THE WOODSHED

STEP 1: THE PLANNING

As an admin for RIT’s Pokémon Club, I had free reign to occasionally throw ideas at a wall and witness what would stick. One of the ideas that I had in my head for quite a long time was doing something akin to the Catching Contest in Gold/Silver/HeartGold/SoulSilver. This idea really came into fruition and turned into a really fun and out there event, which was much different that the usual battle tournament we seem to hold every other week.

Ideally, it would be easy to implement if there was some objective ruleset on what would get you more points in the overall scoring. The games to be used were Scarlet and Violet. The arguably most important part of the event was making it known by people early enough so that they could use the Meal Powers of those games. The idea was that someone who was more prepared with their ingredients and resources for catching would have the chance to get a higher score. Additionally (for reasons explained later), I wanted people to be able to get Apricorn Balls.

Over the course of a Saturday afternoon, I drafted an entire ruleset including very “shouldn’t need to have been stated” rules like not catching something outside of the tournament times and all of that. I also allowed teams of four, since I also had to come up with a system that was easy to understand, used the sandwich creation system well, and lastly but most importantly: was fair. It was with this that my entire draft for the rules was 7 pages. I thought of everything. What if someone evolved their catch and entered that? What happens if someone enters a marked Pokemon that is based off of someone’s birthday (this actually exists, by the way)?

Because an objective system is backed up by an objective point system, the next thing to do was to pull from gen 3 and get some judges for our contest. The judges use the objective scoring system and they also judge how well a mark or a ball fits a specific species. In this instance, we knew that we had tie-breakers pretty much built in. We also used things such as the characteristic phrase or the nickname of the Pokémon in EXTREME tie-breakers (which this did not come down to, thankfully). Thankfully, two of the admins simply did not have the game, and the other one as our third judge could still participate due to having two other admins who probably would have been more harsh to the third just for fun. Additionally, judges were needed in the event someone was blatantly cheating, for example if someone caught a Pokémon the day prior to the event or if they somehow caught a Pokémon in an area where it doesn’t exist. Given the close nature of club, I rightly figured that this wouldn’t happen anyways.

STEP 2: THE STRATEGY

Given the base ruleset above, there’s a lot to consider. What would be the best tactic for catching something that gets a lot of points? Catching everything you see all at once is a good way to go after using Title Power 3 and Shiny Power 3, but should someone specifically shiny hunt or should someone just catch anything? Would certain species have an advantage over others (note: there was a specific Eevee rule that stated that Eeveelutions evolved from Eevee would not count because you could get a mark, like a Rainy Mark or a Thunderstorm Mark and evolve the Eevee appropriately for a matching mark bonus). At this point, I only released the criteria for what gets more points- but I did not release the point system. That was to be released at the start of the contest for the purpose making sure that people aren’t bamboozled for the results, so that people know what to go for exactly, or so that people do not cheat beforehand and catch something a little too perfect.

At the end of the day, it was also something that people didn’t have to think about too much. Many people entered simply to continue their shiny hunting but in a more competitive manner. The species clause existed so that if someone just wanted to catch a bunch of Wooper, they could. I would want to support that! Also, being on a team was considerably better than not being on a team. The winners of the tournament all teamed up. So in some aspects, there was some four player strategy involved with delegation of location, I just didn’t experience it myself.

STEP 3: THE EVENT

There’s not a whole lot to say here. It was pretty tame. Really just grinding and hoping to get something good. My strat for the first half was catching Magikarp. While I have a shiny Margikarp and Gyarados, I thought having a Red Gyarados with the Anger mark would be so cool to have. It might be something that I try to do again in the future. But at any rate, attempting to catch that ended up not going to well. Even if the catch rate was easy, I think it was far worse than trying to specifically go for a shiny. Apricorn Balls and shininess share the same modifier, so if you catch a shiny Pokémon in an Apricorn Ball, it only really comes into play if you get into a tiebreaker. Basically, a Shiny Wooper is just as good as a Roaring Moon in a Moon Ball. My idea is that the more Pokémon I catch, the more chances I have at a really good mark.

Halfway through I swapped my search from Magikarp to Venomoth, because I have always wanted a shiny Venomoth (I like the blue, and I like to use Quiver Dance). I never got one of those either, and I entered in the contest with a marked, not shiny Heal Ball Venomoth. Rightfully so, I did not win. I don’t exactly remember who won, either.

STEP 4: THE EVENT

I genuinely have no idea who won if I am being honest… it was about a year ago now and I forget the results, but the event was a resounding success and we even held it again this year as well (less participants overall, but still a very fun event nonetheless). Also this post took me ~5 months to write where one day it was mostly written and five months later I decided to finish it. So… yeah, that’s a thing. More posts on the way sometime soon.

I have been bragging about this a lot recently, but as of late I have been able to get myself a Steam Deck without spending a real penny. The way I did this was very interesting, and a bit of a bonus to my original plans. I am also gonna give my honest review of the… computer? console? If we consider a Nintendo Switch to be a console, I don’t see how we can’t refer to a Steam Deck as a console.

“So as for the “how”, here it is. CS:GO cases are seriously an investment. I think it’s kind of an open secret now due to CS2 raising the prices to new heights for most of the game’s digital items. If you are able to get CS:GO cases for a low price (these are commodity items, so you buy them in bulk), sit on them for a few years. Eventually, they’ll go up in price. The rarity and scarcity of “Rare” cases (cases that no longer drop) pretty much guarantees this. The gamblers and high profile streamers of the world have as much money as they want to actually buy these cases, so you’re guaranteed to sell them off at a higher price at some point. This does take some patience, but if you really hold onto your stuff, you can make a lot of money on Steam…

So if you make all of this money, obviously you might want some way to convert it. Yeah, you might put the Steam Wallet funds back into CS:GO skins (at the end of my initial investment, I had over $900 in my Steam Wallet) but you can also put it into hardware on Steam. You take a major hit due to shipping and the 15% Gabe Tax from your sales, but it is totally possible to get enough Steam Wallet money to buy Steam Decks and sell them off on Facebook Marketplace. There may be some other ways you can make some actual cash, like buying games for people, but Steam Decks allow you to sell hundreds of dollars in one shot with not too much in the way of losing out on a ton.

To track my case portfolio, I made a python script that allows me to price check individual cases as well as my entire portfolio. Here’s an example of it running. I don’t have a GUI for it, I want to make one eventually (not even sure if Python does GUIs, but I can rewrite this in another language).

Here’s part of the code that actually checks the market. Valve very helpfully set up a .json file that you can pull from any market entry that has information on the current lowest price of the item.

With this tool, I can check the prices each step of the way and when something happens like a new collection releasing or if someone decides to sell their cases a lot cheaper than they actually go for. I could even rewrite this to check the .json every few seconds to see when a lower than average price is listed for buying low if I wanted to.

I won’t lie… I have been bragging about this to a lot of people. I mean, who wouldn’t? It took roughly 200 cases but these are cases I just had over the years and didn’t even buy with Steam funds or actual money. I decided to get the highest model Deck because I thought it would be funny to splurge with my newly acquired spending money. There’s not a whole lot of benefit compared to the other models, just bells and whistles like a bigger SSD and a better screen. It also came in a really good carrying case.

So far I have had a good time with it. With my remaining funds, I bought a couple of games that would be great on the Switch but the Switch can’t run them. One of my favorite games that I have gotten recently is GRIP: Combat Racing. It’s a game very similar to Rollcage in that you have these vehicles with wheels that can stick to surfaces. It’s not exactly a traditional anti-gravity racing game because traditionally those involve actual anti-gravity vehicles that float off the ground (although there are are some of those in the game) and the weapons seem overbearing, but that’s part of having an identity. Overall, I’m really enjoying it. There’s customization for your own vehicle and I always enjoy that in games. It runs really well on the Deck and is a perfect fit to the controls. It feels great to play.

DOOM 2016 is something that I have always wanted to play. I don’t normally care for graphics in games, but DOOM 2016 on the Switch was held back by the hardware and everything looked downright bad and it was in 30 FPS to boot. On the Deck, it runs fairly well and mostly with 60 FPS ‘out of the box’ with no other changes. I did however turn the gyro controls off. I don’t know when this trend started but gyro controls really suck when you have to move the entire screen and device for it to work. It really doesn’t feel good.

Steam backlogs are daunting. There are so many games that people just sort of conglomerate and I think that the Deck really works well for these. There are so many games that I can play now that I’m not hunched over in the same position that I am in when I am working. Braid, BallisticNG, Fight’N’Rage… there’s a ton more.

Overall, I am very glad that I am enjoying this console/computer. I would recommend them to anyone who can get them at a reduced price. If you have a good chair and computer however, I don’t think keyboard and mouse can be beat for many games.

This is something that I can’t recommend enough for fans of the series. I think everyone who is a fan should play the Battle Frontier at least up to the Silver Symbols, maybe even the Gold Symbols. The tl;dr of this is that it’s a formidable challenge that was introduced in the early days (I can’t believe I am saying this, but it’s true- gen 3 is considerably closer to the first two gens than gens 4+) and was the pure essence of postgame for the entire series.

For a bit of background, I started my journey to get a Gold Trainer Card in late 2017 when it came to my Emerald save. I played on cart without an internal battery. My intentions were to 100% the game without using injections or external hacking devices. The challenges are some of the hardest in the entire series, and the patience you need to actually do this on cart is downright saint-like. I finally finished the last challenge with on again off again battles all the way in 2021. The time from 2017 to 2021 I was in the middle of a few career changes, a transfer into a new college, an entire pandemic, and my new (and current) job that I enjoy a lot.

At this point you are probably wondering why. Why should you play the Battle Frontier?
The answer to that, put simply, is that you will have some of the wildest heart pounding battles of your entire life here. You will go up against teams with Pokémon that Quick Claw Sheer Cold you. You will get walled by a Blissey and win, only to then go against a Chansey that has the same strats. You will see a Focus Band proc 3 times in a row (that’s a 1/1000 chance!). You need to win many battles in a row, and the AI only needs to win once to nullify your progress. Your teambuilding and decision making is tested at every point. Masahiro Sakurai’s recent video series that include his idea on giving players stress in order for them to feel pleasure in overcoming that stress is on full display here. That’s not even factoring in the Frontier Brains, that have a bit more well thought out teams for the format you are in. Listen to the theme below and tell me that when you come face to face with a Latios, a Suicune, a Raikou, or any of the non legendary really effin’ good mons like Salamence or Umbreon that you’re not in full panic mode.

You get a good grasp for the gameplay loop and what the developers intended for you to do to train your team. You pretty much nail the mechanics of the game down in order to even start this process. One of the prime examples of this is breeding. Breeding is an iterative process, but I have to back up first. In order to get good potential parents for an offspring, you have to catch a lot of Pokémon, but you also have to make sure you get beneficial natures! To do this, you have to catch a LOT of Pokémon with the ability Synchronize. This is because Synchronize allows you to encounter Pokémon of the same nature if the Synchronize user is at the front of your party. Eventually once you nail that down, you can start breeding so long as the female parent has the correct nature. Then you can give the female parent an Everstone to pass down the ability 1/2 of the time (later gens guarantee that the nature is passed down, but no such luck here). Eventually, you pretty much continue that process until you are satisfied with the IVs. IVs can be checked by a man in the Battle Frontier in one of the random houses(?) there.

What I’m saying is- is that it is a lot. That’s not even factoring in things like EV training or getting Egg Moves or Tutor Moves. I eventually had enough BP to spend on getting an “Elemental Punch” Alakazam, which is an Alakazam with Fire/Ice/Thunder Punch and Psychic. This is 144 BP to do. Your first round of 7 trainers in the Battle Tower nets you ONE BP. My final BP count was over 2000! I was able to afford the gigantic Charizard, Blastoise, and Venusaur plushies for my Secret Base (which are 256 BP a pop).

The formats are some of the most fun formats that GameFreak ever made. Forget things like Little Cup, Metronome Cup, Triple Battles (I may have made some of the Japanese Twitter Triple Battle fans angry if they are reading this, sorry!). We’ve got:
Bring 3 pick 2 Pokémon, but you and your opponents can scout ahead and get info about your team
An entire dark pyramid to explore where your wins expand your view and you have to find items and get to the exit- kind of like PMD, but mainline
A game of pure chance where your 1/3 decision based on your luck may make or break you
Battle where “judges” (really just conditional comparisons) rank your moves after three turns if no KO happens and you can win, lose or tie a 1v1
A facility where you literally CANNOT PICK YOUR MOVES, your Pokémon “chooses” (really it is just random, but natures influence what type of move is used)

While that list doesn’t appeal to everyone, I have to say that it is a lot better than “Battle Tower but” x format that gen 4’s Battle Frontier has. If the phys/special split is a dealbreaker, I hate to say it, but a player would still be missing out on a lot. When it comes time to teambuild, you’ll find that different Pokémon do better in different facilities. I used Slaking in the Battle Pyramid because you get a lot of 1v1s. When I found a Choice Band, it was GG for any wild Pokémon that I encountered. The rest of my team didn’t get much use, but I did bring Flygon and Blissey (actually I lied, Flygon won me the Gold Symbol because it knew Rock Slide at the time). Starmie and Blissey helped a lot in the Battle Pike because they both offered ways to negate the ever present threat of being status’d. I sacrificed my Blissey near the final battle to use Aromatherapy so my Metagross and Starmie could win the battle against Lucy. Sceptile, one of my favorite Pokémon of all time, got me through both the Arena AND Palace, because I built a defensive one that Leech Seeded and Double Teamed. During the final battle against Palace Maven Spencer, that same Sceptile was able to land a crit Giga Drain on a +3 Calm Mind Suicune after it tried using Blizzard against me and MISSED. I remember these battles years later because, simply put, they were down the the wire.

At the end of the day, the streak based system is really satisfying for arcade-y players. The promise that you can keep improving and keep teambuilding and playing, even comparing and mixing records with your friends if you play together, is honestly something that series hasn’t done at this level in a long time. We normally get a pity Battle Tower clone, albeit gen 8 was a bit better at giving players some things to do. I can definitely say though that if Emerald is ever rereleased for the NSO Virtual Console, I will be replaying the Battle Frontier. I may even limit myself to Kanto Pokémon only since many Kanto/Johto Pokémon are rare in Hoenn. It might be a fun challenge. I will leave you all on one of my favorite clips of all time from a streamer named LWisey who I was watching progress the Battle Frontier.

That’s right. I have heard the call to get back into Counter-Strike! The next LAN I am going to is LAN ETS 2023 or Dreamhack Montreal, whichever is sooner.

Counter-Strike for me is probably one of my biggest passions and true loves. I stopped playing it in college because I didn’t want to get distracted, but I think I can temper my playing enough to be fine with a bit for twice a week. Something that decidedly got me interested again was both the addition of Anubis into the map pool, and a Twitter post by someone who both remembered me and a teammate of mine. I think it’s finally time to return to something that I love so much with all of my being.

Everything else I do in life is… fine. Seriously. Like my major, sure, I know my way around after helpful reminders and dedication, but it’s not my passion. I’m surrounded by so many people day-in and day-out that are just so into doing things like doing bug bounties or coding, but I just do this because it’s a good career and they need hard working, honest and knowledgeable people like myself in the field that won’t turn around and be disloyal to people. Martial Arts are also nice, and I am glad I am learning karate as well, but Counter-Strike is just the best.

Fear not! I am still going to be posting various video game things for the people that do read this now and again. It’s not all going to be CS:GO once/twice a week. I have an idea for an article coming up that is going to take a lot of time and waking up early to pull off, but I seriously want to do it (it’s Pokémon related if that helps). I haven’t even written about Source mods, OpenRCT2, RiiConnect24, and a bunch of other things yet, so of course I have more topics to post about.

I’m just really excited about starting it up again. I will slowly be ramping up my game time until April/May and by the time I am done with this semester I hope to finally have a working PC again and not this gaming laptop that heats up to the temperature of the sun whenever I play any intense games.

Here’s another of those classic spicy takes. I actually think that generation 8, specifically Sword and Shield, may actually be among some of the best games/sets of games in the series. They started extremely rough and became synonymous with the removal of the National Dex (despite not being the first games to actually do this, that was LGPE) and pretty much universally hated for its approach to long time fans of the series.

So let’s start with the obvious but in my opinion one of the least important aspects- the absence of over 500 species of Pokémon at launch. I’m hoping readers start to see a pattern in these points, but that still left 400 species with ~70 new Pokémon, which is Kalos tier for new Pokémon but the fact still remains- Sword and Shield allowed you to catch all of that, even without transfers or DLC. This is the same number as US/UM had in its dex, and what SV had in its dex in the next gen- it seems 400 for new + returning Pokémon is now the standard, and it avoids a lot of bloat while still having a good number returning. It also shapes the meta, and the early Sword and Shield meta was wild, much like the Scarlet/Violet meta. Most people have games where 400 that are readily available between the two sets of games simply isn’t possible- certainly gens 3 & 4 don’t do this, or at least as easily as Sword and Shield did. Generation 3 and below didn’t even have this many Pokémon already- so people that gloat about gens being their favorites but then putting down Sword/Shield seriously makes no sense. Eventually DLC did add more in, which was a good move and definitely needed to flesh out the DLC areas more. If someone didn’t have the DLC, they could transfer in the added Pokémon anyways- a pretty smart move all things considered.

The next thing that I would like to point out is that the QoL was through the roof- even more so that Scarlet/Violet have right now. PokéJobs were underrated and criminally underutilized as well as not talked about. As someone who doesn’t always have time to train Pokémon by hand due to having work, college, and other obligations and wants, I appreciated the fact that there was a way that was more efficient than Poké Pelago that I could raise a bunch of Pokémon en masse to a high level for Bottle Caps or for EV training that was legitimate, instead of having the souls sucked out of the game by resorting to injecting. I was able to train over 6 or 7 boxes of Pokémon to be competitively viable that way, which seriously added to my overall collection in HOME for transferring up through the next generations, or just for trading purposes.

Over the course of generation 8, there were essentially 7 Battle Facilities. There were:
Battle Tower (Sword/Shield)
Restricted Sparring
Endless Dynamax Adventures
Battle Tower (BDSP)
Eternal Battle Reverie
Path of Tenacity
Path of Solitude
That’s enough for a Battle Frontier, and I would say that it would be on par with the gen 4 one purely because gen 4’s was just different flavors of the Battle Tower anyways. Each one brought with it something unique, whether it be a tutorial for online battling like the Sword/Shield Tower or a rental facility with a spin on how the rentals work like Endless Dynamax Adventures. Restricted Sparring was interesting, especially when it came time to theory craft how to get the longest possible streak (my longest is still a pitiful 26 with Ice types) and BDSP’s Batte Tower became the best one in the series because the teams weren’t randomly generated- instead, there were set teams with synergy for literally every single trainer. PLA’s various things are minor, but I would take any of those over something like the Battle Hall (gen 4) or the Battle Palace (gen 3) any day.
This isn’t even considering the Battle Stadium in Sword/Shield, which had support up until the release of Scarlet/Violet and had monthly Battle Competitions and Ranked Battle metas. Allowing Mythicals in the the meta was so cool! I was able to get Master Rank ribbons for my Original Color Magearna, my MYSTRY Mew from ’06, and my GMax Melmetal. I always say I am going to participate in more Battle Competitions, but I always never have the time to teambuild for those metas because the actual challenge is announced a mere two weeks before the competitions. I still got the Shiny Galarian birds however, since that was just VGC at the time.
My point is that there were actually a ton of battles to be had, and you could change a lot of your stats and moves on the fly due to the aforementioned QoL. These were once again mostly overlooked by people that didn’t want to see what was there, but instead would complain about what isn’t there.

For shiny hunters, there’s a new allure to shiny hunting- the addition of marks. I talked about marks briefly in my ‘Ribbon Postgame’ post. Sword/Shield were the first and only games in gen 8 to have them, so if someone really wanted, they could do a shiny hunt where the shiny also has to have a mark. This gives more value to their shiny as it is, since gen 7 and to a lesser extent gen 6 as well as Pokémon that game from GO really devalued shiny Pokémon. PLA did as well, but those Pokémon couldn’t be marked- they could be titans, though. Even people that weren’t shiny hunting could get into marks- maybe there’s a perfect mark for a specific Pokémon. Chansey the Chipper? Articuno the Cloud Watcher? Tyranitar the Rampaging? It’s all possible to do, shiny or not. It’s actually an ingenuous system for people to keep catching the same species of their favorite Pokémon; in the event people get a mark they do not want, they could just Wonder Trade it to someone who would like it instead. Plus, that goes towards the ‘Brilliant Aura’ Pokémon that have better stats and odds at being shiny!

Getting resources, especially in the DLC, is great too- it takes no time at all to manually EV train Pokémon. HOME compatibility helps with that too, since it is possible to convert those points into BP. Armorite Ore literally allows you to reset all stats- no EV reset berries required and you can obtain it through raids in a quick manner. Sometimes important mints are just available to get in the wild as a drop. Getting money is as easy as getting Watts since you can trade those for Luxury Balls and sell them afterwards. In Scarlet/Violet, they once again downgraded and make it way to hard to accumulate things like League Points or even standard money.

I can’t deny that it has its faults as well- the raid system in SV is far better (but buggy, even in local play), the main story leaves a lot to be desired, locking Apricorn Balls and better raids to DLC is a bad business practice, BDSP was just an overall mess on top of not having great places to train to get to level 100 for Bottle Caps, and Triple Battles never came back despite being on hardware that could most likely handle them, but my main point is that people like to zoom in on what isn’t there when judging these games- and that’s not fair whatsoever. Sword/Shield were never going to be Emerald/B2W2/Platinum, but that’s okay. I personally had a lot of fun in generation 8 even just by doing random battles or trading with friends, and the additions and changes were just the icing on top. I’m hoping that by the end of this post, people do see the value in what gen 8 brought to the table.

Since generation 3 of the Pokémon games (with the exception of the 5th generation) there have been a fair amount of ribbons to collect. These ribbons persist during transfers and as of recent (the past 4 years) they’ve actually meant something because they are partially equippable, giving whatever Pokémon has earned them a neat title whenever they get sent out. The result of this is that you can quite literally have a Pokémon that is decades old (March of this year marks 20 years for the first gen 3 games!) with ribbons that were obtained all the way back in Ruby and Sapphire.

This mechanic opens up a lot of interesting scenarios and combinations to which I spend a lot of time either obtaining or at the very least thinking about. Take for example all of the shadow Pokémon that get a special ribbon from Colosseum/XD. For those unaware, there’s a special ribbon that shadow Pokémon get after they are purified that no other game awards. Because of this, this is more or less a marker that acts as a signal to other players that ‘yes, this specific Pokémon came from a spin-off game that could trade with the main generation 3 games to which I have transferred up all this time’. Just having the ability to do that is wild, but the execution of it allows for some even rarer scenarios.

Take for example Dunsparce. It was a shadow Pokémon in Colosseum. I believe it was obtainable in Pyrite Cave if my memory servers correctly. Well, Scarlet and Violet of generation 9 saw Dunsparce get a new evolution after all of this time. It would be entirely possible to transfer from Colosseum to Scarlet/Violet only to evolve Dunsparce and essentially have a generation 3 ribbon on a generation 9 Pokémon. There are other Pokémon like this, off the top of my head Quilava, Ursaring, Scyther, Stantler, Misdreavus, Sneasel and Murkrow are all Pokémon that can be caught in Colosseum/XD and can be transferred up into games with new evolutions. There are definitely more, but I can only speak on behalf of Colosseum and not XD (have yet to 100% XD yet for the second time, first time I did I was young and did not keep the shadow Pokémon together).

Another aspect of this is the fact that you can have dedicated Ribbon Masters. There is a small community of people out there that decided to catch a Pokémon and get literally every single ribbon available. I don’t really see too much utility in that because at the end of the day, it’s just another number that goes up with you hardly ever using most of the ribbon titles, but it’s an option. I do have a level 100 Wooper that has every single ribbon obtainable from gen 6 onwards minus the two harder Battle Maison/Tree ribbons, but I find myself often times using only two or three specific ribbons like the Rank Master Ribbon, the Gorgeous Royal Ribbon or the Skillful Battler Ribbon. Ribbons mainly act as an achievement type of system, where they show that you did something. Unfortunately, many of the tasks are mundane, like clearing the Elite Four with a specific Pokémon in your party or getting 999,999 dollars for a specific ribbon. But others have some weight to them, namely the tower ribbons.

The combination of getting ribbons and shiny hunting may be the ultimate test in collection and patience. I am not really much of a shiny hunter because I don’t think the palette swap justifies forgoing so many other details, like natures or stats but there was exactly one Pokémon I shiny hunted and got a special ribbon on.

This is my rarest non-event Pokémon. In generation 3, Sneasel was already one of the rarest Pokémon to get. It was a 5% chance encounter for the species in only LeafGreen in Icefall Cave, explicitly a postgame location, with the original (and really the best) shiny odds of 1/8192 for every encounter. I had planned it to be a hunt that would have taken me an entire summer because the odds were so low. But for some reason, I got it in a weekend in only 1706 encounters. I have no idea how it happened, but the idea after that was to get the Mt. Battle ribbon from Colosseum to give it the 100x Victorious title in Sword/Shield. I did that and the result is a Pokémon that I may be so bold to even say simply doesn’t exist anywhere else in the entire world. Yes, I may be exaggerating that a bit, but the end result is something you do not see every day. I also evolved it into a Weavile since it adds to the ‘rarity factor’ as it is a gen 4 Pokémon with a gen 3 ribbon.

A new aspect of the game as of Sword/Shield are marks. I wouldn’t be able to be content with this post without mentioning marks. Essentially, they are ribbons but they are tied to the conditions of the capture instead of the achievements of a Pokémon. A prime example of this is getting a mark for catching a Pokémon while it is snowing. They give a bit more of a rarity factor for catches and are a perfect alternative to the overdone and flooded state of shinies. There are a few types of marks, like the personality marks (which are a 1/100 chance on all wild Pokémon and to which there are a ton of these marks that a Pokémon can end up with- hunting a specific one here would be even harder than a shiny Pokémon), the weather marks (1/50), and the time of day marks (not sure the odds on these, but these are the most common). There are others and I’m not going to explain all of them, but there are three marks that are only obtainable in Sword/Shield that are not in Scarlet/Violet. These marks are for catching Pokémon when fishing, getting wild Pokémon from making curry, and catching Pokémon in dense fog. With the aforementioned scenario of Pokémon that evolve in later gens, you can get exactly one new Pokémon from gen 9 with the curry mark: Kingambit. Dudunsparce may be available with the special mark that can be obtained on Pokémon in dense fog, but who is to say that fog won’t eventually make its way back into SV?

With Bank shutting down in the future (and with how tedious it is to transfer all the way up), I think it’s more important than ever to highlight some of these Pokémon that will eventually be lost to time. I’m certainly not planning on playing the series my entire life, but it seems clear that in some aspects you will be able to bring Pokémon up to the most recent generation from the last. I think that as a collector that has already completed the National Dex and as someone who doesn’t care about shinies anymore, this route for filling the collection itch is probably the best one yet due to how obscure and at times how tedious it can be. At the end, you will have something that will make you feel accomplished ^{_{until you realize that at the end of the day this is a video game and that it has no weight, bearing or value to your actual life, to which you then have to have cold and crushing reality set in that you spent hours trying to get it all while there are people that actually do what they are supposed to be doing and are hitting tangible life goals like starting a family or making a certain amount of money so that they can then do what they want with no issue, which you cannot do because you are not even putting in the minimum amount of effort to do.}}

Be sure whatever you do, you fully know what it is you are doing choice wise. I am getting tired of endlessly stalling for signing up for my courses; classes begin again in two weeks and I still can’t sign up for any. Here’s hoping that in the end I can get in.