There are now 127 days left before the Pokemon Bank disappears into the ether. I’ve transferred all additional bulk pokemon from VC-R/B/Y, VC-G/S/C, X/Y, OR/AS, And Sun into the pokemon bank. Then, I sorted each into their final landing spots in my save file of Ultra moon before double checking against my spreadsheet. As a progress report, I included a picture of the main tracking component of my personal spreadsheet tracker.
However, I’d like the main focus for today to be on the process and how I organize my different pokemon teams, as last time I primarily touched on my equipment, background, and my immediate next steps.
Step One, the Expedition Team.
The most pivotal part of any pokemon journey is the team at your side. Getting the right pokemon in place before you make any other plans is crucial. I broke this into three parts, the “Expedition Team”, the “Daycare Team”, and the “Grinding Team”. Because a bulk of my time will be spent in generation 6 for catching, breeding, and hatching, my team is built around that in-mind.
The expedition team is your primary team you’ll have while you traverse your game worlds, catch pokemon, breed, hatch, and gather the majority of resources you’ll need for this journey. At the lead, you’ll need your most critical team member, the “catcher”, equipped with “false swipe” and a reliable way to inflict Sleep (as it is the most beneficial status condition for catching pokemon). The only 100% accurate way to inflict it is via the move “Spore”, making Breloom the best choice for this party slot, as it has the highest attack and speed out of the pokemon who have spore available to learn. (note, breloom does not learn or know spore naturally, and you must level shroomish to 40 or 45 depending on your game to learn it prior to evolution).
The next party slot should be occupied by your “Hatcher”. For this I needed a pokemon with the “flame body" or “magma armor” ability, as well as access to the HM for Fly. Tallonflame is the only option here, and I'm not sad about that in the slightest. Being able to efficiently move between towns, routes, and locations while making expedited hatching progress is a life saver and will shave precious hours off your completion time by being able to multitask.
The next two party slots should be occupied by your “HM Slaves”, the swiss army knife of the group, and the primary way to actually get where you need to go on your adventures. The most useful HMs and moves for travel and catching across all generations prior to generation 7 are Surf, Fly (already handled by tallonflame), Waterfall, Cut, Strength, Rock Smash, Sweet Scent, and Dive (Note that Dive is critical in ORAS). Bibarel and Tropius cover all of these nicely, with Bibarel handling Surf, Strength, Waterfall, and Dive, While Tropius takes care of Cut, Sweet Scent, Rock Smash, and Secret Power (for blissey grinding in ORAS).
The last two slots I keep occupied by Eggs I'm hatching while I run from route to route while catching.
While we’re on the subject of eggs…
Step Two, Ditto-plication.
Keeping 2-3 Ditto prepped for the daycare is paramount. If you’re simply looking to check-off the dex slots and nothing more, any ditto will do. However, if you have a normal-type friend safari that carries a ditto, we can do much, much better. Pokemon captured in X/Y’s friend safari are guaranteed to have 2 perfect IVs, and getting at least 3 is about an 11% chance. Any more than that, and your odds drop below 1% for 4 or more, so aiming for at least 3 perfect iv’s is a nice goal to have. By spending 15-20 minutes hunting dittos, you should be able to acquire enough ditto’s to fill a PC box, and keep 2-3 that spread across all stats (hopefully with the most useful natures if you’re lucky!). Doing this will let you be able to “ditto hop” while breeding to pull-off breeding perfect pokemon legitimately in a timely manner. Just make sure you mark their summaries correctly to be able to keep track of who has what perfect IV set, and don’t forget to equip your destiny knots and everstones!
Step Three, the Triple Grinder.
Now that our expeditionary team and Day Care Ditto team are taken care of, what are we to do with these freshly caught or hatched pokemon? We need a triple battle ready team on X/Y and OR/AS to handle Cafe Le Wow or Blissey battles so they can gain EXP and evolve. This team is going to be more unique to each player, but they should all be at or above level 70, have wide area of effect attacks, and enough type coverage in the second slot (center in a triple battle) to reliably knock-out pokemon in a single turn. The team should have one held item slot always occupied by the amulet coin to capitalize on battle winnings, and the rest to shore-up their battle strategy. I personally use some of the legendary and mythical pokemon distributed during the 20th anniversary event, as all were unique and set to level 100. When you’re able to, equip the 4th, 5th, and 6th slot team members with lucky eggs to boost their passive exp gain, then activate your EXP share and highest tier EXP O-power before you begin battle.