Challenge The Bag is Just a Decoration - Pokémon Violet with minimum bag menus

[Its_A_Random]

Well, I managed to go through the entirety of 2023 without making a single forum post... Let's break that non-posting streak by doing a self-imposed challenge run. It has been a while since my last challenge run thread, you can find both challenge runs I have chronicled in my forum signature if you are interested. This time, I am going to do a challenge run of the latest entries in the franchise, DLC included. What could possibly go wrong?

In case it was not obvious, this thread contains story spoilers for all facets of Pokémon Scarlet and Violet.

THE CHALLENGE + RESTRICTIONS
Goal: To clear the epilogue scenario of Pokémon Violet.
Restrictions:
-Minimum Bag Menus
-Minimum Captures
-No Food / Picnics
-"Switch = Set"

To elaborate on each of the above:
Goal: To clear the epilogue scenario of Pokémon Violet.

This includes beating the base story and the Hidden Treasure of Area Zero story arcs. Of course, the epilogue is not out just yet, but it will have been long out by the time I get to that stage (if I get there in the first place).​

Minimum Bag Menus:

The main restriction of this challenge. Basically, I am not allowed to access the bag/item menu through whatever means except when required to advance the story and only for that specific purpose. These forced bag menus to the best of my knowledge are to give Koraidon/Miraidon the Sandwich in the opening hour, to give the Teal Mask to Carmine and Kieran's grandfather, and to trade ingredients in Crispin's Elite Trial. By this restriction, I am also not allowed to use any backdoor methods of accessing the bag menu (e.g. Restore, the Restore all button in the menu, Give held item, teach move via TM), nor am I allowed to create sandwiches (with the exception of the required sandwich creation for Crispin's trial)​

Minimum Captures:

Due to QoL in recent games, it is possible to capture Pokémon without accessing the bag menu, but as with sandwiches, you are still using items from the bag menu. However, the Hidden Treasure of Area Zero requires several forced captures to complete. As of the end of Indigo Disk, there are four required captures: Ogerpon, Terapagos, and two Pokémon in the Terrarium, one of which must be an Alolan forme (Ogerpon and Terapagos are unskippable catches, and the game will give you a Poké Ball if you have none, two Terrarium Pokémon are required for Drayton's Elite Trial, and an Alolan forme is required for plot progression). Including any required captures in the epilogue (I am currently not aware of much, I will find out when it comes out), I am only allowed to use Poké Balls to specifically capture the aforementioned four Pokémon. Pokémon received from NPCs and Eggs are exempt and unlimited (or fair game, if you prefer).​

No Food / Picnics:

Just don't eat any of the Sandwiches or buy any food from the food stalls/shops when not required to. I also cannot initiate picnics from the menu either (outside of required ones). I just don't plan to use either of these, so it's a whatever ban to be honest.​

"Switch = Set":

Just play as if the switch style is set to Set mode. The option to enforce Set mode was removed in SV, but let's just pretend we have Set mode anyway.​

For added measure, I am going to mostly stick to mandatory fights, but will be taking some optional wild encounters with purpose. Mandatory fights only is simply going to result in the same run but slightly longer as I would get where I need through death abusing instead, and I don't think that is particularly interesting. I am also going to mostly play as

Anyway, without further ado, I suppose I will talk about the beginning of this run so that there is some content of substance.

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UPDATE 1: THE PROLOGUE

Scarlet or Violet?

The first question is to ask which version to play for Scarlet and Violet. The version choice affects four things in total:

• Great Tusk or Iron Treads for the Quaking Earth Titan: This is a very minor thing, and it does not matter which version we pick, as we have options to overcome either titan
• The Sada or Turo fight in The Way Home: Basically, the long and short of it here is who do you want to fight at the end of the main story. Of the two, Sada of Scarlet definitely has the easier of the two fights for the options I have access to, but both fights are definitely doable with some thinking and strats.
• Koraidon or Miraidon for the Indigo Disk and on: The basic gist of this is do I want to take advantage of Sun and have some synergy with in particular one Pokémon I will get, or do I want raw nuking power as well as a better defensive typing? This one is the main reason to choose one version over the other and since I am playing Violet, I have chosen to favour the raw nuking power that Miraidon possesses; Electro Drift in Electric Terrain with Hadron Engine boosts is going to be of major use once we get to the Indigo Disk, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.
• Sandy Shocks or Iron Thorns in Area Zero Under-depths: Basically which Paradox Pokémon I fight before the Terapagos fight in the Indigo Disk. It does not matter which one we fight, as the fight itself is not very difficult.

Obviously here, I have decided to go with Violet. While Turo is a more difficult fight and relies a little bit on luck, Miraidon has the better nuking power with considerations to ruleset and other things. also i have violet casually and dont want to pay for dlc for both versions

With that in mind, I pick Violet, do the character selection and home dings, set my menu options, and then it was time to pick the starter.

Choosing a Starter Pokémon

So there are three options here that we can pick: Sprigatito, Fuecoco, or Quaxly. The starter choice here is important as we are going to be using these Pokémon everywhere and so things like set-up potential, stats, moves and other things like matchups and utility is very important.

• Sprigatito is by far the quickest of the three starters, and having a good Speed stat is highly important in this run. Being able to outspeed and OHKO is better than being outsped, but can OHKO as we don't have items like X-Speed to patch up anything that is slow and in some places like the Pokémon League, it results in less damage being taken and by extension, makes Pokémon useful for far longer. Its Attack stat is also not too shabby, and it gets moves such as U-turn, Knock Off, Play Rough, Hone Claws, and Flower Trick, making it a very strong choice in the later parts of the run. Its early game is not the best, however, and Grass/Dark-typing defensively leaves a lot to be desired.
• Fuecoco eventually becomes the best of the Paldean starters when it comes to raw power thanks to Torch Song and high Special Attack, and it is fairly solid defensively. Snarl also has its uses later on. However, its biggest knock is its Speed stat leaving a lot to be desired, and having rather limited utility outside of debuffing with Snarl and Will-O-Wisp.
• Quaxly has a strong physical movepool and access to powerful moves such as Aqua Step, Close Combat, and Acrobatics let it hit very hard, harder than even Infernape. It also has its own setup move in Work Up, but is best used for sweeping purposes due to not having much utility outside of Feather Dance and Low Sweep. Its Speed stat is okay, but not the best either.

With all these in mind, each of the starters are fairly viable, but the one that sticks out the most here is definitely Sprigatito. While an argument for using Quaxly definitely can be made, especially for Teal Mask stuff (Fuecoco is probably the least useful of the three starters for this run personally), I feel like the speed and utility that Sprigatito can bring alongside a respectable Attack stat makes it the better choice. So we go with the cat.

However, it is not as simple as taking the cat and going from there, we do want to have good stats in order to make sure that we can rely on it when we need to. So basically it's a balance of not want to potentially reset for weeks and having something that is good enough. For me, this came down to three things:

• Either a -Sp. Attack nature or a neutral nature; we are going full physical with Sprigatito because its physical movepool is simply better for this challenge, our special attacks being limited to just Grass-type STAB. And even then, it is better to rely on attacks such as Seed Bomb and later Flower Trick when it comes down to it.
• At least 12 Attack (Neutral) or 13 Attack (Boosting); we do want the best chances we can of Sprigatito hitting hard. This means we want an Attack IV of at least 18.
• At least 13 Speed (Neutral) or 14 Speed (Boosting); we want our Sprigatito to ideally go first in most given scenarios, and depending on our nature, can open the door to Knock Off > Electro Drift combos (with Sprig acting first) to deal with things like Assault Vest Pokémon in Indigo Disk. To achieve this, we want a Speed IV of at least 30.
• As for defensive IVs, I did not care too much about them. As long as they are decent enough, and if it comes down to it, we can invest some EVs into bulk.
• All in all, this means that there are nine natures that I considered to be runnable and with that in conjunction with our IV requirements, the odds of having a runnable Sprigatito was 63/6400, or just under 1%.

With two minutes per reset, it takes roughly three and a half hours on average to get a runnable Sprigatito. Right, right?

Yeah... about that...

Try nearly fifteen hours for me.

Needless to say, my reset luck was really bad. In the end, I got this Sprigatito:

It could be better, but it was the first Sprigatito that met my requirements and after that many hours, I was a little desperate. So I took this one despite the bulk not being on the best side. So I decided to roll with it. Jolly is probably not the best -Sp. Attack nature to have either as the Attack or bulk boost would have more immediate impact, but it does let me more efficiently EV Sprigatito later on so that it can barely outspeed Miraidon (which has its practical uses in Indigo Disk) while out-speeding everything else. That is nice since it does mean I can try to patch up the bulk in the EV process once we get to that stage (yes, we will be EV training in this run, there is not much getting around it). Upon further levelling, the HP and Defence IV's are not crash hot, but the Sp. Defence IV is turning out to be decent, and the Attack IV is looking quite good. The Speed IV here is a 30 (based on Likes to run as a characteristic).

Prologue Fights

With Sprigatito, or Purrcy as I named him, in possession, it was time to go through the six fights that make up the prologue before the start of the Treasure Hunt. We avoid all optional encounters here as there is no need to fight any at this point, and go in with the minimum levels we need. We get healed after every fight, so we don't need to visit any Pokémon Centres along the way.

Nemona 1 is just a simple fight where they fight us with Quaxly. A couple of Leafages is all that is needed to clear the fight and we move to Lv6. Immediately we find out that our Attack IV is not higher than 28 as we only got to 13 Attack instead of 14, but it's not worth going through the resetting process once again.

The next encounter is a forced Lechonk wild encounter. The game intends for you to catch it as part of the catching tutorial, but that's not an option for us, so we just beat it down with two Leafages and then walk up towards the Poco Lighthouse.

After the diversion with Miraidon where we have our first forced bag menu to give Miraidon the Sandwich, get defended from a bunch of Houndour and a Houndoom, and all sorts of lore stuff, we get our next fight against Arven to prove that we are worthy of the Miraidon we fell down a cliff for. He uses a Skwovet, and it's bulky enough that it takes four Leafages to get through the fight, surviving the third hit on 1 HP. We don't take anything noticeable in return, and hit Lv7 (thus learning Bite for our troubles).

A walk through South Area One and we get to Nemona 2, which is probably the most difficult of the prologue fights, but it's the one where Sprigatito has the best advantage relative to the other starters. Leafage is a three-shot on Quaxly after we get hit by Growl turn one, but with Quaxly spending turn two on Work Up, we hit Lv8 with all of our 24 HP intact. Tera-Electric Pawmi comes in and Tera Thundershock only deals 7 damage to our Sprigatito. This means with no paralysis procs, we can Tail Whip and three-shot with our moves of choice. We do attempt to get some flinches with Bite, but to no avail. With 3 HP and no status ailments, Sprigatito cleans up the fight with an Overgrow-boosted Leafage. We hit Lv9.

Finally as we make our way to Uva Academy in Mesagoza, we have two forced encounters with Team Star grunts. The first uses Shroodle, which can be nasty with some Acid Spray uses, but we spam Bite and end up getting two flinches in a row to win without taking damage. The second uses a Yungoos, and we get a Tera Orb from Nemona prior to the fight. We make use of it (though it does not matter in this fight) and take it out in two Leafages, only getting a defence drop from Leer in return. This gives us Lv10 and Hone Claws, which we immediately teach over Tail Whip.

Where to next?

After the initial fights, we then get introduced to the Academy and the three main Treasure Hunt storylines (Victory Road, Path of Legends, Starfall Street), and since we have the DLC, we can also start the Teal Mask storyline. At this point, the world is open up to us, but with only one Pokémon in possession, our first move in this Treasure Hunt should be pretty obvious; we need teammates and there is only one path open to us right now that will give us access to a new teammate pretty quickly. We will deal with that next time I update, as that one is also going to be one big reset simulator; spending 15 hours on Sprigatito was not bad enough already.

---

TEAM

Sprigatito [Purrcy] (M)
Lv10, Jolly
EVs: 2 HP / 3 Atk / 2 Spe
IVs: 0-5 HP / 23-27 Atk / 6-11 Def / 10-19 SpA / 20-24 SpD / 30 Spe
Stats: 28 HP / 19 Atk / 16 Def / 13 SpA / 16 SpD / 23 Spe
-Tackle
-Hone Claws
-Leafage
-Bite

---

We move forward... into probably the slowest part of this run by far. Yeah.

 

[Its_A_Random]

This is less of an update and more of a brief status report.

So the Epilogue just released and it requires the Mythical Pecha Berry (which is Mystery Gift only for some reason):

As well as the completion of the Hidden Treasures arc and the Ace Academy Tournament up to a certain point. Since Mystery Gift requires an internet connection and by extension, a linked Nintendo ID, I had to make a throwaway NNID to be able to complete this challenge, which is perfectly fine (since it means I don't have to fork out money for NSO just to complete what I am setting out to do). Since it does not have a current end date, it is also convenient in the distant future if I were to do another challenge with this game involving the epilogue or whatever.

As for the actual next update itself, it is going to be some time away. I am currently at the reset simulator I alluded to, and between that and other commitments in real life and elsewhere on the internet, it is going to be fairly slow going for a fair bit. Once I am past the reset simulator, things should pick up a little bit.

But yes, as far as this run is concerned, the only thing that will stop me from being able to complete this challenge is getting skill issued big time by the fights themselves.

 

[R_N]

Out of curiosity, what's the plan for Ogerpon? Grab it "normally" around the late 30s/40s and her at level 20 or wait and pick it up post game but deal with the harder battle for the level 70

 

[Its_A_Random]

Out of curiosity, what's the plan for Ogerpon? Grab it "normally" around the late 30s/40s and her at level 20 or wait and pick it up post game but deal with the harder battle for the level 70

I will be grabbing Ogerpon as early as I reasonably can, which will probably be around the 40s mark. Her toolkit makes her worth using for a lot of the late base-game content, on top of critically being an extra Pokémon we have access to in a run where we won't have a full party until the postgame.

 

[Its_A_Random]

Well then, it took a while, but here I am...

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THE CHALLENGE + RESTRICTIONS
Goal: To clear the epilogue scenario of Pokémon Violet.
Restrictions:
-Minimum Bag Menus
-Minimum Captures
-No Food / Picnics
-"Switch = Set"

---

Set forth to the land of Kitikami!

I hinted at it earlier, but the first move is very obvious. The long and short is that our Sprigatito needs a teammate, and the only way to get a teammate quickly, taking restrictions into account, is to start the Teal Mask storyline. Fortunately, we do not have to go very far; we just need to get through two trainer fights and some cutscenes.

So we take the field trip and walk into Mossui Town. Here, we are roped into fighting resident jerk Carmine who makes it her goal to make us eat dirt. Well, that's not nice, but eating dirt is all we can do at this point. Sprigatito can push through her Poochyena with Tera-Grass Leafage spam, but Vulpix comes in afterwards, outspeeds us and takes us out with Ember. Fortunately, we are not required to win this fight, so we eat dirt and check into the hotel after some more cutscenes. We also find out at this point that our Sprigatito has a HP IV of 1, which is not good, but we have to roll with it at this point.

After some cutscenes, we come to our first fight against Carmine's little brother and Ogerpon fanatic, Kieran. Just like with Carmine, we are going to give Kieran the W for now before we bury him in a sea of L's later on. We can get through Sentret with Tera Grass Leafage no problems, but Yanma outspeeds and one-shots us with Air Cutter. As with Carmine, the win is not required, so sit through more cutscenes before the orienteering exercise begins. At this point, we also get a phone call that basically says that we can go to Blueberry Academy at this point, but we won't be going anywhere near that for a while. We could technically start the Indigo Disk questline at this point, but until we beat the main prerequisites, Carmine won't be there. We could still do the required catches, but we will wait until we can actually do the main questline in full. We won't need the Terrarium catches before The Way Home anyway.

At any rate, we do the first signpost with Kieran up at the Loyalty Plaza, learn about the "legend" of Kitikami, and then we drop the storyline at that point, because now it is time to get a new teammate.

The Great Reset Wall #2

If you thought two minute resets for a starter was bad, here is a completely new kettle of fish; four and a half minute reset loops. So at this point, the loop is basically you talk to Jacq just outside of Mossui Town, sit through about 90 seconds of cutscenes, picking the top option each time for speed, and then getting an Egg which contains a random Sinnoh starter. From there with no upgrades to Miraidon, it takes just over two minutes to hatch the egg and hope for the best. If not, reset and try again.

For this particular egg, you could make an argument for Piplup, but the best option for our purposes is definitely Chimchar. It is a mix of being primarily physically based (good for efficient training), having the speed to outrun critical targets in the base story that Piplup fails to do (Mostly Turo's Pokémon), and some other nice things. As with Sprigatito, we are opting for a Physically-based moveset, since that is where our coverage and power lies. You could opt to do some specially-based thing with Calm Mind and Flamethrower, but I don't want to be keeping Chimchar a Chimchar for a while for the sake of something that only really one move benefits from. So we prioritise Adamant (Ideal nature) or Jolly, which is a 2/75 chance. Furthermore, IV checking is much worse with Chimchar as the only thing you can check at Lv1 is Characteristic, and if it has a 12+ IV in HP, Defence, or Sp. Defence. So if we want to check if our other stats are good, we have to go into the next phase and do at least 2-3 fights before deciding if we want to pull the trigger.

Of course, between not wanting to do this forever and wanting something decent, I settled for the third Chimchar that made it out of the stat check. The one I settled for was Jolly with this IV range:

IVs: 2 HP / 28 Atk / 2 Def / 2 SpA / 21 SpD / 11 Spe

Honestly rather bad overall, but should be more interesting for those who are just spectating the thread. 28 Neutral in Attack is probably the bare minimum of what would be acceptable, 11 Speed is not so great, but with Jolly it does not matter too much. As with Sprigatito, our physical bulk is terrible and we have decent SpD. Resetting luck in general for me has been rather cursed, but it is what it is. The show must go on, and so, we roll with it.

Flamigo Farming

And now we get to the boring part: Farming for EVs. If this was just The Way Home or something like that, you could roll with whatever EVs you get, but with the Blueberry League E4 in the future, there is no way getting around it; we must EV train. And since it is essentially no bag menu, we are stuck with having to do things the old fashioned way. The first thing we want to boost in this instance is Attack, and we want to get all the way to 252 on both Sprigatito and Chimchar. So my original plan was to farm Flamigo in South Area One. They are low levelled, and they offer 2 Attack EVs per kill, letting us only need 126 of them to take them out. And with techniques like catching them off guard and Tera Grass Leafage early, you can get a grind fully off the ground. Sounds good, right?

One slight problem, however; it's very slow. The problem is that in South Area One, every Flamigo is considered a fixed spawn. Fixed spawns only reset every new day, which makes things go by slower, and there are 16 of them in total. To make matters worse, three of them cannot be accessed until we unlock swimming for Miraidon, which requires beating Titan Bombirdier. So we can only take out 13 every real life day. We don't necessarily have time for that, so we take out two rounds of 13 in order to get enough experience to evolve both Sprigatito and Chimchar into Floragato and Monferno respectively. With +52 EVs in our belt, I decide to do something else before I begin searching for an alternative grind I could do so it would not take ten days just to fill out Attack.

Crab of the Stony Cliff

And that one thing we opt to do is to take on our first Titan, Klawf. After all, we left Arven hanging for asdfghjkl hours, let's impress him by going out the eastern gate to go through South Area Three? Anyway, we come here with Floragato Lv17 and Monferno Lv15, with 57 and 52 EVs in Attack respectively. This fight is something we are more than strong enough to handle. The fight does, however, come with +2 EVs in Defence, but it's something we do want to have a little bit of. Anyway, this titan is not too troublesome. We lead with Floragato.

For the first phase, one Hone Claws and two Leafage uses is enough to push it into critcal HP to begin the next phase. We tank two Vice Grips, but Floragato is healthy enough to move on. After this, we have the chance to menu or even use the Pokémon Centre, but we do neither; straight in we go.

The second phase is a little bit more complicated and has some luck to it. The main thing is that we want Arven's Shellder to play medic with Life Dew, which he does on the first move. The next thing is that if we knock Klawf to half HP, Anger Shell will activate and it starts hitting much harder. So ideally you skip it by going to +3 Attack and then using Tera Grass Leafage to finish off the fight. You can also go to +2 and finish it in two Tera Grass Leafages if Shellder co-operates, but the ending result is the same.

We get the ability to move faster with Miraidon and 2 Defence EVs for our troubles. We then take out another Klawf on the way out to bump that Defence EV count for both Floragato and Monferno to 4, and get back to it.

Back on the Grind

So now we have to get our Attack EVs all the way to 252 for both, but with the higher levels, we can try more things out in between taking out the same 13 Flamigo once a day in South Area One. I tried Komala on South Area Four, and while Monferno can do the job, they appear too infrequently to bother. I also tried Flamigo in South Area Five, but they are a bit too strong for us right now. So eventually after some back and forth, I ended up finding a more viable grind spot for Attack in Reveler's Road in Kitikami. So we have to return there for a little bit. There are some fixed spawns like Nuzleaf, but the main things here to farm are Heracross and Kricketune. Both are in the Lv13 to Lv16 range and offer 2 Attack EVs per kill, which is nice from an efficiency standpoint. With that and trying out Mossfell Confluence for a bit, we eventually hit the 252 Attack on Floragato and 250 Attack on Monferno. Time to make a cheeky play...

Jerkbird of the Open Sky

With both of our Pokémon at Lv28, it's time to wrap up the Attack farm by doubling it up with Titan Bombirdier, who yields 2 Attack EVs on kill. For this fight, Monferno is the main damage dealer with Floragato in the rear if something goes wrong. Phase 1 is simple. Two Flame Wheels is enough to end the first phase, but we do die to a crit Pluck. This did not happen and we got Rock Throw instead, but it's a crit. It puts us into one-shot range with Pluck for Phase 2, which we do not have time to heal up for.

So Phase 2, and Arven's Nacli can be pretty useless if it wants to be by just spamming Rock Polish, which is what happened. In retrospect, I should have just gone for Tera Fire Flame Wheel, but it did not cross my mind at the time, so after a Flame Wheel, Monferno dies to Pluck, and Floragato is able to finish the job with two U-turns. Jerkbird down.

For our trouble, we get the ability to travel on water. Would have been nice earlier, but it is what it is. We get Monferno the missing 2 Attack EVs by taking out a Heracross in Reveler's Road. Now to move onto the next part.

Mascot Murdering

So now comes the important decision with respect to how I want to EV Floragato (later Meowscarada) for Speed. The main rationale here is Blueberry League, where we want Meowscarada to speed creep Miraidon, while Miraidon speed creeps the fastest thing we want to outspeed. The fastest thing we have to deal with is Talonflame from Crispin, but with it being Jolly and 252 in Speed with 31 IVs on top of Base 126 Speed, getting the jump on it is unrealistic unless we significantly overlevel. So we go for the next benchmark; Amary's Jolly Alolan-Dugtrio. At Lv78, Jolly nature, and 252/31 EVs/IVs, it hits 273 Speed. Therefore, we want to pick a level where Miraidon has 274 Speed and Meowscarada 275, letting us get a one-two punch on A-Dugtrio to eliminate it ideally, while also getting Meowscarada safely out of harm's way from Skarmory. To do this, I give the Level we are at, and the required Speed EVs to hit the benchmark, assuming Miraidon is neutral with a 31 IV:

Lv74, 224 Meowscarada, 252 Miraidon
Lv75, 204 Meowscarada, 232 Miraidon
Lv76, 188 Meowscarada, 216 Miraidon
Lv77, 172 Meowscarada, 196 Miraidon
Lv78, 156 Meowscarada, 176 Miraidon
Lv79, 140 Meowscarada, 160 Miraidon
Lv80, 124 Meowscarada, 144 Miraidon

The main question here is what level do we want to fight Amarys at and how much investment do we want to make in Meowscarada's bulk. For this run, I have decided that ideally I get Lv78 Meowscarada, which gives us 102 EVs to play with bulk wise. That is pretty nice, and I suppose, is one of the main benefits to having Jolly on our Floragato...

But then the question comes of getting the Speed EVs. The easiest way to do this is to go down to the riverbank on South Area Two and farm Pikachus for 2 Speed EVs a pop. They are also fairly low levelled, so getting the kill is not a problem. On the other hand, due to Static, we have to use non-contact moves like Ember, Seed Bomb, and Magical Leaf to get the job done. Once Floragato hits the 156 Speed EV benchmark, we deposit it and let Monferno get the rest with Ember. Unfortunately very late into the piece, it starts raining. That meant I could not get the one shot with Ember and had to do an alternative to get the last 18 EVs. Luckily they exist, and the main one here is to farm Morpeko in Wistful Fields in Kitikami. Morpeko also happens to be Violet exclusive (I guess version choice did matter this early on hahaha) and drops 2 Speed EVs per Mach Punch, so we do the thing.

Rounding off the EVs

And with Monferno's EV training wrapped up, it was time to wrap up Floragato's. To this end with 102 EVs for bulk, I settle for 6 HP and 96 Defence. With 96 in Defence and an IV of 7, it patches up Floragato's bad physical bulk by giving it the equivalent of an uninvested 31 IV in Defence. For this, the most efficient way of getting the EVs was to hunt Klawfs near the Stony Cliff Titan location, which was not too hard. Just that Klawf, like Pikachu on the riverbank, is an uncommon spawn. Finally to get the 4 HP EVs I needed, Marill near one of the ponds in South Area Five did the trick for 2 HP per.

In retrospect, maybe hunting 1 EV Pokémon would have been better, but the deed is done and I can finally stop EV training and get on with rushing objectives. We are overlevelled for quite a few of them at this point, which will be a nice break from intense EV training, and we don't have many levels to go until we are good enough to finish up Teal Mask and get back to doing more ev training. But no matter, after all that rather boring stuff, it's time to clear some more objectives and begin the road to Ogerpon in the next update.

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Floragato [Purrcy] (M)
Lv34, Jolly
EVs: 6 HP / 252 Atk / 96 Def / 156 Spe
IVs: 1 HP / 26 Atk / 7 Def / 10 SpA / 24 SpD / 30 Spe
Stats: 85 HP / 89 Atk / 58 Def / 44 SpA / 56 SpD / 92 Spe
-U-turn
-Hone Claws
-Seed Bomb
-Bite

Monferno (M)
Lv33, Jolly
EVs: 252 Atk / 6 Def / 252 Spe
IVs: 2 HP / 28 Atk / 2 Def / 2 SpA / 21 SpD / 11 Spe
Stats: 85 HP / 86 Atk / 40 Def / 51 SpA / 46 SpD / 90 Spe
-Feint
-Mach Punch
-Flame Wheel
-Taunt

OBJECTIVES
Victory Road: 0/8 Badges
Path of Legends: 2/5 Titans
Starfall Street: 0/5 Bases
The Teal Mask: First Signpost Visited

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Oh, and one last parting shot for this update. Since I cannot catch any old Pokémon this run, I am inevitably going to run into Shinies that I can do nothing about but let it roam. Here is the first of the lot. It might not be the last, but who knows...

 

[R_N]

Do Titans give EVs? I don't think they give EXP right? So I'm not 100% sure they would hand out EVs too and not just be counted as a separate, unrelated boss encounter. I guess the same question applies to the Starmobiles and legend-boss-battles.

 

[Its_A_Random]

Do Titans give EVs? I don't think they give EXP right? So I'm not 100% sure they would hand out EVs too and not just be counted as a separate, unrelated boss encounter. I guess the same question applies to the Starmobiles and legend-boss-battles.

Titans do, in fact! They only give experience and EV's once you take them out in the second phase (since in the first phase, they run once they drop to critical HP). I am not sure on Starmobiles, but it is reasonable to expect Legendary bosses to also give EV's since you also get experience once you take them out or capture them.

The Experience gain can be verified once you take out a Titan, while the EV gain I verified when Floragato got to the 510 EV cap when I expected it to (after the second Marill kill), given the 252 EV cap on one stat and then taking out the precise number of enemies everywhere else.

 

[Its_A_Random]

Alright, here is me doing through the early-midgame objective rush. Not the most interesting thing, but we gotta do it.

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THE CHALLENGE + RESTRICTIONS
Goal: To clear the epilogue scenario of Pokémon Violet.
Restrictions:
-Minimum Bag Menus
-Minimum Captures
-No Food / Picnics
-"Switch = Set"

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Patissier of Cortondo

So the first gym that we were supposed to do a long time ago... And we are overlevelled for this point of the game. With Monferno at Lv33 and Floragato at lv34, there is nothing much to note here. The Olive Roll is done with no fights as we can just take the long way around. As for the fight itself, Nymble, Tarountula, and Teddiursa all fall to one Flame Wheel from Monferno. Not even the rain gods saying hi halfway through the fight were able to turn the tide for Katy. Badge #1 in the books.

Artist of Artazon

With the first badge in the books, it's time to go straight to the second intended badge in Artazon. The Hide and Seek has one mandatory Sunflora fight, which we have no problems deposing with a single Flame Wheel, and then Brassius himself is another Flame Wheel simulator with Petilil and Smoliv falling to a Flame Wheel, while Sudowoodo uses the one Sturdy turn it got to do nothing of note with Trailblaze. Pretty trivial at this point of the game, I suppose. Also Language classes open, I suppose. That might be important later on, I suppose.

Oh hi, Nemona

Before we can take on our third gym fight, we get roped into the third fight against Nemona. We lead with Floragato to avoid Static from her Pawmi, but otherwise we show her the culmination of our black belt training. Floragato at this point is overlevelled relative to her team, so Rockruff, Pawmi, and Quaxwell all fall to a single Seed Bomb. Monferno hits Lv34 at this point as well. Next.

Streamer of Levincia

Next gym we aim for is Iono's gym in Levincia. Her gym challenge has two mandatory trainer fights, one with a Tynamo, and the other with a Flaaffy. Monferno one-shots them both with Flame Wheel and we get Static from the Flaaffy, but it does not matter since we can just visit the Pokémon Centre.

As for Iono herself, she puts up more of a fight, but it's still easy. Monferno leads again and one-shots Wattrel with Flame Wheel. Bellibolt is a clean two-hit with Flame Wheel, but Water Gun does not deal much damage at this point. Luxio comes in with Intimidate and we Tera-Fire at this point. Luxio lives the Flame Wheel, but Spark does not much of note before it falls, and Mismagius gets whacked with a critical hit to wrap up the gym match. Badge #3.

Shed Tailer of the Lurking Steel

After Levincia, we decide to clean up the rest of the Eastern Province content available to us right now, which is the Orthworm titan encounter. The high jump ability is useful, I suppose. But either way, we gotta do it. For phase 1, it takes two Flame Wheels to advance to the second phase, but I misclicked Feint for the opener, meaning that I took two Iron Tails to the face. It is a four-shot at least, and it was not a bad thing I got hit twice, so I went straight into the second phase.

And the rain came again. Bloody hell.

It was not the end of the world, though. Flame Wheel is a four-shot in Phase 2 with rain, but we get hit by Iron Tail on the first turn, which puts us into Blaze. With 4 HP. This meant that two Flame Wheels was enough to close out the fight, and during those two Flame Wheels, Orthworm tried to use Sandstorm. Normally it would work, but the rain gods said no and Monferno did not die. Risky, but we got out of there. Arven used a Toedscool, I guess, but all it did was Confuse the Orthworm for no real results. Both Monferno and Floragato levelled up from this.

Chef of Cascarrafa

The next logical step at this point in time is to go to Cascarrafa for the Kofu fight, though his challenge sends us on a goose chase to the nearby port town of Porto Marinada for the sake of a wallet. Getting there, we fight to fight a gym trainer with a Floatzel and a Clauncher. The Floatzel outspeeds Floragato, but does not deal much damage. Everything gets one shot by Floragato's Seed Bomb anyway.

After the auction, we go back and fight Kofu. Veluza, Wugtrio, and Crabominable all get outsped by Floragato and die to one Tera-Grass Seed Bomb. We still took damage, however, from the Sandstorm that came blowing in from the nearby desert. Was not just for show, I suppose. Floragato also hits Lv36 at this point and evolves to Meowscarada. We teach Flower Trick over Seed Bomb, though we can switch when needed. Big boost in power that will be of some relevance shortly.

The Early-Midgame Kitikami Rush

We could go on and take on Larry now, but we can wait until Infernape to make the fight pretty much free. So at this point, we return to Kitikami and now we rush through the plot until the later stages. We finally take Kieran to the second signpost for the orienteering exercise, before going all the way up to Dreaded Den. Here we get our second Kieran fight, and we are pretty overlevelled at this point of the storyline. Mach Punch takes care of Poliwag, while Flame Wheel take care of Furret and Yanma. Easy fight. The first drop in the sea of L's he will endure.

We then return to Mossui to get ready for the Kitikami Mask festival, but we get thrown into another fight with Carmine. Monferno remains in the lead, Mach Punching both Morpeko and Mightyena, before Flame Wheeling Poltchageist and Swadloon. All clear-cut one shots thanks to the level difference, but Carmine would get her payback in the Ogre Oustin' minigame, as I came short of her score during the Festival. Worth noting that you could do the entire Ogre Oustin' minigame quest to eventually pick up a Shiny Munchlax for free, but we have no use for it, nor is it worth my sanity to lab out a way to do it solo. So we will go without for this run.

The next day, and we get our second forced bag menu for the run, as we have to give the Teal Mask we get during the festival to Carmine and Kieran's Grandpa. We go through a lore dump, tell some white lies to Kieran, and go to complete the orienteering exercise with the third signpost. It does not happen without a fight, however, and it's another fairly easy fight (though more complicated). Yanma falls to Flame Wheel, and then we get a one-shot on Furret with Mach Punch (which also lets us avoid Baby-Doll Eyes, convenient). At this point, Monferno hits Lv36, and we teach Close Combat over Taunt for now. We use this to maul Poliwhirl, and then Dipplin survives a hit barely (probably missed a range, cannot be bothered to check). It only uses Defence Curl in return, so we seal the deal afterwards. We also finally get Infernape at this point, and return to leading with Meowscarada for the next part of the plotline.

After a little more plot, the next step is to get a Crystal Cluster from the Crystal Pool. We make our way to the top and get a 2v1 fight (with Carmine's Morpeko) against a Lv30 Milotic. It falls to a single Flower Trick, so ehhh.

Moving on, and Kieran steals the Teal Mask, forcing us to fight him in order to get it back. Meowscarada remains in the lead and the level differential does the rest here. Yanma falls to Bite, Gligar, Cramorant, and Poliwhirl all fall to a single Flower Trick, and Dipplin takes two Bites to take out (doing nothing in return due to a flinch). We get the mask back, but the Loyal Three make their grand return!

So at this point, a trip to Kitikami Hall for plot, and then the Dreaded Den for a 1v1 against the Lv30 Munkidori. With all our Attack investment, a single Bite from Meowscarada finishes it off, and Meowscarada hits Lv38, teaching Night Slash over Bite for now.

At this point, the Loyal Three major fights open, but we are not the most ready people for them just yet. Munkidori, maybe, but Okidgi and Fezandipiti will pose some issues at this point of the game. Then there's Kieran 5, which is going to be difficult by virtue of the Switch = Set ruling. We will be back to pick up Ogerpon in due time.

Overworked Everyman of Medali

With Infernape online at this point, we can pretty much rush through the Medali gym challenge and fight Larry. Since we know what the secret order is (Grilled Rice Balls, Medium, Extra Crispy / Fire Blast, Lemon), we can bypass the trainers and go straight into the fight. With a Lv37 Infernape in tow, this fight ends up being a pushover. Close Combat one-shots Komala, Dudunsparce, and Staraptor (despite Intimidate) in quick succession, and the fifth badge is ours.

It's a Nemona House!

Beating Larry, we immediately get ambushed by Nemona into another battle with no chance to change lead or anything. Oh well. Infernape takes out Lycanroc with two Mach Punches (it spams Accelerock anyway, so might as well not use Close Combat and not get an extra Defence drop that won't matter). Goomy and Pawmo then fall to a Close Combat, but Quaquaval is a bad matchup for Infernape. In hindsight, the best play was to just switch and finish off the fight, but I did not want to risk some Air Slash shenanigans. Anyway, Close Combat deals half damage and then falls to an Aqua Step. The speed boost it got from the move does not matter at any rate, as Meowscarada still outspeeds and finishes off Nemona #4 with a Flower Trick.

At this point, we are pretty much through most of the mid-game as far as SV is concerned. There are realistically a couple of mainland Paldean goals achievable at this point of the game, but we cannot hide from the Loyal Three together. I'll figure out my next move in the next update after I go away for a week for IRL reasons, I suppose.

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Meowscarada [Purrcy] (M)
Lv39, Jolly
EVs: 6 HP / 252 Atk / 96 Def / 156 Spe
IVs: 1 HP / 26 Atk / 7 Def / 10 SpA / 24 SpD / 30 Spe
Stats: 108 HP / 125 Atk / 71 Def / 64 SpA / 68 SpD / 139 Spe
-U-turn
-Hone Claws
-Flower Trick
-Night Slash

Infernape (M)
Lv39, Jolly
EVs: 252 Atk / 6 Def / 252 Spe
IVs: 2 HP / 28 Atk / 2 Def / 2 SpA / 21 SpD / 11 Spe
Stats: 109 HP / 121 Atk / 61 Def / 77 SpA / 68 SpD / 129 Spe
-Feint
-Mach Punch
-Flame Wheel
-Close Combat

OBJECTIVES
Victory Road: 5/8 Badges
Path of Legends: 3/5 Titans
Starfall Street: 0/5 Bases
The Teal Mask: 0/3 Masks