13 March 2024

Filling in the Living Dex

Hello friends! This is less of a one-off blog post and more so a journal that I'll contiuously update.
As stated by the title, this is my journey in attempting to fill in the Living Pokédex, which as of March 13 2024, is 1025 Pokémon!

Back in November of 2022 I completed the Pokédex in my copy of Scarlet, and ever since, I've been kinda itching to do something a bit grander. Finally finishing a Pokédex in any Pokémon game has always been a dream of mine, and this is just one step further!

I'll be doing this by using various games I own and making a full collection in Pokémon Home!

I have a few rules - or guidelines - for this challenge!

• No hacking, the Pokémon must be legal
• Trading is allowed, including the GTS
• Only games I own
• I want a copy of each Pokémon in the box, not just the Pokédex entry

Notes:
There's also Pokémon locked to events that are no longer available. I'll do my best to get these the way it's intended, but I'll tackle those when I get there!

I'm planning to do this semi in order - at least, I'd like to finish most of a region before moving on to the next.

Let's get started!

Day 1 - 13 March 2024

This is when I decided to start this little challenge of mine! Most of today was spent setting everything up, including Pokémon Home on my phone and my Switch, and updating Bank and Transporter on my 3DS (though I did this a little later).

The day before and some of today was also spent combing through my old 3DS and DS save files. Unfortunately, as I discovered (or remembered, I guess) that all of my 3DS and DS saves are really not clean. They all have the Pokédex complete (which I did not do) and have random hacked shinies and various legendaries. I'm still not sure how to feel about these saves. They're from my childhood, so I can't stomach deleting them. I'll just use them for catching Pokémon and I'll ignore all the... other stuff... in the saves. At least my White 2 doesn't have the Pokédex hacked to be complete, just some very strange hacked Pokémon.

I started with the Kanto starters. I already had a Charizard sitting in my Scarlet box, and I got a free Bulbasaur from Pokémon Home. I had to use the GTS for Squirtle, but it only took a few minutes. I then evolved them, then bred them to get their pre-evolutions. Caterpie's line was decently simple - I just had to use my Shield save to grab all 3.

And then there was Weedle. If you have Pokémon Shining Pearl, this isn't an issue! Unfortunately, I only own Shield and Scarlet on the Switch. You can also get this from Pokémon Y, and Kakuna from Ruby, but both of those had their issues. Pokémon Y could've been okay, but I didn't set up Bank at this point. Ruby... I have no idea if I actually meet the requirements for Kakuna, as my Pokédex is hacked to completion. I checked my Friend Safari in Y but had no luck with Kakuna. Thankfully I didn't need to rope a friend into setting up a trade because I had Kakuna and Beedril in Go! Phew!

Pidgey was okay, but I'm missing the evolutions at this point. Rattata was a very surprising issue, actually. I didn't own any of the games it appeared in, and as mentioned earlier, I don't actually know if I meet the requirements for Ruby. I didn't have it in Go, either, so this is what prompted me to use my White 2 save. This is my earliest surviving save (to my knowledge) and I was able to use it to find a Rattata quite easily. I also grabbed a Zubat while I was here, just because it was in the same zone. (Side note, I wanted an Eevee from Unova because it would be neat. It wiped my low-level team (I really don't want to use my hacked Pokémon and the ones that were legit were very low level) multiple times before I was able to catch it...)

Anyway, I had to then set up Poké Transporter. It was out of date, so I had to go do some... magic... to update it. Then I had to figure out which one of my boxes in White 2 was actually Box 1, because I had about 3 of them named Box 1. Then I had to do some magic to Bank, then I had to transfer to Sun, then... getting it to Home from that point was pretty easy!

The rest of my current Gen 1 Pokémon were just sitting in my box in Scarlet. I might go check Shield to see if I can easily fill in any more gaps!

At the end of the day (or I suppose, when I'm writing this post) I am at 54/151 Kanto Pokémon. Not terrible for most of the time being spent fiddling with Home. Thinking about the Gen 1 Legendaries scares me, so I might just catch all non-Legendary Pokémon and then move on, leaving those for last.

Anyway, I might go snuggle up in bed and see if I can't catch more Gen 1 Pokémon! Byebye for now!

Day 2 - 29 March 2024

Umm. So it's been a little while.

I've been taking a break from using the internet so much as it's been having a negative effect on my mental health, and because of that, I haven't had much reason - I guess - to update my site.

In saying that, I have been working on this in the background! Not as much as I would have liked, but a little bit.

To summarise, I've filled in about 50% of the Gen 1 dex. My biggest concerns are the legendaries as I have easy access to at least one member of each evolution line. (at least I think I do) I really have no idea how I'm going to obtain a Mew. A friend has offered me his from an event that was run a few years ago, but I think I'll poke him about it when I'm closer to completion.

But honestly, most of my time has been spent with trying to get some harder to obtain Gen 1 Pokémon via Go. It's worked out decently, and on some of my walks I've managed to find some Pokémon not yet on the Switch games.

Talking about the games, I still haven't figured out what to do about my old childhood 3ds saves. I did decide to transfer some Pokémon that I had caught as a child/teenager via Bank, but I don't exactly want to count them towards the living dex.

Anyway, when I stop getting distracted with shiny hunts, I'll actually do the boring task of breeding and evolving all of my Pokémon lines to fill in my HOME boxes.

Until next time! Love you! :3