Welcome back to my Low-Tier run of Pokémon Silver.
Last time, I discussed why I was even going to bother with this challenge, and briefly shared what my available list of encounters looked like. Now, it’s time to delve into the actual meat, and potatoes of the run.
Before we begin in earnest, it’s important to consider the date, and time when starting. Silver (and Gold) introduced time as a new mechanic to Pokémon, and wanted to emphasize it within these new releases. As such, there are a lot of different species of Pokémon that can only be caught at specific times throughout the day.
For our purposes, we’ll want to begin bright, and early in the morning so that we can catch a Ledyba on Route 30. Ledyba can only be caught in the morning, so we wouldn’t be able to catch one without intentionally setting our in-game clock to be far earlier than it was when I was actually playing my run.
In addition to wild encounters, there are also several time-based events that happen throughout the region. For example, the Weekday Siblings are a group of 7 NPCs that appear throughout the Johto region during specific days of the week. When you speak to them, they offer an item that’ll boost the power of certain attacking types by 10%, which would be a huge boon for our underpowered team.
Luckily, 1 of these 7 siblings – Tuscany – can be found on the very first route of the game provided it is a Tuesday. She awards the Pink Bow, which boosts Normal Type attacks. This is especially noteworthy as most Pokémon are stuck using Normal type attacks throughout the early game. Ergo, Tuscany’s prize will give us a nice boost while we’re at our weakest, and we can grab it immediately after we start the game.
Or so I thought.
Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that Tuscany, and her gaggle of siblings only appear after the player has cleared the first gym leader Falkner. This didn’t end up making a huge difference in my eventual confrontation with him, but I am still really salty about the whole situation. I thought I was playing 4D Chess when I started my game on Tuesday expecting that I’d have a Pink Bow for the fight against Falkner. Alas, it was not to be.
Either way, with the ideal timing sorted – early morning on Tuesday – we can begin our journey in earnest.
I don’t want to dwell on it too much here, but we are stuck playing through Silver’s unskippable tutorial. This involves delivering a package on behalf of Professor Elm to Mr. Pokémon, which is a thinly veiled excuse to give us our first Pokémon. Unfortunately, none of the choices are eligible for our run, so we’ll be stuck using 1 of the 3 until the tutorial ends. After that, we can begin catching other Pokémon, which will see us recruiting our actual starter: Ledyba.
While my choice here doesn’t really matter, I ultimately decided to begin with Potato the Chikorita. Popular consensus is that it’s the weakest of the 3 options, so I figured it was thematically appropriate for our team. We also rolled the 1 in 8 odds of getting a girl starter, which is hilarious given I’m going to be boxing her as soon as I catch a Ledyba.
Regardless, I trek over to Mr. Pokémon’s place, meet Professor Oak, obtain a Pokedex, and make my way back to Professor Elm’s lab to conclude the tutorial. Along the way we ran into our rival, who I later decided to call Kevin, whom I almost lost to. Potato had a solid 2 level lead on Kevin’s Cyndaquil, but back-to-back critical hits almost fed us our first loss of the run. Thankfully, Potato was able to pull through, so we weren’t horribly embarrassed during the tutorial fight.
With all of that sorted, we unlocked the ability to catch wild Pokémon, so we could catch our actual starter. Meet Mabel the Ledyba, who represents the true beginning of the Low-Tier challenge. From what I understood, Mabel was included in the lowest tiers of the Smogon tiering chart for a few different reasons. The first is that her level-up learnset is fairly dismal. All of her damaging moves are Normal type, which doesn’t allow her to take advantage of her Bug, or Flying typing.
In fact, Mabel isn’t able to learn any Bug or Flying moves in her debut generation. I’m only just now realizing this as I’m writing it while eyeballing the Serebii page for her. That’s…wow that’s really not great.
Though, I think the thing that really landed Mabel her spot at the bottom of the totem pole is how much worse she is than either of the Generation 1 bug types that you can scoop up on Route 30. Both Caterpie, and Weedle are catchable here (depending on the version) and they both evolve to their final forms by level 10. This helps to wordlessly teach players about evolution, while also providing them with a massively powerful Pokémon for the early-game. As such, both Weedle, and Caterpie make excellent temporary additions to any player’s team.
By contrast, Ledyba (and its counterpart Spinarak) seem to exist as a way to teach players about how different species of Pokémon only appear at specific times of the day. As such, neither received the blistering fast evolutions that normally define early-game Bug Pokémon. This means that both Pokémon are stuck in their very weak starting forms for a very long time before they evolve into mostly unimpressive Pokémon that you wouldn’t be caught dead using past the mid-game.
That said, I see a lot of potential in Ledyba.
For starters, it has a monstrous 110 base Special Defense stat after it evolves, so it should be equipped to tank a variety of different elemental attacks.
In a similar vein, it also has a quad resistance to Grass and Fighting, and fully resists Ground. I’m not entirely sure how useful those resistances will turn out to be long-term, but, on paper, they seem like notable attributes.
Finally, Ledyba can learn both Thunder Punch, and Ice Punch. These attacks, alongside Fire Punch, represent some of the strongest elemental attacks that we can get in our playthrough. Doubly so because they can be purchased multiple times for a nominal cost from the Goldenrod department store. Pretty well all of the top-rated Pokémon for Silver and Gold learn some combination of these punches, so I’m hoping they’ll prove just as useful on Mabel.
Unfortunately, Goldenrod is a ways off, so Mabel is stuck with Tackle for now. Her Attack isn’t anything to write home about either, so I decided to score a few levels with her before we recruited our second party member on Route 46.
There’s just 1 problem – Mabel is too weak to defeat anything on her own. While I could’ve continued using Potato, I decided that I wanted the true Low-Tier experience. That meant I was stuck using Mabel on her own instead of scoring a few easy KOs with switch training.
So now what?
Well, Route 30 has a 10% chance to spawn Kakuna during the morning, and Kakuna doesn’t know any damaging moves.
After about 10 minutes, I managed to hunt down 2 different Kakuna, and I was able to slowly whittle them down with Mabel. This bumped her up to level 5, which marked our first breakpoint – she was finally able to reliably take on other Ledyba, and Weedle without fainting. Huzzah!
Though, I was an idiot here, and immediately scooted over to Route 46 to catch our next party member, Jigglypuff. Instead, I should’ve grabbed a few additional easy levels for Mabel. My thought process at the time was that I might as well train Mabel in the grass on Route 46 while looking for Jigglypuff since it is rare. However, I didn’t account for what species of Pokémon actually live on Route 46 before making this decision.
Here’s what the encounter table looks like if you’re curious:
Geodude’s Rock typing pretty well invalidates Mabel’s soft Tackles, and Spearow can damn near 1-shot her with a Same Type Attack Boosted (STAB) Peck. As such, Rattata is the only viable target, which only appears a fifth of the time. Hence, this was a terrible idea.
Luckily, I got bailed out and found a Jigglypuff after only 5 minutes of searching through the grass. Though, I noticed something a little odd while trying to catch it. The wild Jigglypuff wasn’t actually attacking. Instead, it was repeatedly using Defence Curl to increase its defense, and Sing to put Mabel to sleep.
Oh no.
OH. NO.
Please tell me it knows Pound. This can’t be a repeat of Blue and Red where Jigglypuff doesn’t learn Pound until level 9, right?
Fuck.
You know…I was wondering why Jigglypuff was rated so lowly on the Smogon tier list. I think I understand why now. All of the other Normal Pokémon that you could catch at this point in the game – Pidgey, Spearow, Sentret, Rattata, and Hoothoot – all join knowing STAB Tackle (or STAB Peck in Spearow’s case). This gives them an immediate edge over other Pokémon since they’re able to hit everything that little bit harder, which is a valuable asset.
By contrast, Jigglypuff is dead-weight until it learns its first attacking move at level 9.
Okay – that’s not totally fair. It can put foes to sleep with Sing, which can help to give Mabel more turns to score a KO without taking damage. However, I wasn’t thinking about that in the moment. Instead, I was spiralling down the toilet thinking about how awful training these 2 goobers would be.
Either way, meet Winston, our second team member. Aside from Jigglypuff’s complete lack of offensive prowess out the gate, there’s a lot to like about it. Firstly is its Normal typing. In older games, Normal types had the widest movepools, which made them incredibly flexible team members. I’m hoping that Winston will help glue our team together in a way that none of the other encounters could manage thanks to how deep his available pool of attacking options is.
On top of that, Winston also gets STAB on moves like Headbutt, Strength, and Return which will allow all 3 moves to hit well above their weight. For context, Headbutt is a 105 power move after STAB, and Return caps out at a whopping 153. Both of those attacks can be obtained in Goldenrod, which would be an absolutely insane power-bump for the third gym. That’s the sort of heat you’d normally be packing when you roll up to the Pokémon League at the end of the game. As such, I have a feeling that Winston will be a bit of an ace in the hole for us.
Anyway, switch training is a complete ball ache, so I’ll spare you the details on how that went. Though, I do think it is noteworthy to highlight the immediate synergy that Winston, and Mabel had with one another. I was expecting the worst when I stepped into the first route trainer battle against Youngster Joey and his top percentage Rattata. Much to my surprise, we breezed through the fight without issue. Winston’s high bulk (for this point in the game) meant that I could fish for the inaccurate Sing to put Rattata to sleep before sending Mabel in to chunk it down. This same strategy proved to be surprisingly effective for clearing all of the early route trainers that I otherwise would’ve struggled against due to Mabel’s rather dismal Attack, and Defence stats.
Good job, team.
We eventually made our way to Violet City, which is the location of Falkner, the first properly difficult hurdle of the run. For the sake of making the run more interesting, I decided that I wanted to use level caps, which means that we need to challenge Falkner before our Pokémon hit level 10. Thankfully, Winston learns Pound at level 9, so he’ll be able to contribute a little more heavily during this fight.
Unfortunately, level caps raise a bit of a problem: Winston can’t hit level 9 without Mabel hitting level 10. As we previously mentioned, Winston can’t fight anything on his own since he doesn’t know any damaging moves, so he’s entirely reliant on Mabel for damage. This wouldn’t be the end of the world, but both Mabel and Winston share an EXP table. In short, both Pokémon require the exact same amount of experience to reach level 9. Unfortunately, Mabel was just far enough ahead of Winston to where she’d ding over to 10 by the time he reached 9.
As such, we needed another team member to help fill the gap.
Meet Trevor the Bellsprout.
Now, some of you might be wondering why Bellsprout is one of our encounters. There is no question that Victreebel is in a completely different tier of Pokémon compared to Ledian. So why is it available? Well, you can’t evolve Bellsprout into Victreebal in Silver version. Not until well after the Pokémon League anyway.
I’m not exactly sure of the reason why, but GameFreak decided to bar all evolution stones from the player, sans the Sun and Moon Stones, prior to them completing the Pokémon League. This means that all of the Pokémon that evolve via stones are substantially weaker in a playthrough of Silver (or Gold) relative to basically every other Pokémon.
This is a bit of a shame because it removes one of the most interesting aspects of using a stone evolution: choosing when to evolve it. All of these Pokémon stop learning new attacks via level-up once you evolve them. Ergo, the player has to decide what they feel is move valuable: do you want the immediate power increase of an evolution, or stronger attacking moves?
In our case, the decision was made for us: we’ll be grabbing those stronger moves since we can’t actually evolve any of these critters.
I didn’t put a ton of thought into grabbing Trevor, but he does bring some useful utility to the table: he can actually damage Rock type Pokémon. Mabel, and Winston are both stuck using Normal type attacks until we reach Goldenrod, so I didn’t have a way to deal with the random Geodude, and Onix encounters that are littered throughout Route 32 and Union Cave prior to recruiting Trevor.
Plus, he learns Sleep Powder, which is a more reliable option than Sing for putting foes to sleep.
Also, in the event that the first gym proves to be an apocalyptic disaster, I can trade Trevor away for an Onix named Rocky. Hopefully it won’t come to that, but I’m willing to exercise all options across this cursed run.
Anyway, after several wild Pokémon encounters, Winston finally dings over to 9 learning Pound. With that in tow, I decide I’m finally ready to take on Falkner’s gym. Normally, level caps only apply for the fight against the leader themselves, but I actually needed Pound so I’d have a solution for the first gym trainer’s Spearow. Mabel, and Trevor can’t take a Peck, so it falls on Winston to carry the team.
After defeating that scary Spearow, we’re able to scoot through the remaining gym trainer without issue, while also staying under the level cap. However, Winston got dangerously close to dinging over to 10.
OK – Falkner time.
I led Mabel into his Pidgey. It only knows 2 attacks, Tackle and Mud Slap, which means that it is fairly predictable. Mud Slap doesn’t affect Mabel thanks to her Flying typing, so Falkner is just going to use STAB Tackles on repeat.
Against my better judgement, I attempt to confuse the Pidgey with Supersonic, but miss on the first turn. The confusion takes on the following turn, but we don’t end up getting a ton of value out of it. Pidgey only attacks itself in confusion once before healing the confusion on turn 3.
It also seems like our soft Tackles are going to be completely outpaced by Pidgey. While this isn’t a Nuzlocke, I don’t want to needlessly sacrifice my team members in battle, so I decide to swap into Trevor who is able to fell the Pidgey after a couple resisted Vine Whips.
That just leaves Falkner’s Ace: Pidgeotto. It carries the same moves as Pidgey, but also has Gust which hits two-thirds of our team for Super Effective damage. Despite what I just said, I let Trevor go down here so I get a clean switch into Winston. Though, Trevor does manage some chip damage first with Vine Whip.
We get extremely lucky right off the hopper with Winston landing Sing on the first turn, into a Defence Curl on Pidgeotto’s guaranteed turn of sleep. I didn’t want to take any chances, so I figured reducing all incoming damage was the safest bet for besting Falkner’s bird. Though, this turned out to be an unnecessary precaution, as Pidgeotto stayed asleep for the maximum number of sleep turns. This let Winston clean up with a few strong Pounds, scoring us our first gym badge.
That was a rather luck dependent win, but we take those. Admittedly, I was a little disappointed in Mabel’s performance, but I was betting on Winston to make up the difference, which he more than managed. Trevor wasn’t part of my original plan, but I think he’ll prove useful in the coming routes.
Regardless, that’s where I’ll call it for now. I was hoping to get as far as the second gym leader, Bugsy, but I’m already pushed past 3000 words and I don’t want my head to explode while I’m editing this. As such, we’ll put a pin in the journey for now.
Next time, we’ll head down to Azalea Town with our misfit crew. Will Winston continue to prove himself now that he finally knows a damaging move? Will Mabel redeem her lacking performance against Falkner? Will Trevor bail out my team that otherwise had no way of fighting against Rock type Pokémon? The answer to that last one is yes.
Either way, I hope to see you in the next one where we’ll continue our Low-Tier challenge run through Pokémon Silver.
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Frostilyte Writes 