A Low-Tier Playthrough of Pokémon Silver: Part 4

Last time, we ended after rescuing the lost Farfetch’d from the Ilex Forest. We were awarded the Cut HM for our troubles, which I taught to Trevor. Cut is a nice bit of neutral coverage for him, plus none of our other Pokémon are actually capable of using it. We’ll call that another W for Trevor, though he is winning by default here.

Anyway, we can travel to the far side of Ilex Forest now that we have Cut. Though, I ran back to Azalea 1 final time to scoop up a Charcoal from the boy who lost the Farfetch’d in Ilex Forest. This held item is the Fire type version of the Pink Bow, and I’m planning to use it to help boost the power of Fire Punch once we’re able to teach it to Winston. Though, we’ll need to make it through this forest to Goldenrod City first.

As such, we head back through Ilex Forest, cutting our way through all of the vegetation that gets in our way. It’s here that we’re able to acquire the first major power spike of the run: Headbutt. This 70 power move is gifted by a trainer in the forest, and can be learned by 67% of the Pokémon in Silver. Headbutt is basically a massive upgrade for just about anyone on our team. The question is: who?

Now, I’m not going to bury the lead here: it’s Vanessa. She is so obviously underperforming right now thanks in large part to her incredibly shallow learnset. Headbutt single-handedly solves this problem. Plus, I can kit the rest of the team out with Headbutt once I reach Goldenrod City since the department store sells additional copies of it for a cheap price.

Either way, I’m immediately rewarded for teaching Headbutt to Vanessa as she’s now able to keep pace with the rest of the team. In fact, she just about demolished every trainer on Route 34, just beyond Ilex Forest, without any assistance from the rest of the team. Turns out, lack of a reliable way to deal damage was the thing that was holding Vanessa back. Now she’s just as strong as the rest of the squad.

I take it back. She’s probably stronger.

Thankfully, that gap won’t last as we finally made our way to Goldenrod City, which is where we can stock up on a bevy of powerful attacks for the whole team. Namely, I’m looking to grab additional copies of Headbutt, as well as the elemental punches. These are powerful moves without drawbacks, which makes them useful additions to just about everyone on our squad.

Unfortunately, Trevor is getting left out while everyone else gets new toys since he’s not able to learn any of the moves on offer. Don’t worry, buddy. I still love you for your unrivalled support via Sleep Powder.

As for the rest of the party, I didn’t quite have all the funds I needed to buy everything that I wanted. Instead, I had to decide carefully to determine which upgrades deserved priority. Obviously, some of the elemental punches are a must here. That run-in with Kevin’s Gastly in Part 3 proves that we desperately need some additional type coverage. This is especially true because the fourth gym features Ghost type Pokémon, which are totally immune to all of our Normal type attacks.

That said, Headbutt would be nice for Winston. It’s a straight upgrade over Pound’s 40 power, and it receives STAB. That makes Headbutt an effective 105 power move when Winston is using it. That’s tremendous for this point in the game, and will allow Winston to continue breaking holes through basically every enemy team.

Ultimately, I decided to split my funds by picking up a copy of Headbutt, Fire Punch, and Thunder Punch. I simply couldn’t resist the Big Chungus Damage that Headbutt offers Winston, and I wanted to stick with my original plan to throw Fire Punch on him. With a held Charcoal, I’m expecting Fire Punch to put in some good work, though I’m not entirely sure how useful Fire is as an attacking type across the mid-game. I suppose time will tell.

As for Thunder Punch, I taught that to Mabel. She’s been chomping at the bit for an elemental attack for quite some time since her Special Attack is a solid 10 points ahead of her Attack stat. Hopefully, Thunder Punch will do the trick.

Though, I did also consider Ice Punch for quite some time. I ultimately decided that Electric type coverage was a little more useful right now thanks to the overabundance of Flying Pokémon we’ve been running into. Plus, Mabel is immune to Ground type moves, so I can afford to take a few extra turns to beat Ground type foes with soft Comet Punches.

Oh yeah – Mabel learned Comet Punch on the way up through Route 34. This is, I believe, the signature move of Ledyba even though it doesn’t really have the attacking stats to make use of it. Regardless, it hits between 2 and 5 times consecutively meaning it has a random chance to out-damage Tackle every time that I use it. This happens more often than not, though I really should’ve just taught Swift to Mabel back in Union Cave.

With our shopping spree completed, I decided to head into the Goldenrod Underground to clean up a few trainer fights. These were a breeze with our newly acquired attacks. Vanessa, and Mabel were able to deal respectable damage with Headbutt, and Thunder Punch respectively. Meanwhile, Winston cleaved holes through Super Nerd Teru’s army of Magnemites with Super Effective Fire Punches.

While I don’t expect anything will come of it, I also grabbed the Coin Case while I was in the Underground. With enough gambling, we could obtain a copy of Fire Blast, Blizzard, or Thunder but I’m not sure if I have the patience for that. It’s certainly not hard to do – the card flipping tables offer a stable pay-out – but it is tedious. As such, I think I’ll skip out on those powerful TMs. At least, I will for now.

At this point, the team was approaching Whitney’s level-cap of 20, but I decided there was 1 more bump in power that I wanted to grab for the team. Namely, the Dig TM, which can be found in the National Park. Dig was nerfed between generations down from 80 power to 60, but it’s still solid Ground type coverage that we otherwise lack. Plus, it’ll give Vanessa another option for tearing enemy teams asunder – something she’s proving rather adept at now that she has proper attacking moves.

As such, we slugged our way through Route 35 battling a few of the trainers on our way up to National Park. During this stretch, Mabel dinged over to 18, which marked the first evolution of the run. Becoming Ledian gave Mabel an additional 10 points in every stat, which puts her a little ahead of everyone else. Though, there are a handful of additional evolutions just beyond Whitney’s level cap, so Mabel’s reign as queen will be short lived.

Anyway, we wrap around the Park, collect and teach Dig to Vanessa, and then head back to Goldenrod for our battle with Whitney.

Well…not exactly. 

You see, in my infinite wisdom, I decided that now would be a good time to pick up a new team member. Normally, I wouldn’t increase the size of the squad beyond 4, so early into our adventure, but we haven’t had any trouble keeping up with the level cap. In fact, Mabel and Winston are still leveling up so fast (relative to the rest of the party) that I’m having trouble staying below the cap. Hence, I decided it was pertinent to grab another EXP sponge.

As far as what I had in mind: Pineco. We can catch one now that 2 of our Pokémon know Headbutt. For those unaware, there’s a mechanic in Gen 2 where you can shake Pokémon out of trees by headbutting the tree. This might be why you can purchase additional copies of the attack in Goldenrod, and why so many Pokémon learn the attack. Evidently, Game Freak really wanted to highlight this new mechanic even though there are only a small handful of Pokémon species that actually live amongst the trees.

Anyway, Pineco is one of those treebound Pokémon, so I took to assaulting the local flora in search of one.

As far as what attributes Pineco brings to the table: it evolves into the only Steel type Pokémon that we have available to us. Steel is a grossly overpowered type that resists more than half of all attacking types in the game. That’s normally a great attribute, but it’s especially good for us. Namely because most Pokémon throughout Silver attack with moves that a Steel type can resist. Ergo, Pineco, or rather its evolution Forretress, should work well as our team’s defensive backbone.

In addition, Pineco comes with Selfdestruct. This’ll make it a little complex to catch, but it’ll give us a powerful option for eliminating key foes during boss fights. As a reminder, this isn’t a Nuzlocke, so I can boom foes as much as I need to throughout the game. In fact, blowing up Whitney’s Miltank was the other reason why I decided to make this detour.

I also believe Pineco will make a good home for Rollout. The TM for it is located just beyond Goldenrod City on Route 35, so it’d be nice to make use of that notoriously powerful move as soon as we’re able.

That said, Pineco proved to be a much harder Pokémon to locate than I originally expected. I spent a solid 15 minutes attacking trees across Route 34, and Ilex Forest before I finally found one. Now I just needed to catch the thing before it exploded.

To achieve this, I had basically 1 option: sleep. This would fully immobilize Pineco for several consecutive turns, which would give me an opportunity to lower its health, and hopefully capture it. While I had 2 ways to put it to sleep, Winston and Trevor, I ultimately decided to use Trevor since Sleep Powder has a much higher accuracy than Sing. Trevor was then able to chip the wild Pineco down with a few soft Vine Whips before we caught it with a single Pokeball.

As such, meet Pinellopi the Pineco. It should go without saying, but I’m incredibly proud of that nickname. That’s right up there with Ratricia the Raticate (different playthrough). Regardless, Pinellopi joins at level 10, so she’s a fair bit lower than our party. Despite this, I’m fairly confident she’ll catch up since we can immediately throw both Headbutt, and Rollout onto her. Hopefully that makes her first few levels a little smoother than…basically everyone else’s have been.

Also, I feel like it’s worth calling out that I had the cash on hand to teach Mabel Headbutt too. That’s 80% of our party that knows the move now for those of you keeping track at home.

Either way, I cleared out the remainder of the trainers on Route 35, alongside some wild encounters with Pinellopi. I can not overstate the following statement enough: the first few levels on Pinellopi were so much easier than Mabel, Vanessa, or Winston. Having access to strong moves makes a world of difference, and Pinellopi was able to score several KOs completely unassisted as a direct result. It’s crazy to think about, but Headbutt makes a huge difference in the viability of many of the Pokémon that we’re using.

From there, I headed back to Goldenrod with the intention of actually completing the gym. There was no more putting off Whitney. It was now time to fight Johto’s most infamous gym leader.

Much to my surprise, Whitney’s gym marked the first time that none of the gym trainers proved particularly challenging. I’m going to chalk this up to the gross power increase that we experienced thanks to the addition of Headbutt, alongside Fire and Thunder Punch. These attacks are just so much stronger than what we were working with before, and that’s made it much easier to navigate fights against more challenging opponents.

Regardless, I was still nervous rolling up to Whitney with a team between levels 17 and 19. Her Miltank can absolutely bowl over unprepared teams with Rollout, which works much the same way as Fury Cutter did on Bugsy’s Scyther. The difference is that Rollout has much more explosive power, so it’s a lot better at punching holes through entire teams.

It’s also worth noting that Miltank’s other attacking option, Stomp, hits just about as hard as Winston’s Headbutts. This makes Miltank an exceptionally tricky foe to best with a good team, so I’m not sure how our team of underachievers will manage.

That said, I decided to lead Mabel into Whitney’s first Pokémon: Clefairy. The thought process here was simple: Mabel is extremely weak to Miltank’s Rollout. As such, I didn’t feel like I’d get much out of her while fighting the cow.

As it would turn out, this faith wasn’t misplaced. Mabel managed to take out Clefairy while only taking damage once. Unfortunately, that 1 attack was a Doubleslap that landed 4 consecutive hits. Regardless, the 30% flinch chance from Headbutt, and Mabel’s brisk speed helped her to keep Clefairy stun-locked for most of the battle before we took it down with a strong Thunder Punch.

That only left the cow.

I was fairly certain that it’d immediately lock itself into Rollout given the Rock typing of the attack was quad effective into Mabel. Unfortunately, Pinellopi isn’t yet a Steel type, so I didn’t have a good defensive pivot to eat that first hit. As such, I decided to let poor Mabel go down so I could get a clean swap into another member of our party.

Trevor got sent out next. My plan was to tank the second turn Rollout, and pray that Sleep Powder didn’t score the 25% chance to miss. Thankfully, Miltank missed its second turn of Rollout, and we scored the sleep.

With that being the case, I swapped over to Winston to begin setting up Defence boosts via Defence Curl. I figured that this was my only chance at securing victory, though a Critical Hit would’ve swiftly ended Winston. Regardless, this seemed like the most stable path to victory, so we began setting up while Miltank was having a snooze.

Now, there’s something that I’ve neglected to tell you up to this point: Winston learned Rollout at level 19. I bring this up now because there is a special interaction that exists between the moves Defence Curl and Rollout. Namely, Rollout’s power is doubled if it is used after Defence Curl. This means that already explosive damage increases with each consecutive roll are even more nuclear.

I think you see where this is going. We’re going to beat Whitney with her own strategy.

Thanks to the damage boost from Defence Curl, Winston’s Rollouts started punching massive holes through Miltank. Unfortunately, it awoke the following turn, but the damage was already done. We were ahead on Rollout turns, and Winston was able to completely outpace Whitney’s Miltank. Though, we definitely needed that defence boost because we just about bifted it ourselves. With that, we earned our third badge, and a copy of Attract.

Gotta say, it felt very good to beat Whitney with her own strategy. Doubly so since Winston naturally learns both Defence Curl, and Rollout prior to the fight. That combination is so absurdly busted, especially this early in the game. As such, I’m once again questioning why Jigglypuff was included as an available encounter for our challenge run, but I guess we’ll continue to exploit this (seemingly) busted puffball.

Also, I think it’s worth calling out that Whitney’s badge has awarded us another badge boost. I forget if I mentioned this after beating Falkner (I didn’t), but there are certain badges that passively boost our Pokémon’s stats in battle. The boost is a flat 12.5% to the affected stat, which is going to be a huge bonus since the majority of our Pokémon have lower than average stats.

For beating Whitney, we’ve now acquired the boost to speed, which should help us to get the jump on targets that we otherwise wouldn’t outrun. It’ll pair nicely with Falkner’s badge which gives our Pokémon a boost to their Attack. Now we can hit harder and faster, which should prove useful as our opponents start deploying stronger, evolved Pokémon against us in the coming routes.

Though, you’ll have to wait until part 5 to read about all of that. I don’t even know what’ll happen next time. This marks the end of the footage that I’ve captured for the run, so I need to play through the next several gyms, and then report back here. Regardless, we’ll be tackling Morty next time, and maybe starting the Lake of Rage questline? We’ll see.

As always, thank you for reading if you made it to the end. I’ve been having a lot of fun writing these even though they’ve proven to be more work than I originally anticipated. I should’ve figured that though – just about everything is more work than I think it’ll be.

Anyway, thank you, and I’ll see you in Part 5 with another gym battle!

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