The Pokemon Trainer Page
Good day, class. I am Pokemon Master Iwan. I have defeated the Elite Four, and my predecessor Gary, to become the World Pokemon Champion. Now that my training career is over, I have decided to become a Pokemon teacher in my old age.
Therefore, on these pages, I will help a budding Pokemon trainer like yourself to follow in my footsteps, and become a Master. Many aspects will be covered, but if you need to know something that isn't on these pages, please feel free to e-mail me with your questions. Now, let us begin:
Pallet town
Choosing your Pokemon:
You will be given a choice of one of three starter Pokemon. Bulbasaur, Squirtle or Charmander. If you are playing yellow, you will start with Pikachu. Your arch-rival Gary will pick the Pokemon that has an advantage over yours once you have made your choice. For example:
If you choose
Bulabsaur, Gary will choose Charmander
Squirtle, Gary will choose Bulbasaur
Charmander, Gary will choose Squirtle
At this point in the game, it makes little difference in battle, but once your respective Pokemon have learned their type's attacks (e.g water Pokemon learning a water attack), Gary's Pokemon will have a distinct advantage over yours. We will deal with this problem later.
Wild Pokemon.
At this point in the Game, you cannot capture wild Pokemon. Don't worry about this like I did, as I was frantically trying to find my Pokeballs, but of course, I didn't have any. So just fight them to gain experience points. Experience points are what you get when your Pokemon fights other Pokemon. These accumulate to raise your Pokemon's experience level. When your Pokemon gains a level, it becomes stronger, tougher, faster and has a higher special rating (this means that special attacks will have more effect, e.g. Smokescreen, will decrease the opponents accuracy to a higher degree). At certain levels, your Pokemon will learn new, more powerful attacks. However, any Pokemon can only learn 4 attacks, and so after this, to learn a new attack, you will have to delete an old attack to make room for it (if you want to that is, but I recommend that you do). As you can see, training your Pokemon is the key to success.
Reaching Viridian city
This is where your learning curve will be at its steepest, there is a lot to learn here.
Pokemon Centre: no doubt you Pokemon's HP (Hit Points) will be low. NB: HP is basically energy, or if you like - health. When your Pokemon runs out of HP, it will faint, and will no longer be able to fight. To restore your Pokemon to full health, go to the Pokemon Centre. This is the building with Poke written on it. Go to the woman behind the counter (Brock: Nurse Joy!!! Aaaahhh!!) and press the A button. Your Pokemon is ready for action again!! Next go to the Pokemart, the building with Mart written on it. Then do as the Guy says, or you can't advance. Now that you have your Pokedex, it's back to Viridian for you!
Learning to catch wild Pokemon
Go to the Pokemart again, and this time, buy some Pokeballs. You will need these to catch Pokemon. Next, go North to leave Viridian, but before you do, speak to the bald dude who is by the chick. He will teach you how to catch Pokemon. Now, on to Viridian forest!
Capturing your first Pokemon
When you encounter a Pokemon next, you can try to catch it. Remember, weaken it first, but DON'T knock it out, or you can't capture it. Once it's HP is low, typically small and amber, or if you can, red; go to the item list, and throw a Pokeball. If it is too strong, it will break out, so weaken it some more. If it is weak enough, it will stay in. Congratulations!! You've captured your first Pokemon! May you capture 148 more!
Fighting other trainers
So, you wanna be the very best, like no-one ever was? Well here's the key: Fighting other Pokemon trainers. You will see them dotted around Viridian forest. When they see you, they will challenge you to a match. This match will not end until one of you loses. The Run command will NOT work. In a trainer battle, do not use it under and circumstances, or you will lose a turn. You will gain a lot of experience points in trainer battles, but the Pokemon are a LOT stronger than wild ones. Expect their levels to be the same as yours throughout the game. This leads me to a couple of points that are VITAL, if you want to become a Master.
Raising your Pokemon
It is easy to raise only one Pokemon. You will find that the temptation is to use one Pokemon for battles, as it is easier to fight that way. But this way, you can't win. You have to raise all your Pokemon equally. This means battling them all, and changing who is in your no.1 slot, form time to time. This is because, you can learn to:
Exploiting weak points, and defending through strong points
Yes, I know that grammar was poor, but I'm just lazy, OK? Now back to business. All Pokemon, no matter how strong and well trained, will have weak points. This can be a disadvantage, or it can work in your favour. Your Pokemon will be weak against some types, but strong against others. Thus, it your rival sends out a certain Pokemon, send out one of yours that would have an advantage against it. For example:
Bug catcher sends out: Caterpie
So you go: Ha ha ha, foolish bug trainer. I will now crush your pathetic little Pokemon, using my trusty Pidgey. Prepare to lose to me oh weakling.
This is because, Pidgey is a flying Pokemon, and Caterpie is a bug type. Flying pokemon are strong against bug types, so your chances of winning significantly increase. Of course the flipside of the coin is this: You've raised one Pokemon to be strong, but all your other Pokemon are weak. Then this happens:
Gentleman sends out: Pikachu
So you go: Ha ha ha, your Pikachu is weak. It is no match for my extremely strong Pokemon: SQUIRLTE!!!
Result: Pikachu used Thundershock. It's super effective. Squirtle fainted.
Use next Pokemon? OK. Oh dear, they've all lost too, as they were weak and untrained, as you have neglected them.
See my point? So bro, if you wanna be the best, you gotta train 'em all. This leads me back to a point I made earlier in this class.
Defeating Gary's Pokemon.
Since your starter Pokemon is weak against Gary's, you must find a Pokemon that is strong against it, like this:
Gary chose:
Bulbasuar. Get a fire or an Ice type Pokemon. e.g. Growlithe or Articuno
Squirtle. Get a Grass or Electrical type Pokemon. e.g. Oddish or Pikachu
Charmander. Get a water or, errr an Ice type Pokemon. e.g. Star-U or Articuno.
Now, Gary's @$$ is yours!!
Once you realise this concept, you will realise an extremely important lesson:
Building a Solid team
As you know, you can only carry 6 Pokemon at any one time. So you must try to make a team that will defend against all types, or as much as possible. Thus, you will be ready for anything you encounter.
My fave team:
1. Mewtwo. Type: Psychic. (The most powerful Pokemon on earth)
2. Zapdos. Type: Electric/Flying. OR: Raichu. Type: Electric
3. Articuno. Type: Ice/Flying
4. Moltres. Type: Fire/Flying. OR: Rapidash. Type: Fire
5. Bastoise. Type: Water. OR: Gyrados. Type: Water/Flying
6. Dratini. Type: Dragon (NB. I'm still training Draitini!) OR: Haunter. Type: Ghost
This team can take care of almost anything.
Raising harmless Pokemon
Some Pokemon, such as Abra or Magikarp are basically useless. They make you want to strangle them, they're so weak. However, when they evolve, they become extremely powerful. Since they cannot fight, there are only two ways of giving them experience.
1. The expensive way: (Not recommended, unless you have lots of money, and little time) Go to Cerulian city, and give your Pokemon to the man in the Day care centre. He will raise your Pokemon for you. However, it may learn attacks you didn't want, and you will get a whopping great bill at the end!
2. The long winded way. Put your weak Pokemon in slot 1. Go and battle a trainer, and send out your weakling. Instantly recall it, and send out a strong Pokemon to battle your opponent. Your weakling will gain half the experience, and will therefore eventually evolve.
This leads me to talk about possibly the most rewarding (and controversial) part of the game:
Evolving your Pokemon
Some of your Pokemon, at some point will evolve. Pokemon evolve in one of 3 ways:
1. By level. Once your Pokemon reach a certain level, they will evolve to the next stage.
2. By Evolution Stones. Some Pokemon only evolve when you use a stone on it, e.g. Thunder Stone evolves Pikachu into a Raichu. However, evolving them this way prevents them from learning further attacks (see later)
3. Trading. Some Pokemon only evolve when you trade them with a friend. Traded Pokemon grow faster, but they are weaker than their un-traded counterparts.
When your Pokemon evolves, it becomes MUCH stronger, faster etc. It is incomparable to its unevolved form. When my Pokemon evolve, I can't help laughing out loud at how my Pokemon crush my opponents!
However, it takes longer for a Pokemon to learn its further attacks than its unevolved form does. Therefore some people prefer to stop evolution (temporarily), and then learn the rest of the attacks, and only then, allow it to evolve. Pressing the B button during evolution can do this.
Pokemon that evolve by stones also have a similar problem, but it is far, far more severe. When you evolve a Pokemon with a stone, it loses the ability to learn new attacks. Therefore, make sure your Pokemon has learned all its attacks before evolving it. Otherwise you'll get the situation arising like in that episode of the TV series, where Ash sends out Pikachu to battle Lt. Surge's Raichu.
Surge: Raichu, use your Body Slam.
Ash: Pikachu, watch out!!
(Pikachu evades attack)
Surge: Muuuhhh, Raichu?
Ash: Pikachu, Agility, now!
(Pikachu runs rings around Raichu)
Ash: Your Raichu is much too slow Surge, that's its weakness.
(Later on:)
Brock: Surge evolved his Raichu when he first got it. He evolved it too quickly, so it never learned the speed attacks it can only learn in the Pikachu stage.
Let that be a lesson to all of you!!!
Now, back to an earlier concept, taken a step further:
Capturing strong wild Pokemon
Strong Pokemon will break out of Pokeball, no matter how much you waeken them.
There are two things to learn about this:
1. Altering the Pokemon's status
2. Using a stronger ball
A status change may be all that you need. If you look at the stats of your Pokemon, it will show its status, typically reading Status: OK.
This is changed when your Pokemon is:
1. Poisoned (PSN)
2. Sent to sleep (SLP)
3. Frozen (FRZ)
4. Burned (BRN)
5. Paralysed (PRL)
These make your Pokemon extra weak and/or vulnerable. If you change the status of the Pokemon you're trying to capture, it will be more likely to stay in the ball. Certain attacks will change the status of the Pokemon. e.g. Thunderwave - Paralyse the opponent; Poison gas - Poison the opponent.
Another way is to use a stronger ball, such as a Great ball, or an Ultra ball. These are of course more expensive, but they are also more effective.
TMs and HMs
These are items you pick up along the way, which you can use to teach your Pokemon attacks that it would not normally learn. TMs can only be used once, so choose your Pokemon carefully. HMs are attacks that you can use outside of battle. They are essential if you are to advance. Get them all!! (There are 5)
OK, that's enough for now, come back soon if you want more!
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