This is all very exciting.
I only need 19 more pokemon before I have officially caught them all. And amazingly, I've already been through all the truly hard or impossible ones.
My big concerns were the Gold/Silver starters, a few scattered legendaries like Lugia and Raikou, and the handful of crappo types that you can only get by plugging in Game Boy games that I don't have. Well, thanks to poke-pals like Ben, David and Alex... I was able to cross all the toughies off my list.
And when I needed extra Fire and Dawn Stones, my sister Marci came to the rescue, donating the items and sitting through a lot of trade evolutions.
Now, it's almost a certainty that a selection of the pokemon who passed through my DS were cheats. It's the Pokemon Gray Market. Nobody freakin' played Pokemon XD: Gale of Boredom, but yet everybody has plenty of Lugias to pass around. So somewhere along the line, probably well before any of my trading partners got involved, Lugia and Chikorita and other hard-to-get types were hacked out of Action Replays and then set loose in the wild.
It's an ethical puzzle, and it necessarily taints my accomplishments. But Pokemon is as much about trading as battling and collecting, so I find it a fair piece removed from, say, time travelling in Animal Crossing.
Speaking of AC, I'm going to resurrect some old images from the article where I got all pissy about my missing furniture as I list out what pokemon I still need to locate. The AC image indicates my level of irritation with the species or evolution method.
Breeding
Teh easiest. Not even an issue, really. Just a time investment. I have a designated Ditto and I can only assume it enjoys its job. I'll be breeding a Staryu (I know I could fish for one of these, but I hate fishing) and a Beldum. And I think I need to breed another Lickitung, because the one I got on the Global Trade Station was level 34, and I need one at level 33 so I can teach him Rollout and trigger his evolution into Lickilicky.
GTS
My favorite way to find stuff. You just need to have seen the type, and then you can ask the world to deliver it to you. Over the last few weeks, I've picked up a Stantler, Granbull, Vibrava and a level 100 Porygon2... all traded for Piplips and Chimchars. I still need a Tauros and Seadra, both of which could be caught via other means, but this way is just too easy. I currently have a request in for an Ekans, so I can evolve one up into an Arbok. After that, I need to beg for a Pineco, so I can get a Forretress.
Leveling Up
See, I just find this tedious, but at least it gives me something to do while waiting for pokemon to breed or eggs to hatch. I do almost all of my random battling up on Route 228, north of the Resort Area. All the wild pokemon are 50+, so it's a decent EP hunting ground. The types I need to evolve up in this fashion are Bayleef, Meganium, Typhlosion, Croconaw, Feraligatr, Jumpluff, Combusken, Blaziken, Metang.
Item-based
Most of the item evolutions are no problem, but I seem to be lacking a Sun Stone, which is required to evolve my Sunkern into Sunflora. I need to look up the location of the damn Sun Stone. Also, I need to give my Razor Fang to Gligar so he can evolve into Gliscar, I just haven't gotten around to that yet.
Radar
I hate the Pokeradar. It's supposed to rustle up rare types, but it's still random... so you have to go through a lot of wasted radar scans and random battles before you find something cool. This is why I'm trading for a Tauros, not using the radar to find one on Route 209. The only radar-exclusive type I need is Smeargle. So at some point I'm going to kill an hour hanging out on the Hearthome side of Route 212. Sigh.
Dual-Slot, Mass Outbreak
I'm only including these because I like the "suicidal" graphic so much, as these are all achieved. Not owning Pokemon Emerald or FireRed makes their associated Dual-Slot hidden types impossible to find, so I had to go find somebody who owns those carts.
The Mass Outbreak is another classic unrewarding Nintendo moment... every day you have to talk to a specific little girl, who will randomly name a type that is experiencing an OUTBREAK somewhere in the world. Then you have to go to the outbreak site and start searching. I needed a Smoochum and it took at least two weeks of asking her before I randomly got her to do it. The important bit is that it's all behind me now.
So really, most of my list is just get-to-work leveling up time. Which is all very doable.
And yes, I know the game will do nothing special once I hit this milestone. But I will have done it. And that will have to be thanks enough.
Also, I have to think that this will help me in the next Pokemon generation.
