Versions & Updates
- Version 1.0, October 15, 2012
- General Strategies finished.
- TM/HM List finished.
- Movesets finished.
- Version 1.1, January 28, 2015
- Fixed a few typos.
- Corrected contact details.
To Do
- Fix any typos/mistakes I may find
- More detailed TMs/HMs section
- Example of balanced teams
IntroductionPokemon is an interesting franchise. It managed to keep my interest for such a long time even if I no longer watch the TV series. I still remember the Pokemon craze that was Red, Blue, and Yellow when I was in middle school, and thought it was somehow ridiculous. But soon after that (soon being a year or so), I bought my first Pokemon game which was Crystal, and became immediately enchanged. The experience prompted me to play at least a game each generation afterwards. So here I am, writing a guide about Pokemon, my second I believe, because for some incredible reason I still enjoy playing it very much.This guide is more for those who are new to Pokemon and would like some help on what to capture without using a full walkthrough. I will list which Pokemon I think are good to use and their movesets, so you will you have an easier time playing the game. It is my belief that if you have your Pokemon right, then you don't need step by step instructions on what to do at specific points of the game, hence the lack of needing to use a walkthrough. Instead of catching a new pokemon just to beat a gym, you'll use your own Pokemon and form your own strategies. Sounds fun?Some people will say that you can beat the game with any Pokemon. This is mostly true. But with inferior Pokemon, you might have to spend extra time leveling them up to beat a gym, or catch more Pokemon than you wanted. It might even turn what would normally be a 8-10 hour game into 25+ hours, which prompts the new Pokemon trainer to ask why everyone likes this horrible game so much. However, I will say that if you like a Pokemon, then by all means go ahead and use it, no matter what its stats are! I give you suggestions on how to improve your team, but they are not rules. It's important to balance planning and having a good time.Aside from movesets, I will also give general guidelines about what types of Pokemon you should have in your party and which moves you should keep and forget. You may even read that section and come to the same movesets as I did! The difference between this guide and a Pokemon wiki/Pokedex is that I take into account where you are in the game and the limitations that are available at that point. For example, it's great that you know Archeops can learn Earthquake, but you can't get the TM before beating the game! Therefore, I added sections such as listing the TMs/HMs
as you get them so you don't have to worry about
surprises in the future.Thank you for taking your time to read this guide, and I hope it will prove to be useful.General StrategiesIn this section I will first about how to build your party so it will be efficient and good enough to tackle any gym. After you get the concept down, it's time to look more closely at each Pokemon and see what moves they should get.Building Your PartyIf you play RPG games like Suikoden and Fire Emblem, then you should know what it means when the game gives you a huge pool of usable characters. You will soon figure out that it's better to focus on some characters instead of using them all. The same applies here. While Pokemon's motto is to "catch 'em all", you don't have to train them all. Doing so would take way more time to finish the game than required, and if training up many Pokemon is your thing, then you should do it after you finish the game. But until then, it's best to focus on your main party only.You can carry around a maximum of 6 Pokemon, so it makes sense to use only 6 or less. I would say your target is 3-4 strong Pokemon before legendaries. Using less Pokemon means your Pokemon will be higher leveled and you will spend less time training. Why not use all 6 Pokemon you say? Well, first, you will actually get quite a few high-leveled Pokemon right before the end of the game. Second, you will need to keep a few Pokemon around for key HM moves, which are either needed or makes life a lot easier, but not strong enough moves to be put on your main Pokemon. Let's explore what I mean.HM SlavesI actually think the term "HM Slaves" is somewhat distasteful, because why reference something that has such a painful history? Alas, these types of Pokemon are most commonly referred to as such. First, what is an HM? They are hidden machines, but the better description for them is "field moves". By this definition, HMs are moves that can are used outside of battle which has a field effect. For example, Cut will cut down trees.Because of how useful these moves are, it then becomes obvious that we want to have them while we're traveling. Some HM moves are good battle moves too, like Fly, Surf, and Waterfall. But others are lacking, which is why we usually dedicate 1 or 2 HM Slaves as Pokemon that you won't use to battle with but is there for field HM usage. Besides, even if Fly and Surf are good, using them on your main Pokemon means you've committed yourself to having a flying and water type, which will hurt your flexibility.Note that while Black & White does not require HMs to advance the plot besides Cut (HM 01), it's good to have them anyways because they are nice to have. For example, having Strength means you get access to an area unneeded to finish the game but trains for experience along with some rare items, maybe even a TM! Having Fly means you can revisit any town you want for any reason, very convenient if you ask me! Some TMs such as Flash have field effects too, so they are useful to have but useless for battles.If you are using 6 Pokemon to battle, you can spread the HMs across each Pokemon, which is fine. The disadvantage is each Pokemon will be a little bit weaker due to having HM moves, but you'll have all 6 Pokemon to use for gyms and whatnot. Or, since Cut and Strength are most used, just get a 1 HM Slave that can learn both and have Fly and Surf learned on your other 5 Pokemon. This does means you need a flying and water type though. Lastly, you can have complete flexibility with your 4 main Pokemon if you decide to have 2 HM Slaves, which is what I will recommend you do.Getting Really ChoosyNow it's time to discuss what Pokemon you should have on your team. Let's say you decided to have 4 main Pokemon and 2 HM Slaves. Does it make sense for all 4 of your Pokemon to be grass? Probably not, because then your entire party will be weak once you encounter a fire or flying type. The first rule is for all 4 of your Pokemon to different types. It's fine you have a Water/Ground and then Ground/Dark, since that's still some variety. But having two of the exact same types is not very good. If 3 of your 4 Pokemon are flying, that's also probably not a good thing, regardless if they are dual-type or not. And there's definitely no reason for you to have two of the exact same Pokemon!You probably understand now the important of having variety in your team, let's talk about the Pokemon themselves. You want to pick something that last you for a long time and won't fade away near the end of the game. This means you want Pokemon with high stats. For example, when you capture Woobat it has two strong moves, Gust and Confusion. If you evolve it to Swoobat, it will probably nuke a lot of things with Air Slash and Psychic. But when you get to the Pokemon League, Swoobat is no longer very good and will be OHKO'd often. Usually you'll need to refer to a Pokedex to figure out which Pokemon have good stats and which are not, but this is exactly why I created this guide! You'll have that information easily at the tip of your fingers later on.Lastly, we want to talk about stat distribution and availability. A Pokemon may have high total stats but is extremely slow. Now there's nothing wrong with slow but bulky and powerful Pokemon, but depending on your playing style, you may quickly become annoyed at your Pokemon getting hit first all the time. Therefore, for in-game purposes, you generally want fast Pokemon. Stat distribution also means you don't want an extremely average Pokemon with no strong points. You have 4-6 Pokemon, so let each of them specialize instead of having one being completely boring. Even if a Pokemon is good, you need to consider when you get it too. If you get a really good Pokemon after the 6th badge and you have to train it from Lv1, then you might decide that it's not worth it.Picking the Right MovesOne of my gripes about Pokemon is how you can only have 4 moves at a time, so after 4 you will have to
forget a move to
learn a new one. This means you need to carefully pick what moves you want, or you'll regret it. There is a way to relearn forgotten moves, but it costs a rare item each time so you won't be able to make many mistakes. So in this section, I'll be giving you tips about how to decide which moves you want on your Pokemon.Having Different Types of MovesThe first thing you need to know is actually quite intuitive. If you've read the lecture about having Pokemon of different types above, then it should be no surprise for you when I recommend that you have moves of different types on your Pokemon. Let's say you have a Sawk, a fighting type, and all you have are fighting moves. When you face something that resist fighting, you would be at a huge disadvantage. Having moves of different types would remedy this.There are some exceptions to this rule of course. If you have Confuse Ray and Shadow Ball, that's fine. Both are grass moves, but one inflicts a status effect and the other one actually deals damage. Even then, there are some cases where you can have two damage moves of the same type on a Pokemon. This happens when one of the moves have too low PP (Fire Blast) so you can't use it a lot or if it has a secondary effect like lowers speed (Bulldoze) or heals user (Giga Drain). I'll explain this in more detail for each Pokemon later on, so for now just keep the "all moves should of different types" mentality.Damage Category, Power vs. AccuracyAfter that, you should consider your Pokemon's stats. Let's use Sigilyph for an example this time, a Pokemon with low physical attack (Atk) and high special attack (SpAtk). In this case, you would know to not give it Fly, a 90 power physical attack, but instead Air Slash, a 75 power special attack. Although Air Slash looks weaker, Sigilyph's SpAtk almost doubles its Atk, making Air Slash do more damage.Next, you have to consider power and accuracy. Both Ice Beam and Blizzard are power special attacks and ice type, but they have differences. Ice Beam is 95 power with 100% accuracy, while Blizzard is 120 power with 70%. Usually, choose accuracy over power, so in most cases Ice Beam is preferably over Blizzard. Also consider PP as well, which is how many times your Pokemon can use each move. Ice Beam has 10 PP and Blizzard has 5 PP. So Ice Beam is a bit less damage, but way more accurate and you can use it 10 times. That beats Blizzard, which may or may not hit and you can't use it many times.Same Type Attacking Bonus (STAB)STAB is so important that it deserves its own section. In short, if you use a move that has the same type as the Pokemon's type, then that move is 1.5x more powerful. A STAB Fly has 135 base power instead of 90 base power. Therefore, even though you want moves of different types, don't forget to use moves that matches your Pokemon's type too! In short, if your Pokemon is Sigilyph, a flying and psychic better, then you better keep a flying move and a psychic move! It's as simple as that, but never overlook STAB.As an aside, STAB is what makes normal type Pokemon boring to most trainers. Normal moves are not strong against any type, so a STAB normal attack won't be super-effective against anything. That's sort of a waste, don't you think? I only have two normal type Pokemon on my list of usable Pokemon, and one of them actually has a second.Non-Damaging MovesOver the course of your adventure, your Pokemon will learn moves that raises or lowers a stat, or inflicts a status effect. I'm talking about moves like Tail Whip and Growl. Most of the time, you want to avoid using these moves because attacking is better. If you use Tail Whip and attack twice, that would be exactly the same result as if you attack three times. And for most battles, you can win with attacking twice. Therefore, they are sort of useless.There are however some exceptions. Swords Dance will raise your Atk not once but twice! This immediately doubles your damage, so Swords Dance + attack is the same as attacking twice. Other moves like Quiver Dance raises 3 stats at once, SpAtk, SpDef, and speed. Now isn't that nice! Sleep Powder is inaccurate, but if it hits, your opponent will spend up to 5 turns doing nothing. That's worth a slot on your Pokemon. I will note these exceptions on my Pokemon list further on.While attacking is the fastest way to win, stat changing moves are actually incredibly strong. If you use Work Up (which increases your Atk and SpAtk once) six times, throwing in a potion or two to keep your Pokemon alive, then that Pokemon can pretty much beat anything. But here's where you have to a decision. Do you want to spend every battle boosting up your stats? Or do you want to just win and get on with it? This is the reason for preferring attacking moves over non-damaging moves. You give the nod to stat changing moves for being potentially really good, but you also understand that you don't have all day either.TM/HM ListRating:
- 1: Not very useful, or only for specific movesets
- 2: Somewhat useful for a few levels
- 3: Useful in some situations
- 4: Useful immediately, might be replaced later
- 5: Very useful, probably a keeper to beat the game
Markup:
- TMs that are bolded are given by gym leaders. This means all TMs before that are usable to fight that gym.
- TMs that are italicized may not be available at that point of the game, but it is my best guess.
Comments
- item: Probably appears on the ground as a PokeBALL
- given: Someone gives this to you for free or after doing something
- battle: Someone gives this to you as a direct result of a battle
- shop: You can buy this in a shop
Pre-League TMs/HMs# Name Rtg Location & Comments TM 83
Work Up 2 Gym 1: Striaton City HM 01 Cut 1 Striaton City (given) - teach it to an HM Slave instead of your main Pokemon TM 46 Thief 2 Wellspring Cave (item) TM 94 Rock Smash 2 Pinwheel Forest (given) - you can get this before challenging Lenora, outside of the forest TM 67
Retaliate 2 Gym 2: Nacrene City TM 86 Grass Knot 3 Pinwheel Forest (item) TM 44 Rest 1 Castelia City (given) TM 70 Flash 1 Castelia City (given) TM 45 Attract 3 Castelia City (given) TM 76
Struggle Bug 2 Gym 3: Castelia City TM 54
False Swipe 3 Nuvema Town (given) - visit Prof. Birch after you have seen 30 Pokemon (you should have this much by now) TM 41 Torment 1 Route 4 (item) TM 28 Dig 4 Route 4 (given) TM 39 Rock Tomb 2 Desert Resort (item) HM 04 Strength 2 Nimbasa City (given) TM 49 Echoed Voice 2 Nimbasa City (given) TM 22 SolarBeam 3 Pinwheel Forest (item) - once you entered Nimbasa and helped the daycare man, the right side of Pinwheel opens up TM 21 Frustration 1 Shop: Nimbasa City TM 27 Return 5 Shop: Nimbasa City TM 73 Thunder Wave 3 Shop: Nimbasa City TM 74 Gyro Ball 1 Shop: Nimbasa City TM 16 Light Screen 1 Shop: Nimbasa City TM 20 Safeguard 1 Shop: Nimbasa City TM 33 Reflect 1 Shop: Nimbasa City TM 66 Payback 2 Route 16 (item) - you can get this before challenging Elesa TM 76
Volt Switch 2 Gym 4: Nimbasa City TM 55 Scald 4 Cold Storage (item) TM 78
Bulldoze 3 Gym 5: Driftveil - you'll get it a bit later after beating Clay HM 02 Fly 5 Driftveil City (battle) TM 17
Protect 1 Nuvema Town (given) - visit Prof. Birch after you have seen 60 Pokemon (you should have this much by now) TM 07 Hail 1 Shop: Mistralton City TM 11 Sunny Day 3 Shop: Mistralton City TM 18 Rain Dance 3 Shop: Mistralton City TM 37 Sandstorm 1 Shop: Mistralton City TM 58 Sky Drop 1 Mistralton City (item) TM 57 Charge Beam 2 Route 7 (given) TM 81 X-Scissor 5 Route 7 (item) # Name Rtg Location & Comments TM 61 Will-o-wisp 5 Celestial Tower (item) TM 65 Shadow Claw 4 Celestial Tower (item) TM 62
Acrobatics 5 Gym 6: Mistralton City TM 40 Aerial Ace 4 Mistralton City (item) - this appears on the airstrip after you beat Skyla HM 03 Surf 5 Twist Mountain (battle) - you can get a lot of new TMs after getting Surf! TM 84 Poison Jab 5 Route 6 (item) - use Surf to access TM 80 Rock Slide 5 Mistralton Cave (item) - needs Surf to access the cave, then Strength inside the cave TM 47 Low Sweep 3 Wellspring Cave (item) - needs Surf to access TM 52 Focus Blast 3 Wellspring Cave (item) - needs Surf to access TM 06 Toxic 3 Route 17 (item) - needs Surf to access HM 05 Waterfall 5 Route 18 (item) - not needed to beat the game, but useful to get more items TM 24 Thunderbolt 5 P2 Laboratory (item) - between Route 18 and Route 17 TM 19 Telekinesis 1 Route 18 (item) TM 91 Flash Cannon 5 Twist Mountain (item) TM 90 Substitute 1 Twist Mountain (item) - winter only TM 31 Brick Break 5 Icirrus City (given) TM 14 Blizzard 1 Shop: Icirrus City TM 25 Thunder 3 Shop: Icirrus City TM 38 Fire Blast 5 Shop: Icirrus City TM 36 Sludge Bomb 5 Route 8 (item) - you can get this before challenging Brycen TM 42 Facade 2 Route 8 (given) - you can get this before challenging Brycen TM 79
Frost Breath 4 Gym 7: Icirrus City TM 10
Hidden Power 1 Nuvema Town (given) - visit Prof. Birch after you have seen 100 Pokemon (you should have this much by now) TM 63 Embargo 1 Dragonspiral Tower (item) TM 30 Shadow Ball 5 Relic Castle (item) TM 43 Flame Charge 1 Tubeline Bridge (given) - she moves really fast TM 56 Fling 1 Route 9 (given) TM 15 Hyper Beam 3 Shop: Route 9 TM 68 Giga Impact 3 Shop: Route 9 TM 82
Dragon Tail 1 Gym 8: Opelucid City TM 05 Roar 1 Route 10 (item) TM 12 Taunt 1 Victory Road (item) TM 02 Dragon Claw 5 Victory Road (item) TM 93 Wild Charge 5 Victory Road (item) Post-League TMs# Name Rtg Location & Comments TM 32 Double Team 1 Route 18 (given) - sage TM 75 Swords Dance 5 Dreamyard (given) - sage TM 85 Dream Eater 3 Dreamyard (item) TM 04 Calm Mind 3 Runic Castle Depths (given) - sage TM 26 Earthquake 5 Runic Castle Depths (item) TM 01 Hone Claws 3 Cold Storage (given) - sage TM 69 Rock Polish 1 Chargestone Cave (given) - sage TM 71 Stone Edge 3 Challenger's Cave (item) TM 50 Overheat 3 Route 11 (item) TM 53 Energy Ball 5 Route 12 (item) TM 29 Psychic 5 Route 13 (item) TM 89 U-Turn 1 Route 13 (given) TM 13 Ice Beam 5 Giant Chasm (item) TM 03 Psyshock 1 Giant Chasm (item) HM 06 Dive 1 Undella Town (given) TM 08 Bulk Up 3 Route 14 (given) - sage TM 35 Flamethrower 5 Abundant Shrine (item) TM 92 Trick Room 1 Abundant Shrine (item) TM 09 Venoshock 3 Route 15 (item) TM 23 Smack Down 1 Shop: The Battle Subway TM 48 Round 1 Shop: The Battle Subway TM 87 Swagger 1 Shop: The Battle Subway TM 88 Pluck 1 Shop: The Battle Subway TM 34 Sludge Wave 5 Shop: The Battle Subway TM 51 Ally Switch 1 Shop: The Battle Subway TM 59 Incinerate 1 Shop: The Battle Subway TM 60 Quash 1 Shop: The Battle Subway TM 64 Explosion 1 Shop: The Battle Subway TM 77 Psych Up 1 Shop: The Battle Subway TM 95 Snarl 0 Event: Not yet existed Analysis of TMs/HMsHM 01: Cut
- Rating: 1
- Comments: Don't bother teaching this to any of your Pokemon, unless you're doing a 6-Pokemon party without HM Slaves. It's not a great move and if you need a normal attack, Return is much better.
- Field: I believe there's only one spot where you absolutely need to use Cut to advance the plot. You still want to keep around an HM Slave with Strength though because you can get more items as you travel with Cut.
