Hey folks, and welcome to another instalment of "Gotta Catch 'Em All!", a series of blogs chronicling my efforts to complete a living National Pokédex before the release of Pokémon Sun and Moon later this month. If you missed my first entry from last week, you can find it here. For those of you who are all caught up, let's get this underway, shall we?

Part Two - Well Begun Is Half Done

Something I realised that I didn't do in my previous blog was provide a comprehensive list of every Pokémon that I was missing. "I couldn't possibly do that", I thought, "it would take up a ridiculous amount of screen space and make the blog post incredibly long and unwieldy."

...then I remembered that the Giant Bomb text editor supports tables. Have I ever mentioned how much I love the Giant Bomb text editor? It's awesome. Anyway, here's a full list of all the Pokémon currently missing from my "living Pokédex" (not counting Meloetta for the reasons outlined in my last entry):

Following on from the calculations I made in my last blog, I set about reducing this list of Pokémon as rapidly as I could. The first (and easiest) step was to very quickly catch three missing Pokémon that are very readily available in Pokémon Y - namely Burmy, Riolu and Zweilous. I managed to pick up a Burmy on Route 3, a Riolu on Route 22, and a Zweilous in Victory Road, all without any great difficulty, cutting my required total down from eighty-one to seventy-eight. While in Victory Road, I also conveniently snagged a Lickitung to use as a 'base' for my Lickilicky.

My next step was to start evolving all the 'bases' I already had waiting in my PC. As I explained in my previous blog, 'base' is a term I'll be using throughout this blog series to refer to a spare Pokémon sitting in my PC that has the potential to evolve into something I need. For example, at this stage in the proceedings, I had two Minccino boxed in my PC - one which takes the Minccino spot in my living 'dex, and one eventually intended for evolution. This second Minccino was therefore a 'base' for a Cinccino. At this point I had twenty-three 'bases' ready to raise to the point of evolution. I began with the ones that required straightforward levelling, employing my trusty level 100 Greninja, my starter from my original playthrough of Y, on an expedition into Victory Road. My Greninja, which boasts a comprehensive special-sweeping moveset of Surf, Dark Pulse, Ice Beam and Extrasensory, can one-hit KO every single enemy inside Victory Road (except those pesky Geodude and Graveler with their Sturdy ability, of course). With the Exp Share turned on and a bevy of Lucky Eggs for my 'mons to hold, it wasn't long before I'd added Gabite, Toxicroak, Abomasnow, Pignite, Swanna, Vanillish, Sawsbuck, Fraxure, Braviary, Quilladin, Pyroar, Pangoro, Meowstic, Malamar and Barbaracle to my living Pokédex. That's another fifteen down, with sixty-three to go.

Of my eight remaining 'bases', I was able to quickly deal with six. A Soothe Bell helped to turn my spare Chingling into a Chimecho, and a brief visit to the Move Reminder to learn Rollout allowed me to turn my new Lickitung into a Lickilicky. Another four were sorted with evolution stones - a Dusk Stone, a Moon Stone and two Shiny Stones yielded Mismagius, Musharna, Cinccino and Florges respectively. That left just two of my original batch of 'bases', both of which I'm still yet to attempt anything with because they require a little more input than just levelling or chucking a stone on them. These are Gligar and Swirlix - I need to acquire a Razor Fang for the former, which is going to cost a bomb at the Battle Maison, and although I own the Whipped Dream required to evolve the latter, it requires a trade, which I'm putting off for the time being. Even so, that's an impressive total of twenty-four Pokémon obtained with minimal work, leaving just fifty-seven left to get:

Part Three - A Breeding Egg-stravaganza

Having achieved as much as I could with my existing set of 'bases', the next step on my journey was to set about acquiring all the 'bases' I didn't already have. While some of these were readily available to capture in Kalos and Hoenn, I instead elected to take the breeding route. I slapped a Ditto in the Day-Care on Route 7, and spent a few hours pairing it up with an assortment of unlikely partners. In the past I've likened Ditto to a pimp due to its utility as a breeding Pokémon, but this was more a case of straight-up sex slavery. No sooner had one egg appeared at the Day-Care than I'd swapped out its parent for another kind of Pokémon. I also elected to hatch as I bred, keeping a Magcargo with the Magma Armor ability at the front of the party to 'incubate' the eggs and speed up hatching times. I settled into a nice little rhythm, picking up new eggs as existing ones hatched, and it wasn't long before the seemingly arduous task was complete.

My lengthy breeding sessions provided me with all fifty-five of the remaining 'bases' I didn't already have. Where possible I switched these newly hatched critters around in my PC, swapping them for slightly more mature counterparts who are closer to meeting their evolution requirements. This should minimise the amount of time I'll need to spend battling in order to evolve everything. Of course, some of the Pokémon I required at this stage were first-forms of evolutionary lines - I was able to tick off Finneon, Oshawott, Solosis, Shelmet and Deino simply by hatching them from their eggs. This puts us at twenty-nine Pokémon acquired with fifty-two remaining, a little over a third of the way through the challenge with twelve days to go:

I think that about covers my progress up to this point. "What's next?" I hear you cry. Well, the plan from here is to return to the power-levelling strategy used in Part Two. I'm once again in a position where I have a ton of 'bases' ready to evolve, and I'll once again be taking a similar approach to prioritising them. First up will be the 'mons that evolve through straightforward levelling, which I'll once again be doing through my tried-and-tested Greninja/Victory Road method. After that I'll focus on the straight-up stone evolutions, although this is likely to mean getting caught up in some Super Training to acquire all the stones I'll need. Third up will be the more complex level-based evolutions involving learning specific moves, and the final batch will be the most difficult of all - trade-based evolutions and those involving items that I need to buy with BP at the Battle Maison. I've still got a long way to go, but I'm feeling quietly confident that I can pull it off before Sun and Moon roll around on the 23rd.

As always, thanks very much to you guys for reading this blog post. Your readership is hugely appreciated, as is your interaction - it was awesome to get so many comments on the first entry in this mini-series. You can expect the next one of these to land at some point next week. when I'll be updating you all on how my progress is going will the final fifty-two. Until then, thanks again for reading, take care, and I'll see you around.

Daniel

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Currently playing - Pokémon Y (3DS)