my leafgreen badge quest
hi, everyone! it's been a while, huh? in my last blog post, i talked about a really popular shiny hunt challenge: the badge quest. that post specifically detailed my adventures in method hunting for my alpha sapphire badge quest. this post is gonna be similar, in that i took on yet another badge quest... but this one was, instead, entirely full odds AND in my childhood copy of leafgreen version!
for a quick recap on what a badge quest is: it's essentially a challenge during which you catch one shiny pokemon before each gym leader that you face. this means that most badge quests consist of 8 shiny pokemon - one for each of the pokemon gym leaders.
my alpha sapphire badge quest was the very first one that i ever took on. since it's one of the modern pokemon games, i had a 1/4096 chance of running into a shiny at full odds. i also improved these odds by method hunting for many of the hunts in the challenge (in the form of using dexnav's chaining feature, as well as chain fishing. for more info about those methods, definitely check out the alpha sapphire badge quest post). to make up for these comparatively merciful odds, i extended the challenge to include catching shinies for each of the hoenn elite four, as well as for champion steven.
for THIS challenge, things went a little... differently.
since leafgreen is one of the older pokemon games (gen3, babey!), my chance of running into a shiny at full odds is 1/8192. furthermore, leafgreen has no means of method hunting available - meaning that there was no means of improving those base 1/8192 odds. that made it one of the most 'hardcore' badge quests that i could take on! i was definitely intimidated about this - but i was no stranger to full odds hunts by this point and really wanted the thrill of a ton of 1/8192 hunts under my belt.
in terms of hardware, i used an emulator for most of this challenge (namely, for all of the shinies save for the final one). my main reason for this was so that i could take clear screenshots for this post, but i also wanted to make backups of my save file after finding each shiny, and ALSO to make the soft-resets easier on my hands versus with my ds lite. i single hunted for each shiny - meaning i used one window with my own copy of leafgreen (which i got as a present back when i was a kid!) - and i obviously used absolutely no save state or shiny-spawning cheats, as that would've totally defeated the purpose of the badge quest. for the final hunt of the challenge, i managed to get my hands on my very own analogue pocket, so i swapped to using that instead! the analogue pocket has a built-in screenshot feature, which i used quite a few times - but it also has a BEAUTIFUL screen, so i ended up taking photos of it, too.
now, with all of that said... let's get to the challenge itself! YIPPEE!
choosing my first target for this badge quest was easy: it'd have to be my starter! (and i'm sure you can tell which pokemon THAT was, given the picture above... lmao!)
this was a pretty straightforward hunt. i saved right before picking up my squirtle at oak's lab, then soft reset a bunch of times before i met a beautiful, bright blue one with a gorgeous green shell! i was pretty nervous about it, since it was my first hunt of the challenge... and i was totally expecting an overodds hunt... but my shiny starter showed up after 5205 squirtles seen!
it took me forever to decide on a name for this squirtle; for a portion of my journey, he was named 'blaster' (after my childhood blastoise in pkmn blue, haha!)... but, in the end, i named him milo! i was super happy that he showed up below the 1/8192 odds. it was a fantastic start to the challenge. it's always so awesome to have a shiny starter pokemon; starters are already so special, with so much sentimentality attached to them even when they're NOT shiny. these hunts are honestly some of my favourite ones to take on.
i really wanted my next shiny to be a special one. instead, i... got ripped off. :\
...just kidding!
my second shiny hunt was for a shiny magikarp - specifically, one bought from the ICONIC magikarp salesman on route 4! when i was a kid, i always bought this magikarp, because i thought it was incredibly cool that you could get one before nabbing the old rod. i thought those 500 pokedollars were 500 pokedollars well spent, and, tbh? despite what the game implies with that text box, i firmly maintain that i was CORRECT.
my 3481st magikarp bought was a shiny! (and, yes, i reset after each magikarp bought, as i was still a sweet, baby, novice trainer with very limited funds, and ALSO because the vendor only sells you one magikarp at a time, haha). look at how awesome and gold it is... ugh. SO regal. this was yet another under-odds hunt; needless to say, i was STOKED. i had a lot of fun conning the con man!
i decided that i would evolve this magikarp eventually, so, due to shiny gyarados' red coloration, i named him tabasco!
i’ve always been really intimidated by shiny hunts that rely on random encounters (because getting unlucky and running into a ton of shinies other than my actual target is a scary concept...!), but i decided to take a random encounter hunt on for the 3rd member of my leafgreen badge quest team. gotta keep stuff unique, right? i tried to offset some of the pain of phasing by keeping my target fluid. as it turns out, the route right outside vermillion city - route 6 - has a really cute selection of pokemon (pidgeys, bellsprouts and meowths), so i decided that i’d just aim for whichever shiny pokemon turned up first.
secretly, i was hoping for a meowth, though.
i didn’t think i’d get one, so… needless to say, i FREAKED OUT when a shiny one ACTUALLY showed up!
this meowth was my 3809th random encounter! (ANOTHER under-odds hunt!! three in a row; you KNOW i was freaked out lmfao.) i’m beyond thrilled with this shiny. shiny meowth is quite subtle but it’s still a fav design of mine. like… look at that cute gold coat… and those pink paws and tail!!! perfection.
i named her xiao and decided to give her an everstone! so the team is gonna have a powerful baby tagging along!!!
upon arriving in celadon, i knew exactly what had to be done. i marched over to the game corner and got ready for my very first casino-based shiny hunt.
honestly? i think it's a HUGE shame that we don't have game corners in modern pokemon games anymore. i know, i know... we shouldn't teach small children how to gamble... but i just love all of the mini-games in the game corner! and being able to exchange your coins for rare pokemon is so darn cool. the vibes are just kinda sleazy in the best way possible.
my grind for coins was REAL. i was a MASTER of the slot machine.
initially, i was trying for a shiny porygon - the bulk of this hunt was actually porygon encounters (encounters feels like the wrong term here but w/e) - but i randomly looked up shiny alakazam’s sprite and was absolutely DAZZLED by it. i thought its gold-and-pink coat was awesome, and that gen3's spritework only made it cooler. as a kid, i never had the means of having an alakazam on my main team due to the trade evolution requirement, but i figured i could meet that requirement as an adult*...
(*i wasn't wrong, but it ended up being a whole... thing. i'll talk about it later on in this post, lmao!)
...so, needless to say, i caved and swapped my casino target to abra. since abra didn't cost that much and i had a bunch of extra coins from my big grind to be able to afford porygon, i changed up my setup and bought multiple abras at a time, checked them, then reset my game so as to preserve my coins. literally around an hour or so after i decided to do the swap… a shiny abra girlie showed up. absolutely bonkers stuff. like. WHAT!!!!! it was fated. absolutely fated.
overall, this lil shiny abra - whom i named grimoire - was my 3050th pokemon seen! even though i saw a REALLY tiny amt of abras compared to porygons, i figured the encounters from before still count! this abra also marked the halfway point of this badge quest... with FOUR of the hunts being under-odds! i truly felt like i was due for a horrifically long hunt in the very near future, but i continued to enjoy my luck and carried on with my quest.
i took a picture of my team as a little update! (as you can see, milo's name was blaster here, haha!)
celadon city has more to it than its huge department store, its game corner and erika's gym, of course. you can actually pick up a random eevee here!!! it's kind of an easter egg, as nothing in the game really hints at it, but it's extremely hype nonetheless. after all, it's the only 'wild' eevee in the whole game! i knew that i'd have to shiny hunt for the celadon city eevee.
i never thought much of it as a kid (beyond thinking eevee was super cute and cool and just being excited to finally have one), but as i set up for this hunt, i realized that this eevee is actually so... mysterious. it’s just chilling out in a random pokeball on a desk… which you can snatch up with 0 consequences whatsoever.
the guy who supposedly Knows Everything and happily breaks the fourth wall doesnt even comment on it?!? it’s bizarre, but that’s what makes it so great, i think. (it also makes the soft resets for it INCREDIBLY easy LMAO. i just saved right in front of it, checked if it was shiny and reset if it wasn't, and that was that. there was no dialogue involved - much unlike my starter hunt.)
now, by this point, i was pretty spooked to have been so under-odds during the entire badge quest thus far. like i said, i was certain that i was in for a long haul hunt... but, in the end, that long haul was not gonna be this one. i kept saying that i really wanted a shiny to show up within 1000 encounters during this badge quest - while acknowledging how that’s a ridiculous thing to want in a game with 1/8192 odds - but, uh… eevee decided to make my dreams come true.
arlo the eevee was my 808th eevee seen, and the fifth member of my badge quest!!! after levelling him up a bit, i evolved him into a jolteon!
team rocket decided to take over silph co during one of their little schemes... but i thwarted them easily! and this random guy gave me such a cool gift for saving everyone!!! just goes to show u that it’s always important to… be kind? beat up giovanni? idk. anyway! F;LKDL;GKDG
i managed to nab a shiny silph co lapras after a ridiculously short 514 resets! laertes saw how fast eevee came home and was like ‘idk man… i can get there faster, i think.’ i was beyond shocked to see him sparkle THAT quickly - in a 1/8192 game, no less! i genuinely think i will never get luckier than this in any 1/8192 game, haha!
my silph co lapras hunt was another really fun one with a lot of Childlike Wonder attached to it. i was so amazed to get a LAPRAS(!!!!) during this little part of the kanto plot; i definitely had to shiny hunt for one right after getting my badge from sabrina. as you can probably tell from all of my little childhood stories, a lot of these shiny hunts were taken on in the name of nostalgia but i guess that’s the power of kanto.
now, this part of the badge quest got a little... weird. as it does.
i tried to resist taking on this shiny hunt, as, technically, i already got my shiny for the soulbadge. but the very moment that i got the pokeflute, i knew that my fate was sealed.
there are only TWO snorlaxes in leafgreen, blocking off routes. one of them blocks off the route to fuchsia city, where koga's gym can be found. initially, i planned to just wake that one up without shiny hunting it, then make my way down to fuchsia city for my badge... and then, someday, shiny hunt for the OTHER snorlax. but... well... when i saw snorlax sleeping peacefully, i felt the urge to shiny hunt it. it felt WRONG not to do so. so... i decided to add on an extra slot to my badge quest to accomodate a snorlax hunt! (as such, my lapras and snorlax share the soulbadge slot, haha!)
snorlax has a pretty subtle shiny design, but it grew on me sooo much with time… the shade of blue is a super pretty one! i was actually a bit worried that i wouldn’t notice the shiny whenever it showed up, but i noticed her RIGHT away when she did.
the encounter was a pretty terrifying one - she had the rest + chesto berry combo, smdh, not to mention snorlax’s very low catch rate - but i managed to catch her in a pokeball! (do you know that i used to think that catching snorlax in a pokeball was literally impossible? iirc, a strategy guide from gen1 claimed that large pokemon like snorlax and onix were impossible to catch in pokeballs! i actually have no idea if it's true for gen1 or not, but it made catching this one in a pokeball all the more funny to me.)
sleepytime was my 8726th snorlax seen! she was my first overodds hunt on this badge quest AND my first overodds hunt in a 1/8192 game…! i guess my crazy luck had to end somewhere. i thought of it as karma for disturbing her cozy slumber!
keeping up with the trend of iconic kantonian hunts, i decided to shiny hunt for a fossil pokemon for the volcanobadge's slot! i had a few options here, but i ultimately went with my fav fossil pokemon of all time - kabuto. the dome fossil that i picked up all the way back in mt moon prior to getting my 2nd badge was crucial here!
after handing your fossil over to the "weird doctor," he forces you to give him some time to revitalize your fossil. luckily, you just need to leave the lab then walk right back inside and your fossil will be ready. furthermore, you don't need to do this back-and-forth with each reset: you can save right before picking up your fossil, as its shininess is determined when you get it back rather than when you hand the fossil over to the doctor.
a bright green kabuto graced me with her presence... eventually! this hunt was another slightly overodds one, as she was my 8738th kabuto resurrected! i was super shocked to see that my shiny one ended up being a girl. sleepytime is also a girl - and both species of pkmn only have a 12.5% chance of being female!!!
i named this little kabuto veldea! since she was my 8th shiny for this badge quest, i was, technically, all done, at this point... but i stuck true to my original plan of just having lapras and snorlax share a slot. you see, i wanted my final shiny of the leafgreen badge quest to be one of my most memorable shiny hunts ever...!
in quite a few pokemon games, there is a special little zone where you can run into some super rare pokemon. in kanto, this zone is called... (drumroll)... the safari zone!!!
in kanto, the safari zone can be found in fuchsia city. you pay an entrance fee and have a set amount of steps in the safari zone. once those steps are used up, your safari game is over. however, during your time in there, you are also provided with 30 safari balls and you can keep each and every pokemon that you successfully manage to catch.
...but encounters in the safari zone aren't like normal pokemon encounters. you can't battle any of the pokemon that you run into within the safari zone. instead, you can throw bait at them OR throw rocks at them. and pokemon within the safari can very much run away forever.
bait increases the pokemon's chance of staying with you, while making it a bit harder to catch. meanwhile, rocks make the pokemon easier to catch, but make it more likely to run away from you! naturally, this added element of chance makes the safari zone one of those really fun places to shiny hunt in, since you may hit the jackpot and run into a shiny only to have it flee from you. (...yeah, it's a very funny idea of 'fun.' there is actually a shiny hunting community event known as safari week where tons of shiny hunters descend into the safari zone en masse with the goal of running into as many shinies as possible. a ton of video compilations are out there, if you're interested in checking them out!) safari zone hunts are a whole other beast when compared to normal shiny hunts. some targets, such as chansey and kangaskhan, are INCREDIBLY rare encounters with INCREDIBLY difficult catch rates; you're lucky to so much as RUN INTO those shinies. a lot of technical preparation goes into choosing safari targets and maximizing your chances of running into specific pokemon.
i had a humble target, though. i just wanted a lovely little doduo. my reason for this was that i still needed a pokemon who could fly me around kanto, and i thought that doduo having the ability to learn fly despite not having wings was the most inspiring thing ever. i wanted to grant a doduo the gift of flight. (also, its shiny design is SO cute.) so i simply had to run into one.
quite a bit of prep went into this shiny hunt! while doduo isn't a totally uncommon encounter in the safari, i wanted to maximize my chances of running into a shiny one. using this encounter calculator, i figured out that you can repel trick with a level 26 pokemon for doduo in the eastern part of the safari zone. this boosted my chance of running into one from 20% to a lovely ~65%! it also boosted my chances of running into the elusive 1% chance pinsir to ~3%. i decided to train up a staryu to level 26, as staryu also has the illuminate ability which DOUBLES the amount of pokemon encounters that you get in tall grass.
after popping a max repel, i got to hunting for my awesome, two-headed green bird.
it was during this time that i also managed to buy an analogue pocket! like i mentioned at the start of this blog post, i swapped over to hunting on my Beloved Game Boy once it arrived. here's a picture of it in all its decorated glory!
after hopping over to my analogue pocket, i settled in the safari zone. i maximized my time in the safari by rapidly pressing the movement arrows so that my character rarely ever took full 'steps' and instead just kind of twirled in place. this way, i ran into new pokemon, but my steps never counted down (...though i sometimes messed up and took a few steps in the tall grass. whoops). whenever my timer ended (or i was tired of hunting for the day), i'd just soft reset so that i didn't waste a ton of pokedollars in the safari zone. a few days into my hunt, i ran into my first shiny...
...and it left me completely speechless.
leave it to me to run into one of the rarest safari zone pokemon EVER as my VERY FIRST SAFARI ZONE SHINY. pinsir's flee rate is absolutely brutal and i was NOT prepared for this encounter, so i panicked and just threw a safari ball at her (in reality, you should honestly do some research and find a table detailing the specific amt of bait and rock throws in order to maximize your chance of catching the rare shiny. like i said before, safari hunting is VERY popular, and a lot of resources are out there). there's always the chance that a pokemon will stay even if you're not optimal, however - as there is always a chance that it'll flee even if you ARE optimal.
as for this pinsir? she broke free IMMEDIATELY and RAN AWAY!!!! i wasn't shocked at all - tbh, it was a thrill to so much as RUN INTO HER - but, oh my god. it was crazy.
that pinsir was my 3210th safari zone encounter and my first phase for doduo. and what a phase she was!
3100 safari encounters later, i lucked out and ran into my ACTUAL target: shiny doduo!!! i was terrified that he’d run away just like the pinsir, but he didn’t act coy at all and stayed in the very first safari ball that i threw. overall, this shiny hunt took a grand total of 6310 safari encounters!
i then taught my doduo how to fly, thus fulfilling my main goal of this shiny hunt.
upon catching this doduo (who i named pickles), i finally completed my leafgreen badge quest. i caught one shiny for each of the gyms - plus one extra snorlax! but i didn't consider my journey over just yet. i still had to take on the elite four and make it to the hall of fame.
while i didn't do any other shiny hunts for the rest of my challenge, i DID have a few other tasks that i needed to tackle before taking on the elite four. my first order of business was FINALLY evolving grimoire the kadabra into an alakazam. at first, i thought that i had the hardware to do this with my analogue pocket - but, as it turns out, i didn't, as my adapter wasn't compatible with it UNLESS i sanded part of it down... and i didn't want to take that risk. trading with pokemon colosseum wasn't an option, either, as, even though i had the hardware to do so, i'd unlock trading to games OTHER than firered or leafgreen during leafgreen's post-game. since i wanted my alakazam to be included in my first leafgreen hall of fame, this posed a bit of a problem.
i shifted focus to doing the trade with the use of an emulator. i had NO idea if it would be possible, but i figured i'd give it a shot. since i had a copy of firered, i plopped it on my pc and got to researching. (i also seized the opportunity to make a backup of all of my leafgreen badgequest shinies!) anyway, i soon found a guide online which taught me how to do the process with two separate windows of the visualboyadvance emulator.
here's a little recount of that video's steps, describing how i pulled off the virtual trade:
1) i launched my firered save in one window and my leafgreen one in the other, setting both up outside of the pokemon center trading npc.
2) i went into the emulation tab for each window and unchecked 'pause when inactive' (so that the games would run simultaneously).
3) i went into my leafgreen window's options tab, then hovered over 'link' and made sure that 'cable' was selected.
4) i then selected 'start network link', set leafgreen to 'server', then hit 'ok.'
5) in firered, i went into options, then 'start network link,' setting firered to 'client.'
6) after a short wait, 'all players connected' appeared as a message on both of my game windows.
7) in both of my games, i talked to the pokemon center trading npc and selected 'trade center.'
8) the npc let both of my games into the trade center, and i did the trade like normal!
after my kadabra evolved into alakazam in my copy of firered, i traded her back to my copy of leafgreen.
ngl, pulling this virtual trade off was one of the coolest pokemon things i've ever done... and i've done a lot of cool pokemon things! lmfao. i was really so amazed; technology really is incredible, huh?!
now that grimoire was a fully-evolved pokemon, i buckled down and got to training for the elite four. that, in itself, was a grind and a half! your rival's pokemon are in the early 60s, so i decided i'd try to get my whole team to level 55. milo, my blastoise, was pushing 70, so i figured that he'd be my anchor of sorts if i ended up in a thorny situation.
i did the majority of my pokemon league training on route 16. if you use the vs seeker on this route, you can battle these biker trainers repeatedly and gain a respectable amount of exp each time. you also get prize money, which can be helpful in buying hyper potions and full heals for your league challenge!
after a ton of battles, everyone was eventually ready to face the brutal kantonian pokemon league. while i left tabasco, sleepytime and laertes in the pc, i knew that they would send us their power for the league challenge.
the battles were daunting, but my pokemon managed to pull through. in particular, i had a blast battling agatha, as i was able to thwart her evasion spam + toxic stall strategy with xiao's faint attack. (yes, my little meowth was VERY useful and pulled her weight in the league challenge!!) furthermore, when xiao was put to sleep with gengar's hypnosis, i ruined agatha's little hypnosis + nightmare strategy by playing a jaunty little tune with my pokeflute.
i'd be so incredibly pissed off if some kid pulled this off on me, tbh. LMAO.
after fighting my way through the elite four in a series of enjoyable battles, i soon met up with my rival.
milo had a touching reunion with green's venusaur. even with the type disadvantage, i always feel like recreating the very first battle is super important; it's one of my little pokemon traditions.
once we got through the fight against my rival, i was declared champion... and my team finally made it to the hall of fame!
while that playtime is absolutely NOT reflective of my ACTUAL playtime (as it doesn't account for the hours upon hours of soft resets, haha!), i still made sure to take a screenshot of it with my analogue pocket's screenshot feature, as it marked the very moment that my badge quest was finally complete!
this badge quest was a total BLAST!!! i was shocked at how lucky i was for most of the hunts; the eevee + lapras hunts in particular were absolutely CRAZY (and they were back-to-back, too!!! like... WHAT)!!! furthermore, i was thrilled with being able to take my first foray into safari zone hunting. i can't believe that i can say that PINSIR was the first shiny pokemon i ever ran into within the safari zone, and i'm so happy that i managed to successfully catch my actual target doduo so soon afterwards! in a general sense, i'm so incredibly pleased with my team, as i feel like they are all pokemon that i have a lot of childhood memories attached to while also being pokemon i just generally vibe with a whole lot, lmao. this badge quest had a whole lot of sentimentality attached to it, and it's awesome to be able to say that i successfully completed it! (with one extra pokemon, no less!!!)
i definitely want to take on a lot more shiny hunts in my cartridge of leafgreen! i think i'll try to shiny hunt for mewtwo next... but that's another story entirely! i hope that you guys enjoyed reading about my leafgreen badge quest, and i also really hope that i can inspire at least some of you to take on the badge quest challenge, yourself! you'll make tons of memories and end up with absolutely incredible pokemon, so it's really just a win/win overall! :D
i'm not sure what my next wild pokemon challenge will be - but i'm sure i'll come up with something! (pointedly averting my gaze from my unfinished ribbon masters lmfao)
see you next time!
mood: 
proud
music: back to black - amy winehouse