A Pokemon Scarlet and Violet player with a lot of time, patience, and help from other trainers, completed a personal challenge of filling up the regional Pokedex before challenging a single Gym Leader in the games. The player then posted their accomplishment on social media with proof of their feat and received both praise and questions about how they were able to complete their challenge in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet.
Unlike their predecessors from generations past, Pokemon Scarlet and Violet have a pseudo-linear way of going about clearing the game's main story arcs. This, in turn, allows Pokemon Scarlet and Violet players to make their own challenge runs. From using or banning specific Pokemon on their teams, or using specific Pokemon types, the challenges that players can take to mix up their gameplay are nearly endless.
In this case, a Redditor by the name of Kvesh posted a screenshot from their Pokemon Scarlet save file that showed they had caught all 400 of the Paldea region's Pokemon before challenging a single Gym Leader or Team Star Base. The post received nearly 300 votes within the first few hours of posting, and the comments asked Kvesh about what they did to complete their challenge. However, Kvesh's post was removed by a moderator at the time of writing, citing Rule 3 of the subreddit's rules concerning discussions.
Before the post was removed, Kvesh admitted that they cleared the Path of Legends story arc by defeating the Titan Pokemon and unlocking Koraidon's travel capabilities to make their task a bit easier. This allowed them to catch the different kinds of Pokemon that were out of their level range under normal circumstances. Kvesh said that they had a lot of help from the r/pokemontrades subreddit when it came to obtaining the version-exclusive Pokemon from Pokemon Violet that they were missing, and acquiring some Legendary and Paradox Pokemon that they did not have access to without any progress beyond what they had.
Kvesh added that they caught whatever they could on their own, even though they had a limited selection of Poke Balls to start, and certain Pokemon took longer to catch, such as Skuntank. But, Kvesh said that they were able to use what they could buy from Poke Marts and made extensive use of what they could find out in the wild, though it was no easy task. Plus, Kvesh said that only the Pokemon they caught without trading were obedient in battle, so that made specific team members such as Ampharos very valuable in their Pokedex completion quest.
Though the Paldean Pokedex lists 400 Pokemon at this point, the list does not include Pokemon exclusive to seven-star Tera Raid battles, such as the Unrivaled Charizard and the upcoming Unrivaled Cinderace. It remains to be seen if and when that criterion will change once Pokemon Scarlet and Violet release any DLC, and when Pokemon HOME compatibility is added to the games in 2023.
Pokemon Scarlet and Violet are available now for Nintendo Switch.
Source: Reddit
