I’ve been a fan of Pokemon since the beginning. I remember being sat on the carpet as a kid watching the first episodes on TV and just being in awe. Collecting cards and battling in primary school during the great Pokemon boom of the 90’s. Having that 90’s board game but unfortunately never being able to play it.

Then I remember seeing a friend on the street playing Pokemon Blue on his Gameboy and letting me have a go. It was love at first sight for me. Very fortunately on one of my next birthdays I received a gameboy advance and pokemon Crystal. I remember as kids we would just be out in each others front gardens all just sitting playing pokemon. Trading for evolutions, battling, racing to see who can get the first level 100 Charizard. It was an amazing time. Buying that weird light attachment for the GBA purely to play it at bedtime.

Fast forward ten years and life gets in the way, you become an adult. I ended up losing all my pokemon through a crisis called being broke in my 20’s. Trading in games and consoles to get by. It was a hard time and I pretty much convinced myself I didn’t need pokemon anymore. I forgot about pokemon bank and ended up losing everything in there too. 

Fast forward another ten years when Pokemon Go releases and I relish the opportunity to get back into my favourite pastime. This leads to playing more of the games again, getting a switch and now a switch 2 and absolutely loving what is on offer.

And so it begins…

So after years of playing Pokemon Go and my most recent thorough playthrough of Scarlet on the Switch 2. I decided to see if I can fill the Pokedex. Just like old professor Oak asked me to as a kid. So here I’ll be documenting that Journey to 1025 pokemon caught and hopefully I can do it before gen X gets announced/released. 

Luckily I wasn’t starting from absolute 0. I have been using Home for the past 2 years now. Transferring pokemon into it when I wanted to start a new game. Transferring shinies and legendaries from GO to use in the mainline games. 

It turns out I had around 400 of the 1025 already in. So then I did what I always do with any task like this… I made a spreadsheet. Tracking which pokemon I’ve caught from which region and their national dex number to keep me right. (if anyone needs this hit me up)

Then I transferred everything I had caught in my most recent Scarlet playthrough which was a lot! And started filling some gaps with transfers from Pokemon Go and other mainline games that had pokemon stored. 

I am fortunate to have some rare mythical pokemon like Diancie, Hoopa, Celebi and Marshadow from Pokemon Go through previous events etc. I got Mew and Jirachi from Brilliant Diamond for having Shield and Lets go pikachu save data. This has probably eliminated a lot of hard work. 
Here is how we stacked up :

670 caught and in Pokemon Home with 355 to go. Plotting my journey ahead it should be smooth sailing all the way up to Kalos, most of the legendaries and mythicals I have caught or have in home or I can catch in Legends Arceus/the Pokemon Shield DLC. 

The issue with Kalos is Volcanion. I am cursing myself for missing the most recent pokemon go fest which allowed people to catch a volcanion. There’s no other way to get one currently. So I am crossing my fingers that it is available in the upcoming Legends Z-A.

The next stumbling block is Magearna, to get this currently you have to have all of the Pokedex up to Eternatus which is number 890 in the national dex. The one I will be missing will of course be Volcanion. So there is a lot riding on his availability in Pokemon Legends Z-A.

Arceus will be a bit of a pain as it involves a lot of work in Legends Arceus to catch it but I am ready for the challenge.

Then there is the task of getting all the Pokemon Violet exclusives either via trade or buying the game outright and replaying it again. Or through wonder trading which could take a while. But we will cross those bridges when we get to them. This is also whilst spending time doing the legends of ruin tera raids to do my part in getting shiny versions of Wo-Chien and co. (Whos dex entries I need as it will save me a lot of running around in Scarlet to get the non shiny versions)

So I’ve started from the beginning with Kanto and I’m currently trying to fill that last spots which are: Ivysaur, Fearow, Nidorina, Nidoran M, Farfetch’d, Goldeen, Staryu

There’s probably a faster way to catch these but instead i’ve started a run of Lets go Pikachu! I’ve caught a Spearow which I will train into a Fearow. I’m close to having 30 pokemon so I can receive the gifted Bulbasaur. Currently at Vermillion city.

After a few more hours in Lets go we unlocked the ability to surf and the pokeflute meaning we could go and catch Staryu, Goldeen and get past the Snorlax blocking the way to the route Farfetch’d is on. Meaning we have hit all the targets on our list and officially completed Kanto.

My let’s go journey is going to continue as I would like to try and get that shiny Meltan.

Johto Journey

With kanto complete its now on to Johto where I currently have 21 Pokemon remaining, after raiding Pokemon Go for Celebi, Ho-oh and a few others which included evolving a Togepi in go to transfer Togetic I am down to 8 remaining the new hitlist is:

• Sentret
• Flaafy
• Hoot Hoot
• Slugma
• Ledyba
• Ledian
• Natu
• Wobuffet

I think I have Hoot Hoot currently in Shield, Flaaffy is available in Scarlet I know that but the others I will need to check up on to see where I can get them.
It’s worth noting at this point I’m thinking ahead and I’ve set a Galarian farfetch’d as my buddy in Pokemon go to get more candy and finish his buddy challenge so I can evolve him to sirfetch’d to fill that spot in the Galar dex.

I rooted around in pokemon Scarlet to capture Hoot Hoot, Sentret, Slugma and a Mareep which I swiftly evolved into a Flaaffy.

The Ledian situationship

Ledyba proved slightly more difficult. It seems the only way to get one for me currently is to capture a Ledian in Brilliant Diamond and breed it, thankfully I am in the post game on my Brilliant Diamond save. But it meant filling the Sinnoh Regional Pokedex. This involved spending around an hour and 80 Ultra Balls catching the lake trio and finding a Chatot (but hey I did need them for this project anyway). After that I had completed the regional dex and the national dex was unlocked. 

Meaning I could go to the post game area and find a nice couple of Ledian on route 229 which I shipped off to a romantic getaway(that totally isn’t forced in any way) at the day care centre. Low and behold a few 1000 steps later they had an egg and a few more 1000 steps later it hatched and they had a boy. So I’ve transferred the full family into home for now. 

Which means the Johto mission is down to Natu and Wobuffet so I’m off to the Galar region in Pokemon Shield to try and catch them in the wild area. Loading into my Shield save I don’t even have the first badge yet so I may have some progression to do but I am at the Wild area.

A shiny surprise

I go back into home to check and see if Sirfetch’d is ready and it’s here where I am invited to a Zacian raid. Knowing I don’t have Pokemon Sword and need it for my dex I jump in and get very very luck with a shiny. What a result!

And in other good news my Sirfetch’d is ready for action so I’m going to transfer him through to Home and then to my team for Shield.

Heck I may have to bring this Zacian along too it is so pretty.

Subplot: The Regi walkathon

My new buddy in Go will be Regice who is currently in shadow form. I need 17 more Regice Candy to get him out of shadow form so I can transfer him to home. This means walking 20km “17” times so I’m taking Regice on a whopping 340 kilometre walk in total. Then after that its Registeels turn.

After this I got sucked into my playthrough of Pokemon Shield which was a bit of a distraction but one that is needed as we need to get to the post game DLC area for a lot of the legendaries. 

I did a good bit of work on Pokemon Go, a couple of raids which netted me a Regigas and earned some rare candies which meant Poor Regice only had to walk half the distance before being purified. I also ended up with almost enough rare candy to purify Regigas too. Registeel however is going to have to do the walkathon unfortunately. I caught a few more much needed pokemon such as Castform, Tailow, a Bidoof I somehow needed, Turtonator, Dhelmise, Drampa and luckily a Natu and a wynaut! So I have transferred wynaut to shield to get him past level 15 for Wobuffet. And thats a wrap for Johto.

So this is how we currently stack up 860 caught and in home, 165 remaining. 30 of which I have in a game save file or in GO but cant transport yet.

We now move on to Hoenn, luckily I’m in a great position of already having Deoxys, Kyogre, Groudon and Regice from GO, REgisteel is currently on the treadmill and I have a latias ready to transfer from Go too, I have Jirachi from Brilliant Diamond and that wraps up all the legendaries. 20 left to go including Lombre, Swellow which we can evolve the Tailow we have from Go, Nincada, Whismur line, Skitty line, Gulpin, Wailmer, Spinda, Baltoy line, Lunatone, Kecleon, Relicanth and the Bagon line.

(This is a work in progress and will be updated as we go)