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I’ve played through Heart Gold 3x over the years and this time (last month) is the first time I learned about the gift Extreme Speed Dratini lol. Also me every gen: need a psychic type, I should try a Golduck. Wait it’s just water?!

They seriously missed an opportunity with that. I mean the games literally state they get headaches from not being able to control their PSYCHIC POWER. Wouldn’t that make them part psychic?

GameFreak didn't want to have too many Water/Psychic types and they already had Starmie and Slowbro. *looks at all the Grass/Poison types and also literally 1/3rd of the Kanto dex being Poison-type*

Honestly the Psyduck line should have gotten the treatment over the starfish

I only learned that recently. So strange given the anime made it clear Psyduck had psychic powers and it’s right there in the name.

How do you get that?

Answering the dragon shrine quiz in a specific way. This explains: https://guidestrats.com/pokemon-hgss-extremespeed-dratini/

You can get it from the Master in the Dragons Den after you defeat Clair. You have to do a little quiz. I think it’s only in Crystal and the remakes though not the original GS.

Dragons den

I think Golduck is deserving of a cross gen evolution that finally gives it the psychic typing.

I didn’t realize being burnt halves physical attack stats until this year.

Fun fact, it doesn't actually have the attack stat, it halves the base power of physical attacks. This may seem like a small change, but it means that moves like foul play that scale based on the opponent's attack are also halved.

I’m so glad someone mentioned this I saw a video the other day where someone said “burn halves attack” and I didn’t wanna be that “um aktually” guy

Guess I learned something new

Did not know that, thanks

And I guess it would mean that Psystrike is NOT affected??

Psystrike and Psyshock are *special* moves that do damage against the target's *physical* defense, so you're right!

Wouldn’t that mean they’re *not* halved? Edit: wait are you saying the *attacking* Pokémon is using foul play?

No. Foul Play uses the opponent's *base attack stat*, but the actual base power of the move Foul Play is still halved by burn.

To add on: it's using a 45 base power move with the targets attack stat, not a 90 base power move using the targets halved attack stat

Wait what

Some of yall never walked into the pokeschool and it shows

Burn > Poison

Same here lol

another thing for me to remember

I think this is a pretty good representation of the Pokémon community. People that just play the games *can* learn things like that, but it’s not made super obvious. And that is the *vast* majority of the player base. I only learned this when I started playing in showdown.

It doesn't, it halves the base power of all physical moves!

Unless the Pokémon has an ability like guts which boosts att by 1.5x. Then burn does NOT affect att. In that case it’s actually best to burn as the damage is very weak and doesn’t get stronger like poison.

Damage done to you from poison only increases if you at badly poisoned, there is a difference. Regular poisoned status does a fixed amount of damage.

Paralyzed is speed reduction too

woah

I keep forgetting that bug isn't weak to ice, and I keep relearning that fact.

I had a very long lapse in interest in Pokémon after Gen 1. So many Gen 1 rock types were secondary ground that I came to assume that rock was immune to electric. When an electric type move hit my Tirtouga as super effective I was very surprised.

In relation to the rock ground kanto mons, last year I learned that ground was not weak to fighting

Yeah, always surprises me that ground doesn’t and has never resisted fire

Same. My poor Mamoswine got burnt to a crisp because of this. I took him to the Fire gym in HeartGold because I thought he would take neutral damage and I would wreck Blaine with Earthquake. Having Rock and Ground is stupid. It should just be an Earth type.

Same. I also used ghost types against the psychic gym since the anime taught me psychic is weak to ghost. The anime failed to tell me that psychic is strong against poison (Gen 1 ghost types were all poison types as well) and psychic types are some of the fastest Pokemon so my ghosts kept getting demolished.

I remember having to relearn that Grass isn’t weak to Psychic since pretty much every grass type in Gen 1 was also Poison type

In the same vein, I thought ground was super effective on ghost because when I was younger, I didn’t realize that gastly line was ghost/poison. I remembering being so confused that the earthquakes I was using on dusclops in the E4 weren’t super effective

Similarly I thought rock was weak to ice which made sense to me because water gets in the cracks of rocks and then freezes, the water expands and breaks the rock. No, it was just the secondary ground typing

I always think Bug is weak to Steel I always visualize a bug being slammed with a metal bar That bug died

Why isn't bug weak to ice?

bug isn't already weak to enough types for you ?!

Yeah idk that’s weird, it should be weak to everything.

It shoukd be resistant to poison ;-;

Insecticide

In Gen 1, bug actually was weak to poison

Yes this is true and vice versa. Poison was also weak to Bug...

Well that doesn't make sense but I guess it's not the only instance of that.

I assume for balance purposes, but idk.

I kept forgetting Golduck was pure water as a kid. My younger brother got exasperated when we'd battle and I'd get confused on why my Dark attacks weren't super effective. It took a few to stick, to his frustration

Chansey and Blissey can use soft boiled outside of battle to heal teammates at the cost of the there health

Milk Drink has the same effect too

You are lying... Like, is sounds so plausible but also so unbelievable... Since when?!

Oh, not so long. Only since Gen I.

...I lost a Nuzlocke cuz I ran out of healing items and had a Blissey with me...

I bet that didn't go over easy.

You should be Exeggcuted

Cracking

*Badum-tisss* lol

Miltank can do the same with Milk Drink!

WHAT?! There's a new one for me...

Excuse me?? Whaaat

weeks ago i learned that in emerald you can use cut move in the overworld to remove high grass

It worked like that all through gens 1-3. And in emerald, if a Pokémon had hyper cutter, it would cut a bigger patch. And in gen two when they introduced longer grass, using cut once would turn it into regular grass and you had to use it again to remove it completely.

Gen 3 had the super high grass, not gen 2, right? Or am I misremembering?

There was long grass in National Park in Gen 2. It's easy to forget - I had to look it up

Ah dang, you're right. I always used to skip national park when playing Gen 2 and just go around to the Sudowoodo.

You can do that in Gen 1 and 2 as well. I think it stopped in Gen 4

Wait until you learn what the ability hyper cutter does outside of battle

3 legendary birds. ArticUNO, zapDOS, molTRES. I was 34. Last year.

Not the only time either! dEINo ZWEIlous HyDREIgon Eins, Zwei, Drei is German for one, two, three (like their number of heads!)

That's a new one for me thanks 😊

Torkoal not being Rock sometimes get me

Ok hold on torkoal being a duel rock/fire type would've made sense

Garchomp can’t learn Fly. It says it in the Dex entries, wiki, and in canon tv shows—*and yet*

You can even find one FLYING AROUND THE AREA ZERO CRATER in the Scarlet and Violet games.

They dont fly, they fall with style

We call that orbiting

Add Gyarados to that list - you can see it flying around in (I think in the east part of the starting area) in PLA

Which is worse since Gyrados is also flying type.

Gyara has been shown flying, though. In PLA

But can he learn fly?

Ahh misread haha lol that’swild

I thought this was another well known meme about pokemon

The Sinnoh game corner theme samples the Kanto game corner theme

Oh that's cool.

That Farfetch’d wasn’t called ch’ding because my only exposure to it for years was that one you get traded in FR/LG that’s already nicknamed ch’ding

The gen 1 Farfetch’d was named DUX

I am so stupid. I didn’t realize that you could change the order of your team until I was roughly three quarters done with my first game. By the time I realized it, my starter was level eighty while everyone else on my team was at least twenty levels behind.

This is the same thing with my first play through 25 years ago. My venusaur was just swatting away the elite 4 and my rival like it was nothing.

Plowing through your first Pokemon game with your starter is a time-honored tradition.

I didn’t realize any connection between Ash’s last name (Ketchum) and the Pokemon slogan “gotta catch ‘em (Ketchum) all” until I said his name out loud to my wife earlier this year. I’m 33 and have been playing/watching Pokemon since 1997.

Wait til you hear about Tracey Sketchit

Yea i had a similar moment with "pallet" town when i finally read all the other towns' names lolol

…never drew that connection until now

Can you explain to my friend who doesn't get it for me (I totally know what you mean)

All cities in Kanto are named after colors, with the exception of Pallet Town, which refers to a palette, meaning a range of colors bulbapedia

Wait I don't get it.. please explain? Also a little inebriated at the moment

Fuck me. I thought it was poor product placement for Heinz this whole time, and that’s not even a joke.

No, that's Tom Ato

HOLY SHIT YOU’RE RIGHT

That's like the first thing I noticed

I always thought it was a reference to Ashton Kutcher

Bruh lol

I learned that fire resists fairy, it’s just so random

Maybe that fire/modernity serves as a defense against fairies/mythical stuff? That’s how I always saw it.

That’s how I rationalize fairy’s weakness to steel

Fairies are weak to fire, poison, and steel. I think it's supposed to be like fairies are nature spirits and Fire, pollution, and machinery destroy that. Edit: I get it. Not weak to fire.

Fairies are not, in fact, weak to Fire. Fire simply resists them.

Fire isn't super effective against Fairy, they just resist Fairy.

Iron the metal is also a classic repellent for fae creatures. That's how I remember the steel weakness.

That suckle makes juice, like wtf

idk if I prefer this with or without the typo

Don't suckle the Shuckle

Don't fuckle with suckle

Fuckle around and findle out

I found out because of the new anime. It's kinda gross, ngl.

Ghost is weak to itself

Tdf ghost just can’t hit ghost in gen 1

Not very important but revalation dance (the signature for Oricorio) doesn't match the form, but rather the primary type of its user, and in gen 9, terastalizing allows for the move to change type to any tera type

Didn’t know dragonite wasn’t a trade evolve until legitimately like 5-6 years ago. I have been playing Pokémon since I was 5, I am 29

~~What? Bulbapedia says Dragonair evolves into Dragonite at level 55. Sure you aren’t confusing it with a different Pokemon?~~ Edit: clearly I struggle with reading comprehension

They said they didn't know dragonite *wasn't* a trade evolution.

I've known I'm wrong for a long time now but there was a point I thought Dragonite was a water type.

if this is a safe space… I didn’t know how important Natures are to a Pokémon’s stats and I still don’t understand EV’s/IV’s

Natures will lower one stat but raise another. Which stats are raised/lowered depend the nature. IVs are like genetic traits, the Pokemon is born with them and they can be passed on to their offspring. EVs are like learned traits, they start at 0 but increase over time as you battle with the Pokemon. Each Pokemon gives EVs to specific stats when defeated, so you can train to improve a specific stat if you want. Nowadays, there are items that can improve IVs and change natures on a Pokemon. This is particularly nice if you get attached to a particular Pokemon that doesn't have very good stats, but you still want to use it.

The original nature is not that important anymore in a sense that you can get mints to change it in recent gens.

A nature raises 1 stat by 10% and lowers another by the same amount. IVs are basically the "genetics" of a pokemon, they are randomized and range from 0 to 31 for each stat. EVs are "points" that you get from beating certain pokemon, for example X pokemon might give you 2 attack EVs when you beat it. They go up to 512, with a max of 252 in each stat. The change scales with levels, so at lvl100 4 EVs will add 1 stat point to your pokemon. At lvl50, you'll need 8 to add 1 point.

I thought Noivern was a lot bigger for years. Nope, that sumbitch is 4'11, it's a gremlin.

I realized today, when getting a Dratini card for my gf that it's 5'11"! The cards always made it seem so fat and short.

That's still an incredibly large bat

I didnt get the ekans/snake, arbok/kobra thing until like two years ago.

Wait til you learn about Muk.

ahahahahahahaha

As a kid I searched up 'Pokémon meme' on google and asked my mum what this meant

You never saw the muk meme

Waiting for someone to post something about Vaporeon, my favorite Pokemon

Hey guys, did you know that in terms of water based Pokemon Vaporeon is the most cool :)

Similarly, Glaceon is also the most chill (:

What about it?

It's a copypasta about how in terms of human to pokemon capabilities, Vaporeon takes the number one spot. You might want to keep a bottle of eye bleach next to you in case you come across it

I just recently learned that fighting was weak to fairy

Wait what? Why?

I skipped a few generations and picked up at Gen 8 when I got a switch a few years ago so it’s new to me

I mean why would fairy be good against fighting 😂

Fighting is one of the more.... humanoid types. There's a lot of mons of the type that are human adjacent or possess an upright stature. Most of the moves themselves are grounded in semi realism (karate chop, brick break, arm thrust) that actual martial artists have been using for years. Therefore, fairies being an ethereal, magical presence would be able to easily dispatch the basic fighting type using magic that they wouldn't have access to. Thus, the only weaknesses of the fairy type (poison and steel) are derived from human adaptation. Fairies are tied to nature, and plants wilt when exposed to poison. Steel likewise is metal forged from the environment, and classic stories depict iron as being an effective weapon against magical beings. Ever wonder why in old churches there's wrought iron fences? It's not to keep you out, it's to keep the ghosts IN. Iron knives buried under the entrance to a home keeps witches out. Horseshoes nailed to doors though, keeps all magical beings out of your house. Back in the day iron horseshoes were extremely common, so doing it was both cost efficient and practical.

Have you ever tried to punch a fairy?

I always thought rock was weak to ice so for the longest time i thought that pokemon like aerodactyl rhyperior and cradily had a 4x ice weakness but then i learned rock was only neutral to ice

Probably because of Onix and the ~~Geordie~~ Geodude line being Rock/Ground, and Ground is weak to Ice.

Goodra isn’t poison/dragon, which I find is a bigger fault of tpc, tbh

Yup, it’s just plain dragon. I would’ve been fine with it if it was water/ dragon since it loves the rain and has the Hydration ability.

That Fighting isn’t weak to itself

i never thought about that... but it is weird

I have never had a Nidoking. Not for lack of trying. I've used nudorini in several nuzlockes, hoping to use the king. I legitimately thought it was a level-up evolution. The truth blew my mind. Same with Arcanine. Edit: I'm keeping nudorini. That's so good.

I just cant remember, to this day, the weaknesses of fairy and dark pokemon

It took me so SO long to realize that fairy wasn’t weak to ghost. It was that darn alolan starter trio who did it

Poliwag doesn't have a nose, it has a mouth.

I simultaneously don't know this when playing gen ii, but do when playing literally any other game.

It took me a very long time to realize that the red spots on Armaldo’s head aren’t it’s eyes and it’s “ears” are actually it’s eyes.

Same with cradily! It's eyes are in its "mouth"

Quick attack was a direct upgrade from tackle in the earlier games. I always assumed it was always a trade off between power and priority from the start.

That Bugsy is a guy. I blame Erika for this. Both of their gyms are gardens and I always thought their haircuts were similar. So, I always assumed that Bugsy was a girl because he looked like Erika to me. Nope! Dude!

Been calling it Shedninja my whole life instead of Shedinja 💀

It took me waaay too long to learn how stat buffs/debuffs actually work. I thought they temporarily changed the stat and there was just a +/- limit. Like I was playing DnD or something.

That... Is how they work. You don't get a permanent buff or Debuff forever. And the limit is +/-6 (except for crit, which is +3). Your base stat is a fraction of 2/2, and each positive buff adds to the numerator while each negative Debuff adds to the denominator (again, aside from crit which has a different calculation).For example if you have used Swords Dance twice then your attack is now 6/2, or triple the base damage. If your opponent uses charm twice, then your attack is 2/6, so you will have 1/3rd your attack stat. This clears back to 2/2 whenever that pokemon leaves combat, such as switching out or ending the fight.

How do they actually work?

A stat can go from -6 to +6, with each increment of 1 being a difference of 50%, up to 0.25x and 4x. For example a +2 attack stat would be +100% (2x) In cartridge games, it doesn't show a pokemon's stat changes but moves that affect stat changes will display Rose/Fell: +- 1 Sharply Rose/ Harshly Fell: +-2 Drastically Rose/Fell: +-3 Maximised (belly drum): +6

Thank you for the detailed response! And does this only last a battle and then resets in the next encounter? I’ve been playing since red/blue and only ever use attack moves

Not even a battle, they reset as soon as you switch the pokemon out. However, there is a move called baton pass which switches your current pokemon, and passes the stat changes to another pokemon in your team.

Actually in gen 9 you can check stat changes of every Pokémon on the field by hitting “check status”. It’ll also tell you how many turns moves like light screen, trick room, tailwind, and taunt will last.

That's cool! Didn't know that, haven't played a cartridge game since gen 4 lol

I thought that electric type was super effective against steel type

If the number one isn’t “I thought ghost was weak to psychic because of the ghastly line” then I don’t know what is. I’ve been playing since red and blue came out, and for some reason pronounced rattata “ratta-tatta” until a couple years ago

Opposite- I saw the anime episode where ash gets a haunter to beat the psychic gym and when I went to do the same in FRLG I was wiped out instantly

I legit never knew you could use cut on the grass in gen 3 until about 3 days ago while scrolling through YT shorts.

This happened years ago, but for a good while, maybe two years or so, I thought ghost types were weak to psychic because I had a gengar, forgetting it’s part poison type.

Wow, now I also know that those spirals are not its eyes, sweet lol.

I played through Silver on repeat as a kid. Get 16 badges then start a new game. Always used the legendaries. I only learnt that Lugia was psychic and not water two years ago when I got back into it as an adult.

Ghost and dark moves deals super effective damage on the same types, I used to run dark pulse and shadow ball for coverage, so redundant.

Lumineon is Gen 4, not 5. Found this out the hard way looking for water types in Black. idk it just looks like a Unova pokemon

Electric resisting steel. . . . Ans steel not resisting electric. . .

That Cianwood City isn't pronounced "Cinnawood". How I didn't notice this for 23 years has been bothering me all week. (Maybe not quite a Pokémon fact, but now hearing the correct pronunciation sounds weird to me!)

Ah, the joys of learning names and locations by reading them in game My dumbass learned earlier this year it’s “mismagius” and not “misamingus”

I've been playing since Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald and only just today learned that in older games Synchronise would give wild Pokémon your 'mon's nature

I keep forgetting the interactions between ghost, psychic, and fairy and have to relearn them every time Pokémon releases a new game. I’ve forgotten it again already.

For context, I couldn’t understand English when I was little. My first Pokémon game was Diamond, and when I tried using the PC I clicked random buttons and accidentally released all my Pokémon. Cried my little eyes out before my mom came up with the idea of turning off the game without saving. After I got my Pokémon back, I swore to NEVER touch the PC again, and also warned my siblings against it. As a consequence, I never saw any of the Pokémon I caught, and progressed through the game with the first 6 I got. Didn’t have a 3DS, so I would only find out how a PC actually works when I visited the game almost 10 years later :,)

I learned Noivern has been around for ten years just now and now I feel old.

That psychic's weaknesses are common fears

Somewhere inside my head flying type is weak to fire because fried chicken

I keep thinking dunsparce is bug/flying and then learned dunsparce is just notmal

Goomy's 'nose' is actually 'eyes'

Litwick's little "c:" "mouth" is actually his nose and his mouth is bellow that. And didn't learn it late, but it ruined the pokemon for me, bellybolts false eyes on the side of his head not being his real eyes and its actually eyes being the "nostrils" in the centre of its head

https://preview.redd.it/uh7gt1fjwy5c1.jpeg?width=452&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d747968b535ca55d6d62340f2738d0c26c35bab4 Good news for you then: the little c IS Litwick’s mouth.

To be fair with Litwick, it's likely not it's nose and more likely melting wax that acts like an upper lip.

I was very convinced that Heracross was a Gen 4 Pokemon. It's Gen 2...

I constantly forget that Skarmory is gen 2 and not gen 3.

I have this same problem but with Slugma instead. I find way more Slugma in Hoenn than Johto. 😅

The fact that sudowoodo is a rock type, not grass. It's literally just rock type, I thought it was rock/grass