Pokémon SoulSilver Hardcore Nuzlocke - Smeargles Only! (No items, No overleveling)

hi everyone i'm flag on hg and this is the video of my attempts at a hardcore nuzlocke of pokemon soul silver using only smeargles to see what i define as hardcore nuzlocke rules check out the description below but in short no items in battle no over leveling past the gym leader's ace before the start of the battle and we're playing on set mode so this challenge is all about the pokemon smeargle smeargle is one of the dozen single stage pokemon introduced in generation 2. however unlike many of the other completely forgettable johto pokemon smeargle has a pretty interesting gimmick the only move that smeargle can learn is the move sketch sketch is a move that lets smeargle permanently learn the move that the target last used so for example if the enemy pokemon uses quick attack on the previous turn smeargle can use sketch on that pokemon and from then on even after that battle is over smeargle can use the move quick attack so effectively smeargle can learn almost any move in the entire game so long as you can successfully sketch the move from another pokemon now you might be thinking holy crap all the moves in the game smeargle is an incredible pokemon but to offset the immense power of an unlimited moveset gamefreak gave smeargle the stats of an expired soggy loaf of bread just look at these stats i mean the speed is fine but every other stat ranges from embarrassingly bad too tragically bad 20 attack and 20 special attack is stupidly weak a while back i made a whole video about how onyx had an atrocious attack stat that was less than the attack stat of wimpy pokemon like oddish cutifly and yamper it's actually really pathetic but smeargle stats aren't your everyday ordinary pathetic these are advanced pathetic guys miragul has less than half the attack of onyx it has half the attack of pichu there are exactly six pokemon that have less physical attack than smeargle and seven pokemon with less special attack if you combine the physical and special attack stats of all 898 pokemon that exist right now only four pokemon have less total attack than smeargle those pokemon are two fish who literally exist just to suck happiness a baby pokemon and shuckle who has such monstrous defense and special defense that it has to be balanced out with garbage attack potential so even though smeargle can learn virtually any overpowered move it will still hit with the force of a cotton ball but okay i mean not all pokemon are designed to be strong damage dealers plenty of incredible pokemon have relatively weak attack stats but those pokemon tend to be able to tank hits well and smear goal cannot a small gust of wind knocks over smeargle so for this challenge we're left with a pokemon that takes a lot of damage from even light hits and retaliates with very little damage in return smeargle does have a few other advantages at its disposal though for one smeargle's abilities are actually very good it can have either own tempo which prevents confusion which is huge in earlier generations since 90 of the ai battles involve some form of confusion or it can have technician which gives moves with 60 base power or less a 1.5 times boost in power i'll explain why this is a run saver later but for now it's just nice to know that many of our attacks will hit with the force of a slightly stronger cotton ball another advantage is that smeargle's normal typing means that it only has one weakness granted that's the fighting type which is the type of one of the gym leaders in johto and one of the elite four members but i guess it could be worse and of course the final advantage is that smeargle is known as the painter pokemon which gives me an incredibly easy segue into the sponsor of this video skillshare skillshare is an online learning community where you can find thousands of classes designed to teach you creative skills ranging from topics like illustration graphic design video editing and painting did you know that you can take a painting class taught by 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premium membership so that you can explore your creativity for free thanks so much to skillshare for sponsoring this video now let's get into the challenge just as a quick reminder before we start i play with species claws so i'll be able to reroll encounter wait actually that's not true i guess we can just skip the species claws this time but actually how is this challenge gonna work it's pretty obvious that this challenge is impossible to do with a single smeargle if we're using level caps but smeargle can only be caught in one area of johto and i don't get access to that area until after the fourth gym leader so what i decided to do is call up my formerly incarcerated uncle jim tendo who hooked me up with a sweet sweet special edition of pokemon soul silver why soul silver instead of heart gold i don't know cause last time i played heart gold and it's not like it can make that much of a difference right anyways using this special edition of pokemon soul silver i was able to turn pokemon eye catch into smeargles like magic so the encounter rule for this challenge was that for every route where i could normally catch a pokemon from a patch of grass i was allowed to catch the first pokemon i encountered and magically turn it into a smeargle routes towns and caves with encounters that did not have grass patches could not be used just to limit the total number of smeargles accessible in this challenge the one exception to this was the starter from new bark town which i also transformed into a smeargle including the routes on kanto before the elite four that resulted in 22 additional potential smeargle encounters which is good because if smeargles are good at anything it's dying and so after converting my starter into a smeargle named picasso our journey begins then it's time to get picasso a move see even though smeargle can theoretically learn any move in the game in order to sketch a specific move i need to actually be able to find a pokemon that learns that move so my options are actually pretty limited especially early in the game i decide that my best bet is to sketch quick attack from a rattata it's not the best move but it'll do for now after that we face down our rival who we mow down with stab quick attacks we also kind of have a level advantage but just look at how little damage we do to a cynical with a 4 level advantage it's not great anyways we name our rival fascism and then i'm given pokeballs so i can now catch some encounters but of course in blind haste i immediately run from the first encounter of route 29 this is still a nuzlocke so if i don't succeed in catching the first encounter tough luck but i get another chance at an encounter on route 30 which i do successfully catch so i name the new smeargle kalo she has technicians so she'll hit a little bit harder than picasso at least on route 31 i get another smeargle and i name her o'keefe and then on route 32 i catch a fourth smeargle at this point i realize that i know very few famous female painters so it's time to educate myself a little bit and learn about a few more painters that the american school system decided to just toss aside welcome to the team cassatt from here i need to sketch some moves on to these guys though our choices are still pretty limited smeargle learned sketch again at level 11 so each of our smeargles can learn two moves a piece before the first gym i give most of them quick attack from rattata although when i try to sketch quick attack on o'keefe the rattata outspeeds me and uses tackle so i end up sketching tackle instead that's effectively a waste of a move slot until o'keefe levels up to level 41 and i can replace tackle with another iteration of sketch and since this is heart gold and still silver level 41 is not until after the seventh gym badge cool anyways i also give a bunch of my smeargle synthesis from wild hopit so now we have recovery time to face the first gym leader faulkner so let's see if team smeargle can handle the flying types of the johto region first up is pidgey so i lead o'keefe the powerhouse of the team she hits pidgey with a quick attack that actually does a sizeable chunk of damage and then we tank a tackle with our massive defense tat then we finish off the pidgey with another quick attack so faulkner brings out the true king of the johto skies pidgeotto an illegal pidgeotto i might add have you no shame faulkner using hacked pokemon it's a disgrace anyways i switched to cassatt who gets hit by a hard tackle cassatt doesn't actually know any attacking moves she just gets off a few tail whips and stays healthy with synthesis so she's able to get off four tail whips as pidgeotto just goes for relatively weak tackles and gusts after that i switch back to o'keeffe who tanks a gust thanks to the four defense drops from tail whip quick attack is now a two hit kill so two more quick attacks while tanking a tackle are enough to finish off the pidgeotto winning us our first gym badge that first gym badge was pretty easy but next up is bugsy who has a scyther which is incredibly strong for this point of the game or for smeargles in general i also accidentally run from another encounter on route 33 so i'm stuck with just four smeargles if only there was some other place that i could get a grass patch encounter but unfortunately there is definitely 100 not i did keep sketch on kalo though so i can teach her one move to deal with scyther given that scyther is a bug flying type i'd ideally like to get a rock type move but remember in order to teach smeargle a rock type move i need to find a pokemon with a rock type move to sketch and based on my research there is exactly one pokemon that i can sketch a rock type move from at this point in the game hiker daniel in union cave has an onyx at level 11 that knows rock throw the wild onyx and geodude in union cave are too low level to know a rock type move so this onyx is my only shot which comes with a lot of problems since this is a trainer battle i only get one shot if i mess up or if one of my smear goals gets close to dying i can't just run away and try again it also means that after sketching the rock throw i have to actually beat the onix with smeargles that only no quick attack on top of that this onyx knows screech to lower our defense and bind which prevents switching so this is an absolute nightmare and incredibly dangerous i basically have to switch between smeargles to shake off screeches use synthesis to stay healthy and pray that onyx doesn't murder any of my smeargles if they get stuck in with bind eventually i'm able to get kalo into a position to sketch rock throw then it's just a very painful process of quick attacking the onyx over and over and over again this fight takes 18 whole minutes but fortunately it does all end up working out i won't mention every single time i need to sketch a new move because i would make this video super long and it's probably already going to be pretty long based on the script length but just know that sketching moves is not always as easy as you might think it is anyways now we have a four time super effective rock move to hit scyther with and thanks to kalo's technician ability the normally 50 base power rock throw has 75 base power so we'll be able to hit scyther with an effective 300 base power move as long as we hit it should be fun fortunately on the first turn that bugsy has scyther out it uses focus energy so we get off a rock throw which does connect and hits cyther hard though it obviously doesn't kill because of smeargle so on the next turn scyther hits a quick attack which does crit but it's fine because rock bro connects again well i i gotta say that's pretty bad guys that had to just be a really really low roll bugsy heals and rock throw manages to connect for a third time but now we're in trouble kalo is definitely dead to a u-turn or a critical hit quick attack here but i do see my out i switch to cassatt who mercifully doesn't get cripped by u-turn hopefully this battle shows that playing around the crit is gonna kinda not really be a thing that we do in this run because we can't anyways this causes bugsy to bring out metapod which only knows tackle this lets me get a few tail whips off and also lets me bring cassatt back to almost full health with synthesis then i can switch back to kalo and use synthesis with her until she is effectively at full hp as well from here i can kill the metapod with rock throw which is still not missing surprisingly then after we gain a level from knocking out the metapod scyther comes back in and it just wastes a turn using focus energy so against all odds we hit a fifth rock throw knocking out scyther last is kakuna who goes down to two more rock throws which also don't miss kakuna does get a poison off because of course but it's fine that's badge number two but out of the frying pan and into the fire we go because next up is whitney and her mill tank and since the level cap is level 19 none of our for smeargle can learn any new moves fortunately i am able to catch a few more smeargles before we have to take her on first i remember i can go back to route 46 and catch a smeargle who i named ali then after clearing through ilike's forest i get a smeargle from route 34 and name him van gogh so now we have a full team of six smeargles from here it's just getting ready to fight whitney with dali i can sketch leech seed from picnic or gina's bulbasaur so that we can have it to gain hp back from miltank but then this [ __ ] happens see on route 34 there is a 35 chance to encounter a rattata these rattata can be level 11 12 or 13. at level 13 rattata can learn pursuit which does double damage when switching out for one hot second i was accidentally leading with dali when walking through this grass patch he needed to be under level 11 when learning leech seed so that he could learn sketch again at level 11 so i hadn't had time to train him up yet this rattata will out speed so i don't want to try and run fortunately a pursuit from retatto won't kill me on the switch so long as it doesn't crit but of course it does the odds of encountering a rattata here it being level 13 it choosing to use pursuit which is random since this is a wild pokemon and it getting a critical hit is offensively small well no more leech seed and now we have our first death rest well salvador well north of goldenrod city i can catch a few more smeargles so long as we avoid accidentally running into too many trainers since my main smeargles are getting pretty close to the level cap from route 35 i get a smeargle named angiosola from national park i get a smeargle named davinci or davinki your choice and from route 36 i get a smeargle named wood now we got some options well sort of after picking the six least shitty smeargles that we have it's time to face whitney she leads clefairy and i lead cassatt she's the resident tail whipper so that's what we go for as we pray that clefairy doesn't get some ungodly move from her metronome we luck out as she just hits a soft firefang with two tail whips off i switch to da vinci who gets hit by two hits from a double slap on the next turn da vinci goes for a double kick which we sketched off a wild dinner ran this is a pretty good move since technician gives it 90 base power but even with the -2 defense we somehow don't knock out the clefairy but at least she just misses a double slap it's also not the end of the world that we miss out on this kill since whitney does waste a super potion here but clefairy's cute charm activates as we hit another double kick that is actually pretty likely to happen here since each individual hit of double kick has a 30 chance of activating it so we switch to cassatt who takes a soft three hits from double slab i use synthesis to gain some health back and then take another three hits from double slap then i switch back to da vinci who somehow manages to only get slapped twice again over three double slaps this clefairy has hit davinci a grand total of four times anyways now that he's not in love he kicks clefairy in the face and she goes down next up the mill tank the first thing to do is tank a non-critical hit stomp avoid the flinch and hit a string shot to lower miltank's speed since it is surprisingly fast we do avoid the crit and the flinch but then we miss our 95 accurate string shot why is string shot 95 accurate why was string shot too damn good to give it 100 accuracy game freak what were you afraid that cat rp was going to be too overpowered if it had 100 accurate string shots what the hell smeargles are going down in this battle that's for sure starting with couldn't hit water falling out of a boat da vinci see a buddy i bring in angisola who tanks a stomp and then gets off a charm harshly lowering miltank's attack now we just gotta pray miltank doesn't crit on the next turn we survive another stomp and hit another charm the next stomp does flinch us but that's fine just don't crit the next stop also flinches so it looks like we won't be getting miltank down to -6 bummer i decide to let angisola go down to get a free switch to another smeargle but for some reason miltank goes for a roll out which leaves angisola with one hp so never mind we do get it to minus six angiosola is a survivor unlike da vinci but now that the miltank is stuck in roll out it's super safe to switch to picasso here then we do big damage with quick attack as we just hope that miltank never crits rollout is starting to increase in power and do serious damage but spamming synthesis means we're able to survive even the fifth and strongest rollout as long as it doesn't crit of course after that i switch to cassatt who is immune to attract and then we start clicking tail whip and staying healthy with synthesis you know the only thing cassatt does at some point i figure out that we're actually speed tied with the mill tank which is sort of cool and means we're less likely to get stomp flinched cassatt is able to somehow avoid like 10 potential critical hits and get miltank down to -6 defense after that i switch to picasso who just starts chugging away with quick attacks which is now like a five hit kill somehow there's still been no critical hit but that's about to change once miltank is in the red whitney heals and then picasso gets a critical hit see folks that's called subverting expectations hollywood take note one more quick attack knocks out miltank winning us the third gym badge that was incredibly lucky i think even one poorly timed critical hit from miltank and that could have been a wipe after that the level cap finally goes over level 21 so some of our smeargles can now learn three moves i'm also able to get quite a few more smeargle encounters here from route 37 i get a smeargle named keen from route 38 i get a smeargle named savage or savage or savage i don't know and from route 42 i get a smeargle named kusama now it's time to face morty but because we have six team members that are immune to his ghost type moves and morty's moveset has next to zero coverage it's a pretty easy win i sketched bite onto picasso which doesn't even one shot the ghastly but ultimately it is enough to take out all his pokemon i'm gonna actually skip this battle because it's pretty long i end up having to pp style the haunter thanks to it having hypnosis and dream eater which is pretty tedious to edit it ends up getting a little tricky at the end because of sucker punch from his last haunter but it all works out fine if you want to see the full fight there's a vod of it on my vods channel go check it out the link is in the description anyways let's just move on after beating morty our level cap hits level 31 so we get access to a fourth and final move slot on at least a few of our smeargles so we have a few more move slots to figure out how to handle chuck the fighting type gym leader chuck has notoriously garbage ai so he's a bit unpredictable in terms of what he might do but his pokemon are very strong and in the case of his prime ape very fast so this is kind of a big problem for our normal types at this point i decide to go ahead and sketch arguably one of the best moves in the game spore it's a 100 accurate sleep move this will be an absolutely vital move for the rest of the playthrough the only problem is that very few pokemon can learn spore naturally making it very difficult to sketch fortunately paris can learn spore at level 17 and we can find paris in national park during a bug catching contest unfortunately paris only has a 10 encounter rate and they can be found at any level from 10 to 17 so it does take a very very long time to find a paris at exactly level 17 but once i do with the help of a chestowberry we can sketch spore on exactly one of our smeargles since i'm only allowed to bring one pokemon with me for the bug catching contest i will have to do this process of finding a paris at level 17 during a bug catching contest several times throughout this playthrough i also get two new smear goals here first from route 38 i catch a smeargle and name him bob ross then on route 48 i catch smeargle and name him monet okay so now that we have spore we can easily put pokemon to sleep which will allow us to either potentially get off free damage or get away with setting up but of course in order to set up we need setup moves fortunately we are able to sketch swords dance from farfetch'd which can be found at level 25 on route 48. at least that's what it says on serebii right here the tricky thing about this is that you can also find digletts here which can trap you in with arena trap meaning that you can't run from them given that these digletts have magnitude this is an amazing way to accidentally lose a smeargle so to avoid this i can lead with a level 25 smeargle and use repels this will prevent me from running into any pokemon under the level of 25 since as you can see here on cerebe farfetched is the only pokemon that can be level 25 using this method i will only ever run into farfetch'd theoretically but after doing this for about five minutes and never running into a far-fetched or any pokemon for that matter i was starting to get suspicious and it turns out that cerebe is wrong about the level that you can find far-fetched at on route 48. see for some weird reason far-fetched are found at level 25 in heartgold but at level 24 in seoul silver i would love to know why because i genuinely cannot think of a reason why this would be an intentional difference between versions of the game now this tiny difference normally would not matter whatsoever but in this challenge it does because farfetch'd learned swords dance at exactly level 25 meaning that in soul silver i cannot sketch swords dance onto my smeargles sarabi please fix this incredibly minor error in your documentation please well no sword stance but i can still get meditate from wild drowsy but that's a pretty big bummer turns out though that the spore and setup wouldn't have worked against chuck anyways because he leads with a primape that has the ability vital spirit so he actually can't be put to sleep so instead i need to come up with a different plan i do but the plant sucks so i'm feeling very shaky as i head into this battle with dad bought over here chuck leads with his prime ape and we lead with savage who with some speed evs is just barely able to outspeed primapepe with an aerial ace with a held sharp beak and some attack evs this will just barely be a two-hit kill with ariel ace or she'll get a critical hit and knock out primup in one shot absolutely savage polyrath comes out next and tries to go for a focus punch but we spore it to sleep the scary thing here is that if polyrath wakes up at any point and connects with a focus punch savage will just die like really really hard so i have no choice but to just attack aerial ace does pretty embarrassing damage and then poliwrath hits a body slam which does a huge chunk i put polywrath back to sleep as it tries to use focus punch then i decide to risk a one turn sleep and go for a synthesis fortunately polyrath stays asleep so then i go for another aerial lace unfortunately another citrus berry means we'll need to hit two more but at least polyrath stays asleep so i go for another aerial ace as polyrath wakes up and whiffs a focus punch so i spore the polyrath again just in case chuck heals but he doesn't so one more aerialist leaves polyrath with one hp great well now chuck heals so i hit it with an aerial ace then chuck stays asleep as i hit it with yet another aerialist and then yeah you guessed it aerial lace leaves it with one hp so it's another hyper potion as i hit another sport and then it's just four more aerial aces as polyrath mercifully stays asleep that was really dumb but hey most fights with chuck end up that way anyways so the fifth badge is ours up next is the part of the game where the seventh gem has a lower level cap than the sixth gem so my plan is to take on price first before that i decide to go back to the ruins of alf and get a smeargle named rembrandt i also go to route 43 and catch a smeargle named peters before fighting price i have to help lance kill a man and raid the rocket hideout at one point we actually fight alongside each other in a double battle so i take this opportunity to sketch fly from his dragonite onto picasso it's not a great move but it makes traveling around johto easier without having to carry around a dedicated hm user and the image of flying on a smeargle is pretty funny anyways now it's time for price he leads seal and i lead rembrandt the plan here is to encore the seal into using hail and then set up with growth for a special attack sweep unfortunately the seal goes for icy wind to lower my speed so i need to switch out to savage and price's seal is so slow that it actually needs to hit icy wind three times to out speed savage so savage just sits there and does nothing for a few turns now that seal is finally faster than savage i switch back to rembrandt as seal goes for hale i encore seal into hail and then i proceed to set up six growths you might think that six growths is overkill but i promise you it's not i do have to use encore again at some point because seal's encore ends before i can set up all six growths but there's really nothing price can do at this point well i mean i guess he could technically switch but he's not gonna do that so after setting up we hit a technician boosted mega drain and finish off the seal gaining a good chunk of health back in the process next is piloswine so we hit it with the technician boosted water pulse for the one shot and then last is dugon but with plus six special attack a mega drain is just strong enough to get the one shot winning us our sixth gym badge after that it's time to backtrack to jasmine's gym in olivine city we make sure to sketch a few useful moves to deal with her steel types she leads with her first magnemity and i lead with anguisola who a dig from a wild diglett the magnemity goes down in one shot the second magnemity comes out next and the same fate awaits it nice job angusola but now the real task begins jasmine sends out her steelix with a wide lens equipped angusola connects with a willowisp stelix does waste to turn with sandstorm here so that's nice and then on the next turn i go for a charm and then stelix hits a soft irontail then i go for another charm and stelix hits another softer irontail angiosola is definitely at risk to a crit here but i risk it anyways and just get off another charm stelix doesn't crit so after surviving on one hp against whitney's mill tank angisola survives yet another gym battle i switch to rembrandt who tanks an iron tail which does get the defense drop but sandstorm ends so on the next turn a water pulse obviously just barely misses out on the kill and then stelix sets up another sandstorm byrne leaves stelix with just one hp again from here jasmine heals but then i just encore stelix into sandstorm i don't feel like dealing with jasmine using another hyper potion so i growth once and then on the next turn water pulse plus burn damage knocks out stelix winning us our seventh gym badge we haven't had a death for quite some time but now that we're in the late game pretty much every major battle is against strong pokemon that are very capable of killing our smeargles i promised you that smeargles will die so get ready because from here on out it gets pretty brutal first up i have to stop team rocket in radio tower normally i skip right over this because it's easy you know assuming you don't have six copies of one of the weakest pokemon in the game there's a bunch of rocket execs to take out here and first up is petrol who has five coughings and a wheezing that all knows self-destruct or explosion i lead kusama who has max special attack evs and a choice specs with scibeam she's able to knock out petrol's coughing in one shot but second is wheezing and even with a six level advantage she can't one shot it so it gets off a smoke screen now i've got an issue if i miss a cybe against this wheezing or any of the remaining coughings there's a very strong chance they explode and kill kusama the only smeargle i have that can one shot these guys as much as it pains me here i need to switch out to reset the accuracy drop so i bring out savage but sadly wheezing explodes savagely murdering savage in the process she will be missed but her sacrifice will not be in vain because kusama is now able to come back out and kill petrol's remaining four coughings in one shot a piece next up we have a pretty tricky fight with fascism but it works out okay then a random grunt's coughing self-destructs on picasso which would have just killed if it crit but thankfully it didn't then we have to fight ariana which really shouldn't have been a difficult fight but i got stupid unlucky against her arbok i'm talking crunch defense drops missing willow wisps one turn sleeps full peras after glare more defense drops from crunch it was an absolute nightmare but we make it out with everyone alive which leads us to archer he has a hound doom in the back which is strong enough to one shot our smeargles with a critical hit so the plan is to set up against his much more manageable hound door the issue is that the hound door can't be burned so we're susceptible to critical hits it also has early birds so sleep is not very useful and it has roar so it can force us to switch out while we're setting up so basically it was kind of stupid to try and set up on this thing well i start by successfully getting off three charms to bring the hound door to -6 attack then i switch to bob ross and spore it then i switch to kusama but houndor wakes up early because of early bird and hits a faint attack so i start growthing i was able to sketch surf off of a trainer with a gyarados on route 43 but i still need four growths to guarantee the kill on hound doom in the back unfortunately after setting up three houndor uses roar and rembrandt comes out i decide to encore it using roar thinking i might be able to pp stall it out of roar but that doesn't make much sense honestly because it likely won't go for roar unless i'm setting up kalo ends up being out when houndor's pointless encore ends so i switch back to rembrandt i'm getting very lucky that firefang isn't burning here i go for a growth and then houndor hits with a critical hit bite but thanks to a citrus berry i recover enough that a non-critical hit won't kill me so i use encore to lock it into bite that way it won't roar again then i switch to kusama to start setting up growths during houndor's encore but it gets another critical hit on the switch so i have to waste a turn healing with synthesis so by the time houndor's encore ends i've only set up one growth well i heal with synthesis but now i'm almost out of synthesis pp as well i set up a second growth as i dodge yet another burn from firefang i go for a third growth and then houndor uses roar again bringing out rembrandt i go for encore again because at this point i'm just playing really poorly and kind of hoping to get lucky eventually kusama gets dragged out so i use my last synthesis pp as houndor uses roar one more time to bring angiosola out and then the encore ends so i switch to bob ross who gets hit with a faint attack and then i use spore i start going for meditate hoping to get houndor to use roar again if it does and i get lucky and rembrandt comes out i might be able to encore him into roar again and burn through his last roar pp howendor does eventually use roar but kusama comes out instead i don't know it was a long shot well i decided to just start going for growths after two growths i decided that it's just best to kill the hound or and then pray that houndoom can't kill us from this hp without a critical hit so surf knocks out the hound door second is hound doom and so i go for a surf which high rolls and does great damage to houndoom then houndoom goes for a fire fang and we survive but then it gets to the burn knocking out kusama i bring out rembrandt and kill houndhood with a water pulse honestly if archer healed there this would have definitely been game over last is coughing since it's archer's last pokemon it shouldn't self-destruct but this still isn't great i bring in bob ross who gets hit by a sludge a citrus berry means we can survive another one so i spore the coughing to sleep and then i switch to kalo then i use meditate as coughing continues to sleep and then i hit an aerial ace for very little damage coughing wakes up and uses haze so our meditate boost was a waste of time so i just go for another aerial ace we get lucky with a critical hit but then coughing retaliates with the sludge which poisons so now we are dead to even a non-critical hit so i switched to picasso who gets hit with a sludge which poisons so now we are dead to even a non-critical hit i can't really afford to switch here though so i just do some damage theoretically picasso could flinch with bite to save himself but of course that doesn't happen so picasso goes down to poison then i bring in bob ross who is basically our only hope here i go for a spore and then i pray that aerial ace can kill this thing before it wakes up the coughing of course wakes up after one turn but i finally catch a break and it goes for smokescreen so one more aerial ace is enough to knock out the coughing finally ending an absolutely brutal battle honestly this was a sloppy sloppy battle and i kinda deserved to be punished for it my plays were terrible and i was not prepared for it i should have had a backup plan but because i didn't our death toll is now at five smeargles go ahead and make a guess as to how many you think there will be when it's all said and done well now that team rocket is defeated it's time to head to blackthorne city to face claire for the eighth gym badge on the way we get chances at two more smeargles to replace the dogs that we just lost first is pawlik from route 44 but on route 45 the first encounter is a graveler if we catch it the graveler will be magically turned into a smeargle thanks to uncle jim's special version of the game but the graveler might also explode if i don't catch it right away i don't want to risk that so i just run no encounter from route 45 fortunately we have a few smeargles waiting in the box still and now that we're in blackthorne city we also have access to the move relearner effectively giving our smeargles unlimited sketches this is great because it means that i can tailor the movesets of all of our smeargles to each specific fight you do need a great deal of hard skills to do this but as with many of the challenges that i do on stream i use uncle jim tendo's special version of the game to give me unlimited heart scales so that i don't have to sit there and rock smash rocks in cyan wood city for hours in a row also now might be a good time to say that i am using rare candies to level up my smeargles mainly to cut out grinding from the streams whether or not i use rare candies depends on the playthrough but for this one i figured that i would just use it to speed the whole thing up since i have to spend so much extra time sketching moves onto every smeargle anyways well after training a few of these smeargles up coming up with a sort of sketchy plan and absolutely crushing this children's puzzle it's time to take on claire she leads with gyarados and i lead with cassatt she starts with a protect to stall some pp as gyarados uses dragon pulls then she goes for a growl as gyarados uses bite then she uses spite to drain gyarados of bite pp gyarados retaliates with a dragon pulse which activates a citrus berry then cassatt goes for another growl as gyarados hits another hard dragon pulse cassatt uses protect on another dragon pulse and then it's time for her to go down to give us a free switch she growls into gyarados but then it goes for bite leaving one of our smeargles with one hp for the second time this challenge well we just spite on the next turn and cassatt goes down to a twister thank you for your service angiosola comes out next and i go for a willow wisp which misses and gyarados retaliates with the dragon rage so on the next turn i hit a willow wisp and gyarados hits another dragon rage then i switch to rembrandt who gets hit by another dragon rage i go for a recover as gyarados uses dragon pulse then i go for another recover as gyarados continues with dragon pulse we repeat this process until gyarados falls into the red then on the next turn claire heals gyarados with a hyper potion and then i use sketch so that rembrandt actually now knows dragon pulse which we'll need to take care of the kingdra waiting in the back this kinda sucks though because i thought that claire would be using a full restore instead of a hyper potion so now i can't put gyarados to sleep with spore so i have to switch to kalo to stall out gyarados's last dragon pulse pp then as it goes for twister i use recover to get kalo back to full hp then i switch back to rembrandt unfortunately gyarados still has dragon rage pp so it's doing pretty good damage and thanks to burn draining its hp we don't have many turns to set up so unfortunately because of turn spent healing with recover i only get two growths off before gyarados succumbs to burn damage that is definitely not enough to kill kindred in the back even with dragon pulse so now we got a bank on getting lucky with sleep turns kinder comes out and we out speed to put it to sleep on the next turn we hit a dragon pulse which does a good chunk of damage and thankfully kindred stays asleep so one more dragon pulse just barely knocks out kingdra third is claire's first dragonair dragon pulse isn't a guaranteed kill here either so we gotta get lucky again first step is to put the dragon air to sleep and then we pray that dragon pulse gets the high roll or that dragonair stays asleep thankfully we get the former and dragonair goes down claire's second dragon air is last so we do the same thing spore in case we don't get the one shot and then a dragon pulse which does knock out dragonair winning us the eighth and final gym badge that was yet another very sloppy battle against both archer and claire i made some very dumb mistakes i also should have sketched smokescreen onto at least one of my smeargles to put the odds in my favor a bit more when i was setting up on hound door and gyarados live and learn except for cassatt she died and didn't learn well with all eight badges collected we just need to wrap up a few things before taking on the pokemon league the first is fighting against the kimono girls that i've been helping throughout the game they each have an eeveelution but the catch is that you have to fight them without a break between the battles since all the eeveelutions are significantly better than my smeargles this is kinda tough the first one leads with an umbreon so i lead with van gogh i put umbreon to sleep with spore then i switch to bob ross as umbreon sleeps then i go for a meditate as umbreon sleeps again so it's another meditate as umbreon wakes up and hits a hard dark pulse so i put it to sleep on the next turn then i recover and umbreon continues to sleep then i start going for double kick umbreon manages to wake up and hits another dark pulse another double kick will kill here but since i don't heal between battles i make sure to spore it and recover back to full hp before finishing it off next is the kimono girl with espeon you may have noticed that van gogh is pre-damaged to one hp that's because he knows flail which is able to one shot the espeon even with a silk scarf and the seven level advantage it wasn't quite enough to kill umbreon though because it's so bulky next up is flareon who unfortunately has quick attack so we can't use the flail strat i switch to monet who has a very fun but honestly ultimately not very useful trick up his sleeve but i wanted to do it anyways first i put flareon to sleep then i used transform which i sketched off of a wild ditto now i've got access to flareon's moveset i still keep my own hp which is maxed out with evs i use quick attack willowisp and fireblast despite the latter two being ineffective so that on the next turn i can use last resort which can only be used after using all your other moves at least once it finishes off flareon in one shot next up is seo and jolteon but thanks to the speed evs and the level advantage we can out speed and knock out jolteon with a single flail so last is vaporeon who also knows quick attack so i switch to monet then i go for a spore and then i recover as it snoozes then i transform vaporeon wakes up and goes for a surf but it's ineffective things to water absorb then she starts attacking as i go for moves that let me use last resort unfortunately vaporeon gets the same idea and is able to hit a very nasty last resort it was bad timing that he woke up the turn i transformed and hit the surf had i transformed before vaporeon woke up he would have never used surf well i decide to risk a crit and get hit by another last resort and then i retaliate with my own last resort i'm dead to another last resort though and i don't think we kill with another one even if we win the speed tie so i switch to rembrandt who gets hit hard by a last resort i score the vaporeon to put it to sleep then i use recover as vaporeon sleeps then i use dragon pulse for a little bit of damage and then vaporeon wakes up and hits a nasty surf killing rembrandt rest well rembrandt thank you for being so clutch against claire you will be remembranted from here bob ross comes out to spore vaporeon and then she mercifully stays asleep as bob ross finishes her off with two turns of double kick well now we're up to seven deaths from here i gotta go fight luigi but i'm not in the mood to deal with it so i just throw my master ball at it and call it a day whatever after that i make sure to teach waterfall to my gyarados hm mule which gives me access to a grass patch on route 47. so welcome to the team goya this grass patch also has far-fetched at level 35 so we are now finally able to sketch sword stance anyways after that it's time to head to kanto and the pokemon league along the way i catch the last two smeargles of the run alf cleaned from route 27 and ivazovsky from route 26. now in heart gold and soul silver victory road doesn't have any trainers in it other than your rival but route 26 and route 27 leading up to victory road both have a bunch of trainers some of which are mandatory but most of them you can skip but of course i accidentally run into one of these trainers and i'm completely unprepared for it the trainer in question is ace trainer joyce who has a pikachu and a blast toys well i'm leading monet so i just spore the pikachu on turn one and then i recover as it snoozes for two turns from here i used smoke screen a bunch to lower pikachu's accuracy while also sporing it again to put it back to sleep then i decided to transform to steal her pikachu's powers and quick attack a few times to knock it out then blast toys comes out i thought i was clever by transforming into pikachu to prepare for the blast toys in the back but then i remember that it's it's a freaking pikachu and this thing is just gonna wreck me with surf i go for a thunderbolt which does very little damage and then blastoise sets up rain dance so now surf is definitely gonna kill us i go for a thunder wave to paralyze blast toys and then he hits a serf which crits so yeah monet goes down hard thunder wave was also kind of incredibly stupid because now that blastoise is paralyzed i can't put it to sleep i'm kind of a panicky idiot when i'm caught off guard like this well i bring in wood who has mega drain fully expecting blast toys to kill us with another surf mega drain does very little damage and then blastoise gets fully paralyzed so i go for another mega drain and then blast always gets fully paralyzed again well that was stupid lucky i mean sorry for that monet rest in peace but lesson learned i definitely need to be more careful okay oh sh so ace trainer megan has bulbasaur ivysaur and venusaur i'm leading with angisola who knows aerial ace which obviously doesn't kill bulbasaur in one shot but it just retaliates with a weak takedown so another aerialist finishes it off ivysaur is second and we hit it with another aerial ace but a petal dance does good damage in retaliation i decide to switch to van gogh who tanks another petal dance and then i spore the ivysaur funny enough even though it's asleep ivysaur still gets confused by petal dance i use synthesis to get back to full hp but ivysaur wakes up and hits through confusion to connect with a petal dance so i put it back to sleep and then synthesis again this time ivysaur stays asleep so i finish it off with a rock tomb last is venusaur i spore the venusaur and then i switch to keane who starts using smokescreen but venusaur wakes up and manages to connect with the sleep powder so i switch to van gogh who gets hit by a leech seed so i spore venusaur and then i switch to wood as venusaur stays asleep so i get off smokescreen two more times but i might as well not have because venusaur wakes up and hits another leech seed i switch to bob ross and venusaur finally misses a move so i'm able to hit it with spore then i switch to wood and then i hit an aerial ace as venusaur stays asleep i switch back to bob ross who avoids the leech seed as venusaur wakes up then i spore it back to sleep and then i switch to van gogh but venusaur wakes up connects with a pedal dance and gets a critical hit that's now two of the kanto starters that have crit killed one of my smeargles while i bring in wood and just start aerial lacing of course venusaur connects again thanks for nothing smokescreen but it wasn't a crit so wood manages to survive this lets me finally knock out the venusaur ending an excruciating and completely avoidable battle rest well van gogh sorry about that alright well it's time to face the last fight before the elite four we're going toe-to-toe with fascism for the last time he starts with his sneezel so we lead with bob ross who is able to out speed and knock it out with a double kick nice crit buddy next is golbat which is perfect we spore it to sleep and then we switch to keen then i go for smokescreen for a few turns golbat is able to out speed so we risk flinches with bite which does actually happen pretty consistently including a crit flinch on one turn but eventually we're able to get golbat all the way down to -6 accuracy so i switched to bob ross and then instantly put the sucker to sleep then i switch to ivysovsky who starts setting up with swords dances ivazovsky has own tempo so golbat can't confuse it after three swords dances a rock tomb knocks out golbat next is magnaton who goes down to a dig then it's typhlosion who also goes down to a dig and then it's kadabra who also goes down to a dick despite setting up reflect last is haunter who can't actually hit us so even though rock tomb doesn't kill oh never mind we get a critical hit nice it's about time we had a fight go exactly according to plan well with that we've made it to the pokemon league so it's time to prepare this is by far the hardest part of the challenge up until now i've been able to strategically choose which six smeargles i bring into each fight to completely optimize the team for each individual battle however against the pokemon league i need to optimize their move sets for 5 battles at the same time that's 24 moves to deal with 26 pokemon there's very little room for error here on top of that almost every single pokemon in the pokemon league will one shot my smeargles if they get a critical hit and in many cases even a non-critical hit will just straight up kill them i can somewhat alleviate that with investing evs into hp defense and special defense but that then comes at the expense of attack and speed evs and smeargles definitely need the offensive evs to be able to do any reasonable amount of damage before they get knocked out in return the solution i come up with is to have three defensive smeargles for setup and three offensive smeargles to deal damage the defensive smeargles will set up with moves like sword stance sketch from farfetch'd on route 47 and nasty plot which can be sketched from an ace trainer at the lake of rage who has a nine tails then the defensive smeargles will baton pass to the offensive smeargles who have a range of super effective attacks that can be used to knock out the opposing pokemon baton pass can be sketched from a psychic on route 27 who has a girafferidge normally when i use baton pass strats which i admit i do do often it's to minimize the risk of crits there are usually other strategies that would work so sometimes it does feel kinda cheap to rely on baton pass but i genuinely think that this is the only way to do this with smeargles they're just so bad and remember that just a little bit of bad luck in the form of bad sleep turns or unfortunate crits means that we're completely screwed here but here's the final six smeargles that will be completing the journey all leveled up to level 47 to match karen's hound doom if you notice a lot of them are smeargles we haven't used much so i was able to evie train them optimally others like angi sola aren't exactly optimally eevee trained for their specific roles but they'll have to do with nine beautiful flames already snuffed out it's time to see how much more artistic talent this challenge will rob from the world before it's all said and done let's see if they've got what it takes first is will and i lead pollock i set up a sword stance as zatu then immediately goes off script and uses u-turn to bring out exeggutor i was hoping zatu would use confuse ray which pollock is immune to thanks to own tempo and then i could lock her in with encore this ends up working out though because exeggutor just goes for reflect so we lock her in with encore then we set up our remaining sword stances and then we baton pass to bob ross who now has plus six attack i timed it perfectly so that reflect wears off this lets me knock out exeggutor with a technician black glasses bite which crits the rest of will's pokemon also go down to a bite you'll notice here that i did edge all my smeargles to near level 48 so that they'd gain levels in battle which is okay according to my rule set another small positive about smeargles is that they do level up very quickly alfclaint also has an exp share attached here so that she can gain some levels before it's time for her to take on lance anyways that's well defeated next up is koga he leads ariados and i lead angusola she's been so clutch throughout this playthrough and i really need her to come through again here thankfully she connects with willowisp on the first turn burning aeriatos we do have a wide lens equipped but it's still only 82.5 percent effective in this generation so that was lucky ariados just uses spiderweb though so that was a free turn then angisola starts going for nasty plots poison jab doesn't do much things to burn though we get lucky to avoid crits and poison as we manage to get off all three nasty plots we need to knock out muk that's waiting in the back then it's a baton pass to wood who gets poisoned by a poison jab that really sucks because we still need to set up an agility here to be able to out speed koga's crowbat koga uses a full restore as wood uses agility since ariados is burn is healed i have no choice but to just knock it out with a technician boosted confusion muck comes out next so i just knock it out with another confusion but poison is now going to take us out in a few turns as fortress comes out koga's chromat also has quick attack so when it comes out it'll just kill us before we can get off an attack fortunately fortress is pretty weak as long as it doesn't explode so i decide to heal here with recover and thankfully fortress just goes for a swift which doesn't crit i recover again as fortress just uses toxic spikes so on the next turn i knock out fortress with a flamethrower next is crobat but it doesn't go for quick attack and just goes down to a confusion and so last is venomoth but it too falls to a single confusion winning us the battle that was a fairly lucky fight but we need to be even luckier against bruno who has fighting types fortunately he leads with a hitmontop whose only fighting type moves are counter and triple kick triple kick is a move that has the potential to hit three times in a row the first hit has 10 base power the second has 20 base power and the third has 30 base power for an effectively 60 base power move which is boosted by hitmontop's technician with stab and being super effective that is more than enough to kill smeargle even without a critical hit so why is this fortunate well don't quote me on this but based on my experience i have a hunch that the ai is dumb about multi-hit moves i think that the ai reads the potential damage of a multi-hit move as the damage from a single hit this means that the ai thinks that triple kick only has 10 base power which combined with technician stab and super effective damage results in an effective base power of only 45 instead of 270 if it were to hit all three times this means that dig with 80 base power will always be the better move in the eyes of the ai so my hunch is that hitmontop will never go for triple kick here and that means we can semi safely get away with setting up another sweep let's see if i'm right i start by having angiosola hit another clutch willowisp and then him on top does indeed go for dig that's huge i start setting up with nasty plot as dig hits for a small bit of damage though it does crit then it's just a few more turns of using recover to stay healthy and nasty plot to get to plus 4 as him on top goes for counter then i baton pass to wood as hitmontop uses dig i miss my first attack because of dig which does just a bit of damage then technician boosted confusion knocks out the rest of bruno's team we have a choice specs on wood which is just enough to finish off the mod champ without needing to go to plus six bruno's onyx doesn't take super effective damage from confusion but it's an onix so it goes down hitmonchan is a little scary since it has bullet punch but at this hp even a crit would barely miss out on the kill but it doesn't even go for it so that's bruno defeated okay last for the elite four is karen she has a lot of shenanigans at her disposal so i do have to be very careful here but i do have a plan she leads umbreon and i instantly set up a sword's dance with pollock as umbreon goes for a double team then i decide to encore it into double team a little risky but it's fine i sword stance two more times as umbreon is stuck in double team i make the mistake of swords dancing a fourth time thinking that it'll be smart to wait for the encore to run out and then encore him into double team again but then twitch chat reminds me that encore can miss because of the double team so that was super stupid thank you twitch chat so i just baton passed to bob ross as umbreon thankfully continues to be stuck in the encore so two aerial aces that never miss finish off the umbreon and then gengar comes out viewers i have no idea what spurred me to double check that i out speed this gengar but thankfully i did because i do not outspeed this kangaroo which is very very bad because gengar has focus blast which will absolutely kill bob ross i cannot believe that i forgot to make sure that bob ross would outspeed gengar it would if he had a better speed iv but i'm honestly more surprised that i just randomly checked it now because had i just gone for a bite i would have been in for a very very nasty surprise but nevertheless this is pretty bad the good news is that focus blast only has 5pp and it has 70 accuracy gengar also doesn't have any other moves to hit our normal types with so it can only kill at most 5 of our smeargles and if i get a little lucky and it misses a few focus blasts then maybe maybe i don't wipe here but i absolutely need to switch out here because if it kills bob ross we just can't beat the rest of karen's pokemon so the first thing to do is switch out to wood as gengar unfortunately connects with her first focus blast but wood has done his job already and won't be needed for lance thank you for your sacrifice wood then i bring out pollock now somehow against saul odds because pollock has max hp evs and almost max special defense evs pollock manages to survive a focus blast with 5 hp an absolute legend this lets him get off a smoke screen which now lowers the accuracy of gengar's focus blast to just 52.5 percent now it's time to get stupid lucky i switch to angusola and gengar misses a focus blast three focus blasts down two more to go gengar misses another focus blast azangysola just goes for a cover to stall a turn unfortunately with gengar's last focus blast she connects finally bringing an end to anguisola thanks for everything you've done this run you little pupper rest well that's two deaths to this monstrous gengar but it looks like things are going to be okay i bring pollock back out and since the ai doesn't like to switch very much gengar just tries to go for spite this lets me set up a sword stance then i go for encore to trap the gengar into spite so that it doesn't click destiny bond this lets me set up another sword stance and then after another useless fight i baton pass to bob ross back to where we started a bite kills gengar then hound doom comes out and i kill it with a double kick then murkrow comes out it has sucker punch which is priority and will kill if it crits so i spore it on the first turn then i kill it with double kick last for karen is vile plume which goes down to an aerial ace winning us another incredibly tough battle with the elite four defeated it's time to take on lance with our four remaining smeargles i have a plan but it requires a good amount of luck against his gyarados i screw up yet again and assume that my smear goals will out speed gyarados but because my setup smeargles have zero speed evs and bad speed ivs they don't out speed meaning i'm also at risk to flinches from waterfall this is really scary i lead with pollock who barely takes a waterfall but he doesn't get flinched so he's able to get off a smoke screen ideally we get another smoke screen off but that's not happening and icefang takes him out bringing our death toll to a dozen smeargles rest well pollock next up is peters who also doesn't outspeed gyarados fortunately he has maxed out hp and defense evs so he takes waterfall a bit better than pollock meaning that a critical hit waterfall is just barely enough to not kill thankfully we get a spore off this lets me recover back to full hp as gyarados snoozes for two turns next i just start clicking spore the idea behind this is to hit gyarados right as it wakes up to reset the sleep turns since the number of turns that a pokemon can sleep is completely random so it's pretty likely to wake up soon but i end up wasting two turns that i could have set up with nasty plot let's hope that didn't just piss away the game okay well on the next turn gyarados wakes up and hits a waterfall as peters hits another sport so i recover on the next turn and then i go for a nasty plot as gyarados sleeps again then gyarados wakes up but misses a waterfall thanks to pawlik's smokescreen so we get another nasty plot off we need one more though so as gyarados hits another waterfall we sport to sleep then peters uses recover and fortunately gyarados stays asleep so we get the last nasty plot off then i spore until gyarados wakes up which lets us put it back to sleep without it having taken any turns of sleep so on gyarados's first turn of sleep we baton pass bringing out our ringer against lance alf cleaned but she needs to get off an agility to outspeed lance's aerodactyl if gyarados wakes up waterfall can kill so she uses agility and gyarados stays asleep from here we're able to kill the gyarados with a thunderbolt that we sketched from a raichu and national park then lance's strongest dragonite comes out but we know aurora beam which we sketched from a cloister on route 34. it's thankfully enough to one shot this dragonite as well as lance's other two dragonites that come out next after that is charizard but a plus six magnet boosted thunderbolt is just barely enough to guarantee a kill on charizard making it the only kanto starter that did not take out a smeargle and then last for lance is his speedy aerodactyl who we managed to out-speed and knock out in one shot with another thunderbolt winning us the battle and the run 12 deaths and many many many hours later we finally did it we got to the hall of fame with nothing but a bunch of smeargles that was a really wild challenge having to craft the move sets based on what was available to be sketched at any point in the game was a lot of fun and it made for a very unique challenge i'd highly recommend it it really makes you think in a way that no other challenge does but it's also super exhausting because of how many different options there are at any given point that's why i wasn't quite ready to hop over to kanto and try to best the remaining 8 gyms and trainer red at least not right now if you want to see that though let me know in the comments and i'm sure i'll return to this game for more smeargle shenanigans at some point until then thanks so much for watching if you enjoyed watching please like the video and subscribe or don't i don't know but i do know that you should follow me on twitter and twitch to keep up with streams of my future challenges oh and happy new year 2021 was wild for this channel and i'm really excited for what's coming in 2022 to stay up to date on everything be sure to join the flag on hg community discord where you can also discuss nuzlocking and make recommendations for future challenges the link is in the description stay tuned for more nuzlocke videos and until then remember to always always always play around the critical hit [Music] you

Channel: FlygonHG

Views: 677,140

Keywords: Pokemon, Nuzlocke, Hardcore Nuzlocke, Gaming, Baby Pokemon

Id: vI3njo-Zyd8

Length: 59min 22sec (3562 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 08 2022