Tentacool Only - Pokemon Yellow

so my fiance said i should give tentacool the meme glasses in my thumbnail i thought this was a great idea however i did my research and gym leader matt beat me to it so i decided not to add the glasses to tentacool as a result a couple days later i asked serena who does all the illustrations for the channel to draw some tentacle expressions for the video she told me she had a great idea but didn't mention what it was and i just let her go for it and then she sent me this so i wanted this smug little guy in my thumbnail so badly but i really didn't want to step on another content creator's toes so i sent gym leader matt a message asking if it would be okay if i included this in the thumbnail i'll have you know gym leader matt is a very cool dude so he said that it would be alright by the way if you want more solo challenge content check out his stuff i've left a few of his videos in the description along with the playthrough rules software i use term definitions and a guide to switching starters tentacool is basically the zubat of the sea when i was a kid as soon as i caught it i boxed it with moves like wrap constrict acid and water gun it was very frustrating to even try and use this thing so i just thought yeah this thing's terrible let's put it away plus why would i use it if there are awesome water pokemon like blastoise and then when i started to do this run i looked at tentacles stats why does this thing have a hundred special that's 15 more than blastoise 70 speed is also pretty decent unfortunately its hp attack and defense stats all leave a lot to be desired still the water typing is really nice especially here in kanto but the poison type adds a lot of drawbacks just think about my coughing and atkins playthroughs poison types have not fared well so far however with the water typing in combination with an outstanding special and speed i think the tentacle might just be the best poison type that i've used yet and its move pool convinces me of this acid rap water gun barrier swords dance double edge bubble beam ice beam blizzard mega drain and surf so it has two setup moves that both sharply raise the stats at the altar it's a bit unfortunate that it gets an attack boosting move when it's primarily a special attacker however with the badge boost glitch both of these moves are going to be workable plus being able to shore up weak defenses can come in handy brock on the other hand doesn't have any problems with weak defenses because he's the rock solid pokemon trainer and especially against my water type that only learns poison and normal moves until level 22 but there's a way to do this long before tentacool learns water gun i can level up to 13 and learn rap in generation 1 this move prevents the opponent from attacking if you out speed then it's quite possible to trap the opponent forever the only way the enemy can get a move in is if rap misses which happens 15 of the time yeah this move kind of has trash accuracy however let's think about how long it's going to take me to level up tentacool to level 13 to learn rap so to do this let's think about rattata the rodent that occupies the earliest route in the game what do you think its growth rate is well its medium fast the most common growth rate and what about zubat that bat that occupies nearly every cave in the game it's also medium fast so uh tentacool is obviously also medium fast right right nope here's a fact that i bet very few of you knew tentacool has a slow growth rate yes this thing levels up at the same speed as dratini the legendary birds and mewtwo in the past this growth rate has really slowed pokemon down that should have been incredible otherwise so getting to level 13 today is gonna take quite some time so despite tentacool's excellent stats and water typing its poison typing and slow growth rate are probably gonna hold it back today at level 11 tentacle already has 24 speed that means it's going to move first against onyx who has 23 speed finally i make it to level 13 and now i'm ready to take on brock [Music] geodudes first i set up super sonic so that when rap misses juju has a chance to hit itself instead of dealing damage this is going to speed up my knockout prolong my pp and preserve tentacles health things are off to a good start because supersonic hits and judo damages itself rap just keeps hitting and geodude falls without attacking once onyx is next i go for super sonic it fails onyx binds but it's only doing two damage a hit my next supersonic works onyx crits with tackle i use acid once hoping for a defense drop and i actually get it now honest deals more damage to itself in confusion as a result and it's time to rap the rapping lass would be proud by the way if one of these hits crits all the successive hits crit as well so that's a way for tentacle to deal a bit more damage every now and then after all this thing has almost a 14 chance to crit because of its speed stat the pp for wrap eventually runs out but that's okay because i can just use acid to knock the onyx out and with that tentacool's done it a brock split under 10 minutes that's pretty decent route 3 is simple for the jellyfish acid is quite good against all the bugs here what i really want is a special move though not being able to use my best stat is pretty painful and conveniently the tm for water gun is just inside the entrance to mount moon as i go i only fight one optional trainer this hiker with his team of three rock pokemon they are quick and easy to take out with water gun at the end of the cave i battle the super nerd and win the prized dome fossil by the way i didn't actually mention my fossil choice in my last tentacool video good thing i made this video to correct that major error thanks for the me and my dry bread by the way anyways moving on now i have to decide if i want to face the rival or misty first in this solo series with first stage water pokemon i'm noticing how powerful bubble beam is if you can get it before a nugget bridge so i'll try that today if it doesn't work at least i'll be able to correct my mistakes in my follow up play through star u is first i out speed and i choose rap the ideal scenario is that i want to make it to starmie without taking any damage my first rap knows this because it gets a crit and hits five times taking staru to orange health my next one hits three times and misty's lead falls now starmie is much more complicated it has 16 more speed than my tentacle so use super sonic to cut its consistency when my wraps end i followed up with acid to hopefully break down its defenses but she's put up too many and it doesn't work okay so i need to start using rap starmie hits itself and rap begins the first one is a two hit and the second one's a two hit my third rep crits and hits three times bringing the stormy to orange health and then i quit again so i've done it despite my graphics card dropping the ball in the encoding right at the end with misty out of the way i can teach tentacool bubblebeam before the rival battle which is really fortunate because i totally forgot to heal i've got 17 hit points bubble beam one shots the spiro sandshrew comes out and obviously gets one shot as well no sand attacks today but the following rattata knows quick attack he uses it and that takes tentacle to eight hit points and then bubble beam finishes the rat off i don't think bubble beam can one hit the eevee it's special stat is decent after all i try for it eevee survives but it uses growl excellent choice i'm moving on nugget bridge is quick the last at the end with the oddish isn't a challenge because acid gives me decent damage against these grass types i smash the rocket earning myself the tm for dig and i head to the ssn i'm grabbing rest today tentacles of poison type and i know that it's gonna hit a roadblock at somewhere so having recovery will be really useful plus i really should never skip this tm every time i do i end up getting punished in the rival battle we can start to see tentacool's power building it just one shots all of his pokemon even the eevee this time i guess a critical hit made that possible but still with how everything's going i think that i can take on surge now maybe just maybe my ridiculous special will allow this water type to survive a thunderbolt [Music] raichu moves first it uses thunderbolt and tentacle actually survives but five hit points won't be enough for the rest of the fight bubble beam does a third raichu uses growl then it misses a mega kick and my third bubble beam fails to get the knockout are you kidding me it actually survived that and then serge uses an x speed so that's a nice gift he is definitely the worst gym leader in yellow the rapping lass is the first intimidating trainer on my way to lavender town however she just doesn't really do anything today absorb and growth at the worst possible times even a poison powder i'm a poison type you can't poison me next is the pokemaniac inside rock tunnel the cubone is a simple one hit but the slow poke worries me a little bit confusion's gonna do a lot luckily it's very slow so rap can just trap it and whittle it down the next pokemaniac puts up more of a fight with his slowpoke because rap misses but i managed to take it down without a reset the status condition junior trainer lives up to her name by paralyzing tentacool but it isn't enough i sweep the self-destructing hiker and i've arrived at the mid game with slow growth rate pokemon i believe that obtaining the rare candy in the rocket hideout is the best strategy it costs some real time and game time to do this but getting walled by a tough opponent one or two levels too low to out speed is gonna cost much more time this also lets me grab some other useful items on the way like a nugget and an hp up in the department store i grab the tm for ice beam teach it to tentacool and buy three calciums to boost my special even more pokemon tower rival time what do you expect a difficult fight of course not it's very easy but the next channeler she's much scarier because she has ghost pokemon two of them in fact i knocked the first ghastly out in two hits the second one then paralyzes me with lick it confuses tentacle hits itself lick does damage paralysis prevents a turn lick does more damage tentacle hits itself again and nightshade kos so that's my first reset and it's against a random npc just great at least she doesn't beat me the second time that i fight her now that i have the poka flute i want to make it to the safari zone as quickly as possible this is important for water pokemon because i want to get surf as fast as possible this is going to make every following major battle much easier and it gives kale ranges against most of the pokemon that i want to fight for training now surf is good but tentacles growth rate is not i'm actually only level 30 at this point and my speed is 62. in yellow koga has a level 50 venomoth that no psychic so yeah i think that i'm gonna need to do some grinding now however i'm only here in self to grab items most importantly the tm for sword stance i start my mid game training in erica's gym ice beam is super effective here and while its pp is small i have stockpiled some ethers by the way i almost always use my max ether here it helps the training last by increasing my pp and preventing me from making a trip to the pokemon center with a couple more levels earned i face erika [Music] tangle is first ice beam does whoa a lot more than i expected actually i take it out the next turn move on to weep and bell and then tentacle freezer burns the colon-o vegetable so yeah that's an easy knockout as well gloom is last ice beam doesn't ko petal dance hits but tentacle's typing let's shrug it off and take the victory i haven't mentioned which team the rival is going to be using in this playthrough and i've set things up so that he picks flareon because i felt like it would be the easiest for a tentacle to get a good playthrough time against because of that i think that i might be able to defeat himself right now by doing so i'll get the experience from jesse james and giovanni that'll really help in my preparation for koga by the way this cloister it's not only going to use supersonic so thanks good ai barrier decreases confusion damage because it's using my attack stat against my defense stat when i hit myself and it also increases my text at just a bit magneton's next i use surf and okay that's not good it didn't even do half and thundershock zaps for more than half however but uses a potion so i take the magneton down cadabra's next oh it out speeds so that's a no-go for now tentacle is pretty good so maybe i could use a couple of rare candies to make all of this easier i try and uh nope magneton gets the ko this time so while i'm training a bit more i should talk about the upgrades that were given to sabrina and koga going from red to yellow both of their teams got major level increases sabrina's alakazam used to be level 43 and now it's level 50. kogi used to have a bunch of mono poison types now he has bug poison types that no psychic moves the result of these changes is that usually grinding is required before one of the two can be overcome today it's worse because tentacle is leveling at what might be described as a relaxed pace and it has a weakness to psychic type attacks i train in the dojo koga's gym and finally self again taking tentacle up to level 40. now i think that i should be able to defeat the rival after all his cadabra only has 84 speed i'm setting up sword stance here unfortunately confusion messes with me and then acid crits against the magneton so it does less damage and then in the next fight tentacle damages itself and gets blasted by thundershock okay at least i survived but sword stance doesn't give acid enough damage to knock it out okay i think that maybe i can rely on my special stat for the rest of this playthrough so let's try using rare candies i use five hopefully this will get me past the mid game now surf two shots of the cloister magneton's next i use acid and it's still not enough but i take it down on the next turn cadaver follows acid one shots and surf knocks the flareon out okay i did it so reviewing my speed stat it's still not going to be enough to move first against the venom off am i gonna have to use more rare candies i would really like to avoid that until the league especially having used five already i collect a total of 11 in most playthroughs so i've already used almost half well i do have a great special stat so i might just survive the venomoth's attacks and two hit with surf let's try [Music] then on that's first i use surf and it's a one hit the second one is as well and so is the third i've reached venomoth with full health it moves first uses leech life oh yeah it actually knows that move and my surf does have if you're confused why it chose leech life that's because in generation 1 bug moves are actually super effective against poison pokemon so koga's good ai chose it next he chooses an x attack and finally venomoth shows us its stabs psychic powers however they aren't enough so blaine what do you expect from him he's obviously gonna lose right i wasted some time setting a barrier trying to prepare for the rapidash or arcanine if they use takedown after all these fire types have decent specials so water moves don't always one hit this setup allows confused ray to do its work and tentacool goes down alright so i refuse to let that happen again this time surf crits nine tails i use barrier against the rapidash before taking it out arcanine's last uses fire blast and my jellyfish resists it and finishes the battle that's much better so sabrina's next and what do you expect from her do you think that she has good ai she really doesn't in pokemon yellow so her pokemon just bam random moves which is great because it gives me the time that i need to take the alakazam down unless it just uses psychic and one shots me don't worry i decided to counter this by setting up twice on abra in the next fight that way i'll one shot the alkazam and then i crit and it negates all of my setup but alakazam randomly selects reflect and my second acid takes it down i talked about the improvements that sabrina and koga were given in yellow but i haven't mentioned those that giovanni got in red version he only has two ground type moves dig on his level 42 dug trio and fissure on his ride on in yellow his dugtrio is first it's eight levels higher and it has earthquake so yeah that was a really fast loss maybe if it uses dig or mrs fissure i can get a barrier off and then survive a hit that badge boosts my speed as well so that i get a second barrier in and then doug trio crits just great well i'll knock it out if it doesn't crit uh apparently not though because it can hit with fissure and knock me out right away this was getting a little bit frustrating currently tentacool is at 121 speed after the passive boost from koga's badge doug trio has 133 speed so i need 12 more in order to move first i'm gaining two every level so that's six more levels now that i've defeated all the trainers in giovanni's gym i reflect on my options the slow growth rate is going to make grinding against trainers across kanto take forever so i guess that this is where i need to use more rare candies with the gym training behind me i only need four to get the speed required now tentacle moves first surf one hits persian is next oh it's also a one hit this fight just went from brutal to trivial every single one of his team members goes down to a single serve normally i just sort of gloss over the rival right before the league it usually isn't too difficult however acid is really starting to become dead weight it can't even one shot the execute because of that it gets leech seed my lack of recovery makes things scary as damage stacks up against cloister i do get all six turns of setup in and then i start to attack surf one hits the cloister one hits magneton one hits cadavra and flareon is obviously no different being able to make it through this fight without changing my moveset is really nice i preserved both sword stance and barrier for the league i can't remove surf because there is no move deleter in gen 1 and so i have one move slot that really needs some spring cleaning however if i remove acid from mega drain then what's the point of keeping sword stance when i could just replace it with a move like mimic dugong's the first pokemon in the league because i'm a psychic type it's gonna spam rest almost always that gives me time to set up barrier mega drain does so much to cloister barrier makes spiky cannon feel like a joke and then i use surf to knock the shellfish out i did this because i want to pace myself with mega drain i might need all my pp of it for slow bro it does half the hippo uses amnesia luckily lorelai just keeps using super potions and i finally knock it out so that did take a lot of mega drains i'm really happy that i use surf on cloister jinx is able to survive one of my hits but lorelei uses a potion so i get a free knockout last is lapras i'm just gonna say i love lapras's design it's so cool unfortunately it confuses tentacle but it's not enough my jellyfish is ready for its next challenge and guess who the next challenge is i'm gonna give you like 15 seconds to think about this while you're thinking about it i need to say that i'm really enjoying using tentacool so far i'm excited to start testing with it because i think that optimization is really gonna aid this setup machine knowing which moves i can use when like how many barriers how many swords dances that's going to be so key to getting a better time okay anyways let's get back to it the next challenge is of course agatha well not really i can just mimic substitute and then set up three times boosting my special a bit that gives me better damage against all of her pokemon and they go down one after another the third member of the elite four is next it's lance gyarados leads and i decide to use barrier to minimize damage from hyper beam after two barriers and two layers i'm at half health with four badge boosts so i decided to strike with surf it does half and chaos gyarados on the next turn i hope that my special stat is enough for the dragonairs unfortunately the first one survives and paralyzes tend to cool now i have a problem all of his remaining three pokemon are going to out speed i mimic icebeam giving me away to ko but i need more health to survive attacks i try to use mega drain to heal but it isn't doing much because dragonair of course resists grass moves tentacool goes down okay there's a really easy solution here teach tentacle blizzard in the place of mimic why spend a turn stealing ice beam or having the chance to get paralyzed when i can just ko the dragonairs right away i take my time to set up against the gyarados and this ensures that i'm able to sweep the skies grow cold and the dragons fall one after another i've made it to the champion going into this fight things are looking really good i actually might do this under an hour and 20 minutes sand slash is first i thought i might as well set a barrier here to boost my damage for the rest of the fight and improve my defenses but earthquake does a lot more than i was expecting it has good ai so it's only going to use this move maybe mega drain will heal enough it does tentacle just barely survives and i knock sand slash out who's that pokemon well it's alakazam and i'm very sad because surf does half and side beam knocks tend to cool out well i guess if i use surf to ko the sand slash i can two hit the alakazam wait this time it's moving first oh yeah the tentacle speed is 151 alakazam's is 156 so the barrier that i used against sand slash boosted me to make me go first this is a problem if iko sandslash alakazam is going to move first that means i need two hits but it's going to move twice and knock me out so if i try and set up on the sand slash i'll take damage and then alakazam will knock me out because it only needs one hit to do that so either way i'm not going to get the setup that i need unless alakazam fails a kinesis it's a psychic move after all so it's going to use it or cyber or psychic recover is actually a normal move in this generation because of that i get the opening i need and i ko with surf oh nice a critical hit helped out i've made it to the executor albeit because of a bit of luck but i'll take it for now blizzard can manage the grass type but before that i want to set up so that i ensure my victory especially after that luck with the alakazam magnaton's next i use surf it survives and thunderbolt knocks me out so i guess alakazam could use kinesis first turn and badge boost me so that i move first on the second turn and then get the ko and then i don't play carefully enough and exeggutor and hypnosis in combination with leech seed finish the fight if alcazam attacks twice in a row i lose barrier against sand slash is almost a guaranteed loss barrier into mega drain won't help as we saw before but barrier into surf does change something i really should have been using surf there i don't know why i picked blizzard it just has worse accuracy oh well the single turn of setup lets me out speed by doing this i can use blizzard before alcazam moves if i freeze then i can set up and heal for free so uh here it's montage time i don't get a freeze i don't get a freeze i don't get a freeze still no freeze again no freeze it's getting really old now because it knocks me out again no freeze even worse a blizzard miss funnily enough i get a charity kinesis and this lets me defeat the alakazam i arrive at magneton with green health as a result surf takes it into red and then thunderbolt crits okay uh back to fishing for freezes not here not here not here not here not here kinesis ah i don't record live reactions in all my playthroughs because sometimes they just want to sit here and play the game i was playing this one while my fiance rage quit playing hollow knight in the background so i wasn't recording but at this point i decided to take a small break to let things cool off because i was getting frustrated and i was feeling hopeless when i came back i started up the live audio so uh here it is all right uh i'm just gonna chime in here this is uh this is getting really old really fast so i have to use barrier to outspeed the alakazam it has 156 speed so i have 151 and i have no rare candies left so i'm just stuck using barrier once and then hoping that blizzard freezes or alexander oh my gosh or alkazine doesn't ko me freeze no and then i get k out like that that's like every fight so yeah in the yellow version over leveling really helps you get stuck so frequently at the champion just because you didn't over level like the champion in yellow i cannot describe how much better he is than the champion oh oh never mind he teased me so it's back to ice fishing side beam kos please freeze sai beam chaos again come on earthquake crits oh it uh it crits again alakazam uses psychic once and twice apparently all bad things come in twos kinesis oh he misses i move first and surf takes the alakazam down all right i've made it to exeggutor blizzard does more than half so he gets the leech seeds set up but that doesn't matter because i want to set up anyways i take my time and once i'm done i rest up so that tentacle will have as much possible health left over next is magneton i decide to go for blizzard in case it freezes unfortunately it doesn't thunderbolt hits tentacool but i survive i take the bolts out and then cloisters next the only move i have against it is surf so this is going to take a while i use rest replenish my health and then i get started on the task of knocking it out oh i actually might get this with just one more surf and then spike cannon crits and i had some feelings about this oh no no no no are you kidding me what is that i hate spike cannon gen 1 crits you're the worst multi-turn moves so i gotta fish for the freeze still ah okay so let's just reflect on that whole scenario i realized that in many of my videos i constantly mentioned how painful some of these fights are and all of you might think that i'm torturing myself by doing these playthroughs actually it's quite the opposite i really love playing the game and i always can't wait for the chance to sit down and do another playthrough still that doesn't take away from the frustration that occurs but all the lows make the high moments even more exciting and this time my luck continues without leech seed i'm far less scared for the remaining portion of the fight magneton takes tentacle down to orange health and then i knock it out cloisters a two hit with surf and all that remains is flareon i knock it out and finally i've done it tentacool clocks in with a time of 1 hour 34 minutes and 25 seconds at level 62 with 39 resets and a game time of 4 hours and 35 minutes that's a faster real time and game time than seal's first playthrough a lower level finish but more resets i still do have high hopes for tentacle though with the right planning i think that it can do much better before that though let's wind down with a relaxing fight against mewtwo well i wish it was relaxing the psychic cat takes tentacle out over and over and over and over it felt endless the thing is fishing for a freeze is a powerful strategy if i use blizzard enough eventually i'll win once i get the broken status condition the fight's over now let's do some testing speed was the primary issue for tentacool what happens if it arrives at the champion a couple levels higher so that it moves first against the alkazam 157 speed is required for this so level 64 is just right if i had prioritized carbose more aggressively in the mid game this might be possible at level 63 though at this level i can survive alex m's psi beam and get to executor to set up it uses leech seed and hypnosis if i get put to sleep at low health leech seed could ko but that isn't likely after that magneton's a two hit which seems scary but tentacool can actually survive thunderbolt cloister should be simple because of barrier unless it gets two critical hits with spike cannon just great so what about alakazam's psychic though if it crits i lose if it doesn't tentacle actually survives however if it lowers my special i won't be able to ko it that means i'll probably lose to the next attack unless it like misses kinesis or something however in most cases this thing is just going to attack and do damage not alter my stats and then tentacle survives and knocks it out so this is so much more consistent than before but i had one lingering thought what if i had a physical move to hit it with my options are acid rap poison sting take down double edge rage no just no and cut also i could mimic slash or earthquake from sand slash but i'll take damage in the process from earthquake so i'd need to one hit the alakazam the easiest option here is double edge and it's doing about the same amount as blizzard and less than surf okay what about slash tentacle's base speed guarantees a crit after all but to get it i need to take one earthquake and then i remembered i was only surviving these because i set up barrier so these two moves aren't an option because there isn't time to use mimic that means that none of the other moves have the potential to do more damage than double edge with one exception rap if i outspeed alakazam i can trap it one of you suggested that water on normal type moves gives neutral coverage against all typings in this game so surf and rap actually pair together well and give me options for the rest of the fight against alakazam i won 10 out of 10 fights using this move i need to use between 1 and 3 turns of rap then when alcazam is at half health i finish it off with surf if rap misses tentacle can survive and try again now this feels better but it's a bit complicated because exeggutor follows and leech seed will trigger every time rap hits so i need to prevent it from using this move entirely this doesn't seem like something i want to bank on since i'm not setting up anymore i don't have time i just have to prevent the leech seed i could replace barrier with blizzard however if i'm going to use blizzard on exeggutor anyways then it's gonna get leech seed and raph is gonna be useless for the rest of the fight however what if instead of barrier i had swords dance that way i can boost my damage and hopefully knock it out before leech seed kos however the problem here is it becomes impossible to time a rest so that exeggutor faints and tentacle has the maximum possible health for magneton because rap is just like really random in how much damage it does another consideration is that i need to keep rap with me the entire playthrough so while this does solve the alakazam very well it doesn't seem to be the best choice right now okay so get ready for this i have another strategy that i want to try and a lot of you have commented about this in the past so this is the first time i think i'm using it what about surf rap mimic and toxic surf takes care of the sand slash rap manages the first portion of alakazam's health preventing attacks and allowing for surf to ko now i'm ready to spring the trap i mimic exeggutor's leech seed after that i set up toxic which will take it out consistently and then wrap traps it so this way it won't be able to put me to sleep magneton's next and since exeggutor failed leech seed in this case i use wrap surf finishes it now prepare for something that feels truly unfair if i set up leech seed and then use toxic every time toxic's damage is increased so is the amount of damage that leech seed heals making this combo next level broken is rap it traps cloister and prevents it from moving while the combo stacks up tentacle finishes this first fight with full health that was a dominant performance but what if executor's leech seed actually hits well the problem is now the magneton leech seed can counter the opponent's leech seed but thunderbolt is just doing too much damage if i use rap without leech seed then i take way too much damage so while this strategy is fun i don't think it's the best option here i explored keeping sword stance instead of mimic and using toxic with rap but this doesn't solve the leech seed problem either unless i luck through it with many turns of rap against the exeggutor preventing leech seed in that case sword's dance would be dead weight on my moveset anyways because i have no opportunity to set it up and if i'm not setting up here because i need to spam rap then toxic is kind of useless as well if i want to set up either toxic or sword stance i need a way to counter leech seed and unfortunately because of the following magneton tentacle doesn't have a way to do that so back to the original strategy surf blizzard barrier and rest but then another problem presented itself magneton can use thunderwave that ruins tentacool's speed and then it gets another use of thunderbolt that means if it chooses thunderwave first it always gets the thunderbolt next because of the champion's ai he knows when you're under the effect of a status condition and so he won't use a move that causes a status condition leech seed is very obviously an exception to this so i had a thought what if tentacle is actually going to be better against the champions team with jolteon if i can set up earlier for the badge boosts i might out speed the electric doggo and prevent thunder wave in that situation here's what i'm thinking if i can set up sword stance at some point in the fight then double edge can one shot the jolteon also on this team the is a lower level and he has nine tails which is uh quite bad i get a lucky freeze on alakazam giving me the chance to set up with three badge boosts blizzard ko's exeggutor surf two hits cloister surf one hits nine tails and double edge ko's jolteon now is this repeatable without the freeze i thought that maybe sneaking in one sword stance would let me kao the alakazam and it does but now i don't have enough health left for the jolteon another issue is that i have no recovery so taking damage against the alakazam essentially stops this strategy dead in its tracks since it's a two hit without setup on sand slash i think that i do have to let go of double edge how much does surf deal to jolteon well getting back to it it's tough because alkazam can still mess with me i tried using barrier twice in a row on sandslash but earthquake kos maybe with more investment in iron earlier on i might survive just quick aside this sand slash alone is making me think that i should buy more iron for most pokemon ah this thing's so good anyways that seems like a long shot when i do make it to jolteon surf does a lot of damage but it isn't quite ko however jolteon knows pin missile and it's also super effective so it's rolling the dice between three moves here not two like magneton was in this case it can choose between thunder wave you could also use thunder which has a 30 chance to miss or it could use pin missile which is going to do a lot less damage so i've been at this for over an hour now by the way i don't show all my tests these videos are long enough if i showed every single strategy that i tried it would just be like a three hour video yeah anyways i'm not coming up with a solution that i really like here i tried using cut in combination with sword stance for boosted accuracy no recoil and physical damage but yeah doesn't help against the alakazam and that means that i have to forgo the chance to freeze as well but the real issue is that it's a gamble against exeggutor if i replace mega drain with rest i think this will be more stable that way i get back to jolteon with only two inconsistencies alakazam and hypnosis from exeggutor now will this damage be enough and no it is not now during the first playthrough you might have wondered why i was keeping acid so long well i thought it might be useful in combination with sword stance could acid be the answer for this fight it certainly makes exeggutor much easier to take out unfortunately though for jolteon it doesn't quite do enough damage i tried to apply this strategy to the flareon fight but it's more difficult because magneton is just choosing between thunderwave and thunderbolt so in this case it's starting to seem like this water type is better suited to knock the jolteon out just because it's more likely to miss or choose pin missile so here's my answer sword stance and barrier sand slash and alcazam are unchanged there still is some inconsistency here at executor though i can set up using rest to heal as it spams leech seed from there my special stat has received six badge boosts and that doubles its value now i can take the executor down in three turns cloister's a two hit nine tails is a one hit and now it's the moment of truth jolteon gets crit and it survives oh my gosh just wonderful i made it back here tried again and i got another crit so yeah in these situations the crit is actually doing less damage because my stat is boosted but it bypasses that boosted stat in generation one when it crits ah well what happens when i don't crit in this case the jolteon consistently faints if i do crit it could use thunder and that's a 30 chance to miss so i might be able to attack again so i think that this is actually the best way for me to get through this fight for flareon though using this double setup actually allows me to take care of the magneton so this strategy is very good against the champion the difficulty here though is that i need to get through the entire league with two setup moves and an hm move that means i'll only have one move slot that i can change up through most of the playthrough so now i'm gonna go back from the champion with this moveset and try and figure out the optimal time teach moves at lance i see two possible approaches to preserve both setup moves surf rest barrier and sword stance or surf blizzard barrier and sword stance the first of these exploits gyarados's moveset because it knows leer i can spam barrier and use rest when tentacles health is low this lets the badge boost stack to ridiculous levels and i can just heal with rest with nearly 900 special surf can one hit all of his pokemon even if they resist it there is a flaw to this strategy though gyarados has a 15 chance to crit and if it does with hyper beam that's it i figured out another strategy that works better set up one barrier to decrease hyper beams damage then two sword stances followed by mimicking hyper beam after that i can sweep i could still lose here if gyarados crits but this way i don't spend like 10 plus turns setting up only to lose to a single critical hit one thing i'm always thinking about in these challenges is if i'm gonna lose in a fight or it's going to be inconsistent i should lose quickly instead of setting up for a long period of time and then losing after all of that time if i'm investing so much time to set up i really want to make sure that the fight's 100 consistent well i guess 99.61 consistent because this is gen 1 after all ah these games now let's go back to lorelei and she's changed because in this case i have to choose between mimic or mega drain while i'll probably only need mega drain for this single fight i do think it's the superior choice here stealing amnesia from slo-bro is dangerous because it was psychic and uh you can see that right here in this fight dugong provides such reliable setup that i can get surf so powerful that i can actually manage the slowbro right away so if i can win the fight only using surf why not just bring megadrain in for recovery giovanni is perhaps the most disappointing part of tentacool's run i can use barrier to boost my speed high enough if diatrio uses dig first turn then i can set up once more tank the hit and sweep but it can just ko immediately with earthquake or fissure luckily for me it will never use sand attack and there is a chance of a guard spec being used so i'll have to decide if i want to train for the speed needed to move first or if i want to try to pass him with barrier look i tested it 10 times the lower speed and i won six of them for koga it seems that leveling up a bit more really helps not only does it allow tentacool to move first against vanenat but it also means that surf is a two hit against the dark poison type if it doesn't heal with leech life what this means is that it's actually impossible for him to use two psychics in a row if he uses an x attack i'll just two shot the venom off if he uses leech life first then he can still only use one psychic because he'll survive my second hit so this makes the fight consistent the only way that i can lose to the venomoth is if it crits with psychic or i get a genuine miss of course i'll also need to out speed the self-rival's cadabra so level 40 it is for this fight surf can't one hit the magneton at this level but there is another option instead of keeping acid i can just keep rap after setting up with sword stance it'll be pretty good with a 5 hit magneton can actually faint in a single turn also rap takes the cadabra out in only two hits so yeah this is definitely the strategy here serge is probably gonna be inconsistent right he usually is he's usually honestly just random it's like if he uses thunderbolt i'm probably gonna lose but he's probably not gonna use thunderbolt and i'm probably gonna win well in this case thunderbolt can't actually one hit tentacool if i'm level 25. so this is a decent result but i wonder if the results will improve if i backtrack here after rock tunnel in this case i'll be level 28. this almost gives me the two-hit range on raichu but not quite surge's moves do about the same to me the advantage here is that i can do something that i've never done before i can actually backtrack after learning ice beam and potentially freeze raichu so this is a bit more consistent because of that i got lucky at misti previously starmie's dealing just too much damage and super sonic isn't consistent enough like super sonic might very well be the least consistent move before dynamic punch was introduced even if i use the two available rare candies before this fight the results don't improve i think that nugget bridge first makes more sense for tentacool that way i'm level 23 for misty in this case it isn't even great supersonic needs to cause some self-inflicted hits or tentacle isn't gonna win because this isn't much more consistent i think i need to just get through misty with luck i need to save my rare candies for later specifically because this jellyfish has an awful leveling rate so now i'm going to get started on my second playthrough i tested brock because i didn't know if level 13 was enough well it is i do need to confuse you dude as soon as possible though because running out of pp is an issue this is typically the case when you're going up against the rock solid pokemon trainers such a grind luckily supersonic provides an avenue for additional damage and acid can lower defense thereby increasing confusion damage onyx is a slog but tentacle does it i'm only five seconds ahead of my previous time that said things are gonna seem like they grind to a halt now that's because i'm gonna do a lot of optional trainers between here and misty almost everyone on route 3 like not this bug catcher that you have to jump over a ledge to get you see a bug catcher i don't even know what this guy is he's not a bug catcher i think he has a spiro but yeah i'm not going to fight him i'm also gonna face everyone in mount moon i'm doing this in preparation for nugget bridge and later misty because of this extra time spent training i breezed through the rival and continued training against optional trainers on nugget bridge now i'm level 24 for misty ah the slow growth rate is awful i did all that and got like one more level come on well please let me win on my first fight staryu goes down only getting a single tackle in next is starmie i use super sonic hold my breath and it works starmie hits itself and the rap begins i reestablish confusion and then starmie starts to hit with tackle once twice ouch that second hit was a crit tentacle's left with 11 health i don't think a single rap will take it out even if i get five hits i guess i need to gamble with super sonic starmie tackles tentacles survives supersonic hits and starmie hits itself yes i've done it oh okay yep rap misses but starmie hits itself again and that's that if we compare misty splits i'm six minutes behind because of all the training but don't worry i think that i'm gonna claw back all of that time during the rest of the play through just by being a little bit more over leveled i continue training in the ssn make my way through rock tunnel stop by the department store i've collected items so i can buy five carbos as a result this is uh exceptional actually it's usually two vitamins sometimes three if you're a little bit more frugal four if you're incredibly frugal but in this case five's just outstanding i'm really happy with this i'm doing this to prepare for the level jump in the mid game i'm going to need 104 speed of course to defeat koga so now let's try surge with ice beam this is a very first and it also freezes first turn so that's great i've avoided resets entirely in this playthrough i head to the safari zone grab a carbos and then the training begins erica's gym erica herself the dojo and then i backtrack to silf that brings tentacool to level 45. okay that's a lot of time that i've invested now it's time to face the rival the strategy involving rap and swords dance works so well here plus six allows it to manage the magneton the kadabra and surf takes the flareon out now my extreme focus you might say hyper focus on buying carbos has led tentacle to obtaining 104 speed one level early you can see that here in this giovanni fight which i never narrate because he's so bad but how's koga gonna be all three venonats are a one hit with surf venomoth follows surf does half he uses psychic no special drop so this is over unless my surf doesn't knock it out okay so it hangs on with a sliver of health venomoth uses psychic again but luckily tentacle survives and i do manage to take the victory now it's blaine time and uh i had some seriously unfortunate luck here i wasn't sure if surf would ko so i wanted to use wrap first just to whittle it down and then one hit with surf after that but it just misses way too much on nine tails so i'm really bruised for the rest of the fight luckily rapidash is a one hit and rap works on arcanine so i do manage to win but rap made things more stressful than they needed to be now i didn't test sabrina since she's gonna be pretty random because of flash and kinesis i set up sword stance once to boost my speed and boost raps damage avra doesn't get a flash and then it goes down rap traps cadabra long enough to ko but i level up and this resets my badge boosted speed meaning that alakazam is going to move first it uses reflect i choose wrap it misses i try again but as soon as it hits i change my mind using sword stance again will counter reflect and boost my speed i just can't get hit by psychic in the process cywave on the other hand is okay and then rap traps alakazam falls after using rare candies to boost my level i got the speed required to get an easy victory against giovanni the pre-league rivals next once again the strategy here is to set up on cloister it's only going to use supersonic i did add blizzard in just to ensure that execute doesn't lower my speed with stun spore and with that tentacle is off to the league so let's check in with my splits i'm no longer slower i'm actually one minute and 36 seconds faster than my previous attempt so that's a seven and a half minutes swing from the misti split however i think that the real gains are all still ahead i use all but three rare candies against lorelai this is so that i won't level up during the fight with her that way i can manipulate my experience at agatha lance and the champion to ensure the same thing i got asked a little while ago why it's good not to level up during a fight this is because the badge boosts that my setup creates are reset whenever my pokemon levels up agath is actually easier this time around because i have two setup moves while i can't use rest to heal which is a little bit less consistent i can use substitute two to three times with six turns of badge boosts on the field i am surviving hits more and after that i can sweep all of her pokemon in single hits each lance is next gyarados leads here's the turns barrier dragon rage swords dance hyper beam i may make hyper beam and then i get one more turn of setup in i survived the second hyper beam and begin my sweep please be enough i really don't want hyper beam to miss and in this case both the dragon airs fall aerodactyl's easy to manage with surf and dragonite's last hyper beam hits and i've done it at last i've arrived at the champion will all my work pay off allowing me to seal the deal with a reset free tentacle playthrough or will alakazam break the streak he uses psi beam tentacle survives and surf gets the knockout it's time to take things slow now on the exeggutor i'm keeping track of how much damage leech seed is doing each turn looks like 10 hit points this is because i want to be very safe so that sleep doesn't get me in generation 1 it can last from one to seven turns and you don't attack on the turn you wake up so that's around 70 to 80 damage total that could accumulate from leech seed if hypnosis puts me to sleep so i want to heal with rest as my health approaches that level this is slow going but finally i managed to knock out the pineapple tree seriously though exeggutor looks like a pineapple have you ever gone to the grocery store and seen a pineapple this thing looks like a pineapple i don't care if it's based on a coconut tree forever pineapple tree surf takes magneton out because of a critical hit it would have done slightly more if i didn't get the crit by the way after that cloister's a two hit and then flareon's a one hit tentacool clocks in with a time of one hour 13 minutes and five seconds at level 65 with no resets and a game time of 4 hours and 50 minutes in my follow up playthrough the game time is higher and that's because i reset less also i spent more time training by the way game time and resets are inversely related as game time increases resets decrease that is provided the player is playing well and not just like randomly wandering around i'm really happy that i was able to get a perfect playthrough but i'm a bit disappointed by the real time the slow growth rate and poison typing really did hold this sea monster back without them i think that it would have earned a very high spot in my tier lists now i'm ready to rank it in my first stage water type tier list polywag is the clear leader by far its time was so unbelievably fast goldeen was second with a time of 1 hour 23 minutes and 39 seconds but today tentacool easily beats it and earns itself second place now let's rank tentacle overall it got a faster time than aerodactyl by only seconds but that doesn't tell the whole story aerodactyl felt awful and awkward to use but tentacool felt smooth after testing so it deserves a spot at the top of the b tier up next is horsey and i wonder how it's gonna do put your guesses in the comments because i read them all also like subscribe and ring the chime echo so you'll be notified when that video goes live thanks to my patrons for their continued support now if you've made it this far you're incredible it's bloopers time [Music] in generation one this move prevents the opponent from promote attacking hold on in the past in the past this this oh it's like a lisp come on so despite tentacles excellent so the tentacles yes tentacles yeah uh nugget bridge is quick the last at the end with oddish isn't a challenge because acid gives me deep decent damage raichu moves moves first it does not and it does not do that ice beam is super effective here and i've stockpiled some stockpiles from ethers yes by the way i always almost i almost i always almost perfect sentence and then ten to cool freezer burns the colon over vegetable leech seed can counter but butch butch elite shade at lance i see two possible approaches to pervert proverb and there is a chance of a guard spec being used be amused oh come on i set up sword stance once to boost my raps damage i don't know what i was saying there the garage door opened and then i was just like i can't keep going there's noise this microphone's so sound isolating it doesn't even matter i don't even you probably won't hear it in the recording at all but it also means that surf is a two hit against the dark poison type venom off yeah check this video out if you want to know what's up with venomoth's typing not that don't do that don't do that for people people could just comment don't know what you're up to venomoth is definitely a bug poison type and then i can just say welcome to the channel it's not if you're new that's what's gonna happen to you just just know that now okay so if you watch the bloopers you will now know that if you show up and you comment that venomoth is a bug poison type we're all gonna tell you how wrong you are i'm so sorry this meme is probably not good for growth on youtube please comment and like the video help me with the algorithm help spread venomoth's true typing it's a it's a fairy dark type in genuine actually maybe just mono fairy been wanting to show this art off for a while i need to like just make it fairy type at some point okay it's time for uh tentacle vs oak let's see how this goes um yeah i'm gonna set up barrier here because this thing has physical moves and leer and so uh unless it gets a crit i'm gonna be fine okay again let's let's do this again i'm gonna be fine unless it gets a crit oh if it uses rage this is like the uh if it crits with rage that's really annoying but uh rage is like the perfect move for it to use because i can fully set up okay so now i'm set up completely and i can knock it out okay exeggutor does no hypnosis it also knows stomp and barrage i think you can hit it oh that really didn't do very much if it hypnosis is me i lose i think yeah good it's uh luckily the uh stomps and barrages are doing very little because of my setup i just got to be careful okay come on come on come on stop stop barrage wake up why does it always take so long to wake up from executor's hypnosis this thing is like so good at it i swear there we go okay i'm gonna heal again if it it's gonna crit at some point yeah it's slow but it's gonna crit okay i crit first okay and then it misses hypnosis so that's good arcanine will be a one hit for sure and now venusaur is gonna be brutal it's neutral though against me because i have poison type surf does like nothing sleep powder sunlight okay that's a that's solar beam okay well i live that and the crit razor leaf does so much i wake up okay i can't if if it didn't use solar and use razer leaf there i was dead but it used solar beam gave me the chance to heal another solar beam gives me the chance to heal again um what does it need to do i guess miss that helps get more damage in okay took in sunlight i can survive that if it doesn't crit surf solar beam no crit rest oh tried for sleep powder when i was already asleep okay solar beam is gonna hit me but i've woken up so if it's solar beams it would be ideal solar beam ah razor leaf that's not good um the gyarados is next it's got hyper beam but my defense is like really buff so i should be okay he also doesn't i don't think he has good ai so maybe he does now that he's only using hyper beam just please don't crit please don't crit to please don't let this end with a crit i really don't want this to end with a crit there are too many crits earlier on please okay come on come on come on come on yes okay tentacle does it second oak fight we got this you

Channel: Scott's Thoughts

Views: 85,994

Keywords: Pokemon Challenge, Pokemon Yellow

Id: deeQEUlZA64

Length: 58min 11sec (3491 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 19 2022