The Legendary Birds - Pokemon Yellow Solo Challenge Race

in this video I'm going to figure out which legendary bird is best for a solo playthrough of Pokémon Yellow playthrough rules can be found in the description this is the season finale of my Pokémon Yellow series and it will be the last generation 1 video of the year it'll start up again in February so stay tuned for that now let's talk about the legendary birds I find it surprising that in Generation 1 these three don't share a base stat total starting in generation 2 they do so generation one is the only time where this is true of course their names are based on Spanish numbers and the basat totals reflect to this Articuno has the lowest basat total Zapdos is right in the middle and Moltres has the highest I'm going to start examining these playthroughs sequentially so Articuno of course is up first for base stats it has 90 HP 855 Attack 100 defense 125 special and 85 speed this gives it a 16.41% chance to crit all three of them have the slow growth rate but I think they're stats will make up for this disadvantage due to their typings they don't have very expansive move pools Articuno has a fantastic starting set of PEC and Ice Beam and then through level up it gets blizzard agility and Mist through TM andhm it learns bubble beam water gun Ice Beam blizzard Swift Sky attack rest and fly having Ice Beam Brock is going to be quite simple so I don't need to do any optional battles in vidiian Forest defeating the mandatory bug catcher levels Articuno up to six and then I headed into pwer City to face the first gym [Music] leader Geodude is first and it has very low speed so Articuno moves first and Ice Beam takes it out the experience levels Articuno up to seven but this isn't enough to outspeed the Onyx it starts things off with tackle but just misses and then ice beam one shots so that was an extremely easy first gym and Articuno gets an initial split of 3 minutes and 11 seconds normally when I structure these versus videos I always switch to the next Pokémon after the previous one has got its first split I think this is the best way to introduce Pokémon at the beginning of a video like this go through all their base stats and get a sense for how they're going to do in the playthrough but Articuno crushed Brock so quickly let's continue with it until it defeats Misty on Route three I face the first bug catcher and during this fight I want to do a back Sprite review I'm connected to this one by intense Nostalgia because Articuno really did a lot of work in my very first playthrough of Pokémon Yellow which by the way was my first ever Pokémon game despite having looked at this thing for hundreds of hours I never noticed the one janky black pixel on the right hand side that extends one row down when I was filming this video I actually had to go online and look up if this has always been the case and yeah that little pixel has always been there this doesn't entirely ruin the back Sprite for me but it's the only thing that I look at every time I see it now by the way if you you can't unsee this I am not sorry I don't want to jump the gun but these back Sprites are only going to go downhill from here so this is about as good as it gets in this video in Mount Moon I pick up the TM for water gun and teach it to Articuno right away throughout the rest of the cave I only fight one optional trainer the hiker with three Rock ground Pokémon after that I fa the two mandatory trainers at the end of the cave they are very easy for Articuno to defeat even though it's only level 13 and then eventually 14 by the time it's defeating Jesse and James next is Cilan City and here there's always a choice that the player has to make are you going to face Misty right away or take on the Rival on nugget bridge I think for Articuno since it is fairly underleveled the Rival makes more sense plus 34 speed is very ideal for this fight because his lead speo has 33 because my legendary outs speeds Ice Beam one shots and of course it also takes out the sandrew so I don't have to worry about sand attack the ice type continues rolling his team one-shotting the ratata but the Eevee does survive it gets a crit with tackle but it doesn't do very much and Articuno knocks out his Ace things are going as I expected them to very easily when I sat down to start filming this video I expected that Articuno was going to perform the best that's because when I was a kid I used to use it almost exclusively to defeat the entire Elite 4 the only exception to that is lorai because ice type moves are not very good against her water ice types the ice type is just so fantastic offensively in generation one especially because here fire types do not resist it one downside to having Ice Beam as my primary damage dealing move is the fact that it only has 10 PP that said as I journey through most routes I'm going to pick up restoring items and I can use these to just keep going so I don't have to backtrack to any Pokemon centers with nugget bridge and Route 25 complete I go into mti's gym defeat the junior trainer and now it's time for the second gym leader if you're new to my videos you can look in the top left to see the effective power of all of my moves this is calculated using the movees base power as well as the same type attack bonus and then the type Effectiveness between that move and the opponent's current Pokémon this is not the same as how much damage a move will do but it's a good way to get an estimate for which move choice is the best very counterintuitively here Ice Beam is going to be doing the most damage when compared with PEC the first turn it's in Battle misy Star me hits a bubble beam which actually does surprising damage it made me really want to get a freeze with Ice Beam but I don't however the star me just uses tackle and water gun which isn't enough to finish Articuno off it gets a second split of 10 minutes and 17 seconds its first split was very fast and its second one is quite respectable but Zapdos on the other hand might struggle with Brock for base stats it has 90 HP 90 attack 85 defense 125 special and 100 speed if you remember articuno's base stats it had 85 in two of its values but zaptos has 90 in two of its values so it has five more base stats in total also due to its higher speed stat it has a 19.53% chance to crit the real downside for this thing comes in the form of its move pool because it starts with thundershock and drill peek now drill peek is a great move but it is resisted by Brock's Pokémon and Thunders shock can't do anything to them through level up it learns Thunder agility and light screen and through TM and hm it gets basically the same moves as Articuno without the water and ice Moves In dead having electric moves that said this electric type has several advantages especially when compared with other electric types in generation one first it is the only dual type electric Pokemon in the entire game and the addition of the flying type means that it takes no damage from ground type moves this is such an advantage I cannot understate it we're going to talk about it a lot more as the playthrough progresses second it starts with drill peek giving it really good damage against all of the bugs in the for forest and third its crit rate which is roughly 1 in five is hopefully going to give me some really big hits against Brock's Rock Pokemon in order to train for him I fight all four bug catchers in the forest bringing zaptos up to level 9 because of how the Pokemon damage calculation works it is far more advantageous to face Brock at level 10 so I'm also going to face the junior trainer in his gym drill peek is able to on-shot the Diglett and it takes unfortunately three hits to knock out the sandrew but it does give enough experience to get to level 10 so now let's see how Brock goes I'm hoping that I'm going to knock the Jude out and preserve a decent amount of Zapdos Health right away a crit occurs which does more than onethird in damage geodude's tackles are doing four damage to Zapdos per turn my next drill Peck takes it to Orange health and then I get a second crit knocking it out in only three turns I still have green Health remaining for the Onyx this is exactly what I was hoping for Zapdos critical hit spree continued on both turn one and turn two against the Onyx I get one and then it goes for B if I attack into this and the crits continue Zapdos will be knocked out but luckily I have thunder shock since it does nothing to the Onyx I can just buy time after all zaptos is faster so I can do this whenever it chooses B when Onyx unleashes absolutely no energy then I can return to using Drill Pack still I'm not out of the woods yet because Onyx is lowering my defense with Screech when it hits with bind it is doing four damage per hit luckily this only lasts three turns but its next tackle takes Zapdos down to 12 hit points drill pick chips away taking the otic down to red and it uses one more tackle but zapto survives with three hit points and finishes Brock off with a critical hit the electric type gets a first split of 4 minutes and 10 seconds this result is so much better than I was expecting maybe just maybe Zapdos is going to put up a fight against artic Kuno on Route three I fight the minimum number of Pokémon which includes fighting this last walking back to Peter City to reset her position and then fighting the bug catcher in Mount moon I grab the rare candy and then I fight the bug catcher as well as the last that is just North of him because they're both very fast experience for Zapdos when it's using drill peek this is my first playthrough with Zapdos and if you're a new viewer to the channel you won't know that I'm going to do a followup playthrough later to get more accurate results whenever I'm exploring the game for the first time I tend to play over safe just so I don't get stuck somewhere and lose a lot of real time resetting over and over with electric types specifically there are a lot of moments where you can just get completely walled and so I am playing fairly tentative with this legendary bird you can see that once I reach Cerulean City inside of Misty's gym I face the junior trainer and then I backtrack and face the swimmer as well for a little bit of additional experience remembering that the electric type does not resist water type moves I even backed out of the gym all together and fought the Rival on nugget Bridge before Misty against his Spearow I go for drill peek because it has slightly lower physical defense when compared with its special and thundershock and drill peek have the same effective power sandrew could be very annoying with sand attack by the way in generation one this is a normal type move but even in generation 2 and on when it gets the ground type it can still hit flying Pokémon luckily I only get hit by scratch so no accuracy drops for this fight drill pek one hits the ratata and two hits the following eeve I continue to the end of nugget Bridge picking up my hm user Charmander as well as tm45 which is Thunder Wave and I do teach it to Zapdos just in case I need the status move I think it's also worth bringing up this hiker because he has a Geodude and fighting rock type Pokemon initially seemed like it would really slow Zapdos down but drill peek is doing roughly a third to the Geodude before it sets up defense curl also because of my high crit rate sometimes I'll bypass stat changes so I end up knocking out the Geodude in three turns anyway okay it's time to face Misty I put this one off far too long against the Staryu I use Thunders shock and I get a one hit next is star me because I'm playing overly safe I use Thunder Wave to paralyze it after all these two were speed tied but with the status condition I'll always be moving first my first thundershock does half without a critical hit so I definitely should have just attacked right away and with that Zapdos clocks in with its second split of 11 minutes and 23 seconds that's a a little bit slower than Articuno and I think that's mostly because of my overly cautious approach and the fact that Zapdos was slower coming out of Brock okay so it is time to introduce the last of the three legendary birds this one is the final one you obtain when doing a regular playthrough and as such it has the highest base stat total earlier in the month I did a match which was very similar to this Jinx vers Electabuzz vers Magmar and in that video the fire type was able to achieve the fastest result in the middle of the month I did Raichu vers ente vers suun and once again in that video the fire type got the best result so today things are looking very good for moles I don't have a lot of fond memories of this thing because I usually just boxed it whenever I was playing the game but I don't know why because it's honestly fantastic for base stats it has 90 HP and defense 100 attack 125 special and 90 speed giving it a 17.58% chance to crit of the three legendary birds this is the highest base stat total but also the best distribution of stats you really don't need zaptos speed or articuno's defense having higher offensive stats means more one hits and that means less time like zaptos the fire type when paired with the flying type eliminates one of its weaknesses which is to ground type Pokémon it's also worth noting that since Brock is the first gym leader and none of his Pokémon have rock moves moles is double weakness is not going to be tested that much throughout this run for a move pool it starts with Peck and flamethrower and then learns Lear agility and Sky attack it has the most limited TM and hm set because flamethrower is not a TM in this game but it can still earn fire blast just in case I need a little bit more fire type damage even though Brock's Pokemon resist flamethrower it's going to do so much damage to them because they all have really low special stats so on minimum battles at level six I face the first gym leader is is this what you were expecting from a legendary fire type Pokémon um yeah because this isn't Moltres it starts with PEC and fire Spin and has no way of learning flamethrower well unless you trade your Moltres to a crystal version player and then they use the move tutor to teach it flamethrower and then it gets traded back in the past I've got comments saying this isn't possible because the game checks to see if Moltres can learn flamethrower but no that's not how it works it just checks for moves that didn't exist in generation one usually it goes without saying in my generation one challenges but trading my Pokemon to a different game and then receiving them back with some kind of upgrade is not allowed so moles doesn't get flamethrower it's going to have to rely on fire Spin and believe me this move is really awful it has 70% accuracy and 15 base power that said trapping moves are quite good in Generation 1 because the opponent is unable to move while they run their course provided the user is faster than the target it may be the case that you can chain this move infinitely if you watched my Arbok versus wheezing versus Muk video you will have seen me utilize wrap in this way to great effect with the poison type snake I was also able to use it with Tentacruel to great effect and then in my Charmander video I completely rode off fire spin as just a trash move and some people commented that I really shouldn't be after all I was using wrap isn't fire spin just the same with a little bit less accuracy and the answer is no that is really not how odds work to really understand this let's do a little bit of math in one scenario the Pokemon is going to be using fire spin with a 70% accuracy in the second scenario the Pokemon will be using clamp with 75% accuracy and in the third scenario the Pokemon is using WP with 85% accuracy for the purpose of understanding let's say each one of these moves requires 10 hits to knock out its Target and if the target has a chance to move the user will faint what is the chance that fire spin has to hit 10 times in a row well it is a 2.82% chance clamp is slightly better with a 5.63% chance but wrap is fundamentally different it has a 19.69 per chance to hit all 10 times in a row this table shows all of the numbers from turns one all the way to 10 and I hope you can see just how much more consistent wrap ends up being this is why I didn't want to use it with Charmander but unfortunately today with Moltres yes I am going to have to because the first new move that I'll be able to learn is technically B but the first useful new move I can learn is rest on the SSN the first decent damage dealing move that I can get is Swift just after Rock Tunnel and then I am probably going to want to teach fly despite its 95% accuracy I have recently learned that fly is better starting in generation 4 but in this game it only has 70 base power you might think that it would be better to just use PEC because it's going to hit every single turn but that really isn't the case fly is going to be getting more one hits which means less damage taken by molr and it's also exposed to fewer status conditions this is incredibly important for a solo challenge especially when the opponent's team counts start to get to four and five for Moltres I take nearly the same path that I did with Zapdos training to level 9 by the time I reach pter city Moltres has exactly 24 speed so I figured I would be fine against Brock because I'm going to move first against both of his Pokémon okay fire spin please do not let me down and turn one it hits I have to chain this move to knock out both of his Pokémon notably this is the only fire type damage dealing move in the game that cannot inflict a burn while we watch Moltres Whittle away at the Geodude let's talk about this back Sprite articunos had one bad pixel but I think everything in this one is just bad the beak doesn't look really right its head shape is oddly round the hair that is supposed to be fire on its head looks so awful and then it has these two little chicken wings down at the bottom I think this might be my least favorite back Sprite in the entire game it really doesn't communicate that moles is an intimidating legendary Pokemon and I guess that's fitting I surprisingly don't have that many misses with fire Spin and Moltres clocks in with a first split of 4 minutes and 3 seconds so the fire type was faster than the electric type but uh that's going to stop because Misty is coming up next on Route three I fight the bug catcher who has four Pokemon this is the best experience yields that I can get here while still doing minimum battles in Mount Moon I faced three optional trainers the super nerd the bug catcher as well as the last when defeating jessan james' Pokemon molus levels up to 16 I'm keeping my eye on its speed stat because I'm going to need 57 in order to move first against misy star me of course it makes sense to face the Rival next I'm going to use fire spin on the speo just to hopefully prevent it from using growl same scenario for the sandre I really want to avoid sand attack so fire spin is the go-to here luckily for me I get a critical hit and in generation one multi-turn and multi- hit moves deal the same damage across all of their hits so molas takes out the ground type in only one turn from there the fight gets much easier so let's proceed with nugget bridge I want to mention this last yes I'm starting to have to talk about random trainers she could be problematic because her first Pidgey knows sand attack and and I am not able to one hit it in this run she isn't an issue at the end of the bridge there is a rocket and uh the ekins traps me in wrap wasting some time then the Zubat uses supersonic luckily molus doesn't hit itself and I get through this fight as well with Articuno and Zapdos they were just one hitting everything here so molus is fundamentally different I once again get a critical hit against the hiker and this is helpful to knock his geodo out quickly using fire spin okay so now it is time to head back to seruan city after completing Bill's house and now mol's speed is 49 that's not enough to trap misti's star me so I think I need to head to Vermilion City now in my way is the innocent bystander rocket and his drowsy puts Moltres to sleep which is really annoying luckily as a legendary I have a lot of health and good special so its most potent attack confusion isn't doing very much following him I have to take on Sandy and Moltres is exposed to a small amount of risk here because peek is not able to one hit her Birds without a critical hit on the San and I fight the Sailor so that I can grab the TM for rest and then I go up against the Rival again this fight is rarely a challenge so today let's just check in with mol's speed it's 54 upon defeating his Eevee I gained enough experience to get to level 23 and I have 56 speed now one shy of the outspeed on the star me that said a speed tie is much better than an UND speed I didn't want to waste time training now after all moles is already falling behind so with the ship to started I head back to diglett's tunnel and dig to Cerulean City okay I'm probably rushing here but let's see how my fight against Misty [Music] went staru is first I didn't want to waste time here so I just knock it out using PEC twice water gun really didn't do that much next is star me and now I think it is time to use fire spin I'm just hoping for the outspeeds here first turn I get it and then on the second turn Mist to uses an X defend so once again I get to do damage for free but on the third turn this all reverses because the star me moves first hitting bubble beam taking molus down to half Health fire spin hits taking it to a similar amount I outp spe but miss on the next turn and bubble beam once again connects this time getting a speed drop now star me is faster it moves first with bubble beam and moles faints I think I should have trained to 24 that would have been far more consistent but instead I come back and try again this time against the star me to minimize the misses I go for PE dealing decent damage by the time I get it to low health I switched to using fire spin which is probably not a good choice however Mist to used the next defend so that's perfect and fire spin is able to trap it and moles takes the win it gets a second split of 16 minutes and 47 seconds the data is all lining up with my prediction Articuno is in first Zapdos in second and Moltres in third oh that's not nice their ranks are the numbers they're based on outside of ceran City I have to face the wrapping lass luckily with Moltres peek is doing enough damage to knock out both the Oddish and the Bellsprout in one hit inside Rock Tunnel I have to go up against a Cubone this Pokemon is very annoying because it has high defense that said it can't hit me with any powerful moves so I'm not worried about it the Slowpoke is also slow to knock out but it can only damage me with confusion it doesn't have any water type moves and that brings us all the way to the self-destructing hiker for this battle I'm going to teach Moltres rest because I need a way to counter self-destruct and that is not the only problem with this battle because these three rock types do no rock throw there are just so many ways this fight can go wrong I really have to hope for good fire spin luck and I get it right away because it crits taking the judu down to Orange health and then my next one hits knocking it out okay that's a really good start fire spin continues to connect taking the second Geodude down so I've made it to his Ace graler the fire chicken continues to come through getting a critical hit early on it lasts for three hits but then I miss and gral uses self-destruct by the way this slow rock type gets a critical hit dealing massive damage to Moltres but the legendary hangs on so I have cleared the most intimidating trainer in Rock Tunnel well uh I don't have any healing items left over and I still have to defeat one mandatory trainer when my software records splits for her it's always labeled as the finishing Junior trainer and that's specifically because when I was a kid she would always polish me off when my Pokémon were bruised from the rest of the tunnel that's exactly the scenario Moltres is facing her in I have 24 Health peek doesn't one hit the Meowth and it uses growl lowering my attack okay please knock out the odish in one hit and I don't I was so worried it was going to use sleep powder or stuns for but it just goes for absorb and I finish it on the next turn but there still is a Pidgey left over it survives with half health and uses sand attack then it starts dealing damage with quick attack my Peck misses not once but twice I get hit by gust to 11 hit points and quick attack down to five okay this Peck has to come through for me and it does okay so moles has made it through the tunnel and into Lavender Town I really dislike healing here because I want to set my Waypoint to sell it on City so I have to heal there anyways but with Moltres this beat up I think I need to with my terrible legendaries Health restored I go south of the town talk to this girl in the guardhouse and get myself the TM for Swift finally a decently reliable move that moles can spam in Celadon City I start by grabbing PP UPS these are going to be very important for this run exploring the rocket Hideout gives me access to a second one and I'm also going to pick up all of the high-priced items this is also going to be important later on the biggest reward for this location of course is the rare candy in the department store I sell a bunch of items and I'm just going to keep all of this money and not buy any any vitamins with moles today additionally I traded in all of the beverages so that I could sell those TMS for even more money outside of the city I pick up the HM for fly and then I teach it to Moltres right away in the place of PEC of course I can't use it outside of battle yet because I don't have Serge's badge I didn't want to chance fire spin against him and I thought using Swift would be far more reliable so after backtracking through the middle of the map let's take on what is usually the most underwhelming gym leader in all of Kanto [Music] he's only got one Pokemon it's Ru but it does no Thunderbolt Moltres uses Swift which does about a third and the electric type does choose its best move and it does half if it uses it again Moltres is going to lose however it goes for Mega kick and misses and that was exactly what Moltres needed I filmed these first playthroughs with the birds in August and as a result my midgame training is not really optimized here however this does give me a chance to mention something which I think is very funny in Erica's gym you have to be very careful with Moltres if you want to train because fire Spin and fly can both Miss and you're probably not going to be using Swift in the case that Moltres misses gets paralyzed and the opponent's Pokemon only has WP as a damage dealing move they will just Spam this move over and over again and have a chance to knock you out there are four trainers where this can happen but only three of them are fought by Moltres in this run of them I want to draw special attention to the cool trainer in the center just because I regularly do face her because she has extremely good experience yields so when I'm doing follow-up playthroughs there will be a little bit of risk here with that out of the way let's take on Erica I don't expect molus to have any problems here just because of its typing Erica's tangla is only going to use constrict and bind and the Weeping Bell and Gloom are both going to be stuck with acid that is if they ever get to attack because as long as fly is hitting I am going to be getting one hits the Weeping Bell goes down Gloom comes in I use fly it doesn't miss and with that Moltres has earned itself its fourth badge it did this in a time of 27 minutes and 41 seconds now I definitely would understand if you thought this is a decent result for the fire type but when compared with Articuno it is night and day right after defeating Misty I earned the TM for bubble beam which I teach right away then outside of suran City while I fight the rocket I try to cheat by opening my inventory every time I do this my heart almost stops it has happened in the past where I've used a potion and had to start the run all over again of course Sandy is not a problem I have Ice Beam for her flying types that leads Articuno to the ssan here to be safe I am going to pick up the TM for rest I get a lucky freeze against the sailor's tentacle speeding the fight up just a little bit after all it can delay me using the move wrap the other item that I want to pick up is the rare candy and it's walled off by this gentleman and his two fire types but with bubble beam Articuno has super effective damage against both of these Pokémon I'm going to let the whole battle against the Rival play out because I want you to see how dominant this legendary is I'm not significantly overleveled and access to Ice Beam early on means I'm going to one hit everything even in the case that I need to use bubble beam it's still super effective against the sandrew and I'm sure it would have knocked out his other Pokemon now while Articuno has been smashing its way through this section of the game up next is Serge and technically it is weak to him and it's also five level under his Raichu in this case I just want to avoid Critical Hits and Thunderbolts Raichu moves first hitting Mega Punch it does about a fifth and Ice Beam does half but then the electric type uses its same type move Articuno hangs on with six hit points because of the damage I did last turn I figured I was about to win but no the mouse survives with a sliver of Health chooses Thunderbolt again and Articuno has its first reset Okay Legendary Pokémon losing to Surge that that feels really bad of course I'm just going to try this again because eventually Serge is going to drop the ball Ice Beam does the same amount on turn one and ah Raichu goes for Thunderbolt are you kidding me luckily it doesn't get a critical hit or inflict paralysis so Articuno gets another chance to attack and this ice beam crits I'm hoping that is the last reset to an embarrassingly bad trainer in this video because I really value being thorough in these videos the next trainer is the wrapping lass and obviously AR Kuno has no problems here so much so that I was confident going into the battle without healing the ice type continues its dominant performance in Rock Tunnel one-shotting slow bones cuone and then things slow down a little bit against the Slowpoke I tried PE but it's doing so little ice beam is actually the better go-to here unfortunately slowpoke disables it that means I have to go back to the weaker flying move but luckily Articuno gets a critical hit so the Slowpoke doesn't survive next is the first m atory battle with Pokémon that have rock type moves I think there might be the possibility to get a reset here if you gen one miss attacking any of his Pokemon but barring that Articuno is going to be solid solid ice that is because it's definitely not going to get smashed by these rocks in the game corner I grab the rare candy this is important for slow growth rate Pokémon and then I teach Articuno fly in the place of PEC because of its typing it's not going to have any problems against grass type Pokémon so I'm going to go into the cell on gym next I felt getting to Erica as fast as possible was the priority so I fight only the trainer with execute and then I'm ready okay so let's see if Erica's grass types are all one shots I think they're going to be ice beam crits the Tanga okay that's good weeping Bells next Ice Beam knocks it out and the Gloom is exactly the same okay so remember moles is 27 minute and 41 second Erica split yeah Articuno crushes it with a time of 19 minutes and 53 seconds and that is even with the one unfortunate reset against surge so will the rankings remain unchanged and Zapdos get a time between these two I think so south of seruan City I take on Sandy her team is very easy because I have thunders shock on the ssan defeating the Sailor to obtain rest is simple once again because of electric type attacks drill peek is Zapdos is Big advantage over the other two legendaries and it really comes through against a bunch of other Pokémon specifically the gentleman's entire team and then against the Rival I was fairly sure his sandre was going to survive a single hit but nope Zapdos just gets a critical hit this thing is on an absolute tear when compared with the other two legendaries it is the only one that takes neutral damage from Serge is Raichu that said it just barely doesn't have enough speed to move first which I find infinitely frustrating also the Raichu crits right away with Mega Punch and that's not good because I was playing passively cutting its speed with Thunder Wave I thought this was the correct choice because both drill peek and thundershock are resisted with half damage drill peek is only doing about a quarter Zapdos gets hit by a second Mega Punch taking it to Orange health and I'm not sure I will survive a third luckily for me its high base speed comes through giving Zapdos a critical hit which takes Raichu to Orange that said Serge's AI is playing very well it goes for another Mega Punch and Zapdos hangs on with six health so that's it it's one I really narrowly dodged a second reset to Surge the prize for defeating him is the TM for Thunderbolt which of course I'm going to teach to Zapdos now the unfortunate thing is electric moves don't really help throughout much of the mid game in Pokémon Yellow you can see that here as I face the wrapping lass of course Thunderbolt isn't useful here it's very good that Zapdos has drill Peck once I'm inside the tunnel the same thing is true against the pokemaniac with his Cubone but luckily I can use Thunderbolt against his Slowpoke for an easy one hit it's really nice when that thing isn't a chore to knockout okay now I'm sure some of you are thinking ahead and have realized that the self-destructing hiker has the potential to be absolutely awful his entire team has super effective damage with rock throw and my electric moves cannot damage them because Generation 1 is very janky I sometimes get asked if Thunder Wave can paralyze ground types and it can't unfortunately so the only move zaptos currently has against his entire team is drill peek and that is just not good enough for me the solution is fairly simple I'm just going to teach Zapdos rest in the place of thundershock in this case whenever one of his rock types self-destructs I can just heal and then continue with the fight also it is worth noting that drill peek is doing decent damage and I knock out the first Geodude in only three hits plus its rock throw really didn't do very much this fight would be significantly harder if I had Articuno typing and Zapdos move set but of course that wouldn't make any sense I make it to his final graler and I don't want to deplete my drill PCS because they'll be useful against the next trainer in the tunnel so instead I use rest graler blows itself up and with that Zapdos has made it through the tunnel in The Hideout I pick up the rare candy and then I buy two calciums for Zapdos in the department store following that I obtain the HM for fly and as I go up against the Rival in Pokémon Tower I want to talk about the damage dealing flying moves in Generation 1 if you didn't already know these moves are kind of strange so let's go through them first of all there are the moves that sound like they should be the flying type but they aren't that razor wind and Whirlwind these ones are still normal by the way so game freak never changed them on the other hand a move like gust is normal in generation one but was made flying in generation 2 the first damage dealing move that most flying Pokemon get is PEC which has base power of 35 this is really strange because wing attack also has 35 base power this comparison is increasingly perplexing because they both have the same PP and no secondary effects so these two moves are identical I think this context clearly explains why the developers opt Wing attack's base power to be 60 in generation 2 there is one flying type status move which is mirror move and then there are three other flying type attacks that deal damage fly which has a base power of 70 and an accuracy of 95 drill PEC with base power 80 and accuracy 100 and Sky attack with 140 base power and 90% accuracy these three moves are really strange when considered together fly has the downside of taking two turns and a chance to miss but drill peek just has the better base power to me it would seem more balanced if drill peek had base 70 power and fly had base 80 power and it seems the developers agreed with me at least later on because in generation 4 fly's base power was increased from 70 to 90 now I have received some comments in the past telling me that I should use Sky attack because it has an increased critical hit chance and in generation one it does not have a secondary effect outside of the fact that it takes a turn to charge and this is not an invulnerable turn to charge like fly this is just a turn where your Pokemon can be attacked so let's say I use fly two times in a row and my Pokemon is moving first if that's the scenario I'm in fly will deal 140 base power of damage to the opponent and I will take one turn of damage provided I knock the enemy out with Sky attack it is the exact same scenario I guess it's nice that the damage takes place over fewer turns but that's not really a major advantage when the move only has 5 PP plus over the same number of turns drill Peck would inflict more damage but for the two Pokemon that are going to be using fly in these playthroughs Articuno and Moltres it's also not an option to use Sky attack because there is no move deleter so I can't even remove Fly later into the playthrough when I want to switch to Sky attack plus fly has the chance to knock the opponent out in a single hit without taking damage whereas Sky attack always leaves you vulnerable for one turn I hope I have explained that clearly and everyone understands why sky attack is not a good option I thought that would be a little bit quicker so we've been watching a lot of B- roll right now from Zapdos let's get back into the playthrough and I'll try to be a little bit more concise on cycling Road I fight no optional trainers and then after the Safari Zone I go to Erica's gym like Articuno I fight only the execute trainer and then the gym leader herself I was expecting drill pee to just sweep her team but the Tanga survives and uses constrict no speed drop though so I knock it out move on to the Weeping Bell and this time Zapdos gets the one hit he continues against the Gloom and so the electric type gets a fourth split of 24 minutes and 39 seconds here are the splits from the first four Gym Leaders the rankings have not changed that said I think articuno's time is a little bit artificially low because it didn't do Pokémon Tower or the Safari Zone yet and Zapdos did in the next SE of Pokémon Yellow I don't like to compare splits because the paths can be wildly different the next split that we'll compare is against Giovani and uh I am very worried about Zapdos chances against him but before then there's a lot to do so let's go to Sil of course I'm going to fight the guy with the Machoke to get the rare candy but I accidentally run into a guy with two cubones after that I fight two more trainers and then I figured it was time for Zapdos to use rare candies six take me up from level 30 32 to 38 and then I face the Rival I know the drill peack is going to take a while to knock the sand slash out I'm just hoping it doesn't go for sand attack and of course it does on the very first turn hopefully it doesn't poison me luckily it doesn't but it does slash doing a decent amount of damage and then I miss it goes for sand attack luckily it misses this time and then I finish it off obviously the cloer is a onot with Thunderbolt and then against Magneton I don't really have a good option that's it it isn't going to use electric type attacks against me because I'm an electric type I can take my time with rest and then slowly knock it out using drill pck unless accuracy is my downfall because I run out of drill peek PP on the Magneton and have to finish it with Thunderbolt luckily it was at low red health so it only takes one I miss first turn against the Kadabra it uses sbeam but it doesn't do that much even when it gets a critical hit once Zapdos wakes up I can use Thunderbolt to knock out the psychic type and the following Flareon goes down into only two hits with only one miss against it that battle was honestly quite slow and so is the one against Giovani because Zapdos is only option against the ryhorn is using drill peek if you think this is a bad Omen for what's coming in the final battle against Giovani don't worry there are other options available there with giovan's Neo Queen out of the way I can move on with my playthrough in this case going to fuchsia City because I think Kaa is going to be quite easy for [Music] Zapdos [Music] Drill Pack is going to want hit all the venats right well let's see the first one goes down to a single critical hit okay that's not a great test the second one Falls to a regular hit and so does the third one all right that's perfect my electric type outspeeds the venomoth but it survives on a sliver of Health luckily the ground type doesn't get a chance to attack because Koga uses an X attack by the way if you're a new viewer welcome to the channel I'm I'm sure you're writing a comment right about now with Koga finished I now have access to Surf outside a battle and I'm going to head south of Pallet Town just a visual warning we're going to go into cinear mansion and the tiles here are very jarring to look at I'm showing this footage for a purpose in this video though and that's because Zapdos is only level 41 by the time I reach the basement floor I can now run into encounters specifically against level 41 Muk level 43 radicate and 46 radicate whenever a wild Pokémon shows up it is a a frustrating small delay for the Pokémon that I'm running there's no way to prevent this because repels only block Pokémon under your lead's current level in my follow-up playthroughs I turn off encounters to normalize RNG in certain locations but I won't be doing that here or in the Safari Zone because these wild encounters are related to the Pokémon that I'm using with the Mansion done and dusted I think Zapdos should face Blain next this fight often causes problems even with Pokémon that shouldn't have an issue with him that said things go very well for Zapdos against the Ninetails it doesn't get burned doesn't have its defense lowered and it doesn't get confused Rapidash is by far Blaine's weakest Pokemon Zapdos gets a critical hit with Thunderbolt it survives on a sliver and Blaine uses his signature super potion honestly I don't see these very much in Pokemon yellow so it's kind of refreshing I knock the Flaming horse out on the next turn and move on to his Ace Arcanine I was a bit worried after Thunderbolt does less than half also takedown is doing quite a bit that's said Zapdos is next hit crits and Arcanine faints so Blaine's done that was actually very easy I dig go to the cinear gym and head back to Saffron City my next stop is going to be copycats house because I want to pick up the TM for mimic I think this is going to be critical for Zapdos success before going to the saffron gym I stop by the fighting Dojo because I want to take on all of the trainers here to gain levels this is so that I can boost Zapdos speed and hopefully be faster than Sabrina's Alakazam when the legendary levels up to 44 it has exactly 135 speed which is two more than her Alakazam so this fight should be really straightforward I do expect her final psychic type Pokemon to survive in this case it does it uses recover then she uses an X defend and drill peek knocks it out zaptos now has seven Badges and I need to prepare for Giovani to do this I fly back to seladon city to pick up a TM for reflect you'll notice that I'm buying more than one the reason is I thought I might have to unlearn the move and then teach it again later it's not really relevant for this playthrough I was just trying to be safe in that spirit I go to the fifth floor and buy more vitamins okay so it's time to head into the vidiian City gym I'm going to save before the first trainer after all he has a ryhorn Drill Pack doesn't take that long to knock it out then I move on to the next trainer who has three fighting types as I'm defeating them Zapdos levels up to 45 and now I think it's time to face Giovani well at least for Zapdos the other two need to catch up so let's check in with Moltres yes I am just going to leave you hanging there it's called dramatic tension in comparison to Zapdos Moltres feels incredibly slow for instance against the rival in Pokemon Tower's shelder it is spamming withdraw and I'm using fly to knock it out which takes quite a while I decide to not give it more turns to set up and use Swift instead but it hangs on taking one more turn to finish H Moltres really isn't that good I do want to mention that I think the developers thought that fire spin was the best fire type move other than fire blast my supporting evidence here is the fact that Moltres starts with it and it's Charizard's last level up move and yes trapping moves are very good but they're also very slow so in speeduns they're really not what you want to be doing either way Moltres has good stats and it's eventually able to get the job done with fly it doesn't have any problems against any of the Chandler and Pokemon Tower and now let's talk about items I'm going to pick up the HP up not so I have more health I want to sell this I'm also going to grab a nug and then in the Safari Zone I'm going to continue picking up high-priced items once I'm finished with this area I'm going to sell a bunch of these and I'm watching my money specifically because I'm looking for 110,000 polka dollars after selling everything I top out just over 990,000 so I'm going to need to pick up some more items luckily for me there are a bunch in Sil a caros the earthquake TM calcium protein and the takedown TM selling all of these gives me the money I need so I head back to to sell it on City and pick up the coin case now is everyone ready for things to really slow down yeah I have to buy coins in the game Corner 50 at a time it seems like in generation one the developers thought you would only need to buy a few coins from this guy and then eventually you would just gamble and earn enough to buy the prizes but really that is not realistic I remember as a kid spamming this dialogue so much trying to buy a Porygon it took forever and even on four times game speed in these challenges it still takes a long time the reason I'm doing this is because I want 5,500 coins and with them I can purchase myself the TM for hyperbeam after all in generation one this move is broken because if you knock the opponent's Pokemon out you don't have to recharge with molus as limited learn set going into this first playthrough I thought this powerful normal type move was its best option for success I think it's important to get an accurate sense for how much time it's going to cost me in order to get this move so here's the breakdown of everything that was required in order to do this number one I had to pick up a bunch of high-priced items that I didn't need to pick up number two I had to sell these items so that my bag doesn't fill up after all in Generation 1 you only have 20 inventory spots for all different kinds of items number three the time spent picking up the coin case number four the time spent purchasing all the coins number five the time spent moving between all of these Overworld locations and number six the time spent purchasing the TM and teaching it to moles I went through the run and cut out every segment that is one of these categories I did it as Fram perfectly as possible and so here is a summary of my time investment I do want to note that I didn't include things that I would have regularly done in a playthrough so like selling items in the department store the first time I arrived there that was going to happen anyways it doesn't really count towards This Time by the way while editing this video I realized there are two more categories both of which are symptoms of the fact that your inventory is just so full so number one you will have to spend time dropping items and number two you will have to spend time depositing key items in the PC to free up more space the total time required to do all of these things and get hyperbeam in this run was 5 minutes 42 seconds and 53 frames so let's see if this major investment pays off before continuing I fight some trainers in Sil to level Moltres up to 36 before I take on the Rival sand slashes first I go for fly and it does un inspiring damage I try hyperv but it just misses and then when I do use it it doesn't get close to knocking out so I have to recharge and yeah I take a lot of damage before I even move on to the Closter at this moment I couldn't decide between rest and fire spin because fire spin is going to stack up the poison damage really quickly I didn't get to do much damage I try for hyperbeam maybe I would get a crit but I don't and Aurora beam finishes Moltres off okay I think I should use rare candies this might make the late game more difficult but I need a solution for the Rival now with four I am level 40 and now I can two hit the sand slash using fly into hyperbeam against the Closter I can fire spin it down to lowish health and then polish it off using fly well that is if I don't just miss and take an aurora beam luckily eventually I hit and it does go down next is Magneton I'm going to repeat the fire spin strategy here but it just keeps missing twice before it finally hits and I take out the electric type the final two Pokemon are going to be a lot easier hyperbeam one hits the Kadabra and it also does on the Flareon I wasn't expecting that the rifle was fairly challenging but Giovani who follows is really not going to be although it's fairly slow like with Zapdos because I have to use fire spin to knock out the ryhorn koga's next and this one should be fairly straightforward I think fly is going to want hit all the venets and it does next is venomoth of course like zaptos my flying type move just barely doesn't do enough damage but it doesn't end up mattering this win is very exciting because now with surf I can go to cabar Island and face Blaine once I defeat him I will get the TM for fire blast which is a 120 base power move with 85% accuracy and a 30% chance to burn at long last Moltres will have direct fire type damage that isn't fire spin that is if I can actually beat Blaine I have to use rest on the rapid Dash and then it uses Tak down followed by stomp which crits I wake up and I'm back at low Health but but I can't move on this turn rapid Dash goes for another critical hit Stomp and molus faints ah we were so close but still fire blast seems so far away hopefully in this attempt I can beat him one advantage molus has is that it's outspeeding all of his Pokemon so I can actually trap them in fire spin doing chip damage I do this for a little bit against the Arcanine just so it doesn't damage me with moves like Tak down and as you can see when it hits it does so much but because of the recoil damage I felt comfortable using hyperbeam and it gets The Knockout molr at long last has earned tm38 and so I teach it fire blast in the place of fire spin as I face Sabrina let's talk about the implications of giving up the trapping move the pros are quite simple I won't have to take as long during battle and I'm not going to have to contend with awful accuracy plus I can now potentially burn critical targets I'm thinking giovan's ride on that will really minimize damage from rock slide and maybe just maybe Moltres could survive survive a hit then there's only one con which is I can no longer trap Pokemon that I outspeed indefinitely that could be a problem against Lance's Gyarados after all it is going to be spamming hydr pump Okay so we've made it to Sabrina's Alakazam it goes for reflect and so hyperbeam is not doing very much I decide to use fire blast instead after all it's going to do a lot of damage especially when it crits but Alakazam just barely hangs on it goes for psychic getting a massive crit itself and this lowers Moltres is special okay fire blast now is not the time to miss and of course it does if the Alakazam uses psychic I'm pretty sure I lose I'll probably survive a swave after all it'll do like one damage that said Moltres is now faster because of the special drop and fire blast hits knocking the Alakazam out because I'm pretty terrified of giovan's ride on I'm going to do some additional training in the fighting Dojo really I should have done this much earlier into the playthrough so that I could have benefited from these levels this training brings Moltres up to level 46 and then I explore the power plant to grab one more rare candy also this location is useful because near Zapdos you can actually pick up another PP up and this is going to give me more uses of fire blast so I take the time to grab it in the Verdian City gem I fight trainers leveling Moltres up to 47 and now I think it's time for more rare candies I use my remaining seven to bring Moltres up to level 54 will this be enough for the ground type specialist with a rock type Ace well let's find out in a bit because we first have to see tic auno yes I did it to you again I'm not sorry don't worry this thing is going to absolutely crush the mid game at least that's my expectation and things start off that way in Pokemon Tower the Rival is easy as well as Agatha Jr on cycling road I don't fight any trainers only grabbing the rare candy and then I head into the Safari Zone note here I am skipping the carbos because I don't think that Articuno needs it next is Sil I make one of the worst pathing mistakes it looks like I intentionally ran around this trainer and decided to fight him no that was just an input error by the way just in case you're curious when you're watching the footage it is usually half of the speed that it was when I was playing the game hopefully that puts this error into a little bit of context for Articuno I don't think that it needs much optional training in Sil so at level 31 I decide to use rare candies and because of its typing I figured that it was safe to use a total of seven bringing it up to level 38 before battling the Rival it should go without saying that the sand slash is an easy one hit that said I don't really have a good move to take on the following Closter the fact that the only type ice resists is itself is actually an advantage here because then Aurora beam won't be super effective in order to knock the water ice type out I'm going to have to use a combination of fly and bubble beam the former move ends up being not very good because the cloy loves withdraw so bubble beam has to get the job done by the time Articuno takes the Closter out it only has orange Health remaining which is quite bad because next is Magneton I was praying for a freeze here unfortunately Ice Beam doesn't get it but I survive Magneton Thunders shock and knock it out okay maybe there's a chance after all I am 5-speed faster than the Kadabra in retrospect I make what is a mistake here choosing Ice Beam against the cadabra I'm pretty sure fly would have one hit I checked my root file for this playthrough and yes fly was a guaranteed one hit provided it doesn't miss Articuno does survive cadabra's follow-up Confusion And while I do take it out I can't one hit the Flareon with anything I went for Ice Beam here because yes it does have the highest effective power remember in gen one fire types do not resist ice type moves in this case my legendary gets a critical hit at the moment when it really matters but the Flareon survives on a sliver of health and knocks me out with Ember let's try that again I think Articuno can get this done against the Cloyster I can go for bubble beam right away so every time it uses withdraw it's essentially just wasting a turn still clamp does a lot of damage and I end up at around the same amount of Health going into the Magneton this time though the electric type crits with Thunders shock and Articuno once again faints all right so I'm just barely not doing it let's go to Koga instead he should be fairly simple after all fly is super effective against three of his Pokemon which are bug types I just barely don't get The Knockout on the third venonat it poisons me and then he sends in venomoth okay I think Ice Beam is probably going to be better here going for fly gives it time to set up double team that said the ice move only does what looks like a third and venomoth uses psychic taking me down to half health I continue with Ice Beam taking it to Orange Health it sets up double team but I don't miss and with that K is defeated fighting him first gives me two more levels to face the Rival with this will be a little bit better damage ranges also I have noticed that Ice Beam is just fine against the Closter while I can't freeze it is doing more damage than bubble beam also this time the Rival is completely incompetent clamp misses he goes for withdraw and then Articuno crits so I move on to the Magneton with full health Ice Beam takes it to Orange Health it uses Thunders shock only doing about a quarter and I knock it out for the cadabra I just continue my ice beam spam finishing it over two turns Flareon comes out I do more than half Ember takes Articuno to Orange but it doesn't matter staying in Saffron City I pick up the TM for mimic then in the fighting Dojo I get Articuno some quick experience and after that I head into the Saffron City Gym to face Sabrina [Music] I only outspeed one of her Pokemon the Abra I can knock it out with just a single Ice Beam next is Kadabra it moves first hitting Kinesis ah also it survives my second Ice Beam with a sliver of Health my PP is really precious I only have two more uses of Ice Beam so I go for water gun but it misses giving cadabra another turn and with it the psychic type goes for its most powerful move uh psychic to make things even worse for me it gets a critical hit and Articuno survives with orange Health while I am able to finish off Sabrina's second Pokemon I am not doing very much to the Alakazam and both of my ice beams do not get freezes so I guess I have to hope for a critical hit with fly but I don't get it and the Alakazam eventually finishes Articuno off this thing was completely dominant in the early game and only now in the later stages of the mid game is it running into bumpy territory in the next fight I get some great great freeze luck which is always something that Articuno has on its side as sort of a passive buff I inflict the status condition on both the Abra as well as the Kadabra and I make it to the Alakazam with full health it just goes for a turn one recover which is absolutely awful Ice Beam does a little bit under half and then it crits with psychic but once again Articuno hangs on uses Ice Beam taking it down to low Health all right I just need to get one more in h unless Alakazam uses recover that's really frustrating okay I guess it's just another chance for me to roll for a crit or for a freeze or in this case for Alakazam to use reflect which does nothing and my next Ice Beam polishes it off the next gym leader that I have to face of course is Blaine there's no choice about this now so Articuno is level 44 going up against his team of Pokemon that are level 48 to 54 Generation 1 is my Saving Grace because I can use Ice Beam against all of them and I crit the Ninetails knocking out in one turn all right that was impressive I go for Ice Beam on the rapid Dash it does half and then the horse crits me with stomp but I knock it out on the next turn and move on to Blain's Arcanine Ice Beam does just under half but it takes a page out of Sabrina's book and uses reflect giving me another turn of damage taking it down to Red it gets a critical hit with takedown but Articuno survives giving me one last turn and with that Blaine is defeated on my first attempt and at long last we have finally made it to that portion of the game I'm in the Verdian City gym now facing one optional trainer which brings Articuno up to level 46 and with that out of the way let's finally take on [Music] Giovani of the three birds Articuno definitely Stacks up the best against him oh but the dug Trio moves first and uses sand attack that is not how I want this fight to be starting the Rydon knows rock slide and this move will deal four times damage Articuno just can't afford to miss against it I knock out the the Persian and make it to the Neo Queen with full health so far so good I go rce beam it misses and the Neato uses thunder which does so much due to a crit and it also paralyzes Articuno so that is a reset and I didn't expect that the ice type would have one here even if the Doug Trio doesn't go for sand attack the fight can still be problematic for Articuno the moles can't do any damage but the Persian can slash is devastating doing almost half plus I need two turns to knock it out giving it time to set up double team in this case that doesn't result in more damage which is perfect without my accuracy dropped I can one- hit both the Neo queen and the Neo King making it to his Ace r on I think the only way I lose here is if I get a genan Miss in this case I go for bubble beam and it doesn't miss as expected and the rideon faints Articuno gets a final gym split of 36 minutes and 42 seconds and now I expect things are going to get much more difficult how is Zapdos going to do against the ground type specialist on the Doug Trio I want to take the honorable path to Victory and mimic earthquake for super effective damage against giovan's final three Pokemon of course the dishonorable option is mimicking double team from the Persian setting this up and then sweeping his team I thought that drill peek was going to want hit the Doug Trio but it survives uses sand attack I miss and then I knock it out on the next turn at least I didn't get another one in next is Persian which I crit with Thunderbolt getting a one shot okay so I've made it to the NEOS let's see how much earthquake does and the answer is just a little bit more than half however neoc Queen uses tail whip and that's where I need to draw your attention to the fact that the AI is only ever going to use this move when it checks the type interactions it sees that earthquake does nothing to my flying type that Thunder is resisted by the electric type and the double kick is resisted by the flying type so it finds that its only useful move is tail whip and spams this that means that the neoc king is going to do the exact same thing using Lear the advantage is that I can knock out these two Pokémon for free but the disadvantage is that my defense stat is getting lowered and I'm about to level up so I'm going to lose my badge boosts when the Neo King goes down Giovani sends in Ryon and now rock slide is going to hit really hard plus I miss an earthquake and that's one loss okay this fight isn't as bad as I was expecting though I can use drill peek on the Doug Trio knock out the Persian with Thunderbolt in this case it takes two turns move on to the neid queen sweep it and the neoc King for free with earthquake and then see how much damage I can do to the rideon and in this case the answer is less than half once again with my defense lowered this time to minus one it hits with rock slide and Zapdos faints I have a little bit of experience towards level 46 so I'm going to fight some trainers in the gym to get this level and then I'm going to use four rare candies to bring Zapdos up to level 50 I think this is all it's going to need first turn I mimic earthquake Doug Trio goes underground which is a little bit annoying it does nothing with dig just wasting my time and then I knock it out with drill peek Thunderbolt now without a critical hit can One-Shot the Persian and earthquake is going to two- hit both of the NEOS but this time the badge boosts I'm getting from them will be retained on the rideon that means earthquake does more damage in this case because of a critical hit Giovani uses a guard spec and Zapdos defeats him after saying no to thunder which is a trash move in generation one Zapdos clocks in with a 39 minute and 25 second Giovani split Moltres can use hyperbeam against the Doug Trio and then fire blast on the Persian for two one hits do note now that I have not taught mimic specifically because I don't have a move to give up I want rest for the end of the game fire blast and hyperbeam are my go-to moves and I can't unlearn fly even if I wanted to moles doesn't have the same Advantage with typing that Zapdos had both of the NEOS are going to be spamming thunder in this case luckily for me Giovani just uses a guard spec on the neoc queen and I also burn it with my fire blast this lets me use fly to go into the air the status condition finishes it off and then I hit the neoc King on the turn it comes into battle moles has fantastic special so it tanks Thunder quite well and hyperb does enough to knock the Neato out but what about the Ryon in this case I think I need a miracle with fire blast as soon as I thought that it just misses Rydon uses rock slide and that's that in my second attempt I make it by both of the NEOS with full health which is fantastic then fire blast does more than half to the rideon I thought that might be at his especially because it gets a burn but rydon's Rockside does so much damage because moles got hit by Screech like Zapdos I fight some trainers in the gym and then I also backtracked a cycling road to get molas all the way to level 50 without using rare candies the reason I did this is because I'm very afraid of Lance's Gyarados in retrospect watching this footage back and doing the narration I think this is a lot of over kill Moltres definitely doesn't need this high of a level I'm going to use seven rare candies taking it up to level 50 7 and on its way at level 55 it has the chance to learn agility I haven't talked about this move yet and it is the only badge boosting move that all three of the birds get well other than the TM for double team but that is banned due to my rules I decided to pass up on this just because I think mol's current set is fantastic with two more rare candies used and level 57 I attempt Giovani again I miss fire blast not once but twice against the Nido Queen luckily it sets up with guard speec and then I crit on the next turn buying back some time NE Kings next and I go for fire blast and yeah this one crits to okay this is really good so will I survive one of rydon's rock slides well I don't actually need to find out because for a third time in a row Moltres gets a crit examining the root file while doing this narration I found out that rockslide had a 51.7 1% chance to one hit Moltres and that is if it was at full health it deals between 187 and 220 damage so without that critical hit moles would have lost in this case luck was on its side and it gets a Giovani split of 58 minutes and 43 seconds here are the most recent splits as they stand right now the ranking is unchanged Articuno is still in first place Zapdos in second and Moltres in third I would be very surprised if something happened during the league to change this ranking so let's just keep going with the playthroughs the next battle is the Rival on Route 22 Articuno shouldn't have problems here Ice Beam is super effective against his first two Pokemon I have to take things slow on The Cloister knocking it out with four four uses of ice beam and then he has Magneton which goes for Thunder Wave paralyzing also I'm confused and I hit myself while I do knock it out I am paralyzed with half health for the Kadabra it goes for psychic Articuno does survive but I shouldn't have been worried about it because Flareon is next and it uses flamethrower and that's that it's worth noting that that last battle went pretty well the cloer can be awful with clamp and confusion and this results in Articuno being bruised by the time the Magneton even comes in luckily this time it goes for Thunders shock so I don't get a status meaning I can move first against the Kadabra and heal using rest Kadabra wastes time with recover but then it goes for psychic gets a crit and does more than half Articuno wakes up but cadabra has another psychic setup so it takes me to Red health I continue using rest it switches into sbeam uses reflect and then does nothing with recover giving Articuno the time it needs to knock it out with two ice beams this time I have enough Health to tank the flamethrower and knock the Flareon out with two hits to prepare Articuno for the league I journey into the power plant to collect an additional rare candy and I also fa trainers in Victory Road to bring it to level 50 just outside of lauraliz chamber I use rare candies leveling it up from 50 all the way to 55 at level 51 I have the chance to learn blizzard which I teach in the place of bubble beam and this new move set update is slightly undercut by the fact that when I reach level 55 I decide to teach agility in that slot anyways now Articuno is ready to go with zap I do things in reverse order I pick up the rare candy and the power plant and then I face the Rival on Route 22 with other electric types I would be saying that the sand slash isn't difficult now but later when I get to the champion it's going to know earthquake but that's irrelevant for a Zapdos and it feels really good it's fairly slow to knock out using drill PEC but it doesn't do much and then I can oneshot the following execute and the cloer okay time for the Magneton now I wasn't sure what its AI was going to do but it appears it cannot use its electric moves which is fantastic as a result I finish it off I still have green Health drill peek one hits the Kadabra and Flareon goes down to two uses of Thunderbolt there's only one more pre- League Rival Battle and it's with moles fire blast is able to oneshot all three of his initial Pokemon and I was wondering if maybe just maybe it would do the same to the Magneton and it actually does without a critical hit for cadabra use hyperbeam securing a one hit and the following Flareon also faints to this move when it find main L hits as was the case with all of the legendary birds I grabbed the rare candy and victory road and then I fight some optional trainers the two cool trainers in the entrance area as well as the black belt and the juggler that are just through the next ladder this brings moles up to level 60 and now I think it is time for us to take on the Elite 4 the first member of the league is laurelai for Moltres this one is a mixed bag I wasn't really sure if I should be terrified or confident my experience playing with this thing as a kid tells me I should be terrified but maybe just maybe the fire type won't struggle well it misses its fly on the first turn and then duong's Aurora beam lowers its attack I click to fast and use fly again doing about a third and tank a bubble beam as a result okay so I should probably be using fire blast here I knock her lead out move on to the Closter Miss with fire blast and take some damage from Ice Beam oh that's actually a reset because it froze me so we know that fire blast is the right choice and in this case it almost knocks the dong out in a single turn that causes lur light to use a super potion so I use fly to polish it off next is Closter fire blast gets the one hit when it actually connects and so I've made it to the slow bro I don't really have a good move here I'm going to use fly doing a little bit more than a third it sets up with withdraw and then I use hyperbeam critting and knocking it out I continue with the powerful normal type move knocking the Jinx out and make it to the Lapras okay so fire blast does more than half it uses blizzard but Moltres confidently survives and aims its fire blast well okay it's time for silly music and a silly choice I accidentally use hyperbeam on the Onyx yeah that's not a good choice I use fly after that to counter the onyx's Dig and eventually I use fire blast the correct move and knock it out from there fly one shots the Hitmonchan hitmon Le and fire blast obliterates the second Onyx I want to specifically note that one does no rock slide but it's not a problem for Moltres in this run while the Machamp does survive a single hit with red Health it just goes for submission and knocks itself out a very fitting end to this fight against Agatha Moltres has a lot of options it can use fly and fire blast for damage and hyperbeam against the gbat and the Arbok interestingly I don't one hit the gbat with hyperbeam allowing it to use toxic on me but I actually think this is an advantage now I can't be paralyzed or put to sleep I make it through her Haunter as well as her ARB walk and arrive at the final Gengar and then fire blast misses once twice and I take so much damage from Poison I'm not actually sure if I'm going to survive the next one this time fire blast hits doing about 2/3 to the Gengar and I do survive the poison damage with five hit points because Moltres is faster I can use rest to heal removing the status condition I survive the gengar's uses of psychic and use fly to polish it off that brings us to Lance this is the battle I have been most terrified for with moles it is the reason that I invested in hyperbeam his Gyarados is the stuff of nightmares for fire types in this case I can outspeed using fly and I get a critical hit bringing it down to Red Health triggering Lance's hyper potion by the way when trainers use items in generation one it replaces the move that they were going to use I go for fly again doing half to the Gyarados it hits hydropump which does so much because of a critical hit but Moltres survives on 14 hit points I figured I had knocked it out however I miss with hyperbeam but Gyarados also misses with its hydr pump as a result I'm able to finish it off and move on to his first dragon air I have so little health I didn't know if I should use rest here or not but I decided to go for hyperbeam and I one-hot the dragon a okay that's good on the second one I will use rest to heal because it's going to spam Ice Beam or bubble beam both moves that won't do that much to Moltres actually they are doing more damage than I was anticipating his especially if the dragon air gets a critical hit this also allows him to lower my speed so I'm no longer faster than the Aerodactyl but I am faster than the Dragonite I decide to go for it Knocking the dragoner out with hyperbeam and now it's time for the Aerodactyl it can't do that much damage so I take some time healing with rest and once I'm back at Green health I start attacking Aerodactyl takes me to Orange health and my fire blast does the same to it luckily it chooses wing attack and Moltres heals again I might actually be able to do this the interactions that follow are a little bit silly Aerodactyl is using hyperbeam and I'm using fire blast but I am missing in the end though my legendary is superior to the prehistoric Pokemon so I'm moving on to his Dragonite okay Moltres you can do this actually should I use hyperbeam or fly I was thinking that hyperbeam would not get the one hit and then I would have to recharge I decide to go for fly it does a little bit less than half Dragonite uses thunder luckily missing and because of that my hyperbeam knocks it out and Moltres beats Lance on its first attempt I was not expecting that to happen for Articuno its matchup against laurelai is not very good every time the Rival sends out his cloer I've really emphasize the fact that I have to knock it out slowly and that's essentially the situation I'm in here against five Pokemon this is why I didn't pass up agility when I had the chance to learn it I can use it to badge boost against the D gong I'm really hoping that this is going to give fly enough damage to two or three hit and in this case the more optimistic damage range is possible but still laurelai has a Closter following that in this case it looks like it's choosing between supersonic clamp and Spike Cannon all of which are not that good also it has low special so I'm able to three hit it using my own ice beams slow Bros next I go for fly doing just under half it's setting up amnesia which is very scary because when it uses surf it takes Articuno down to Red health I get one more attack in knocking it out and now there's only two Pokemon left I figured healing on the Jinx made most sense its physical attacks are really not that impressive after that fly one hits it and now it's time for laury Ace it looks like the Lapras is only using body slam and confuse Ray it probably should be using hydropump I'm just getting lucky and not seeing that move confus Ray on the other hand is a bit annoying because the status condition messes Articuno up that being said I do get enough hits through with fly and eventually her a goes down and I am moving on to the next guy who of course is really simple I remember as a kid sweeping this team with Articuno like it was nothing I can just Spam Ice Beam every single one of them is a one hit with the exception of the Machamp but it just goes for Karate Chop doing very little even with a crit and that's that Articuno is on fire against Agatha the first Gengar sets up substitute then she switches it out and I oneshot the goldbat the Gengar comes back in it's on low health so it's easy to polish off and then Articuno crits the following Haunter against starbo it has a one hit range with base damage and that leads to her final Pokemon Gengar and Ice Beam just freezes it and I'm sure you know what's coming next it's Lance and yeah after I knock out the Gyarados which takes two hits all of the remaining Pokémon are going to be one hits the only way Articuno could lose here is due to its speed the Aerodactyl is going to move first and I think that a crit from hyperbeam would do enough damage it goes for this powerful normal type move but it doesn't get a crit Articuno survives and takes it out of course I outspeed the Dragonite so that's it for the Elite 4 for the ice type Zapdos on the other hand starts off the league with a very confident performance against laurelai I one hit the dong one hit the following cloer one hit even the slow bro this thing usually survives apparently in this case the Jinx is the bulky one I don't really have good damage against it I think drill peek would have got the one hit either way Thunderbolt does it in two last is Lapras I was expecting a one hit here but it just barely survives and hits with blizzard but Zapdos hangs on on red and that's that okay so for the next fight I actually do need to play the game I'm going to use mimic to steal onyx's dig this is just so I have super effective damage against the rock types things can be kind of annoying here because he has X defense yes I'm not going to say his name he does not deserve it in this video especially when this is the last Yellow video of the year once the first Onyx goes down things get much faster I can use dig to twoot the second one and then drill peek on the Machamp again it survives for the third time but he just uses an X defend and that's that of the three birds it seems that Zapdos is the best suited to defeating Agatha drill peek is fantastic against the ghosts and Thunderbolt is good against the other Pokémon the final Gengar does land a confuse ra but it doesn't stop Zapdos from attacking and with that it's made it to Lance first of all I noted that my speed is 165 which is not enough to move first against the Aerodactyl I really wasn't expecting that that said I am going to level up soon also notably after one-shotting the Gyarados the first dragoner uses hyperbeam it is never going to use Thunder Wave or Thunderbolt which is a huge Advantage for the electric type these moves can really mess Pokemon up the experience from knocking it out levels me up still 168 speed so Aerodactyl is moving first unless I teach Zapdos agility right now however I think the set of Thunderbolt mimic rest and drill Peck is just too good so I say no and move on to the second dragon air on this one I'm going to mimic ice beam and it uses its own getting a critical hit but Zapdos survives and knocks it out okay Aerodactyl please use Swift or wing attack but in this case it chooses hyperbeam so that's that I have to try Lance again that being said for this fight I used rare candies so now I'm level 56 I have the outspeed on the Aerodactyl and Thunderbolt can just one hit Ice Beam of course can onshot the Dragonite and now all three legendary birds are ready for the [Music] champion molus actually Stacks up quite well against his team well when I'm not missing fire blasts that is I do want to mention that this move has an incredible animation definitely one of the best in Generation 1 I think the only one that's better is hyperbeam which I get to use immediately following the sand slashes knockout on the Alakazam we've slowed this footage down quite a bit and I'm filling time with my voice over just so this animation isn't too flashy for all of you if you're wondering why I turned on animations I didn't actually the game just does this for the champion fight to make it more intense I've thought about modding it out but that doesn't really feel like it's in the spirit of The Challenge fire blast one hits the exeggutor and I move on to the Magneton okay fire blast please do enough and unfortunately it doesn't allowing the electric type to paralyze Moltres and then use Thunderbolt this does almost half so I'm moving onto the Cloyster in a very bad state it goes for what is likely its weakest move Aurora beam Moltres survives hits fire blast and it does enough damage likely due to a critical hit last is Flareon it sets up reflect giving me time to use rest in generation one this doesn't recover my speed but all I need is health because then I have time to use hyperbeam and knock the Champions Ace out Moltres clocks in with a final first playthrough time of 1 hour 9 minutes and 1 second with six resets at level 64 this is a game time of 4 hours and 19 minutes overall moles did quite poorly and I was expecting that out of it that said if you didn't care about time this thing is still quite capable it does not feel as bad as a bunch of other Pokémon in the game game but I couldn't help but wonder how good it would be if it had flamethrower throughout this entire run next against the champion is Articuno and you might think that it would be better but it really isn't I'm going to set up agility against the sand slash this way if I don't want hit the Magneton and it paralyzes me my speed will still be its regular value after all plus six multiplies your stats by four and then paralysis just divides it by four it's a net neutral interaction and I really need this so that I'm going to move first against the Closter cuz things are really going to slow down there with my setup complete I also have badge boosts so I'm going to knock the sand slash and the following Alakazam out in a single hit each I haven't leveled up yet so I knock the exeggutor out as well and move on to the Magneton okay I still have my boosts maybe it's not going to paralyze me however even with them my ice beam does not get the one shot but it uses Thunderbolt so no paralysis with the electric type fainting I level up losing my boosts and Closter comes in I played risky here attacking with fly doing a little bit of damage and it traps me in a clamp taking Articuno down to 10 hit points that said I can just use rest to heal and cluster can't do that much damage to me each turn the only reason Articuno would lose here is if it gets crit and that doesn't end up happening so I move on to the Flareon Ice Beam does more than half the fire type goes for flamethrower which does massive damage but not enough and with that I have cloged in with my second legendary bird Articuno gets a first playthrough time of 48 minutes and 51 seconds with six resets at level 59 this is a game time of 3 hours and 2 minutes okay so Articuno was easy as I expected it to be that said I did lose a lot of time against the cloer and that's relevant because Zapdos is going into the battle against the champion under 47 minutes is it maybe possible that Zapdos gets a competitive Time with Articuno in its first playthrough the champion sand slash isn't much of a threat and it also gives me time to mimic a move in this case slash which I can use to knock it out because of zaptos is high base speed this move always scores Critical Hits and so it is doing slightly more damage than drill Peck would be next is Alakazam I continue using this move but the powerful special attacker hangs on and uses psychic that said Zapdos also lives with only five hit points because of that I move on to the exeggutor and heal with rest as soon as zaptos wakes up it's ready to attack with drill Peck I take the grass type to Red health and then to play safe I rest up again and knock it out okay time for the Magneton I mimic slash so I can knock this thing out in two hits but I just barely don't have enough damage it chips away at Zapdos using Swift but the following Closter isn't a threat Thunderbolt can easily secure the one hit however the final Flareon with flamethrower could be so I go for rest healing as much as I can then flamethrower in combination with a critical hit from Quick attack brings Zapdos to half Health while it is still sleeping another quick attack chips away so I have to rest again flamethrower hits quick attack hits and then Flareon takes a break using reflect this gives Zapdos the opening it needs to use Thunderbolt doing half and also causing paralysis as a result Flareon fails to move not one turn but two turns giving Zapdos The Knockout the electric type clocks in with a final first playthrough time of 48 minutes and 25 seconds with three resets at level 58 this is a game time of 3 hours and 4 minutes so that game time is higher than articuno's but the real time is lower only by 26 seconds but still in its first playthrough the electric type was the fastest Articuno was just barely in second place and of course moles was in a very distant third place like that thing was more than 20 minutes behind these other two legendaries that said I think there's more room to optimize it because Articuno and Zapdos already had quite competitive times and with the slow growth rate I really wasn't sure just how far I could push them after playing these runs in August I took some time off and now that it's December I have come back and done a lot of playthrough with these birds I really wanted to get the best possible times with each one of them that said in the pursuit of optimization a lot has to be sacrificed so let's talk about it continuing the approach that I've had so far let's start with Articuno starting with it also reflects the order in which I did these final playthroughs there is a lot about these runs that I am very unsatisfied with and I will mention those details as they come in each playr if you've done any amount of solar running yourself you'll know that getting a perfect run is almost impossible to me it feels very much like Live musical performance there are always small details that are off that can haunt you after the fact with a legendary Pokémon mistakes feel like making a mistake when performing a piece by Philip Glass um if you don't know his music is just really repetitive and one's small imperfection will really stick out in a way that it wouldn't in something that's more complic ated the Simplicity in these runs comes from the fact that all of them don't need to do a lot of optional training yes even Moltres when optimizing Articuno I realized that in vidiian city I can just skip the PokeMart entirely because I'm going to be teaching it fly so I don't need to catch Pidgey in the forest the reason that I go to the Mart here is so that I can catch my flyer before reaching pwer City but that isn't required today so that's a little bit of Saved time in Verdian Forest I'm going to skip every optional bug catcher and only fight the required gu guy at the very end of the area experience from this battle levels aruno up to six and then I take on Brock of course his team is an easy sweep the only way I could lose is if the Onyx chains bind but it's basically never going to do that on Route three I fight only the mandatory trainers choosing the bug catcher instead of the last just due to type Effectiveness I fight only mandatory battles in Mount Moon bringing me to seruan City at level 14 here I should mention my solo running Discord by the way there is a link in the description if you want to join I POS these three legendaries as a challenge to everyone and a lot of great insights were shared in those channels as has been the case in the past Austin set some incredible times with these three and I ended up chasing his results because of a bunch of the powerful software that has been developed for solo challenges he was able to share his root files as well as splits these resources were absolutely foundational in me refining these three runs thank you so much Austin I really appreciate your work and the time you spend with me to discussing all of these things behind the scenes as you can see the Rival on nugget Bridge was quite easy for Articuno to defeat even starting the fight at level 14 on the next two routes the only problem that Articuno has is the fact that it doesn't have much PP therefore I have to backtrack to Nur Joy once in order to heal with my PP replenished I can finish off all of the trainers on Route 25 and then outside of Cerulean City I face the rocket if you look at articuno's experience it is close to leveling up so now when I face the Jun trainer in misti's gym it will level up to 20 before I face Misty it turns out that Articuno is just really good at defeating her ice beam is actually quite effective it's going to be able to two hit the star you and three hit the star me that is if I don't get nice Critical Hits because in this case I get two so the star me goes down in the same amount of time as the Staryu heading south without a heal I teach Articuno bubble beam which is useful to extend its PP making all of sy's Pokémon fast to knockout on the SSN I pick up the TM for rest this is incredibly important for Articuno I fa the gentleman in order to get the rare candy I almost had a heart attack here because I thought the Jigglypuff trainer was going to catch me normally I go left and talk to the gentlemen so I didn't really know what her range was I'm glad it's not longer and he catches me first the Rival is incredibly easy to defeat Ice Beam just sweeps his team but after that I have to face surge I can't believe I'm going to say say this but with the legendary Pokémon he's actually terrifying not because he's consistent don't worry he still has no idea what he's doing that said if the Raichu just locks into a thunderbolt it can be really bad and as you can see here when it gets a critical hit Articuno faints giving it one reset you might think that skipping surge is the better choice but I don't think that's the case with Articuno actually I don't think it's the case with any of the birds and I'm going to talk about that choice in detail when discussing mold ESS in a little bit as you can see in my next fights sometimes Raichu just doesn't know what to do it misses or uses growl actually missing that one as well then Articuno gets what is essentially a free win with Serge out of the way let's talk about the optional trainers that I fight in the mid game because there are very few the rocket to gain access to The Hideout for one extra rare candy I buy two pokka dolls in the department store one for mimic and one for the ghost and then I purchase two calcium I teach Articuno fly and on cycling Road I resume my training here I fight the first member of the wheezing Duo this guy with primeape and Machoke he's probably going to get art at some point because I'm fighting him a lot in these playthroughs after that I fight the cool trainer in Erica's gym and then crush the grass type gym leader okay so are you ready for the major player mistake of this run inside of koga's gym I path incorrectly and run into the guy with Hypno at the beginning of the gym in my videos I haven't really found a good way to explain why these mistakes occur because for you I can imagine it seems very frustrating for me I am currently playing my fourth attempt with Articuno I have done three in a single day and right now I am feeling very fatigued but I am still trying to push my time down lower in instances like this one lapse of judgment or concentration can result in a small error like this that accumulates a lot of time when I am doing these runs there are so many instances where I will just stop restart the entire playthrough again when I make an error like this however at some point you do eventually just need to finish a play through and I decided to do that here today with this run it just unfortunately turns out for me that this is the best time that I got with Articuno so yeah it's the run that makes it into the video and there's this annoying mistake in it I Quantified the amount of time that was lost due to this and it ends up being 26 seconds of real time keep that in mind for later because it will be relevant for some comparisons in the rest of the gym I face the Tamer and then the mandatory jugglers this brings Articuno up to level 35 and this lets me use five rare candies to boost it to level 40 before for facing Koga I have guaranteed one hits on all three of the venats now before the venomoth comes out I need to set the record straight because in my ride on versus Golem video oh sorry I mean my ride on solo video I said that this thing was a bug poison type of course it is a fire electric type but Articuno doesn't have any problems with it provided Koga doesn't set up a lot of double teams inside Pokemon mansion I pick up the TM for blizzard then after defeating the Machoke Grunt in I'm going to teach this move in the place of PE my move set's going to look a little bit weird cuz I have both ice beam and blizzard don't worry it's going to make sense in a second after I knock out the Rival sand slash I have to go up against the cloy and as we saw before it takes a long time to finish off using ice beam I have a 25% chance to knock it out in three turns but using blizzard I have a 37% chance so that's why I want this move early on it's hopefully going to speed this up I don't get the three hit I have to take it out over five actually due to a potion which is quite frustrating this leaves Articuno with orange Health by the time the Magneton comes out we've seen this situation before I try for a one hit using blizzard but I don't get it however Magneton doesn't finish me so I still take it down after that I can use fly to knock out the Kadabra and I get a lucky critical hit with blizzard on the Flareon knocking out in only one turn before Sabrina it's time to use rare candies a total of five in this case it gives me outspeeds on both the ABA and the cadabra so I will one hit both of them using fly of course the Alakazam can be inconsistent but if I get a critical hit it will go down in one turn and that's what happens here at level 48 I have guaranteed two hits on Blain's first two Pokemon using ice beam and then an 84% chance to two hit the Arcanine using blizzard one small frustration of my current route is that I do not outspeed giovan's Doug Trio giving it a chance to use sand attack I think if I came back to do this route I would use two carbos in the department store just to prevent this just so you have all the information if I only used one carbos in the department store and one calcium I would then speed tie the Doug Trio one other thing making this fight a little bit slower is that blizzard misses on the Persian and then I have to take two turns with ice beam to knock it out before the Ral on Route 22 I'm going to teach this Legendary Pokémon toxic in the place of bubble beam credit for this strategy goes to Austin in this case I could have used toxic against the cloer to speed things up a little bit but I still have blizzard on my set so I figured that would be the faster approach the Magneton that follows is a 46% chance to knock out and then the Kadabra and the Flareon are both much easier notably the the final fire type does between 46 and 55% damage with flamethrower so at my current health I Will Survive it also in this case I just freeze so it wasn't a problem at all before the league I teach Articuno rest in the place of blizzard and then I face laurelai this battle alone bleeds so much time from articuno's run I tried so many different approaches here to speed this fight up double edge and even Sky attack but in the end toxic is just the thing that can get the job done fly is useful to stack up the toxic counter and I can also use rest whenever I get to low Health to heal this buys time but also gives Articuno the sustainability that it needs to get through a very long battle even utilizing this strategy there is not a guarantee of success all of her Pokemon can deal decent damage to Articuno especially the Lapras using moves like hydropump not to mention the status conditions it can inflict with body slam and confuse Ray if the legendary ice type doesn't get a heal off when it needs it then this is going to be an awfully painful reset contextual izing the Hypno mistake earlier on in the run the reason I decided to keep playing is specifically because if I can get by lorai in my first attempt then this run will be fantastic if I had had a reset to her here I would have just restarted the entire playthrough because at that point I would know that it wouldn't be competitive results at least when compared with my current finishes today Articuno makes it through the fight so let's continue with the league against Agatha there is another potential loss condition basically you're not going to want hit the gengars and if if they put you to sleep then you could lose I think in the future I should teach mimic in the place of toxic can utilize substitute for this fight making things just a little bit more consistent but that also bleeds time so making it through the fight without mimic is actually a benefit for me today before Lance I am going to teach this move and then the fight is fairly straightforward I have the chance to learn agility and in this case I put it in the place of rest I finish Lance off use one rare candy and then battle the champion for this fight I need to set up with agility three times to boost all of my damage ranges with physical moves the worst possible thing that could happen to my Articuno is getting poisoned by the sand slash and that happens turn one before I do most of my setup following this I'm going to mimic earthquake the reason I set up with agility first is because it raises articuno's defense making it more durable to the punishment that sandslash is going to dish out with three agilities Ice Beam is going to want hit the sand slash as well as the exeggutor fly has a 73% chance to knock out the alazami to knock out the Magneton in one hit because of poison I'm forced to use earthquake on the Alakazam and in this case it only has a 51% chance to knock out I don't get it so that's a reset for Articuno in the next battle I don't get poisoned so I'm able to make it to the Magneton with just above half health I get the damage range I need with earthquake knocking it out and I move on to the cloer in this specific case earthquake is going to be the fastest way to knock it out even though it will take time the fear here is that the cloer will get a critical hit and knock me out quickly but it doesn't happen so I take it down and move on to the Flareon with earthquake I'm able to take it to Red Health luckily the Flareon misses a fire Spin and I knock it out clocking in with articuno's final time of 37 minutes and 59 seconds this is with two resets at level 57 and a game time of 2 hours and 28 minutes these are of course fantastic results you could even call them legendary and with them Articuno earns itself the second place overall in my tier list I'm sure that some of you are thinking that that final battle against the champion was pretty sketchy with Articuno and yes it was that is another reason I kept playing after the Hypno mistake with the ice type it really feels like all of the game is simple with the exception of lorai and then later the champion if you're wondering if facing a different rival team would be faster for Articuno the answer is no because then a bleed time earlier on into the run this lowers its potential final time ceiling so I think that the current method is the fastest way that said it's not the most consistent and speaking of consistency when the goal is to go fast you really do have to take some risks and going into the playthrough with Zapdos I really thought that sketchy play was going to be the name of the game but that isn't in fact how things turn out unlike Articuno it is not going to learn fly so I go to the vidiian city March and I buy two pokeballs this is very specifically because Zapdos is really bad at catching Pidgey if the Pidgey is a low level it will knock it out with drill Peck and it's always going to oneshot them using Thunders shock I essentially just have to throw my pokeballs at them without damaging the pidgeys and hope that I end up catching them over the course of doing these Zapdos runs I restarted so many times just because I failed to get the Pidgey and I didn't want to have to waste time catching a do doo later on I think this is probably the least consistent part of Zapdos playthrough and that is absolutely hilarious because Brock is the first gym leader as was the case in my last playthrough fighting all of the bug catchers as well as the junior trainer in his gym brings zaptos to level 10 and this is enough to defeat the rock type specialist with a good first split in this case zaptos clocks in with a time of 3 minutes and 36 seconds we're going to make a major time Jump now into misti's gym I defeat the junior trainer leveling zaptos up to 16 and then I take on the water type specialist overall this fight's pretty straightforward this is the closest result I had against her because star me takes Zapdos to one hit point with bubble beam but a win is a win so it doesn't matter the Rival is simple because thundershock one hits the SPO and drill peek can twoot the sandrew of course sand attack could mess things up here but not today on Route 25 there is this hiker I specifically want to note his geude because normally Zapdos will knock it out in two hits this happens if it gets a critical hit and throughout the 11 attempts that I completed with this electric bird it happened more often than not unfortunately in my best time I was unable to get it so this fight takes a little bit more time and since we have it now let's review Zapdos his backs Sprite a lot of people say this Pokémon looks like Big Bird from Sesame Street and honestly it kind of does but it doesn't really bother me however when you consider this back Sprite it definitely looks like big bird here this is definitely the middle of the road backs Sprite articunos is definitely the best and moles has the worst one on the ssan I pick up the TM for rest it is once again going to be very important and then I fight an optional trainer this Fisher with three Pokemon on his team this is critically important for Zapdos success over the next small portion of the game The Experience from this fight brings Zapdos up to level 23 and then the fight from the gentleman with the rare candy as well as the Rival brings it up to level 24 where it has 64 speed right before I go into Serge's gym I'm going to use one rare candy to ensure that Zapdos moves first against him this might seem like a little bit of Overkill against a gym leader who is known for being kind of trash but with Zapdos that's not the case because it doesn't have any moves that are neutrally effective against the Raichu if my attack stat isn't modified and I don't get a critical hit zaptos is going to foreshot every time I tried this fight without the rare candy things went very badly for me and I had time lost here plus a reset at this point in the game is more costly for Zapdos than it is for Articuno because the electric type had to do more training in order to defeat Brock you'll also notice that I have rest on my move set and know this is not really helpful against surge you just need to get lucky here and knock out the Raichu which I do with a critical hit the self-destructing hiker can waste a lot of Zapdos his time if his Pokemon don't self-d destruct or when they self-destruct one turn before I knock them out with drill pek overall though with rest Zapdos doesn't have problems here all right time for the mid- game training let's talk about the optional battles of course the rocket in the game corner to get access to one more rare candy then I go straight to Erica's gym facing the cool trainer and then defeating the grass type specialist after that in the department store I pick up one TM for reflect and then I buy three protein I teach zaptos reflect in the place of thundershock and then on cycling Road I face the cuq ball as well as the biker these two battles bring it up to level 33 and then I use five candies to boost it up to level 38 hopefully you can see that Zapdos is starting to speed up when compared with Articuno I can face Koga after defeating only the mandatory trainers in this section of the game because drill peek is fantastic against his venonat I have one hits on the first three and then against venomoth I'm going to knock it out in two hits next is the Rival in Sil and this is usually the first battle where I was expecting a reset Could Happen drill pek has a three hit against the the sand slash giving it ample time to use sand attack once in this case though it doesn't use it so zaptos is set up for success I want shot the Closter and then the Magneton slows down yes Thunderbolt is the best move to use against it from there I can one hit the Kadabra and two hit the final Flareon on my way to cinear Island I face this Fisher he is fantastic for training and then I go up against Sabrina drill peek is able to one hit her first two Pokemon I don't outspeed the Alakazam but it doesn't really matter after all drill pee does significant damage and I have a high percent chance to crit with that Victory under my belt I use rare candies again this time four to bring Zapdos up to level 47 before facing Blain early on in the process of optimizing Zapdos I thought that I needed level 55 in order to defeat Giovani in that case with one use of reflect rock slide from the Ryon is not going to be able to knock me out before I use three earthquakes and finish it off if my level gets lower and lower the rydon's damage increases and my damage from earthquake decreases increases also at level 48 my damage range against the Doug Trio is 71% and I didn't really like that because then it potentially could have another turn to set up with sand attack it does already get one because I am mimicking earthquake but the reason I eventually decided to face giovon two levels lower is because even here zaptos has these same damage ranges against the Ryon sometimes this happen where the fight is kind of level agnostic due to the Pokemon's critical hit rate because of all that I decided using the rare candies before Blaine was the safer choice for that fight and now as we go into this fight I wanted to describe an alternative option for Zapdos in beating Giovani if I'm using level 50 I can use the neok king to badge boost me with Lear then Zapdos will have enough attack to two hit the Ryon and I can survive one use of rock slide due to reflect with my current strategy if I take too much damage early on into the fight then zaptos can lose once it makes it to the rideon however I am getting a little bit more consistent Blain fight and I'm not having to waste time training here in giovan's gym also in general the Ryon is not particularly competent sometimes Giovani will use a guard spec on it and rock slide can also miss which is what happens here it is worth noting that even with the best possible damage roll zaptos would have survived its next rock slide the Rival on Route 22 is pretty straightforward Hau mimic to steal slash because it can deal more damage than drill peek to specific Pokemon like the Magneton and Kadabra the worst case scenario in this fight is the sand slash uses slash a lot which is exactly what happens here so I'm at Orange health for the remainder of the battle luckily execute and Closter are both one hits and the Magneton is going to be a two hit using slash confusion messes Zapdos up a little bit luckily the cadabra doesn't go for psychic on the two turns I hit myself and I knock it out okay last is Flareon slash does more than half it uses smog which doesn't do much and with that I've won okay laurelai is very straightforward for Zapdos the only thing I want to mention here is that I am using mimic to steal Amnesia and set up once this is to ensure that I have the one hit against the Jinx so it doesn't use ice punch and occasionally freeze Zapdos this same logic applies to the Lapras because it was going to be a two hit before the use of the setup move for Zapdos I'm using substitute against Agatha just to make the fight a little bit more consistent against Lance the only thing that can go wrong is the second dragon air causing a freeze with Ice Beam but not today and with that I have made it to the champion before the fight I use one rare candy bringing Zapdos to level 55 I say no to agility and now let's see how the final battle goes my initial intuition was that mimic earthquake from the sand slash and using it later on in the fight was the better play however after a significant amount of frustration trying that strategy it ended up not being the better play so in this case I am using the brain dead strategy just spamming drill peek all the time against sand slash Alakazam and exeggutor Austin and I discussed this in detail and at length the earthquake strategy can work and is definitely more reliable if you have a recovery move that said because of my current set and how the playthrough has gone to this point I no longer have access to rest if you're using earthquake you can't mimic recover from Alakazam and by the way that is a strategy that we toyed around with when using this drill PEC spam strategy however that is conditionally useful and I don't think it is the best play for Zapdos because I want to spend the least amount of time battling the Alakazam so that it doesn't use Kinesis so as I finish the executor off and Magneton comes in let's just pause let's reflect on the Run summary for zaptos is play through to this point is there a way to use rest against the self-destructing hiker and then maintain it all the way to the end of the game if I wanted to do that then I would have to change how I face Giovani zaptos has to give up either reflect or mimic here are the damage ranges for the Giovani fight if we quickly examine rydon's rock slide yeah it seems like reflect is required so if we give up mimic then four of his Pokemon need to be knocked out using drill peek and this move is really not going to do wonders against the rideon but there are are ways to make this work for example I can use mimic to steal double team from the Persian set this up so that the Ryon can never hit me with rock slide and then over time I can use drill peek to knock it out but investing a full playthrough trying that and then getting knocked out on the rideon just didn't feel like it would be satisfying maybe there is a way to be even more consistent if you look at my rules they ban glitches outside of battle but they leave glitches within battle as fair game this is just because the generation one battle engine is so messed up that if I banned glitches I basically wouldn't be able to play these games plus the in battle glitches are really fun and they add so much flavor to these videos I think we would objectively have less interesting content if I just took them all out with glitches on the table I can utilize an absolutely hilarious strategy with Zapdos in biran City gym I can face this Tamer who has an Arbok and a Tauros during this battle I can use mimic to steal Screech yeah this seems weird right I want the Arbok to have time so that it uses glare paralyzing Zapdos after that I can just knock out both of his Pokémon and then go to Giovani where I use a potion to heal that is not going to cure my status then against Doug Trio I can mimic dig can we just take a moment to appreciate What's Happening Here I am using an electric flying Type legendary Pokémon to mimic a ground type move while paralyzed this is ironic on so many levels I absolutely love it what's even funnier is this allows me to trigger a glitch when zaptos uses dig and goes underground an invulnerability flag is set in the ram if wallet is underground trying to use the two turn move it is paralyzed then zaptos will be taken out of dig but the invulnerability flag will not be reset for the rest of the fight as long as I do not use dig again Zapdos cannot be hit by giovan's moves this is the reason that both dig and fly are banned in generation one competitive now this strategy seems amazing because once a I defeat Giovani I am going to have rest for the champion that said just having to use rest during the champion fight is going to waste time and as a result I unfortunately get a better time with the brain dead strategy so let's resume the footage we were watching previously the Magneton best move is Swift so I can knock it out slowly using Thunderbolt as it chips away at me actually getting a critical hit in this case which was very scary Zapdos gets its own crit finishing it off against Closter I obviously get the one hit and now Flareon just needs to not use Quick attack or flamethrower and at the pivotal moment Zapdos gets a gen one miss with Thunderbolt Flareon misses fire spin then goes for quick attack Zapdos survives on 18 hit points uses Thunderbolt gets a crit but it's not enough this gives the Flareon another chance to use Quick attack but it doesn't zaptos uses Thunderbolt and clocks in with its final time 37 minutes and 22 seconds zero resets level 56 s and a game time of 2 hours and 28 minutes if we compare these two birds final times Zapdos the electric type is once again faster even if I subtract all the time lost during the Hypno fight in koga's gym zaptos is still faster than Articuno and all of that said I do think that zaptos is time could be significantly lower if I just cut more optional battles out of the mid game this would require a lot of luck to get through Giovani if you're using the earthquake strategy which is definitely the fastest way to defeat him that said since zaptos has so much wiggle room it is definitely the best legendary bird to solo the game with and today with these results it displaces Articuno out of the second place spot we have an stier electric type and it feels so good but you know what the opposite of feeling good is playing the game with Moltres of the three I refined its playthrough last specifically so I'd have the most experience for it since it is the most difficult this had a consequence for the production of this video I am now sitting here on December 23rd recording this voiceover after my video editor has gone on vacation also like Zapdos I did so many Moltres playthroughs a total of 12 I expected the process of refining its playthrough to be very rough and yes in a lot of ways it was but it did this in a very surprising and interesting way let's talk about it like Articuno Moltres is also going to learn fly so I'm going to skip the Martin and vidiian City upon arriving in the forest there is an interesting choice to make with with Moltres do you use PE against the bugs or do you use fire spin fire spin is going to give Moltres the fastest Forest time because it's going to prevent the opponent Pokemon from wasting turns attacking that said it's very inconsistent so I'm going for PE also this has a secondary Advantage because I am not using fire spins PP then once I defeat the mandatory bug catcher I can proceed to pwor city and skip the Pokemon Center every time you heal it costs about 5 Seconds of real time so avoiding this is very advantageous in a run that's going to be this tight inside Brocks Jam I face the junior trainer and I want to go through the details of this battle if peek gets a critical hit it will knock the Diglett out in one turn saving some time I'm also going to use one turn of fire spin against the sandrew which both improves my odds against Brock because it will have more HP and it also speeds the fight up that said if I miss I can't afford to use more PP against this thing because I need it all for Brock I don't want to backtrack to the Pokemon Center to heal after defeating the sandrew as well as all of the bug catchers in bidan Forest Moltres is level 10 and I can face Brock the split that I'm expecting here is somewhere between 3 minutes and 20 seconds and 3 minutes and 35 seconds it really depends on how the RNG goes also it's worth noting that I can lose here if fire spin is just too inaccurate and I run out of pp the lower range of the split is only accomplishable if I get Critical Hits knocking Brocks Pokémon out more quickly the upper range of the time is only possible if Moltres gets Critical Hits speeding the fight up so so I'm expecting to usually be around the 3 minute and 30 second Mark but in this case I have good luck and Moltres gets a 3 minute and 26 second split as I Journey out of P City I stopped by the march to grab three antidotes and one paralyzed heal this is very important for Moltres I had some failed runs because I didn't pick these items up I'll mention where they're relevant as the Run progresses on Route three I cut out all the battles so you can watch my PP as it depletes upon defeating the final bug catcher PEC only has four uses left and fire spin is completely out as a result of this I'm going to have to do my first center heal right before Mount Moon then inside the cave I fight two optional trainers here the bug catcher as well as this last the Rival on nugget bridge is fairly simple I'm going to be using fire spin against both the speo and the sandrew if Moltres is able to get by both of them with ease then the rest of the battle is very simple sometimes due to bad sand attack lock or just fire spin being awful I will have to heal at the Pokémon Center after this battle and that can lose some time while we watch the battle finish I just want want to mention the fact that the route that I'm currently playing is exactly the route that Austin shared with me all of the credit for this goes to him I'm hoping at some point in the New Year I'll be able to feature him more prominently on the channel so that he can get more praise for his incredible work in these solo runs I tried my best throughout the process of refining Moltres to add things to this route and improve upon it I specifically wanted to make it more consistent that said at the end of 12 runs I am very confident that this is the best route as I mentioned in my first playthrough on nugget Bridge occasionally the trainers that have Pidgey mess mol tress up this is just because fire spin can miss and then the Pidgey can use sand attack while I am using fire spin here I think the safer play overall is just to use PEC it's a guaranteed two hit and because of that they only have one chance to use the accuracy lowering move heading south from Cerulean City I fight this bug catcher he is required for experience notably here fire spin is the go-to move just because this Butterfree move set is so strange it has poison powder stuns spce sleep powder and supersonic if it inflicts a non-volatile status condition then because of his AI it is only going to use supersonic confusing you and making the fight really awful this is one of the reasons that I needed to pick up those healing items earlier on in ptor city it's only really a bad fight if fire spin misses and in this case it doesn't s's next I think the safest approach here is just a Spam Peck it's a two hit against all of her Pokémon after that on the SSN I fight the Sailor to get the TM for rest then I fight this Fisher who has fantastic experience yields and the gentleman to obtain the rare candy all of this gives molus enough experience so that once I defeat the rivals team I am about to level up to 24 my speed right now is 56 and I did contemplate fighting Misty with a tie against her star me I also explored the idea of using one rare candy to go up from 23 to 24 to cut optional trainers I was able to get rid of the bug catcher in Mount Moon the Butterfree bug catcher and the Fisher on on the ssan I tried another approach which was leveling up to level 23 before MTI or going to Vermilion City then I can use one rare candy to be level 24 and have the outspeed without significant backtracking this is so much slower like 1 and 1 half to 2 minutes slower it's just not worth it so the approach that Austin figured out ended up being the best which is once you defeat the goldine trainer in Misty's gym molus levels up to 24 and it has 59 Speed Star use first I'm going to use PEC to knock it out in two turns I'm doing this because yes it can attack with water gun but Misty can also use an X Defan to do nothing going for fire Spin and missing or just taking damage from B are both bad plays and yes I did mention B Because mol's early move set is so awful that this is the best move not just here against Misty's star me but also coming up very soon I'm going to explain that in a second first of all let's talk about this water type because it can cause a reset in generation one B can last two or three turns if I get a three- turn B and mti's star me spams Bubble beam then Moltres is going to faint another way I can win is with a critical hit from Bubble beam that's what happens first turn in this battle that said Misty uses an X defend on the next turn and then another bubble beam which moles survives it pays back damage and oneshots heras now I do make one small alteration to Austin's route which is I go south to face Serge next in his playthrough he goes through Rock Tunnel does a bunch of stuff in Celadon City and Saffron City before backtracking to Surge later on with double edge this makes the battle against the electric types so much easier but I don't think it's worth it for the time cost because when you get surge's badge then you can use fly outside of battle this will allow me to navigate the mid game faster okay so I have a hilarious strategy against surge it's again to use B I said it was going to be useful and here it is the Raichu can knock me out but I'm basically counting on the fact that it's going to miss or go for growl or Serge is going to use an X speed at some point it'll do some damage in this case in the form of two Mega punches molus unleashes energy and one shots in Rock Tunnel I have to rely on fire spin against the self-destructing hiker but I never had any problems here his Pokemon are just too inconsistent cuz they don't know that they should be going for rock throw every turn Okay so I've arrived in seladon city and because I have the Thunder badge I'm going to go straight to the fly house pick up the HM and teach it to molus I can then easily get back to the Pokémon Center using the field move heal as well as deposit some items in Salon City I grab the pp up I defeat the rocket to gain access to The Hideout there's another PP up here I fight another optional trainer with two machops this gives me access to the TM for double edge and then finally in this area I grab the rare candy before the department store I go to the Celadon gym fight the cool trainer and then defeat Erica we're not even going to watch the footage it's so easy doing the gym first gives me more money for the department store so now I can buy four protein instead of three it's important to do this now because I'm going to the fighting Dojo next to do training in here I have two hit ranges with fly on some of the fighting types the additional protein really help in knocking these Pokémon out in one hit saving time just before I fight the Rival in Pokémon Tower I'm going to teach double edge in the place of PEC I kept the weak flying type move in the fighting Dojo because it was useful against some of the weaker Pokemon like Mankey against the Rival I go for fire spin first because the FOH is going to be a two hit I don't want to waste time with a bunch of flies or have them reflected back at me by the F's mirror move after knocking it out double edge has one hits on his four remaining Pokemon so it saves time to use the recoil move this is the final Pokémon Yellow video of the year and I think it's fitting to acknowledge the character development I am actually using double edge and I am recognizing its benefits I'm going to give myself a little pat on the back for that good job Scott on cycling Road I grabb the pp up I have mentioned these three because they will be useful for fire blast when I obtain it after that I fight the QQ ball as well as the biker but I'm going to show this second fight because my damage ranges on the coughing are very unfortunate at just level 35 I would have a 90% chance to knock them out but it's only a 34% chance at level 34 in my attempts to make this route faster in the mid game I tried using one rare candy once I reached level 34 to get to level 35 to speed this fight up it turns out that that means I get to Lance at level 59 instead of level 60 and I need level 60 to ensure that I can get two hits against his Gyarados and I don't even have a good probability of two hitting that thing level 59 is just kind of unacceptable unless you want to wait for a hydr pump Miss and I didn't want to the unfortunate damage ranges continue in koga's gym against the first juggler I don't have guarantees against any of these psychic type Pokémon this route fights both Tamer and koga's gym and they're kind of annoying because the arbox have glare and the sand slash has sand attack things can go very wrong here also note I get poisoned so this is another reason those early healing items are important the second Tamer gives molus enough experience to level up to 37 and then I face Koga this fight has inherent inconsistencies because flies isn't a guarantee against the venats the first two are above a 90% chance each but the third one is only a 53% chance today I get the favorable damage rolles and move on to the Venom off this thing is a 92% chance to knock out with fly over two hits but it's also going to use double teams sometimes in those cases I want one fly to hit and then I want to knock it out with double edge so that I have more chances to roll for the hit the experience of this battle levels molus up to 38 and then after flying to patan I use two rare candies to take it to level 40 when I first saw Austin's route this was the first thing I wanted to change I was like why would you use two rare candies before Blaine you can just fight him at level 38 and not have a problem turns out these two rare candies make all of the battles in the next little section of the game a lot easier and they also line up the levels that I'm going to reach 45 right before Giovani even if I take these rare candies out and position them later on into the route I will still end up at the same level for Giovani because of this the right choice choices to use them now to make the next section of the game easier one Major Impact they have is giving the outspeed on the Ninetails as you can see from my mol's move set I am using toxic this is because fly just doesn't do enough damage to his fire type Pokemon there's an alternative strategy here which is to use reflect in the place of fire Spin and then just stall him out using rest this is overall the safer strategy but it isn't as fast because while fir spin doesn't do a lot of damage to his fire type Pokemon it does help stack up the toxic counter in this case since I'm going for the riskier strategy that has the potential to be faster I do have one reset against Blaine the reason that occurred is because both Ninetails and Rapidash did not badge boost me with either Tail Whip or growl if they do then Moltres is faster than all of Blain's Pokemon and stacking up toxic with fire spin is just so much easier in Sil I fight only the mandatory trainers and then I take on the Rival the whole reason that I fought Blain early is so that I have good damage ranges with fire blast here it can one hit the sand slash and the Closter against the Magneton I only have a 54% chance to knock it out because it is not yet a Steel type but once it's defeated fly one- shots the cadabra and is going to two- hit the Flareon fire blast also helps speed things up against Jesse and James because I can one hit their wheezing instead of having to two hit and the powerful fire move continues its spree against Giovani one hitting all of his Pokemon this is with favorable damage rolles and accuracy because fire blast only has a 58% chance to knock out the Neo Queen after that I stop by copy cat's house to pick up the TM for mimic and then I face sabr my speed is the important thing to look at in this fight because I can move first against both the Abra and the Kadabra one-shotting them with fly after that I use fire blast on the Alakazam this is specifically because it moves first and it can set up reflect or she can use an X defend I don't want to give her time to do those things using fly and also fire blast can crit or burn which would speed up my progress after defeating Sabrina I pick up the rare candy in the power plant and inside of Verdian City gym I fight one optional trainer bringing Moltres up to level four 45 this is the target level so that with five rare candies it will be level 50 to face Giovani but there's one more thing that I do before that battle which of course is teaching mimic in the place of toxic the rare candies ensure that I move first against the Doug Trio and the Persian this is important so that I can knock the first one out without getting hit by sand attack then on his second Pokemon I mimic double team and I'm going to set this up I really wanted the paralysis strategy to work with the Arbok I tried it so many different ways I had to save so much time to during the mid game but in the end it is just not as consistent number one you can fail to mimic it against the Arbok because that thing can just Screech and then knock you out also sometimes you get paralyzed knock the Arbok out but then Tauros stops you and even if you make it to Giovani there is no guarantee that fly will trigger the glitch sometimes you just get lucky paralysis never activates and Rydon knocks you out with rock slide this is disappointing because the base time investment for that strategy is higher than the double team strategy so yeah evasion ends up being the answer that Moltres has to use once I'm set up to plus six I have so many badge boosts that it's easy to knock out his remaining Pokemon the Ron does survive because of a critical hit but it doesn't end up mattering because it misses rock slide and that's that the only inconsistency against the Rival before the league is the Magneton fire blast only has a 40% chance to knock it out in one hit today the game favors me because I get a critical hit knocking out in one turn and with that moles has made it to Victory Road I grab the rare candy and then I fight three trainers the cool trainer in the entrance area the black belt in the second area and the Tamer that's in the next area this is a mistake because I just barely don't have enough experience to get to 53 so I have to face a wild Pokemon to knock it out to gain the level I need to use five rare candies to get to level 58 before lorai just so everyone knows in Austin's route if you fight the juggler and then the cool trainer male that has exeggutor Cloister and Arcanine Moltres will level up to 53 with only two trainer battles so that is obviously the better choice laurelai is fairly simple I should be going for for fly turn one hoping the dong uses rest turn two but I just went into it with fire blast and I crit getting the one hit so that's perfect luck cloer is a guaranteed one hit provided fire plast hits and then on the slow bro I'm going to set up amnesia twice so that I can one hit all of her three remaining Pokemon using the fire type move the next trainer is so simple because fire blast one hits every single team member he has like was the case with the other three legendaries there are two ways to play Agatha either mimic substitute or just try to sweep in this case I go for the safer play because I am on track to clock in with my best time yet I was very happy with this molus run but even the best of runs can come to a grinding halt because Lance is so much RNG the entire run has synergized around the fact that I need level 60 to face him but even this level does not give particularly good damage ranges against his Gyarados I have a 45% chance to knock it out in two turns and I am likely going to two hit the following dragon air which can cause problems because it knows both thunderwave and and Thunderbolt in this case I make it past the Gyarados but I miss my fly on the dragon air it uses thunder wave and as a result I'm paralyzed there is no way to recover the lost speed unfortunately due to the status condition Moltres has its second reset here in the following fight I'm able to heal against the first dragon air and move on to the second one where I mimic Ice Beam the problem is with my speed cut I will take damage from his final three Pokemon before knocking them out with the powerful ice type move I had green health and this is a good scenario for Moltres but the Aerodactyl does damage and then Dragonite crits with thunder knocking Moltres out editor Scott here I failed to mention the one critical hit Gyarados gets which one shots molus in the next fight I make it back to the Dragonite around the same amount of Health this time it goes for blizzard and like I said before I have a chance to survive these moves Moltres uses ice beam and Dragonite faints okay so we have arrived at the Champion by the way for the fire Type legendary this fight is fairly straightforward mimic earthquake and then knock the sand slash out with fire blast fly has a 63% chance to knock the Alakazam out and then Fire Blast has a guarantee against the executor the Magneton is the biggest liability here I only have a 70% chance to knock it out I get the favorable range move on to the Cloister moles doesn't miss and with that I have a guarantee with earthquake on the Flareon so moles clocks in with a final time of 47 minutes and 46 seconds with four resets at level 62 this is a game time of three hours and 1 minute now that I finished my runs with all three legendary birds let's compare the data the splits demonstrate how similar Zapdos and Articuno are in terms of finishing the game however it's very interesting to see how different the runs actually are Moltres on the other hand is so much slower than both of these Pokémon primarily due to the fact that the Misty split takes forever also Moltres took longer at Blain cuz I had one reset there and it also had three resets against Lance looking at Levels by trainer we can see that Moltres really did need the highest level of the three Articuno finished one level higher than Zapdos but overall those two were very similar just a small tip for reading these graphs if there is a negative slope I did not go back in time the splits were just done in different orders between playthroughs Game Time by trainer is also interesting you can see how similar Zapdos and Articuno are I think the only reason the electric type out performed today is because Articuno takes more time against laurelai and in the mid game as you can see in the earliest portions of the game it is far ahead of Zapdos once again unfortunately for our fire type fans this graph does not look very good for Moltres its game time is just so much higher than all the others throughout the entire run uh actually except for the first split against Brock where it outpaced Zapdos just slightly but that shouldn't be a surprise to anyone if I was going to sit down and do these playthroughs all again now and I had to predict the time I would get in a single attempt with Moltres I would say 50 minutes with zaptos I would say 40 minutes and with Articuno I would also say 40 minutes I had to put in so much effort and get a decent amount of luck to get these results with the legendary birds but I figured as the Pokémon Yellow season finale I should go above and beyond for this one just before we rank moles I want to mention one thing that I've been thinking about this entire year and that's the fact that my Pokemon are not ranked based on the number of attempts that I do with each one if I ranked exclusively on first playthrough results then all of the Pokemon played earlier on would have worse results if I rank based on second or third or fourth playthroughs then it's not really fair if one Pokémon gets extremely bad luck in that specific run or if I make a major player mistake the solution I came up with a long time ago was that I was just going to rank Pokemon based on their best time that I had achieved yet this gives me the ability to come back to Pokemon later on and rerank them when my skills have improved but that does leave a flaw in my methodology for this video I completed different number of runs per Pokémon four with Articuno 11 with Zapdos and 12 with Mol hopefully when watching my Articuno run you realized that there was a lot of RNG that just lined up during that attempt for that reason I felt that doing more Articuno playthroughs would just end up wasting time I'm going to acknowledge that there was a bias here because I felt that Moltres was going to take so long to optimize and it did three full days of play time and when I say full day I mean wake up do a little bit of VoiceOver and then play moles until I go to sleep at the end of these days I had done 11 runs and I still had a result I was unsatisfied with I was chasing Austin's incredible result of 45 minutes and 31 seconds it felt like magic that he got that time with Moltres and because I was unsatisfied I came back and played a fourth day getting this 12th playthrough which was my best time if like in his playthrough I had no resets our times would have been very similar so I decided to go with this for molus and that's really what it comes down to some Pokemon require more time than others because this methodology has the ability to be unfair to Pokemon that are more consistent I am going to start recording the number of attempts I take at each Pokemon as well as the number of finishes that I have for these three I attempted Articuno 10 times and finished four times with Zapdos I attempted 34 times and finished 11 times and with Moltres I attempted 29 times and finished a total of 12 this approach still leaves one flaw which is the fact that not all attempts or finishes are made the same for example with Articuno I was playing the final route that I had throughout the second third and fourth playthrough whereas with moles I only settled on my final route on the 12th playthrough each attempt was so different as I tried to figure out ways to make Austin's route more consistent for the best possible accuracy really the only way to do it is decide on the route and then from that point count attempts and finishes as well as all of the other four metrics that I regularly report I'm not sure I'm ever going to get there on this channel for single videos but maybe just maybe in several years once I've completed completed the Pokédex we will be able to collect that data okay so now let's rank Moltres in the tier list with its final time of 47 minutes and 46 seconds it earns itself a placement in the a tier just behind hitmon Ley and just ahead of Poliwrath I do want to bring up the fact that the first stage Pokémon Gastly is ahead of Moltres and radicate is only two spots behind it this is absolutely hilarious to me also when I redo radicate it can definitely get a time under 45 minutes so even its results will improve and it will surpass mold stress as we go into 2024 I'm going to have to rerank this tier list and adjust the times so it's not so top heavy that'll happen in the first Pokémon Yellow video of the new year I'm taking time off from produced videos in January just to do some fun streaming after all December has been very demanding so stay tuned for the next video in this series sometime in February finally I just want to say a huge thanks to everyone who supports me on patreon or through YouTube memberships it really does mean the world to me this is my dream job every day I get to work on being a Pokemon Master so thank you so much if you made it this far you're incredible and you deserve a treat so let's face Professor Oak for Articuno things are pretty straightforward I can set up using agility and then knock the Tauros out using ice beam I was a little bit surprised that I didn't get the one hit but I guess it is nine levels higher than me exeggutor goes down to a single hit Arcanine is next now Oak does have two fire types but once they defeat this one the Charizard is a flying type so it takes super effective damage from Ice Beam and goes down in one hit last is Gyarados I figured I might lose here but Ice Beam freezes not allowing it to get another attack in and as a result Articuno beats Oak of the three Pokémon I think zapto Stacks up best against Oak's teams just because it has super effective damage against all of his starter Pokemon I felt Venusaur was going to be the most difficult to face just because it does know the move sleep powder drill peek isn't able to knock out the exeggutor in one hit and then I have to two- hit the Arcanine using Thunderbolt okay so will the Venusaur use sleep powder and the answer is no it goes for a Razor Leaf Zapdos knocks it out in two turns and one shots the final Gyarados all that's left is molus do note it's taking on Oak at a higher level I'm going to mimic hypnosis here just because his team has two water types Blastoise and Gyarados and they both know hydropump the exeggutor puts me to sleep it wastes a bunch of time I have to use rest to heal I finally knock it out move on to the Arcanine use hypnosis heal up and then knock it out using fly okay time for the Blastoise hypnosis successfully puts it to sleep and then I finish the water type off using fire blast I just don't want it to wake up when I'm in the air last is Gyarados and I think it's fitting that the final Pokémon I defeat in the year in Pokémon Yellow I do with the aid of hypnosis happy holidays everyone daily December continues tomorrow so I'll see you in that video

Channel: Scott's Thoughts

Views: 152,986

Keywords: Pokemon Challenge

Id: Nq02fWBoYC0

Length: 134min 35sec (8075 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 25 2023