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reides · 3 months

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as you probably know, the most recent pokemon games feature pretty significant pokedex cuts due to the sheer magnitude of pokemon that are now available to us. this means that some pokemon are simply not featured in certain mainline games, which adds a unique element to a lot of pokemon's ribbon master journeys. re: my experience with reides, working around unobtainable ribbons wasn't exactly a new experience - after all, there were no available shadow horseas/seadras/kingdras in pokemon colosseum or pokemon xd, so i knew that my kingdra wouldn't be able to get the national ribbon (granted to purified shadow pokemon) - but it still was something i had to consider and plot out carefully as i brought him up towards the more recent generations. for example, reides was unable to get the hisui ribbon (granted for taking a photo with your pokemon in the region's photo studio), as the horsea line was not featured in legends arceus... and, for a long time, i figured that he wouldn't be able to get any of the ribbons (and marks!) featured in scarlet and violet.

but then... the dlc happened. the glorious, glorious dlc.

the horsea line was re-introduced into the pokedex when indigo disk - the second batch of dlc for scarlet and violet - dropped. needless to say, i was EXTREMELY hype about this. in my previous post, i mentioned not being sure if reides would be able to join me in this current generation of pokemon. i wondered if i'd have to brave the long, long queues of pokemon shield in order to get the master rank ribbon on him and make him a true ribbon master... but fortune smiled down on me, and reides was miraculously granted access to generation 9 of the pokemon games.

before i get into reides' journey through paldea, kitakami and unova, here's a quick reminder you can find each part of reides' ribbon master journey here on my personal website, or here in my ribbon master tag on this tumblr! it spans from my childhood copy of emerald version to my... uh... adulthood (lmao) copy of scarlet version... so it's quite the sizeable read! to everyone who's stuck by me for this whole challenge and expressed support for my lovely kingdra: thank you so much! and for anyone new to the reides saga: welcome, and i hope you enjoy my posts about him!

with that handled... it's time to cover a brand new generation of ribbons and marks!

as a big pokemon fan, i tend to play new games and dlc the very moment that i can. in the current era of #gaming, that means obsessively checking for game updates on the night of dlc releases. as i mashed that + button on my pro controller to check for updates to my copy of scarlet, i felt especially nervous. thanks to people being mischievous and sneaking alleged leaks around on twitter, i knew that the horsea line was supposedly being introduced into the game... but i'm extremely skeptical by nature. (can you believe that some people go on the internet and lie?!?!) i didn't want to believe that reides' ribbon master journey would continue until i saw a little horsea (or seadra... or kingdra...) swimming around in a digital body of water myself. once my game finally updated, i sprinted over to blueberry academy as SOON as i could and began running around the terarium in search of a horsea. i found one swimming around in a lake almost immediately.

when i tell y'all... the scream i scrumpt... LMFAO. joking aside, it felt like i could finally breathe again. i was SO READY to plop reides into my file and get right to grabbing the ribbons and marks that were added for gen9. unfortunately, gamefreak had other plans for me, and pokemon home was under maintenance. after falling dramatically to my knees, i busied myself with getting the rest of my team for the dlc ready. this included grinding out the necessary bp to unlock wild starters in the terarium, then embarking on a shiny hunt for my fav starter pokemon of all time - totodile! after hours and hours of looking around, i managed to catch one successfully in a love ball and named him barge. along with the rest of my indigo disk team, barge would go on to be close friends with reides. anyway, after a lengthy maintenance, pokemon home was eventually ready to go. i leapt right in, retrieving reides and plopping him into my party. i'm a huge fan of the updated pokemon models in scarlet, so i was hype to see the one that they gave shiny kingdra. i was NOT disappointed in the slightest!

LOOK AT HOW GORGEOUS HE IS. the tiny scale details... the glossy shine... my god. as much as i liked the sleekness of the models in gen8, i like the more realistic ones that gen9 introduced a whole lot more. the devs did a phenomenal job; kingdra looks absolutely majestic. with my full indigo disk team now present in my copy of scarlet, i had to take a group shot and treat everyone to a sandwich!

reides met five new pals: bane the weezing, grunge the krookodile, bento the snorlax, axe the haxorus, and, of course, barge the feraligatr! i shiny hunted for all of them myself, as i really enjoyed doing the same for my kitakami team during my teal mask playthrough.

i wasn't quite ready to take on the indigo disk plotline, though. my first order of business was grabbing a ribbon for reides - namely, the paldea champion ribbon! i hopped on a plane and flew back to paldea, signing up for a spot in the academy ace tournament.

i really love the vibes of the academy ace tournament; everyone is so passionate about the battles, and the music is an absolute JAM. i was especially happy about reides' first experience as a competitor in it, too, because my fav character in the game just-so-happened to show up for it!

that's right: arven - the man, the myth, the legend - challenged me and reides to a battle.

shoutout to him holding his pokeball upside down. just one more reason as to why he's truly one of the best pokemon characters. (btw, as happy was i was to see arven, i always feel so bad to fight his mabosstiff. that's my FRIEND!!!!!!)

anyway, after sweeping his way through everyone in the academy ace tournament, reides was granted the paldea champion ribbon for his efforts.

after nabbing that ribbon, i decided that i should really get a move on with the indigo disk's actual plot, as i wanted to avoid spoilers and also REALLY wanted to know what happened next in the plot. i was pretty invested in the hooks that teal mask introduced and was especially worried about kieran. (just why did teal mask's plot force us to lie to that poor kid, btw?! just thinking about it gets me so annoyed. i'd go through an 'evil' arc too if i was in his shoes, i'll tell you that.) even though it's not really relevant to reides' ribbon master quest, i figured i'd share some photos of his storyline adventure, too.

(btw, i'm writing this post in feb 2024, which means that indigo disk has been Around for around 2 months and thus the spoiler embargo is pretty much lifted - but, still: be warned that there are some spoilers for indigo disk beyond this point!)

the battles in indigo disk ended up being pretty tough; i was glad that i put time aside to train up my team properly. we managed to take on the blueberry elite four and kieran and ultimately Prevailed - even if the battles were quite close, at times! i was kinda sad that there was no ribbon associated with beating all of them - it would've been nice to finally get some form of an unovan ribbon on my ribbon master - and i was also pretty shocked that the dlc didn't introduce a battle tower. regardless, even if reides didn't get a ribbon for his performance in the battles, it was still awesome to include him in them, and i had a whole lot of fun.

i also brought reides along for the Shenanigans following the blueberry academy plotline.

luckily for me, briar, carmine and kieran were chill with waiting in the underdepths of area zero while i took reides on a bit of a photoshoot. it was just so pretty down there!! how could i resist!!

anyway, silly little wanderings aside, it was really cool to have reides involved in the big showdown against terapagos. i was especially happy when kieran snapped out of his funk and i got to battle alongside him. his hydrapple even used dragon cheer, powering reides up during the battle. it made the whole experience feel all the more significant.

with everything all sorted out, i ended up being really happy with the indigo disk's overall plot. i definitely liked it a lot more than teal mask's narrative and was really pleased that we could become proper friends with kieran once more. (i still wish that we could've apologized for lying to him, though.)

now that i was safe from indigo disk spoilers and emboldened with love for pokemon as a whole, i decided to pick up my ribbon-collecting in earnest once more... though the next ribbon on my list was not actually a ribbon. it was a mark! introduced in gen8, marks are basically the same as ribbons. i think of them as little stickers on pokemon, haha. the first one that i set my sights on was the gourmand mark, which has a chance of being randomly given to your pokemon after eating a meal with them! these meals can be the store-bought ones or the ones that you make yourself via the picnic system.

frankly, i have no idea WHEN reides got this mark, as i went sort of crazy with buying lots of different meals. (i really like the food art in this game, okay!!) it definitely didn't take long for one of these meals to really strike his fancy, though. he got the gourmand mark very quickly and also got the title 'reides the gourmet' along with it!

i then decided that i'd try to get the other two marks on reides in one fell swoop. the first of these marks was the itemfinder mark, which your pokemon has a chance of getting when they pick up an item in the overworld. to get this mark, you have to make use of the let's go feature, which allows your pokemon to walk alongside you. the second of these marks was the partner mark, which... can be quite the ordeal. your pokemon basically has a 1/100 chance to get this mark with every 10k steps that you take. additionally, your pokemon also has to be friendly towards you in order for them to have a chance at getting this mark. since both of these marks rely on random chance, i knew that i could get really unlucky and end up going off on one hell of a grind for them... but i decided to just take it one step at a time. instead of focusing on getting the marks to trigger, i wanted to wander around and enjoy the sights around the various regions of the game. after all, i was lucky to even HAVE reides in this generation - and these marks gave me the perfect excuse to take lots of photos with him, too!

i was especially happy to take some photos of him with aske, my shiny gallade who joined me for my teal mask journey. as you guys know, reides the kingdra is named after a character that i play in a dnd campaign. similarly, aske is named after another character in that campaign; he's reides' boyfriend!

i also enjoyed roaming around *as* reides while using the new synchro machine, too! i'm not sure if items that you pick up count towards the itemfinder mark in this mode, but i'd like to think that they do.

thanks to my casual approach to getting these marks, i actually have no idea how long they took for me to get on reides. one day, i just happened to check and they were BOTH there, so i guess the 'grind' truly ended up being completely painless. in the following screenshot, i'm hovering over the partner mark, but you can see the itemfinder one at the end of the row above it, too.

with the marks now handled, i had one more ribbon to get on reides before he could become a true ribbon master. this ribbon was the one that i was the most nervous about by FAR. the master rank ribbon is granted to your pokemon once you emerge victorious in one (1) online battle against another player... but the catch here is that the battle has to be in the master rank. for me, it meant climbing from the beginner rank all the way up there.

naturally, i procrastinated with this ribbon a whole lot. i took reides along for the (amazing) epilogue when it dropped in january, taking more pictures with him and making more memories... all the while wondering just when i'd get around to tackling the Final Ribbon.

as it turns out, i didn't actually end up procrastinating on it all that long. my friend cody visited me a few days after the epilogue dropped, and my other friend blee stayed over at my house for his visit, too. both of them knew about reides the kingdra and we decided that we'd tackle operation: final ribbon acquisition together, with blee spearheading it as someone very well-versed in vgc. over the course of a few days, we managed to get up to master rank - running into a bunch of really interesting teams and occurences during the climb of legend. (special shoutout to a dedenne who kept trying to spam nuzzle on pokemon who were completely immune to it, but who successfully spread the glory of Cheek Pouch via entrainment onto us all.) i learnt a truly crazy amount of stuff about the competitive world of pokemon and really enjoyed all of the different rental teams that we tried out.

upon arriving in the master ball tier, we had to switch gears, though, as we couldn't use rental teams anymore and, instead, had to build one from scratch so that reides could be included in it. i ended up building this portland regional finals team as per blee's recommendation, though we swapped out raging bolt for reides, himself. since it was my own team and not a rental one, we gave nicknames to each team member.

my entei is one that i got in an event years and years ago (they're shiny and in a cherish ball), so i couldn't nickname them... but just know that they are 'flamberge' in spirit. o7 reides also got an electric tera type (and tera blast as part of his moveset) for fun, as his namesake is associated with storms.

it was a lot of fun making this team!!! the very specific ev-spreads that some of the pokemon required gave me a newfound appreciation for all of the feathers that i happened to pick up while wandering the terarium... not to mention all of the mochi that i collected while oustin' ogres in kitakami.

once the team was all built, it was time to get the final W in order to secure the ribbon at long last. we could all breathe a whole lot easier, as when you rank up to another ball tier, you can't "demote" to a lower one - so falling back into the ultra ball tier wasn't a concern. victory didn't evade us for long, either!

after a REALLY fun battle against someone named alex, operation: final ribbon was finally complete.

reides - along with the rest of the team who helped clutch out the victory - got the much-coveted master rank ribbon.

upon getting this ribbon, it finally happened.

reides the kingdra officially became a ribbon master.

a journey that began back in october 2023 finally came to a close. with his 91 total ribbons (since his two golden memory ribbons have 48 ribbons in total within them), reides now has each and every single ribbon that he can possibly attain from his origin game of emerald version to the current pokemon generation.

i'm sure that all of my posts speak for themselves in terms of the sheer amount of effort that i put into this challenge. there were many times that i thought i hit a "roadblock," be it in the form of a gruelling grind or worries over not being able to access something due to hardware restrictions. in the end, however, reides was able to rise above all of the challenges. i got sooo much help and support from friends over the course of this whole challenge, so i have to give a BIG shoutout to every single one of y'all! and, of course, i have to extend thanks to all of the people who posted about their ribbon mastery experiences online, as i definitely couldn't have guided reides to this point without them. i'm hoping that the posts that i made about reides' journey can serve as a guide of sorts to anyone who wants to pick up the challenge for their pokemon, too!

at any rate, reides is my very first ribbon master and i definitely plan on keeping his ribbon collection up-to-date in future generations of pokemon. i say it time and time again, but the ribbon master challenge is amazing because it gets you interacting with aspects of the pokemon games that you may have never even thought of trying out. you form a true emotional bond with your pokemon, and it's just... so very fantastic. you make so many memories!!! so while there might not be an update to the reides saga until those generations are out and about, i'm already excited to keep on hunting for ribbons and am hoping that the horsea line is included in every single game going forward! because, quite frankly... it's what reides deserves. >:)

before i Sign Off on this post, however, i wanted to share something i bought to celebrate reides; namely, a custom shiny kingdra diorama from nerdidecor on etsy.

ISN'T IT SO CUTE!!!!! i put it right on my desk next to my pc so that i can always have a little reminder of my amazing ribbon master with me. i'm hoping to get more shiny kingdra stuff in the future, too!

either way, thank you all so much again for keeping up with me and my beloved kingdra! i'm already looking forward to being able to write up another one of these posts in the future! until then, reides is definitely going to enjoy a nice vacation from ribbon hunting. rest assured that i will be taking the very best care of him!!! :D

#ribbon master #jamietxt #pokemon #reides the kingdra

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reides · 15 days

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i tried to resist this shiny hunt... but the very moment that i got the pokeflute, i knew i would need to take it on. there's only two snorlaxes in leafgreen, blocking off routes like the icons they are. i always feel bad about waking them up so i figured they deserved the time commitment of a shiny hunt! (and lbr, the snorlax encounter is SUCH a classic... ough.)

snorlax has a pretty subtle shiny design, but it grew on me sooo much with time... the shade of blue is a super pretty one! i was actually a bit worried that i wouldn't notice the shiny whenever it showed up, but i noticed her RIGHT away when she did. the encounter was a pretty terrifying one - she has the rest + chesto berry combo, smdh, not to mention snorlax's catch rate - but i managed to catch her in a pokeball, which is pretty cool.

ANYWAY!!!! sleepytime was my 8726th snorlax seen! my first overodds hunt on this badge quest AND my first overodds hunt in a 1/8192 game... glad it wasn't too far overodds! and i hope that she'll forgive me for disturbing her cozy slumber!

#jamietxt #leafgreen badge quest #shiny hunt tag

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reides · 2 months

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sparkling lettuce 👍

#jamietxt #i love him dearly

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reides · 2 months

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today is the FIVE YEAR ANNIVERSARY of the dnd campaign that i am a member of...!! so you know that a long rambling post is 100% in order.

five years ago, i played dnd for the very first time. (the date on that post says the 16th but that's because we played for like a billion hours and it went past midnight. because of course it did.) i remember being so, so nervous about it bc i seriously knew next to nothing about dnd. i had never watched any tabletop shows or anything and i was pretty much totally new to improv. i had no idea what a d20 was. i wish i was kidding. i truly just dived right in there. (fitting, i guess, since the character i play is a triton... LMFAO).

i'm so glad that decided to try it out regardless bc it has paid off in ways that i can't even begin to express fully... this campaign has accompanied me through so many life events - both the good and the bad - and i cherish each and every one of our Merry Band of Misfits' adventures. even when shit hit the fan and encounters got tense or chaotic in some form, it ended up making for some absolutely wonderful memories. i'm so glad that that reides - my lil blue fish lad!!! - is a member of the champions valoris.

reides is a character who is extremely near & dear to my heart and he has really awakened a creative side of me during these past five years. i always strive to be a player who can live up to him and do his character the justice that it deserves. even 'beyond' the campaign, i have so much fun writing stuff related to him, making crafts related to him, coming up with art ideas for him and getting comms of him... simply rotating him in my mind. you know how it is. really, i think it's impossible to sum up what reides means to me because he's just... REIDES!!! (also, peep the original token i had for him vs his current one... so cute. just so cute.) i seriously love all of the stuff that everyone else at the table makes for their own characters, too! playing pretend with your friends is fr one of the most healing experiences ever; we all gently feed off each other's creativity in such a lovely way. the passion we all have for our respective characters and the overall setting of the campaign is infectuous, and that passion - coupled with a whole lot of hard (yet fun!!!) work - has made for a story that is nothing short of legendary.

so i just wanted to take a moment to express my gratitude and say that i am honored to share a table with these incredibly creative individuals who have saved me in so many ways!!! big shoutouts to my fellow player, @mintflavoredwindows, who plays kilwin, the EXTREMELY blessed (teehee cleric joke) blond lad standing next to reides in that little chibi line-up of our characters (and who also takes the time to write AMAZING!!!!!! session synopses which all of us read time and time again; they are fr a lifesaver not to mention an immortalization of everything we've been through), our dungeon master of legend, @killdragons, who puts a TON of effort into the campaign setting as a whole and was the person who offered me a position in the campaign to begin with, @brewswain who has accompanied us on tons of different arcs with his absolutely incredible array of characters AND @sangre who has guest starred with his lovely miré (AND WHO HAS SUPPORTED THE CAMPAIGN SOOO MUCH IN GENERAL i love talking abt alethustria with you bree)!!! nathan (who plays jorah) and cj (who plays ashara and played slumberjack during the first season of the campaign) aren't on tumblr dot com so i can't give their urls a little shout-out in this post, but i'm still going to restate that being able to share in this adventure with them - both in-character and out-of-character - has been fucking incredible. the adventurers formerly known as the pog champions are eternal. viva la champions valoris. etc etc etc.

i also want to thank everyone who's supported reides / the campaign as a whole on the sidelines, bc you guys are absolutely amazing. and i can't possibly post this without showing off our lovely campaign wiki. bc it's iconic.

thanks everyone :') so excited for future adventures!!!

#jamietxt

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reides · 5 days

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oh to be a little green fossilized kabuto brought back to life by the weird doctor on cinnabar island!!!!

kabutops is my fav fossil pokemon and honestly one of my fav pokemon in general, so this hunt was a guarentee the very moment i decided to take this badge quest on in leafgreen. ALSO! this line is part of the absolutely iconic group of Bright Green Shinies, which is a group that i REALLY adore!!! despite all of the dialogue involved in picking fossils back up, these soft resets were pretty chill. (a small price to pay for a whole resurrection.)

with that said, this kabuto was my 8738th kabuto resurrected! i was super shocked to see that my shiny one ended up being a girl! sleepytime, my shiny snorlax, is also a girl - and both species of pkmn only have a 12.5% chance of being female!!! i named her veldea, after a character who will eventually be featured in my original story. :3

veldea is also my 8th shiny pokemon for this challenge... which means that i am officially done with my leafgreen badge quest! i still need to actually take on the league with my full team, so i'll be making another post once that's handled - and i'll include my general thoughts on the challenge in that post, too. but i hope you guys have enjoyed my updates about each of the shiny hunts! even if the challenge is complete, i definitely want to keep on taking on hunts in this file of leafgreen. it's awakened a true passion for gen3 shiny hunting in me, so i'll be taking on lots more shiny hunts in kanto even if they don't fall within the context of a challenge! :D

#jamietxt #shiny hunt tag #leafgreen badge quest

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reides · 5 months

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leaving alola behind him, reides the kingdra headed for generation 8 of the pokemon games in his quest for more ribbons! gen8 of these games feature the galar region (via pokemon sword and shield) as well as the sinnoh region (via pokemon brilliant diamond and shining pearl)! this leap to gen8 was super alarming, as my beloved kingdra moved from the 3ds to the current nintendo console - namely, the nintendo switch! it's crazy to think about how this whole journey began on my copy of emerald version, slotted into my pleasantly clunky brick of a grey ds.

reides' journey through the generations has been filled with its highs and its lows, but once he arrived safely in pokemon home, it meant that i could be a bit flexible with my approach to the ribbons available in swsh and bdsp! (it also meant bidding farewell to my shoddy photos of my (3)ds screen for these posts... they will be missed...)

anyway, before i get into the story of reides' gen8 journey, i gotta do my customary shoutout to all the other parts of his ribbon master quest. it's really easy this time around, as i finally put together an index for these posts on my personal site! you can find it here! that page also has a lot of information about the challenge itself, along with some helpful resources if you'd like to take it on. as always, you can also peek in my ribbon master tag on this blog, too.

if you're all caught up with the story so far, it's time to get started on a brand new chapter.

transferring reides into my copy of pokemon shield was a really emotional experience. kingdra looks absolutely gorgeous on the switch, and i was blown away by how awesome the shiny form looks, too. this moment on the beach at sunset - with a galarian slowpoke and a kingler lurking close by - felt pretty cinematic. it was also really nice to see my trainer character again! i absolutely love all of the different fashion items available in swsh. immediately, i knew that i had to make my ribbon mastery team a big ol' pot of curry for all of their hard work thus far.

we also played together while we camped out. i was really glad that i was already in shield's post-game, as it saved a whole lot of time on this ribbon master journey AND meant that i'd have tons of toys for my pokemon at my disposal.

after goofing around for hours, i finally decided to take on the first ribbon available in galar. this ribbon was the galar champion ribbon, which your pokemon receive upon entering the galarian hall of fame. i ended up needing to play through the galarian star tournament first, though, as i had procrastinated on doing that for the longest time... so reides ended up taking part in a few more battles than one would think!

it was absolutely awesome to see dynamax in action with reides! it made me wish that kingdra got a gigantamax form, but i guess that would be a bit too amazing for anyone to handle, huh? while taking on this ribbon, i also realized just how much i missed the vibes of the gym challenge in the galar region. the wide stadiums, the cheering crowds, the MUSIC... all of it is so incredibly top-tier and it really got me pumped up! not to mention seeing the absolutely INCREDIBLE cast in action. shoutout to everyone but especially piers. all hail the reigning king of the pokemon punks.

anyway, reides was eventually able to sweep his way to victory in both the galarian star tournament as well as the league battles. he joined the hall of fame and got the galar champion ribbon!

with that handled, it was time to take on galar's battle tower. according to most, this battle tower is an absolute cake-walk, as you can dynamax while most of your opponents (barring leon) can't. it was just a matter of buckling down and spending the time required to amass your wins. as a result, i ended up abandoning the tried and true durant strat and instead took the og trio of albatross, origin and reides, himself, along for the ride.

hilariously enough, i ran into ONE road-block in this tower in the form of a shedinja which i could literally not attack. i had NO moves that could get past its guard... sobs. but another nice thing about the galarian battle tower is that it isn't streak-dependent, instead swapping over to a system relying on ranking up or ranking down. so i brushed off this shedinja encounter without letting it get to me all that much, haha! i also taught albatross shadow ball... just in case.

ribbons also got a bit of an upgrade in the switch games of pokemon. no longer limited to just being pretty graphics on the ribbon screen, you can now equip one ribbon on your pokemon and give it a little title every time you send it out in battle. i equipped the ribbon that reides got for mastering all of the contests in omega ruby, which granted him the title of 'shining star'!

it was so nice to see it every time i sent him out, but i can definitely see myself swapping between all the various titles at reides' disposal!

my climb to the master ball rank was fairy uneventful, though i really understood this child's plight. it's how i felt many times while in various battle towers during this ribbon master journey.

eventually, i made it through the rank itself and got to the final battle against leon. though i had faced him at the end of each rank prior to this moment, it still felt very intense to encounter him knowing that this was my very last battle tower match for the forseeable future. also, his battle tower outfit is SO DRIPPY. love him so much.

not gonna lie, it was pretty funny seeing him say something so inspiring while looking so sad (and the snowscape from one of dynamax-form reides' attacks really added to it). leon is an absolutely amazing character and one of my fav champions ever, though, so i was thrilled that he got to be the final match in my battle tower saga!

even though the swsh battle tower was WAY easier than the others that i faced, i was still so happy to be done with it. my goodness. i really went from ignoring the battle towers in the series to gaining streaks of ~50 in each and every one... it's kind of unreal. reides truly earned the title of 'tower master'!

upon getting the tower master ribbon, we were done with galar. i was sure to make my pokemon team some more curry before they set off for sinnoh! but i honestly wasn't too torn up about leaving galar, as pokemon home lets us shift pokemon between the switch games however we'd like. after so many one-way transfers out of prior generations, it felt kind of surreal - and was also a huge relief.

this cute curry wasn't the only treat that got eaten, either! i made some pokemon cookies in Real Life to celebrate, as well. i used cookie cutters from the official pokemon store to make these pikachu and munchlax cookies!

i then set my sights on the remake of diamond version... pokemon: brilliant diamond!

the last time reides visited sinnoh, he did so via my childhood copy of diamond version. as i wrote in my post about the gen4 part of reides' journey, this copy of the game was already in the post-game, so i didn't have to play through any of diamond's plot whatsoever when he arrived. however... for this sinnoh visit, i actually didn't have a post-game available! despite owning brilliant diamond since the day it released, i had barely played it. (fun fact: in my first run of the game, i ran into a shiny bidoof on my very first night playing it. i ended up transferring all of the pokemon in it - bidoof included - to pokemon home and restarting it, though, as i was toying with the idea of doing a shiny starter hunt... and then i simply never touched it. so i guess restarting it was actually a waste of time. weeps.) i knew that i'd need to play through its plot to get the ribbon that reides needed, so... you know what that meant.

it was time for a whole other adventure to begin.

i decided to keep reides in the pc for the storyline part of this playthrough. i wanted to raise a team of pokemon from the sinnoh region, and i knew that reides' status as a fully ev and iv trained pokemon at level 100 meant that he would absolutely STEAMROLL the plot. we still went on walks together very often though, and he had his pal hammer the garchomp in the pc for company! (i usually raise a garchomp for my sinnoh teams, as it's one of my fav pokemon in the sinnoh region, but i decided to try to resist this time around and limit myself to pokemon that i had never raised before!)

i absolutely loved my brilliant diamond playthrough. the art direction is a point of contention in the pokemon fandom, but i'm a big fan of it! it seems like people either love it or hate it, and, thankfully, i'm definitely in the 'love' camp! the chibi style is endlessly charming, and the environments were just gorgeous. something about the lighting in brilliant diamond is just SUPER pleasing to me, and re-visiting sinnoh like this allowed me to really appreciate it. since my diamond file was in the post-game, i guess needing to play through this one in its entirety actually kinda worked out in my favour, huh?

i was super delighted to see that the ribbons screen is absolutely gorgeous in this game, too! i really like the status screen featured in bdsp. it's so nice and colourful.

this simple little screenshot is also really important to me. you see, when i was a kid, i got diamond version as a gift from a family friend. he'd gone abroad and generously brought back it back as a present for me. back then, the country that i live in didn't get pokemon games in a timely manner at all (we'd get them in video game stores months after they released in the u.s.), and i actually had no idea that diamond version even existed. (not knowing that a new pkmn generation dropped was a recurring experience in my childhood, LOL.) so playing this game for the first time made for a really magical experience. i have a very, very clear memory of playing it for hours and hours on the night that i started it up... until i could barely keep my eyes open. i trained my team a whole lot and was exploring this route right outside of jubilife, and i thought that the small island on the water was very pretty. i saved there for the night, imagining my trainer setting up a little camp for herself and her pokemon... and now, every time i'm on that route, i can't help but smile at the memory. so you can imagine just how happy i was to take a photo with reides there, with the updated graphics and everything!

furthermore, on the course of my sinnoh journey, i ran into lots of old friends... including none other than riley!

thanks to the way he helped me out in the gen4 battle tower, riley is a really special character to me now. so i was really happy to see him and play through iron island with him! after thwarting team galactic, he surprised me with a little gift.

i actually wasn't planning on raising a riolu - much less a lucario - on my main team AT ALL... but, upon receiving this egg from riley, i knew i had to. as silly as it may sound, i thought it would be a great nod to our time in the battle tower all those generations ago! and so, on that note, here is the storyline team that i journeyed through sinnoh with, and who helped reides get to where he needed to be:

as you can see, there's a bit of a theme going on with their nicknames! i decided to name each member of my brilliant diamond team after in-universe berries. i thought it'd be cute!

anyway, the berry bunch and i had a fantastic time exploring sinnoh. days passed, and, eventually, we faced what i believe to be the most difficult league in any of the pokemon games... including the most daunting champion battle ever.

cynthia lived up to her status as the most skilled champion in the pkmn franchise thus far. we had a battle for the ages, knocking 5 of each other's pokemon out. i actually almost lost to her - she had me completely backed into a corner. but my team pulled through, as kelpsy the glaceon MIRACULOUSLY toughed out an attack that should have knocked him out (via the affection system - namely, if your pokemon really loves you, they can occasionally 'survive' attacks that'd knock them out with 1hp instead) and managed to land a single ice beam on her garchomp. this clutched out the win, and my team was added to the sinnoh hall of fame.

now that i had access to the post-game, i could focus on reides once more. to get his ribbon in brilliant diamond, we'd have to foray into the brilliant contest scene.

brilliant contests are a calibre above the typical condition contests and are linked to all of your contest stats rather than just one. you actually don't gain access to this category unless you've achieved a master rank win in all of the solo-stat categories. luckily, ribbons from oras are recognized in bdsp, so reides didn't have to prove his worth to the judges and could instead get right to competing in the brilliant contests.

in addition to this category, bdsp also introduced some new contest mechanics, too. your final contest score can be split into three parts: 'visual', 'dance', and 'move'. these all seem pretty self-explanatory; the visual part is linked to your pokemon's contest condition/sheen, the dance part is linked to how well you perform in the rhythm game, and the move is linked to your timing in executing the one contest move that you're allowed to take in with you during the contests. but the visual part actually has an element of added complexity in bdsp, as it also involves a new mechanic of placing stickers on your pokemon's pokeball so that cool effects play when you send them out. (this feature was also in the gen4 sinnoh games, albeit not incorporated into those games' contests.)

the effects which these stickers play have a direct impact on your pokemon's visual score. however, for brilliant contests, normal stickers don't really cut it. instead, people recommend grinding out champion stickers (from taking on cynthia's rematch team post-heatran plotline) and showstopper stickers (from beating the other master rank contests) in order to get a decent appeal score. since reides didn't need to take on the master rank contests, i didn't have any of those - and i wasn't all too interested in grinding for more. i figured that grinding out champion stickers would work out better, since they give more points in the visual portion of the contest, anyway.

before starting that grind, i decided to give the brilliant master contest a try with nothing but the base-game stickers. given reides' perfect contest stats from omega ruby, i wondered if his contest skills would be enough to scrape through and secure a win.

as it turned out...

...they were not. people are NOT exaggerating when they talk about the difficulty of the brilliant master rank contest!! i was pretty shocked that my lovely kingdra was getting absolutely terrible visual ratings. (LIKE, LOOK AT HIM!! LOOK AT HIM!!!!!!! HE'S SO CUTE!!!!!!! AND PERFECT!!! AND SWEET, TOO!!!!!!!!) anyway, my outrage aside, it turns out that using those two types of stickers to boost your pokemon's visual rating is pretty much a necessity. the rhythm game portion of it is also not to be underestimated and typically requires a bit of practice. luckily, i'm fairly decent at rhythm games, but i knew that i would have to get those stickers from cynthia after all. i played through the pre-requisite bit of the post-game - catching heatran in a premier ball! - and made my way back to the league. with my storyline team vibing in the pc and my ribbon mastery team ready to FIGHT, i got settled and began grinding out the battles.

initially, i intended to get 20 champion stickers on the ball so as to fill it up entirely with them. after getting 8 stickers in one night, though, i was kind of worn down and decided to give the contest another try. i also taught giga impact to reides, as it's SUPER good in the bdsp contests (your pokemon gains a big boost to its score when you use it while you have a positive 'jam' score in the dance game) and can be easily bought in the veilstone department store. i was delighted to see that my protag's mother - johanna - was there for this contest, as well as gym leader fantina. both johanna and fantina are great at contests in-universe, so i was excited at the prospect of at least succeeding on this contest round, even if reides didn't manage to clutch out the win.

...however, by some miracle, reides managed to do just that!! not only did i finally manage to succeed in the brilliant master rank contest, but reides also secured the win. at this point, it was, like, 4 in the morning for me. i was absolutely astounded; i actually wondered if i was somehow hallucinating. the twinkling star ribbon was the one and only ribbon that i needed in brilliant diamond, and after so much work to get to this point...

...it was finally granted to reides!!!

upon recieving this ribbon, reides acquired all of the ribbons that he needs in order to be a ribbon master... save for ONE. one (1) single ribbon stands in his way... and that ribbon is the one that's granted to a pokemon for emerging victorious in a master ball ranked online battle. now, i can technically get this ribbon by putting reides back in pokemon shield and trying to climb the ladder in gen8... but, as you likely know, the current gen (as of me writing this post) is gen9. that means that the gen8 battle servers are... well...

empty.

okay, no. they're not entirely empty. but people have stories of waiting for hours to get into one single match, and i'm not sure if i want to put myself through that unless i absolutely must. and i might just have to, as kingdra hasn't been officially announced as part of the generation 9 pokedex... however, with indigo disk on the horizon (3 more days!!!), i figured i'd wait to see if kingdra would be included in its national dex before subjecting myself to gen8's very delayed match-making times. if it isn't, i'll just devote another post to my competitive climb in lieu of a gen9 one. (tbh, i'm considering making a totally seperate blog post for my very first foray in the vgc realm regardless - but we'll see how it goes!)

either way, i really, really enjoyed my time with reides in gen8. it has been so awesome to see him in games that i can play with the most up-to-date nintendo console, and kingdra's models across the switch games have just been so incredibly snazzy. i said this at the start of the post, but it truly is crazy to see just how far my little shiny horsea from emerald version has journeyed. i love reides so very much and i couldn't possibly be more proud of him!!!

so let's keep our fingers crossed that reides will be allowed into gen9 so that he can explore the paldea, kitakami, and unova regions! thanks again for cheering him on, and i'm looking forward to writing another update soon!!! that update may very well include reides finally achieving full ribbon master status at long last, so i'm already excited for it! :D

#jamietxt #ribbon master #pokemon #reides the kingdra

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reides · 3 days

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cookie crafting ft dedenne

#jamietxt #made this dough w my mom its her birthday tomorrow ;v; so exciting #its chillin overnight so i will report on the taste tomorrow o7 with dedenne as well o7 KDFGLDKFH

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reides · 2 months

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i FINALLY managed to rng hunt for a shiny shadow croconaw in my copy of pkmn colosseum :') put this one off for a long time bc rng hunting in colosseum gets real technical real fast but all's well that ends well etc etc. i love how colo has unique shiny designs but i think it's very funny how croconaw's is just... normal croconaw with a yellow overlay slapped over him. he looks VERY cool though!!! i'm a fan, even if i miss the blue spikes!!!

anyway, shadow croconaw has been a dream shiny of mine - you guys know i'm a MASSIVE fan of the totodile line - so i'm very happy to finally have one! i caught him in a master ball :D i WILL be purifying him asap aaaand i'm planning on making him a ribbon master, too!

#jamietxt #shiny hunt tag #no idea what im gonna name him yet tho... i honestly didn't think i'd get this far #also as you can see i have a reides the kingdra clone in my copy of colosseum LDFKLG he is everywhere. as he should be

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reides · 5 days

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took a break from full odds shiny hunting to do some rng manipulation in emerald version :D shiny corsola is just so cute!!!!

this is my second shiny corsola! i used the dv breeding method to hatch my first one in crystal version, but i sent him up to pkmn home and decided i wanted one in gen3 as well. i’ll be keeping this one in gen3 but will likely trade him over to leafgreen at some point.

#i have a badge quest update post to make too but i just like these pictures #the analogue pocket’s screen is just so beautiful…..#jamietxt #shiny hunt tag

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reides · 6 months

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did you know that generation four of the pokemon games features more ribbons than any other generation? in diamond/pearl/platinum alone, you can get 38 new ribbons - and in hgss, you can add one more to that pile for a whopping 39 ribbons. this is a truly crazy amount of ribbons and i feel like i went a little crazy while gathering them. but, with that being said, i sure did gather them.

this post is all about reides the kingdra's journey through sinnoh, johto, AND kanto!

as a quick aside, you can check out my other ribbon master posts in my ribbon master tag. you can also see the posts on my personal site; those versions have a bit more pictures since they're not Contained by tumblr's limitations.

anyway...!!! my gen4 journey with reides began in my childhood copy of diamond. my trainer - named 'juke' after a handle that i had back in those days - picked up reides at the pal park, along with fangs the salamence, albatross the latios, origin the metagross, persana the suicune, and princess the zigzagoon.

i was really thrilled to finally be using one of my childhood playthroughs; back in gen3, i opted against using my childhood file in sapphire, as i wanted reides' original trainer to be recorded as 'Jamie' - and my sapphire file didn't use that name, either! another bonus to this was that diamond was already in the postgame, so i could get to work on grabbing my sinnoh ribbons as soon as reides made the trip over there.

immediately, i got to work on getting the first of the daily ribbons. these ribbons are very simple to get. all you have to do is talk to a woman named julia - who lives in a little house in northern sunyshore - on each day of the week. each day corresponds to one type of daily ribbon. the first ribbon that reides got was the smile ribbon!

julia is a really sweet character, and i really enjoyed my little routine of popping in and chatting with her. i was able to nab each of these heart-warming ribbons while i tackled other ribbon tasks.

the daily ribbons weren't my only routine, either! i also visited the masseuse over in veilstone ever day so that she could boost reides' affection for my new character. (i understand why affection resets when you trade your pokemon over to a new file, as they're technically a whole new trainer... but it still made me feel a little sad... like, reides. it's me!! it's JAMIE!!! the person who worked SO HARD to get you all those ribbons in gen3!!!)

once reides' affection was maxed out, i went over to... dr. footstep. dr. footstep is a guy who lives on the route outside of pastoria city. his whole deal is that he can read your pokemon's feelings for you by looking at their tracks - even if they don't have tracks. (reides, for example, doesn't have tracks. so, yeah. dr. footstep is... talented?)

an important note about this ribbon is that it actually isn't affection-based from gen5 onwards. instead, it's based on how many LEVELS you gain with the pokemon - becoming attainable when you've raised it at least 30 levels from when you met it. this is obviously deeply horrifying, as it means you can totally miss your chance for this ribbon if you trade a pokemon in that was past level 70 (due to the level 100 cap). an exception to this is if a pokemon is 'voiceless' (e.g. if the pokemon is a magnemite, or a beldum, or one of the regis, etc etc) in which case it... somehow reverts back to being based on friendship.

you'd think that the footprint ribbon would be based on *steps* rather than levels, as not only does that make more sense, but it also prevents poor pokemon from being locked out of it forever... but whatever. it's kind of hilarious that the mark of reides' affection for me is summed up by a ribbon which is essentially A Foot but that's a whole other can of worms.

during all of this, i was also grinding out pokedollars so that i could afford the syndicate ribbons. the ribbon syndicate is located over in a very posh mansion in the resort area of sinnoh. i met the 10-ribbon requirement for entry into the syndicate easily, but i then had to take on the challenge of raising enough pokedollars so that i could afford the hilariously expensive trio of ribbons that they had for sale. i had enough pokedollars to afford the first two - the gorgeous ribbon (10k) and the royal ribbon (100k). the last ribbon, however, was priced at 999,999 pokedollars... namely, the most money your character can carry on them. getting my hands on this ribbon would require some work...

...but admittedly not that much work! by using the vs seeker on an elderly couple on the route right next to the pokemon mansion, you can actually grind pokedollars out super, super easily. they pretty much funded the final syndicate ribbon for me and it really wasn't a painful grind in the slightest. if only real life worked like this...

these side ribbons were honestly a lot of fun to gather as the days went on! they made me wish that we had more stuff like them in future generations, to be honest! i know some people think that they're kind of just 'filler ribbons' which aren't all that meaningful, but i had a great time getting them all. my little talks with julia and my puzzlement over dr. footstep's lore(?) were certainly meaningful to me, and it was pretty awesome to cap out on pokedollars for the final syndicate ribbon! i think ribbons like this offer a unique little break from ribbons that are focused on streaks in battle towers or the standard hall of fame entries, as iconic as those may be.

anyway, on the subject of hall of fame entries... reides obviously had to go grab the sinnoh champion ribbon! i decided to take on the sinnon league with the whole gen3 squad, including princess the zigzagoon.

reides just so happened to be looking RIGHT DOWN into the spotlight in both of these pictures that i took. that wasn't even planned... i guess he just really liked the pretty lights.

with the sinnoh league tackled, the super contests were up next. i was really excited to gather these ribbons, as gen3 made me a HUGEEEE contest fan. with that being said, i knew that sinnoh's contests were a whole lot different from hoenn's contests. despite gathering a TON of accessories for these contests as a kid (THANK YOU, JAMIE OF THE PAST!), i was woefully clueless as to how to win them. i had to do a bunch of research, as the good ol' rest + snore combo wasn't going to carry me through the appeals like it did back in gen3... and i'm very pleased to say that i was able to find a great strategy for winning these things!

the best strategy that i found was provided by Guy_Gin_Smash over on the pokemon ribbon subreddit. it can be found as a reply to this post! i'm attaching a copy of it here just in case that thread is ever made inaccessible in the future, but please go give it an upvote if you use it and it's of help to you, too!

Regardless of the Pokemon, here is my advice for what worked best for me and my Ribbon Masters: ・Move 1: A move that increases in appeal when used first (Thunder Punch, Dragon Claw, Flash Cannon, etc.). This is your "comeback" move when you do poorly in an appeal round. ・Move 2: A move that increases in appeal when performed last (Revenge, Gyro Ball, Assurance, etc.). This is your "Hit while the iron's hot," move. Use this when you do really well in a previous appeal and need a finisher. ・Move 3: Psych Up/Bulk Up/Swords Dance/Dragon Dance/etc. It doubles your next move's score and helps set you up to use Move 1 first in the turn order next turn. Use this when you end up second or third in the turn order. ・Move 4: Protect. It increases in power depending on how low the judge's voltage is, and even on Master Rank there's normally at least one judge with no voltage available to pick. Use this when you get stuck in the second or third turn order -- preferably with a Psych Up boost.

following this template, reides' gen4 contest moveset consisted of hydro pump (part of his learnset), natural gift (bought at the veilstone department store), dragon dance (part of his learnset), and protect (bought at the veilstone department store).

of course, the appeal portion was only one third of the contest itself. i also had to take part in the visual round each time. i wasn't too worried about this, as reides' gen3 sheen transferred over to gen4... which meant that i didn't have to make him a single poffin. like i said before, i also loved gathering the contest accessories as a kid, so i didn't need to grind out any of those either. still, i was sure to skim over this page on serebii, which told me which accessories would score the most points based on the theme provided at the start of the contest. the other part of each super contest was the dancing portion, which was basically just a little rhythm game that didn't really bother me once i got into the swing of things.

i enjoyed these contests a lot, but i do feel like a lot of content was crammed into them. the visual stage in particular is a fantastic addition to the contest format, as i really loved putting accessories on reides, but the time limit that they place on dressing up your pokemon made it unnecessarily stressful at times. with that being said, here are a few costumes that reides wore to various contests.

he's a true model imo.

they were a little bit time consuming, but reides was able to get through these contests pretty painlessly. i didn't lose a single one of them, though i absolutely soft-reset my game every time johanna (the player character's mother) showed up as a fellow competitor. i saw a lot of people say that she posed a huge challenge and i was NOT gonna take my chances. sorry, mom! lmfao.

at this point, reides had a sizeable bulk of the gen4 ribbons... and it was time to face the inevitable. my most dreaded portion of my ribbon master journey: the gen4 battle tower ribbons.

like i said in my gen3 post, this ribbon master challenge is my first foray into the battle tower mechanic in these games. even with my limited experience, i've heard plenty of stories about gen4's battle tower ribbons. all of the tales of streaks breaking due to the ai suddenly 'cheating' had me really nervous - especially since they really ramped up the difficulty in gathering these ribbons for gen4. gen3 had 2 battle tower-related ribbons. gen4, on the other hand, has 6. SIX. i knew i would be here for a while, even if i got lucky and my streaks never broke.

this guy pretty much summed up my thoughts on the matter.

still, i had faith in my team - my beloved companions who made the gen3 battle tower ribbons a lot easier than i thought they'd be. i held my head up high and carried on!!

before entering the tower proper, i knew that i had to change up my team's movesets. gen4 introduced the physical/special split, which meant that the typing of moves no longer dictated if the move was physical or special. for example, BEFORE this split, every single ghost type move was a physical attack move. AFTER the split (i.e. in gen4 and onwards), each move itself was assigned as a physical or special attack regardless of the move's typing. going back to my ghost type example... this meant that you could find ghost-type moves that were special attack moves, too.

my physical attacker, origin the metagross, had to get rid of their shadow ball attack asap, as it became a special attack. i replaced it with zen headbutt but planned on replacing *that* with iron head once i had enough bp for it. i also replaced metal claw with bullet punch. this left them with this moveset:

origin the adamant metagross - earthquake - bullet punch - zen headbutt --> iron head - explosion

as for albatross, i had the opposite problem: his dragon claw was now a physical move. since he is a special attacker, this didn't fit with his stats - so i replaced it with dragon pulse. his final moveset for the battle tower was therefore this:

albatross the timid latios - psychic - dragon pulse - thunderbolt - ice beam

i also refined reides' moveset, getting rid of the moves that i used for the super contests and giving him a set that was more suitable for battle.

reides the bold kingdra - surf - ice beam - dragon pulse - hydro pump

again, as a reminder, i went with a bold nature on my ribbon master kingdra because it suits his personality more! but on the topic of bold legends... i took some time to refine my suicune's moveset, too!

persana the bold suicune - surf - calm mind - rest - sleep talk

i opted to try out a bit of a bulky set for my suicune, since i heard really good things about it!

with my pokemon's moves all sorted out, i walked through the battle tower's doors. first up on the list was the singles tower. i got two ribbons by battling my way through it; one for each time i faced the iconic tower tycoon, palmer. i got the first ribbon - the ability ribbon - after facing him on battle 21, then the other - the great ability ribbon - for facing him on battle 49.

after defeating palmer twice in the singles tower (and being scared half to DEATH while facing his cresselia on battle 49), it was time to take on the doubles tower. i had to win 50 battles in a row there. i'm pleased to say that the metagross + latios combo was still the stuff of legends - though reides and persana also came in clutch MULTIPLE times!

eventually, we got the double ability ribbon, even if we had to face a whole lot of daunting foes during our climb. every time i saw an ice type, i braced myself for a sheer cold inexplicably gaining crazy-good accuracy... and every time i saw a bulky staller, i braced myself for the long wait for those hp bars to go down. sobs.

the third battle tower ribbon that i took on was... a bit of an odd one. you get the multi ability ribbon once you win 50 battles in a row while using an npc as your partner. this meant that my little latios + metagross strategy would no longer be viable, as i would have to rely on another trainer's pokemon to get to 50 wins. i had riley as an option when i took this challenge on, so i decided to pair up with him for the whole tower. he ended up making for an INCREDIBLE partner! in particular, his absol was a huge help. the climb wasn't without its scary moments, but we clutched it out and got through it.

shockingly enough, my streak somehow didn't break at all during my multi ability ribbon climb! given all the horror stories that i heard about this ribbon in particular, i was SUPER relieved. i'm not sure if i got really lucky or if riley is just really, really good - but, either way... thank you riley!!!

once he got the multi ability ribbon, reides' gen4 battle tower conquest came to a sudden halt, though. you see, the remaining two ribbons - the pair ability ribbon and the world ability ribbon - went beyond the scope of my lone file of diamond. the world ability ribbon focused on a wifi-based challenge (which i'll get into later). the pair ability ribbon was similar to the multi ability ribbon, except i would have to get a streak of 50 wins alongside another gen4 file. i couldn't fight along with another npc; it had to be someone i connected with through co-op play. for my purposes, this meant dual-wielding dses. but there was a bit of a catch, here, as - despite owning every other gen4 game, including TWO copies of soulsilver - i didn't have another gen4 game in the post-game like my diamond file. that meant that none of my other gen4 games had access to the battle tower.

upon realizing this, i decided to take the opportunity to replay soulsilver. as i mentioned in my last post, hgss are my favourite pokemon games of all time. you might think that it's odd that i didn't have a fully decorated post-game, in that case - but i have an explanation for that! you see, i loved hgss so much as a kid that i repeatedly transferred out all of my pokemon so that i could replay the plot of the games as much as i pleased. kind of hilarious, i know... anyway, since i also needed to get a ribbon for beating red in hgss' post-game, reides was destined to be part of yet another storyline team.

after planning out my soulsilver storyline team and deciding that i wanted to raise a steelix, i decided to send reides over with a metal coat so that i could evolve an onix early on. pro gamer strats, i know. i picked up a cute little totodile (who i named tapioca!) as my starter and sent reides over to johto as soon as i unlocked trading!

admittedly, i was utterly thrilled to see reides in soulsilver. i didn't care that this would add a HEFTY amount of hours to my ribbon master challenge - not in the slightest!!! being able to explore my favourite region with a pokemon that means so very much to me was a dream come true - especially since hgss has such a flawless implementation of follower pokemon.

i really enjoyed my playthrough and amassed a team that ended up meaning so very much to me. while i kept reides in my party, i obviously didn't use him all that much in battles, as i wanted his younger pals to get experience and catch up with him.

costume the eevee was named after a kid i saw on halloween, who was in a really cute eevee costume! i picked up my eevee that night after the trick-or-treaters left, and my friend cody suggested that i name the eevee after that kid's costume. (fyi, costume ended up evolving into an espeon!)

here are some more pictures of my soulsilver team and me during the course of our amazing journey through johto.

prior to beating the elite four and unlocking the battle tower, i decided to take a little peek at it and instead ran into this guy, who was really, really eager to take on the challenges.

given the sheer amount of grinding that i had been through, along with the amount of grinding that i knew was in my future... i can't say that i shared his enthusiasm. but i respected him for it nonetheless.

eventually, our johto quest led us to the pokemon league. sadly, there is no ribbon linked to beating johto's league and entering its hall of fame, but it was nice to take on everyone regardless.

after a really dramatic showdown against lance in his AMAZING room full of golden dratini statues, we entered johto's hall of fame.

after hours upon hours of time spent in johto, i could finally approach the battle tower again - this time with the goal of getting the pair ability ribbon on reides. grabbing my 3ds, i set up a local wifi room on my copy of diamond (apparently, using a copy of diamond or pearl as the 'leader' means you get to face easier trainers when compared to a platinum or hgss leader) and connected into it on my copy of soulsilver. origin and reides reunited with albatross and persana, and we got ready to get our streak of 50 wins.

the battle tower link multi challenge was actually probably the easiest one i've ever done on the course of reides' journey thus far, though that may have been due to the sheer amount of FOCUS i had on it, LMAO. i really didn't want my streak to break, so i took absolutely zero risks... except for when i had to. and boy, did i have to at one particular point of this climb. on battle 49(!!!), most of my team was knocked out, save for reides. i took a picture, as i wanted to show just how the odds were stacked against my boy. but then... he did something amazing.

reides outsped and took down zapdos with surf (which also dealt damage to registeel), then traded a bunch of attacks with registeel - only to clutch out a win with the luckiest hydro pump i have ever witnessed. he kept the streak alive!! (for context, surf's damage wouldn't have been enough to take down the registeel at that point. if reides' hydro pump missed, registeel would have knocked him out, too.)

soon afterwards, we ended up winning the 50th battle in a MUCH less scary manner - and reides got the pair ability ribbon!

this left me with one last outstanding gen4 battle tower ribbon... the world ability ribbon.

the world ability ribbon is technically unattainable now, as it requires the use of nintendo's now-defunct wifi servers. basically, to get it, you connect to nintendo's servers and download a room consisting of 7 battles. by battling through a bunch of these rooms, you can rank up. once you get to rank 5, your team gets the world ability ribbon. due to the servers' being inaccessible though 'official' means, it's not required for a ribbon master challenge. but people have made fan servers that you can connect to in order to try for the ribbon anyway. the one major drawback to connecting to these servers is that the ds can only connect to wifi hotspots that use either the now-outdated wep security protocol or no security at all. as a result, a lot of people don't really have the means to connect to them... and i was one of these people!

now you might be wondering: why bother with this ribbon if it's not necessary for completing the challenge? the answer is pretty simple. beyond it being a matter of pride, in future generations, all of your pokemon's contest and battle tower ribbons from gen4 and gen3 get consolidated into two memory ribbons. these ribbons are depicted on a silver plaque if you're missing any ribbons and a gold plaque if you managed to get them all. ...so, you're seeing where i'm going with this, right?

people really, really want the gold plaque.

L;FDGKDFL;GK but real talk - pokemon home recently let pokemon with 7 battle ribbons get the gold plaque anyway, so it's just something that people encourage attempting if you have the means. since i didn't have a readily available wifi hotspot that was compatible with the fan servers, i was very much on the fence about taking it on. i decided to procrastinate on making a decision and, instead, wandered out of the battle tower and towards a whole new region: kanto!

the only new ribbon in hgss is the ribbon you get for beating red - and you can only challenge him once you're done with kanto's gym challenge. while journeying kanto and battling these leaders, i also took a bit of a breather in order to complete one of my favourite little sidequests in the pokemon games.

if you collect five of these shiny leaves and put them on your pokemon, your childhood friend back in new bark town will craft them into a beautiful golden crown for your pokemon. unfortunately, no ribbon is attached to completing this sidequest, but it's an absolutely incredible one that also grants you this gorgeous certificate.

empowered by his shiny new crown, reides and i kept up with our kantonian journey - facing each and every gym leader. there's something so special and bittersweet about kanto's status during the johto games. everything is so familiar... but also so different. it was particulary sad to face blaine off in one of the seafoam caverns, as cinnabar had been overrun by a volcanic eruption. but the hope that blaine had for the future of his gym was inspiring, too. it really gave kanto a lot of depth; a sense of its people still having to face challenges, even after your journey as protagonist had ended back in red, blue and yellow.

eventually, we met up with the final gym leader: blue, himself!

upon beating him in battle and getting my 16th gym badge in soulsilver, i gained access to mt silver. i knew that red, the ultimate pokemon trainer, was at the very peak of this lonely mountain teeming with high-levelled pokemon.

i journeyed to the peak as soon as i could. i had every intention of spending a lot of time training in mt silver and even gathered lucky eggs to make the task easier - but, in the end, i couldn't resist challenging red the very moment that i found him.

i'm very, very pleased to say that red still lives up to his status as a legend. his team makes for a very, VERY difficult fight; it's incredibly satisfying to face them all. time and time again, it always lives up to the hype. after duking it out, i managed to emerge victorious... albeit by the skin of my teeth. for being part of the team that won this battle, reides got the legend ribbon.

i was sure to take a picture with the rest of my team during our trek through mt silver, too! without them, this whole journey wouldn't have been possible, after all. we also took a photo together in pallet town, right outside of red's house. since my personal pokemon journey began in kanto with pokemon red version, it was quite the emotional shot. i was really happy to have such a great team with me!

this marked the end of my soulsilver storyline playthrough, but i wasn't quite done with gen4 just yet. i was finally at the world ability ribbon crossroads. feeling emotional over my progress up to this point, i decided that i would try to take it on, as i wanted reides to get that gold plaque from gen6 onwards and i didn't want to bypass an optional ribbon unless i absolutely HAD to do so. this meant that it was time to research just how the hell i would connect to those fan servers.

eventually, i found a thread on the ribbon master subreddit talking about an incredibly simple method of connecting to them. they said that you could use a flashcart or homebrewed 3ds to inject your save into your pc. from that point on, you just needed to run your save on the melonds emulator and use its wifi feature to connect to the dns featured on the poke classic network. (it's also worth noting that you need a rom that's been patched for online play - you can use the wfc patcher to do this). i decided to give this a try, as, before this point, i had no idea that emulators even supported wifi without a billion complicated workarounds. even if it didn't work out, it was super interesting to me.

...and, hilariously enough, it worked out on my very first try! i seriously felt like the 'technology is incredible!' guy who lives in every single starting town of every single pokemon game. i found myself suddenly having the means of getting this elusive ribbon despite gen4's servers being defunct. how incredible is that?! i couldn't be more grateful to the people maintaining those fan servers.

the setup was the first part of my world ability ribbon challenge, though. as awesome as it is to be able to connect to the wifi rooms, those rooms are also NOTORIOUS for being filled with hacked pokemon. popular ones include machamps with the no guard ability (which means that its moves never miss) running sheer cold (a move that can ohko your pokemon; they typically have a very rare chance of hitting) and spiritombs with wonder guard (an ability that makes it so only super effective moves can damage the pokemon with it; spiritombs in gen4 have no weakness).

there are ways to counter these hacked pokemon, however. you can outspeed machamp before it can land sheer cold (or run a focus sash on your pokemon, which will make it survive a sheer cold with 1hp), and you can also decimate spiritombs with wonder guard if you use fire fang against it (fire fang SOMEHOW bypasses wonder guard in gen4; a little happy mistake of a glitch, haha).

in an incredible moment of serendipity, i also found a counter-meta team for these hacked pokemon which included latios AND metagross! i was thrilled, since i already had albatross and origin all trained up. while i had to steal a shuca berry from a wild ponyta trotting about on mt silver, that was easily done. i started training up a garchomp, too... but then i got lazy while ev training him and ended up trying out the rooms with reides instead of a fire fang user. (i'm well aware that this was a really big risk LMAO - if i ran into a single hacked spiritomb, i'd have to take an immediate L and raise that garchomp before facing the room again.)

in selecting the rooms that i wanted to challenge, i opted to download those in the late 20s to 30s range, as those rooms are said to have less hacked pokemon within them. i wasn't sure if that was just a rumor, but i tried it out anyway.

in the end, i had a blast. i really liked seeing everyone's nicknamed pokemon in the rooms that i downloaded. i'm not sure if it's because of the 'late 20s to 30s range' strat or what, but i ran into ONE single hacked pokemon, who i will now proceed to shame:

YEAH. I BET YOU'RE SORRY.

luckily, 'i'm sorry' the machamp wasn't a threat and he didn't get a single sheer cold off on my team. he did, however, land a will o wisp on origin, which had me wondering if he was even running sheer cold to begin with? either way, we beat him up real good!!!

i don't want give that machamp the only shoutout re: this ribbon, though! i also want to show off some of the pokemon that i ran into while working towards rank 5. i believe these pokemon are also taking on the ribbon master challenge.

this is only a small selection of the pokemon that i saw, but i still really loved to meet them all. it made me a bit emotional, too, as i thought about future ribbon masters running into reides the kingdra. :') i can also vouch 100% for the anti-hack team that i posted; if you're struggling with getting this ribbon, definitely give that team a try!!

after grinding through these rooms, my team eventually hit rank 5. reides got the world ability ribbon... the 6th and final gen4 battle tower ribbon, which was also the final ribbon of his gen4 journey.

as you can tell from this absolutely massive post, gen4 was a journey and a half. my god. i'm well aware that most of my time spent in this generation was likely during my soulsilver playthrough, as i wanted to raise a proper team and take my time with the experience, but oh my goodness gracious. i should've known it would've been a monumental task, given the sheer amount of ribbons available... but it still took me by surprise. no regrets, tho. none at all.

i sent reides (and the rest of the pals accompanying him on this ribbon master quest!) to unova, which doesn't have any ribbons. this quick stop-over was still necessary in order to put everyone in pokemon bank, though! once they were there, i sent them over to kalos. at the moment, reides is chillin' and getting ready to take on the generation 6 portion of this quest. in particular, i'm excited to take him to omega ruby, as i got him in emerald version and he's a hoenn baby!

so, yeah! that's how reides' journey though sinnoh and johto played out! i'm super excited to keep on going with this ribbon master journey. just like i said last time, i hope that you'll keep on cheering him on, too!!!

#pokemon #ribbon master #jamietxt #GEN 4 UPDATE YEAHHHHHH #reides the kingdra

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