Cradily Only - Pokemon Emerald

[@satisfactoryseal]

Speed lowering natures feel like something that would be easier to evaluate in a second playthrough when you can know exactly what speed thresholds you need to hit and if a negative nature hurts with the important ones. I'm not sure that's ever really possible to figure out in a first playthrough.

[@N12015]

Indeed. With Swampert it was a terrible idea due to Wallace, but Cradily Will never outspeed something important outside the Glalies. Also, never use it on specialized attackers, just slow mix ones.

[@seifer447]

I agree with both of your assessments. I can't imagine speed lowering natures being anything more than a case by case basis with some of the criteria you already outlined.

[@skeetermania3202]

@@N12015 On something like Aerodactyl, it’s still gonna outspeed everything out there despite the speed-lowering nature.

[@scoutbane1651]

​​@@N12015I feel like creating save states before each important battle, noting down the ones that are close annd re-evaluating them with another nature, and calcing the diffetence between them together is the fastest tbh

[@FreyRosfield]

I think it is valid to look at the base speed too A pokémon like Shuckle or Munchlax will only outspeed something if you are level 100, so in this cases it could be a no brainer to just slap a speed lowering nature right from the start

[@gabr.7878]

I have so so much sentimental attachment to the lileep line. It was my first ever fossil pokemon in my first ever Pokemon game, ruby. I remember my cousin telling me how to revive fossils, and when I got my lileep, I showed my family because I thought it was so cool. They have such good colors and plant rock fossil thing, and my 'tism loves it so much

[@TheLeviathan1293]

Scott with erratic pokemon: Early game is really bad. Also Scott: Gym 1 was a breeze.

[@johndafoe9276]

That Steven fight was really a "struggle" (sorry, I could not resist the pun). I am a recent subscriber of your channel and I cannot tell you how much your videos have helped me the last few weeks. You've inspired my own solo pokemon runs and have provided hours of amazing content (my partner actually introduced your channel to me). Thanks for everything you do, you are amazing ♥

[@jacobanderson6114]

I’ve seen someone mention this before, but you can actually forget HMs via the daycare. Logistically, it may not make sense for every Pokémon, but could be something to consider for the future. Keep up the great work Scott.

[@brianwisecarver4880]

Poor aerodactyl just got ignored. "First 4 fossil Pokémon" 😂

[@hibbs1712]

My personal comp Cradily lives in gen6 allowing for its hidden ability

[@Meowserhehe]

I think speed lowering nature would probly be fine for Pokemons under something like 55 base speed maybe 45

[@avita2276]

Hard disagree tbh. In solo playthroughs, pokemon with high speed can lower speed because they‘re gonna outspeed everything relevant. But slowish pokemon (e.g.) Swampert really like being able to outspeed/OHKO stuff in the higher speed ranges. A -Spe nature really hurts you in midgame and sometimes lategame depending on IVs.

[@avita2276]

7:38 look at these Carvanha. With a speed lowering nature, cradily would‘ve been outsped.

[@TotallyCluelessGamer]

@@avita2276 that timestamp being the example you go with doesn't really make your argument look super strong since those Carvanha were only a threat because Scott forgot to heal and went in at 10hp. I would say you could use him getting hit with confusion on turn 1 of several fights as a better example, but since he was using Ingrain on turn 1 of a lot of those, its hard to say it would have actually prevented it. Of course this discussion being on a video covering a Pokemon who's stats are geared for Stall its a harder argument to make here than on most other Pokemon's videos.

[@daexter8971]

Two more days until the autumn holidays end and I have to go back to work. During the last week my brother in law had a terrible bicycle accident and is held in an artificial coma. Yesterday I started getting a fever and I am now lying ill in bed. As I scrolled down my KZbin recommendations and I saw a solo run from Scott being aired tonight, that made me genuinely smile. Thanks, Scott 🙂.

[@zenitfan4life]

Dang bruh, sorry about your situation. Wishing you swift recovery and I hope that your brother feels better.

[@daexter8971]

@@zenitfan4life Thank you! 🙂

[@gambleralex5083]

Take care ❤ and I hope you are both well soon

[@GhGh-gq8oo]

Damn must be nice living in a first world country with work holidays

[@basedbalaclavaman7011]

Prayers going out for you man, and your brother. Life can knock you down all sorts of ways, but never let it keep you down. You're never done until you give up, so take care of yourself and remember someone out there cares about you

[@terra636]

I think teaching Giga Drain earlier might give you that extra advantage against T&L so that you can use HP Fire for Steven

[@provalone]

not just that, giga drain is stab supereffective or neutral against 3/4 of the trainer pokemon in the game and heals at the same time. that, ingrain, and shell bell will make the best fossil fern nearly unkillable.

[@seifer447]

Hi Scott! On speed lowering natures, it's definitely a case by case basis. If Cradily doesn't have any matchups where it can outspeed to make life easier, I think speed lowering is perfectly reasonable.

[@qwirkt]

Yeah it’s not trivial to think about in a first playthrough since you don’t know if you’ll be super overleveled

[@anthonypeterman959]

You forgot aerodactyl when talking about the original fossils. Should be first 5.

[@m704kt733]

Came here to say the same thing!

[@TJF588]

Aerodactyl: "Am I a joke to you?" Scott: "Kinda?!"

[@harrysmith6191]

Can't learn rockslide now this 🤣

[@shinyflygon8883]

@1:20 Aerodactyl: Am I a joke to you?

[@rooislangwtf]

If you're always going to move second in any case a speed lowering nature is fine

[@legendarystormmartialartsg3573]

Exactly, can't understand why people would tell him to never lower the speed if Cradily's never going to out speed in the first place anyways

[@realperson69]

Except that in solo runs, due to level advantage, EVs, and badge boosts, low speed Pokémon end up effectively being much faster than they would be in a PVP context.

[@rooislangwtf]

@@realperson69 crawdily has a base speed of 43, it's not outspeeding anything

[@realperson69]

​@@rooislangwtf 43 base speed is actually enough for it to matter! Scott's Naughty Cradily went through the E4/champion gauntlet with an effective 101-111 speed. A plus-speed nature Cradily (111-122 at the same levels with the same EVs) would actually outspeed everything there except Flygon (126) and Salamence (132). In fact, a 252-EV, plus-speed nature Cradily outspeeds the entire E4 and Wallace at only level 59. Here's all their speeds: 83, 93, 105, 72, 69 43, 46, 70, 83, 91 58, 100, 67, 103, 99 64, 107, 111, 126, 132 91, 118, 116, 113, 100, 80 Case in point, in this very run, Scott enters the Glacia fight with Cradily at 104 speed. Without the lucky omni-boost against Sealeo, a minus-speed nature would have resulted in Cradily (93 speed, 94 after level up) being outsped by both Glalies (100 and 103) and Walrein (99) and potentially having to tank three or more Ice Beams, which is tough even with Resto Chesto and Ingrain on the set.

[@1stclasswarior]

I only have some tiny advice for you today. Try to be a little more mindful when clicking. For example, against the rival, you risked a reset when Rock Tomb missed when you could have secured the KO with Bullet Seed. You are underestimating Rock Smash, imo. Against the Winstrates, you spammed out Rock Tomb and depleted the PP, but if you used Rock Smash with its amazing 50% chance to -DEF, then you reduce the total PP cost per KO and you maybe would have made it further into the fight. I think Cradily was a Pokemon that would greatly benefit from HP EV training. Finally, I think that, for slow Pokemon especially, you should be holding the Macho Brace and only changing out your hold item when it's time for a big battle. Double the EV gain means you get stronger faster, and you'll have an easier time with some difficult battles as you simply have more stats. Overall, I think you played this pretty well. I was going to tell you that you made a big mistake forgetting Toxic on a defensive stall machine, but watching the run, I see that I was wrong and that, even in cases like Cradily, direct damage is favored. I think Toxic is maybe more appropriate for even more defensively inclined Pokemon, with Shuckle being an extreme example. I'm glad you saw the value in Ingrain. I expected you to delete it around time for Roxanne, but you understood how good it was in a solo setting and I was happy to see that, as that requires some fairly in-depth understanding of the game. Looking forward to tomorrow's run.

[@andrewdole3417]

I love when you mention something learned from the comments, firstly for being able to take presented knowledge and adapt to new information in future videos, and also for simply showing you take the time to see what people that watch your videos have to say. Several channels i sub to flat out have said they never read comments, and I get that, busy with all the work associated with running a channel. But for you to do so, and keep updating your overlay to provide better and better experiences for the viewer, such as enemy stats and moves, real time power numbers for moves, are proof of a better youtuber. o7

[@MattWarb]

I appreciate the effort you put in to your annunciation. I can’t always tell what people are saying in videos but every word is always crystal clear with you. Looking forward to the Armaldo video as it’s my favourite ground type.

[@ucjepkjl7fbne6shltft3mlw8]

Aside from the player getting access to the move early, I assume Rock Tomb's also balanced around the fact that the game's first boss is going to use the move against you. 80% accuracy is still way too low IMO, but Game Freak generally seems to err on the side of making the game easier. Rock moves having poor accuracy in general might be because Rock is a strong and common offensive type; IIRC it's the only type (post Gen I) that hits more types for SE damage than it does for NvE/NE damage. Additionally, Rock coverage improves the already great Ground- and Fighting-types much in the same way Ice Beam does for Water.

[@legendarystormmartialartsg3573]

The first time I saw Cradily; I absolutely fell in love with it, so I couldn't help but be extremely excited to see you do a playthrough of it, also I think it's perfectly okay for you to lower it's speed, seeing how it's never going to out-speed anyting

[@aggapuffin]

1:20 Kid named Aerodactyl:

[@mahnameisj]

I'd say Sludge Bomb would still be useful for neutral targets. Especially with the chance to poison which can help if you have enemies that are tanky

[@maxspecs]

Wouldn’t it be weaker than Return?

[@iamtheonebelowall]

Can't wait for the amraldo one. My favorite pokemon ever. Named it excalibur cause I pulled the weapon out of the stone

[@Colin1Moriarty]

I've always preferred Armaldo and after watching this I'm starting to think that it may be much better! Turns out glass cannons tend to perform better in gen 3. Thanks Scott for another good vid!

[@alphacide_2857]

One thing I do for fun is start a run with one pokemon holding leftovers. It makes things easier, but I still take battles as soon as possible, so it just ends up speeding up the runs in most fights. Good video, thanks for your work!

[@andreapareti324]

As others have said, I think teaching Giga Drain, Sludge Bomb and even Earthquake much earlier would have significantly improved your results, but I do like me some Ingrain; in fact, I think it's the perfect opportunity to say that maybe Battle States like Ingrain could be implemented in the overlay, perhaps? Akin to how statues, Stat changes etc. are represented.

[@PrincessGoth574]

According to KZbin mobile, this should be my 100th comment on your channel, so I want to thank you so much for making these videos, you're my favourite youtuber of all.

[@dorkiesanman]

Wooooo! One of my most favorite Gen 3 Pokemon! My older used to beat the crap outta me with this guy until I started using one on my team. Can't wait to watch!

[@ShiftingSkys]

Whoever is telling you the speed thing is not entirely right. Normally they could be right in Competitive but for a Speed run you basically need to lay out like 10 Of your Biggest Speed Challenges, Find a Speed Range and see if its even possible to hit. if you are nowhere near most of them with something slow then Youll likely be fine. Especially considering most slow pokemon are built liek tanks.

[@greyscaleadaven]

Yeah, even in competitive it's ultimately not that important to outspeed if your speed is already like 50 or below. Running a scarf or speed invested set with a pokemon like that either tries to catch an opponent off guard or capitalizes on a high offensive stat/boosting move so it's not as good for less offensively oriented bulky pokemon. Also every pokemon plays differently. People tend to think they're all supposed to beat the game the same way when plenty of pokemon wouldn't benefit at all from trying to sweep with speed or direct damage bc of typing, movepool, ability, or stats (i.e. Shuckle, Smeargle, Chansey post RBY, etc.)

[@iantaakalla8180]

Strangely enough, a base stat of 50-ish, even now, is good enough to outspeed many threats if you grind for max speed EVs and have a speed raising nature. That should not be a relevant fact, but Arctozolt and Calyrex-Ice Rider exist. Calyrex-Ice Rider is even more relevant because it usually wants to be slow and lacks healing, Regenerator and a good defensive typing, and yet speedy Calyrex-Ice Rider existed (if only because Tailwind exists.)

[@ZerglingOne1]

In the fight against the Salamence, Ingrain healed you for 13 and you were left with 14 HP after the last dragon claw. That means you'd have been on 1 HP. It also means that particular fight wasn't winnable without Ingrain since you healed many turns with it and Earthquake wouldn't have gotten you there any safer. You were correct to keep Ingrain.

[@sieonigh]

>gets mirical seed this is a grate boost to the damage of bullet seed bullet seed: 15 > 16 GAINS!

[@midspaz5226]

The fact that you had to say contextually has me laughing so hard thanks for the amazing video you take the cake every time for my favorite KZbin channel I’m always recommending you to my co workers that like just listening to videos

[@perkypenguin1663]

I think Giga Drain (and maybe Rock Tomb for Xatu 😂) would give Cradily enough firepower against most of Tate & Liza that it really wouldn’t need HP Ghost for them. Phoebe is potentially a different story, but maybe SunnyBeam could suffice. HP Fire might be best for Steven, but only testing will really tell. (Also I’m not sure how to execute this idea , but an asterisk or something for the starters could be nice to indicate that they evolved throughout their solos, meanwhile others like Gardevoir and Hariyama started fully evolved.)

[@mahdinner]

I feel speed lowering natures may be very good for second playthroughs once you know which speed benchmarks you need to hit

[@sakuram69]

Oh I’m so glad you’re covering my absolute favorite fossil! This thing is a true wall when properly set up, and deceptively sneaky if it isn’t eliminated right away. It was so much work to do, but I trained this thing for days just to beat the elite four. These games gave me my first truly challenging Pokémon experience. I went all in on defensive setups and stall tactics lol actually made me better prepared for Cynthia in the next gen 😂

[@libraryscholaralexis6581]

I really like Cradily and think that it's an underrated pokemon. It was nice to see Cradily do some good and be acknowledged. As for the speed lowering nature thing I think that it is something that is up to interpretation. It all depends on what the pokemon needs in terms of stats and what their better stats are.

[@Noman69420]

If it's already gonna be out speed by 90% of the game might as well, but if it will affect a decent amount of match ups you might not want to drop speed

[@pancakes838]

Cradily is one of my favorite gen 3 pokemon! I did a grass monotype run of Emerald around five years ago, and Noodle the Cradily was the hero of the run!

[@vincentchiariello4578]

Sub 60 base speed is probably the cut off point as so enough things will outspeed your pokemon even with the EV's accounted for, but that's just my 2 cents.

[@N12015]

I think sub 55 is a better idea. Again, Swampert really needs speed but Cradily doesn't.

[@greyscaleadaven]

Yeah personally as a competitive player I use speed lowering natures ingame about as often as I use speed raising natures. In games like Legends or SV where it's easily adjustable, it's far better for a pokemon that gets the most out of its ingame EV distribution and moveset via mixed attacking sets. I'm not speedrunning those games though, and I'm also not overlevelling one pokemon to solo the game either. So I'm not really an authority on what's optimal or not for these runs.

[@adrisalvador2488]

First of all, congratulations and thank you for your content, it’s really entertaining! There’s something in this videos or your voice that feels like we are just talking, I love the way you tell this little stories. On the other hand, I would like to suggest putting the tier list or ranking at the end of the video. For people who doesnt watch them in order, feels like a spoiler when suddenly the list appears. Keep going and thank you again!

[@OrcOfOrchestra]

I like that you show clips where you find ethers and other useful items!

[@grinbrothers]

Nice to see the Hoenn Fossils get the chance to shine. Cradily will be a fun one to see how it progresses given it can be pretty capable... once it gets access to late game TMs. It'll be interesting to see the difference between the first half and second half of this adventure as a result. 3:32 - I have no idea why folks are negatively commenting about the speed thing. I can't imagine many situations where Cradily of all things is going to outspeed something. 5:38 - See, being slower was even to your advantage here. Cradily's making easy work of Roxanne thanks to Bullet Seed, so already Noodle the fossil is benefiting from it's TM pool. 8:14 - Luckily, Noodle pulled through even on a slither of health. Reduced Special Defence and a neutral damage taken from Water moves made this far riskier than it should have been but I'm glad things worked out. 9:59 - This is a "should have used Acid" moment. With Combusken on just a slither of health, the 100% accurate move here would have been enough, even with it lacking STAB. Again, luckily it worked out. 16:32 - That first attempt victory was fantastic! Hopefully that makes up the time loss from the Bug Catcher and the Winstrate family. 19:06 - A shame Noodle can't gain access to Rock Slide due to the TM's placement in this game. It'd be a magnificent benefit to her. 21:18 - Poor Brawly. You rock up to his gym and just demolish him in these situations. Ah well, with the fight over so quickly he can go back to surfing. 23:42 - Look, I know Sludge Bomb doesn't have the same attack bonus... but I think it would be considerably better than you going about with Rock Tomb. I'm surprised you didn't replace it first chance you got given your complaints about it. 26:23 - Hilarious that Rock Tomb actually had better hit chance after being struck by Sand Attack. How bizarre. Whilst I still feel Sludge Bomb would be better overall, I can see how Skarmory would be a major obstacle for it. 32:14 - I can see why you'd do that. You do many of these challenges and would like to see the uniqueness of the Pokémon shine through. A lot of times the Pokémon end up with similar solutions such as Rest-Curse-Return combos in your Gen 2 runs and the usage of Mimic in your Gen 1 runs, so it's nice when they have a more unique solution. That, an a combination of Ingrain and Shell Bell on a defensive Pokémon seems a sound strategy. I'm surprised you didn't pick up Giga Drain though. 36:46 - I think this is your first usage of a Leppa Berry in an Emerald run. Cool to see it used in combination with Ancient Power. 39:29 - A nice tense challenge of endurance here between Noodle and Drake's Salamence. 43:30 - Skarmory's constantly prove an issue in your Emerald runs. It'll be fun to see how things go when you end up using one. 47:15 - How fitting that the final fight is against an Armaldo. Also, I can't believe you just won against 4 of the top Hoenn trainer's Pokémon with Struggle. That was slow but spectactular!

[@EvanBear]

Cradily is amazing! I love it just as much as you do. It's such a fun pokémon!

[@Austin007]

What an incredible finish! That was fun to watch.

[@SethTheSouthernWeirdo]

I will say: in the Gen 3 remakes, Cradily, from my experience, is an absolute monster. Its moveset got much better, including Rock Slide and Giga Drain for STAB, and its typing allows it to do quite a bit. Most people go for Electric types in ORAS, but Grass and Rock cover most things that Electric Pokemon would. Plus, having Sludge Bomb and Earthquake for coverage on top of that is helpful. Or, if you want the stalling approach, Confuse Ray and Toxic can be stacked together. It was fun and pretty effective to use when I did. I use it pretty much every ORAS playthrough now.

[@LunarWingCloud]

I think for very slow Pokémon it's fine to have a speed lowering nature. I think people might be concerned you can't outspeed since your general stat and likely level advantage can help you outspeed but come on, you think slow Pokémon like Snorlax or Cradily should be compromising their bulk when their speed is already so low? No.

[@olavjorvik94]

First of FIVE videos I’ve missed since at work! Can’t wait for this, it will be a good day!🤩

[@PieEyeToon]

The Hoenn fossils are still some of the most unique in the series imo. Interesting how they both start off as little more than stylized sea creatures but become amphibious saurian monsters upon evolving, Cradily resembling a sauropod and Armaldo a theropod. Of the two, I personally prefer Cradily. As cool as anomalocarises are, a crinoid is an even more interesting basis for a monster, I like its typing a lot more and it just overall has a good balance of cool, cute and weird elements. Sadly, it isn't very good for a Gen 3 playthrough. Its awful level up learnset seriously deters me from having it on a team. Who thought it was a good idea to give it no Grass STAB and to make Rock Slide and Recover egg moves??

[@lozangekitten-gamer7626]

If the pokemon has absolute F-tier speed, speed-lowering nature would be more preferrable in a PvP setting. Outside of that, offset it with a quick claw

[@N12015]

18:54 I think even GameFreak realized the mistake with rock tomb. Now it's 95% accurate, 60BP and 15 PP, making it an actual good early-mid Game move and even seeing genuine competitive play in stuff like technician Breloom.

[@skeetermania3202]

Also a good speed control option on leads or in VGC.

[@JeffDvrx]

now that was an epic final fight! you could say it really was... _a struggle_ thank you ladies and gentlemen, I'm here every saturday

[@martlinkdiamond5644]

Great video Scott! I can't stop thinking that hidden power dark type could work too but idk

[@vincentsterel6448]

Great video! Cradily is one of my faves, I'm doing an all-rock playthrough of Emerald now :) I feel like using giga drain against tate & liza would have made much more sense than using HP ghost (or you could have gotten rid of ingrain earlier) - it's still super effective against 3 of the 4 mons, and ancientpower hits xatu. Then HP fire would be a very useful tool for the Steven fight. I also feel like, in a couple of fights, you're relying quite heavily on ancientpower getting an omniboost instead of thinking of alternatives.

[@banzan0]

I'm waiting for the moment you name your second on the Tate and Liza fight Lt. Surge. Don't know what happened to Bruno but Surge def needs to happen lol. Keep up the good work Scott!

[@stirringlemur]

I think lowering speed is a totally fine option. an important thing that is different is that it only matters if it is 1 higher getting 100 more speed does nothing after you are even 1 point faster. In competitive play this makes speed probably the most important stat, I think makes people assume its also just as important in a casual playthrough. but with a speed boosting 3rd gym badge and opponents not having access to EVs means getting to that 1 point of speed higher isn't difficult even with a speed lowering nature. also even at max speed Cradily i dont think you are going to out-speed anything important.

[@lmr4403]

Speedlowering nature is typically fine with fast pokémon as the scaling typically implies that at some point you will outspeed everything anyway (also ev's in these gens). But it is bad for medium/mediumslow speed pokémon as this would mean that chances are you won't outspeed a lot of pokémon you otherwise would. For the very slow pokémon it is more complex: as these without ev training would mean that every turn you get hit even if you ohko. In these cases the trade-off is between the time to ev-train them and what to ev-train: speed versus hp (and the offensive stat).

[@DwunD016]

Just finished the darkrai vod so I can make the premiere. Can't wait to see how Cradily does

[@AmityvilleFan]

For a pokemon that can't/won't have enough speed to matter even with EVs and top IVs - lower it, who cares. I can only tell how important speed is for the Ultra-games. Anything slower than Crabominable is simply not viable without some very tricky moves, like stab draining, trick room, or SOMETHING.

[@skeetermania3202]

Why’s that the exception?

[@AmityvilleFan]

@@skeetermania3202 Exception? Anyway, anything slower than crabominable will simply be hit too many times, and suffer too much damage. The Ultra-games are no joke. Sure, you could run Double Team for hours upon hours, but where's the fun in that? On the other hand, something as pathetic as Luvdisc can finish the game, and even most of the post-game. Unfortunately, Luvdisc bleeds out against Faba during Episode Rainbow Rocket. (There is a theoretical chance passing it, but not without emulator to save within battle.)

[@seeroh3908]

You can use a speed lowering nature if: *There are no "wall" trainers or leaders that require outspeeding to beat them, and your speed is too low. and *The base speed of what you are using is especially low (and can afford to go second) or especially high (able to outspeed almost anything even with 10% less). It can be hard to tell where you're going to be walled, so it's not always clear if you should drop speed.

[@aeolus7762]

It's a shame that both Cradily and Armaldo get such a bad rep, because design wise, they are both incredible, though it took me probably 10 or so years after Cradily was released to figure out that Ice was super effective against it, which would have helped immensely against Steven when I was a kid. Kind of reminds me when playing through Pokemon Crystal and getting pub stomped by Lance before randomly deciding to use Aurora Beam with my Lvl 40 Suicune and seeing I had an out. The amount the games make you learn sometimes is incredible!

[@levy9595]

The addition of nuzzle compared to smog as a (minimally) damage dealing move that also causes status is just an example of power creep. 3 generations later, each one slowly but surely increasing the power level leads to new moves being better than the old ones.

[@iantaakalla8180]

As a question, if there was something akin to Nuzzle for Burns and Poison/Toxic status, would those be good moves or bad? As Toxic is bad unless you need to bypass defensive or healing Pokémon, and Burns are only good for Physical stuff, they are strictly worse than Nuzzle, but are they not worth it outside of that? There will never be Sleep or Freeze Nuzzle equivalents.

[@randaljr.8581]

nah, dont lower speed. every outspeed is 1 less attack you are taking, per pokemon. that damage adds up over multiple pokemon, multiple trainers. you would have to heal so much more, and way over-level just to survive all of those extra hits. 1 point of speed over the opponent is like 10-200 hp of damage you dont have to take (depending on the fight).

[@mufasa5851]

I love your commentary. it is teaching me so much about games i have played but never understood. Stuff like AI etc. I remember thinking always why did nose stop using rock tomb after it half healths me?

[@johanmedioni7856]

If you're going to be slower in any case, it's better to lower speed than defence cause you'll take those hits anyway. Lowering speed is bad on semi-fast sweepers for the type of run you're doing imo.

[@Ferrant621]

If you add up the base stat totals, they are divisible by 5 if that makes you feel any better!

[@ultlifeform]

Cradily is my favorite fossil! I love it's design, and it has a unique type combination (or did until Ogrepon was introdced) which, despite being the two types with the most weaknesses, actually combine very well. Its hidden ability, Storm Drain, is fantastic, turning one of its neutral interactions into an immunity, which also triggers a special attack boost. And the in game trainers LOVE to activate it, since they see it as a neutral hit. My only real complaint is the Rock move selection. Physical Rock moves are all terrible, and with Storm Drain, you want special anyway. But the best special rock move, Power Gem, has always had awful distribution, with more Pokemon who are not Rock type learning it than those who are. No fossils can learn it, despite how much Omastar, Cradily, and Aurorus really want it. Supposedly it's only learned by Pokemon with a visable gem on their body, but there are some odd cases even by that logic (Aurorus is covered in gems!?!?). However, I have hope, because despite the fossils not currently being available in Scarlet/Violet, the distribution of Power Gem EXPLODED in those games, feels like nearly anything can learn it now. So I am hopeful that this will be remedied when Cradily is next available!

[@Simonnejohnson474]

Speed lowering nature is DEFINITELY the better move in THIS situation 😂 people speak from a competitive standpoint or general one And HONESTLY shouldn't leave negative comments REGARDLESS of the choice preserveing snorlax cradilly or ANY tanky pokemons speed is the opposite of a good move 😂

[@TheLeviathan1293]

2:10 Naughty tentacle plant fits Cradily.. Btw if it's erratic I think it has a decent chance with Brawley but it's probably better to skip him. P.S. If any pokemon can benefit from a low speed nature... It's probably cradily. The game is complex, though. It's hard to know if, for a particular pokemon, not outspeeding a particular enemy will be lethal and it's a per case thing. So if it's just your first playthrough you don't really know for sure the cost of lowering speed.

[@Superius777]

Can't wait for you to do a Dusclops run, I hope that's lined up for this month because that pokemon is so damn cool.

[@TShadowKnight]

Going off what I know about gen 3 AI, Combusken went for Ember because the AI rolled a critical with a high enough roll to KO during its prediction when choosing its move.

[@breadpope0358]

That struggle sweep was so crazy, talk about a sticky situation

[@LTDextel]

Excited to hear the typing for Armaldo next vid!

[@MrVelyx]

"Ein Blumen" -Sechserpack-Sketch (german joke from a comedy show. Translates to "a Flower". Looses a lot in translation. But it lives rent free in my mind)

[@shirounshiroun7555]

When I saw you had 0 pp left on ancient power and had to spam out your pp I was like "yeah not happening might as well reset", I didnt expect struggle to come through and give you the win ! Go Noodle!! Lol love you Scott take care✨️

[@thebigbean8783]

Absolutely one of my favorite gen 3 pokemon. I think it'll do pretty good!

[@thebigbean8783]

I'm remembering how offensively awful this guy is. I'm glad it tried its best though

[@thebigbean8783]

That Steven win was shocking

[@RezeedTheDataspirit]

I believe Speed lowering natures are best used when you either have a mixed attacker you plan on using both types of attack or when your pokemon's base speed stat is really high or really low. If you are going to be going first most fights anyway, no point concerning yourself raising such a hopeless cause and if the Pokemon is going to attack first anyway, the speed loss will not make a single difference. Either way, it gives a good buffer to the stat you want to increase without needing to sacrifice a stat you WILL need more.

[@TracinyaLachance]

Interesting run. I too am interested in that Armaldo run coming up next though, and idk... Armaldo is also reeally slow, so that might really hurt it.

[@Witzwo1]

I would say, that speed is by far the most important stat. K.o. Ing befor the enemy attacks can save so mich time. Till the second playthrough, when you know the speedtiers you need to hit, a speedbuffing nature would be good. Even more so for slow mons.

[@lamiaprincess6371]

For the Speed nature thing, I believe it's the kind of issue that would be good to investigate for a second playthrough. There are going to be Pokemon on which it is beneficial to have because you're just not going to have the Speed necessary, but I remember the video in particular where there was a lot of concerns which was Swampert and I still standby that Swampert is fast enough that a Speed reducing nature was a poor idea on it. The addition of natures makes solo running a lot more complex and I wouldn't personally say there's any hard and fast answer here. Onto Cradily though, and I personally really love Cradily, it's suck a goofy looking fella and it looks like it would be good for hugs. To me watching this, Cradily didn't look particularly intuitive at all during the playthrough, especially as you got later in the game. It feels hard for me to say just how good or bad Cradily is here. I think this is probably going to become even more apparent as time goes on and we get to the proper routing stage: Gen III, in comparison to Gen II and Gen I, tends to give the player a lot more options and it's kind of easy to trip yourself without realizing it. Especially in regards to the Pokemon League, where you have less freedom with your movepool.

[@olavjorvik94]

Btw, while it doesn’t fix Rock Tomb, I think Rock Throw should’ve been a 40 Power, 25 PP, 100% Acc move, with 10% secondary effect chance. Since the beginning. Every single type should have a move with those stats since the gen of the types introduction. Water Gun, Ember, Mega Drain, Twister, Thundershock, Gust, Tackle, Metal Claw, Bite, Powder Snow, Mud Slap, Karate Chop, Poison Sting / Acid / something etc. all with unique stat lowerings / stat buffers / conditions.

[@realperson69]

Speed-lowering natures are all about very specific thresholds, but lowering speed on a low/medium speed Pokémon is _usually_ asking for trouble in a timed solo run. It's going to depend a lot on the small subset of tough trainers with super effective moves or status moves that you'll end up needing to outspeed, and that's not something you can know during a blind run. Having to increase your level by 10% to beat them probably takes way more time than finding a way to mitigate a small portion of incoming damage or a way to increase damage output a little, especially since both durability and damage scale *exponentially* with level (damage is LVL x ATK, while durability is HP x DEF) while speed scales *linearly*. And note that it will come up less often, because the nature of solo runs means the majority of battles come down to turn economy not HP economy, and speed is almost always the single biggest factor in Pokémon turn economy, especially in solo runs where extremely long battles are very risky, since taking one super effective critical hit is often all it takes to ruin things. I like to imagine having to choose between, say, Brave and Hasty for a Rhydon solo run when there are smart-AI water trainers and grass trainers. Brave seems more intuitive, but Hasty to lower the levels necessary for outspeeding key opponents is probably faster overall. Cradily is a bit different - a mixed tank with no 4x weaknesses and only a few relatively uncommon 2x weaknesses (Ice, Fighting, Bug, and Steel) - but Steel could be an issue for beating Steven Stone, since a low-speed nature Cradily will have a ton of difficulty outspeeding his Metagross and, as a result, Metagross can generally out-damage it with Meteor Mash. (At level 100, including the 10% gen 3 badge boost, a low-speed nature Cradily with perfect IVs needs at least 80 speed EVs to outspeed Metagross.) Even if Metagross doesn't nab the 2HKO, a max defense, max HP, relaxed nature, level 100 Cradily still takes roughly 73% damage from double Meteor Mash, leaving little margin for chip damage through a tough fight. Elite Four Glacia could even be a problem, given a low-speed nature Cradily might need to be level 70+ to start outspeeding, and I don't know how many Ice moves Cradily can take straight to the face or whether setting up Amnesia is viable. Edit: As a note, if you had faced Glacia with a speed-lowering nature and failed to get that omni-boost, you would have been outsped by both Glalies and the Walrein. Edit 2: Well, if you're just going to cheese Steven with omni-boosts, it doesn't really matter. XD

[@wilbert3842]

Craftily has always been one of my favorites, not amazing but good bulk with uncommon weaknesses. Giga drain and ingrain make it insanely hard to take down if you can get the set up off

[@davidestabrooks211]

To Scotts talk about Rock moves having low accuracy to me it is not just rock moves that are problematic. It is almost every single physical type move in the early games. They are in my opinion almost all worse than the special moves of the early games. It feels like all of the physical moves come with worse accuracy and no upside for similar power to 100% accuracy special moves with upside.. It also feels like this has sort of continued into later games with moves like Scald being a special water move that can burn you know the one thing some fire moves have a very low chance to proc or you have to use like Will of the Wisp which has lower accuracy and no damage compared to Scald.

[@red-eyessolares1817]

I do think HP Fire is better than HP Ghost since Cradily has Giga Drain and Ancient Power for coverage against Tate and Liza. Giga Drain in particular allows for Cradily to gain back health as well. HP Fire is also nice for Winona’s Skarmory so the fight does not take as long to finish. The Phoebe fight will probably needed to be tested in that case, but the tradeoff is probably worth it especially for Steven.

[@Aliyah_666]

In regards to the rare candy conundrum, if you use zigzagoon as an hm user it has pick up. This may be against your overall goals though. I just find running a zigzagoon early game in gen 3 for me yields nuggets, rare candies, various poke balls, full restores...the list goes on. If the idea suits you.

[@Nehezir]

for a pokemon like Cradily? yeah I'd tank the speed. This thing isn't going first against very many things tit doesn't drastically outlevel to begin with.

[@lyoukeefen7199]

Speed lowering natures should only be considered when you have a route planned and have done calculations. If your nature lowers your speed but you’re still faster than everything you would have outspeeded otherwise, then it’s a no brainer. Lowering speed is only serves to benefit

[@VindirWefent]

I can't remember where I heard it. But I remember lore saying Honchkrow is rivals with another mobboss Persian. The two gangs fight over shiny things and coins in cities.

[@ninolifegawd4826]

100% accuracy on sludge bomb might woulda been better than rock tomb with that high chance to poison

[@handanyldzhan9232]

3:38 Speed is the most important stat, especially if you have such a slow mon. Otherwise you hit a lot of walls towards the end and take too many hits. Got a lot of mileage out of the Hasty nature in my solo Magcargo run. I doubt I could have beaten the game if I hadn't chosen a speed boosting nature. At least Cradily is bulky on both sides, but being worn down by everything before you can move still sucks. 10:19 You should have used Acid to finish Combusken off instead of risking a miss with Rock Tomb, and then Acid again on Lombre. 17:46 Maybe I'm biased, but the Rock Tomb slander is kinda rough. Granted, it doesn't miss a lot in my experience, but I got a lot of use out of it during my Magcargo run, using it to outspeed many opponents I had no right to. It has great utility especially for very slow pokemon. Though I get that 70% accuracy is objectively just as bad as Thunder and Blizzard. 33:08 Because in most games, the gym leaders, E4 and evil team members tend to have lots of "badass" looking pokemon in their team to give the player a sense of dread. These intimidating mons usually have better offenses and speed than defenses, so give EVs accordingly.

[@cameronquinn377]

The nature you chose was perfect. Cradily appears erratic and naughty.. lol

[@ktvx.94]

Cradily literally struggling to beat Steven. As for the -speed nature, just run the calcs on whether you can outspeed specific mons. If you can't without neutral anyway, go -speed.

[@Snoborder95]

Your program is so freaking amazing!

[@Thundermikeee]

while it may be different for solo play throughs, in more competitive settings typically your first priority for natures is one offensive stat for the other (or speed, but I think in beating the game you can out speed more easily as is). you can cut speed on very fast or very slow mons depending on thresholds you need to hit. while defenses are nice, it seems to me that in a solo playthrough walls aren't really an option, and the general best play is to outspeed and oneshot, so sacrifing a defensive stat might be doable, especially when most threats are from either special types or physical.

[@lenlimbo]

On one hand, without trick room or moves like Gyro Ball, less speed is always bad. On the other, if your speed is basically non-existant, losing speed to keep the rest of the stats untouched doesn't matter that much. If you are not going to outspeed anything, you may as well sacrifice it.

[@ItsASleepySheepy]

For the natures, that's definitely a tricky one. I don't mind speed lowering natures on pokemon that are already slow, I think Cradily would've been fine with one. On the other hand for some pokemon, like Milotic, the ideal nature really is obvious, but for others it's really not and there's potentially good arguments for multiple different natures. I suppose if you wanted to keep things even across the board you could always choose to do first playthroughs with a neutral nature? That way you're able to assess what you do or don't need (higher speed, more attack, better defenses, etc) for optimizing in second playthroughs and beyond.

[@JD-ve6kn]

I've always loved Cradily too. nice run

[@bateltheassistant]

Cardily had a real slow run , considering its defensive capabilities. It had to stuggle even at the very end. But I guess that it was saved by ingrain , which was surprisingly good at the end. As a kid I always thought that Cardily is a steel gress ,so I always used to attack it with fire moves or with fighting moves.😅 But nevertheless you've managed to produce some good results,even though Cardily's moves are not that good for a solo run , because like you've mentioned earlier it was meant to be used a staller ,as a part of a full team . Maybe it's potential will shine more on a nuzlocke challenge.😊

[@mariusvfl1848]

One of my favourite Pokemon to use in competitive Gen3 OU: Smeargle @ Leftovers Ability: Own Tempo EVs: 252 HP / 40 SpD / 216 Spe Timid Nature IVs: 0 Atk - Spore - Dragon Dance - Substitute - Baton Pass Cradily @ Leftovers Ability: Suction Cups EVs: 252 Atk / 16 SpA / 240 Spe Jolly Nature - Rock Slide - Earthquake - Giga Drain - Substitute

[@mymarshlands]

scott! i think you end up always underrestimating Sludge Bomb, it deals neutral damage a lot of times like return, its 90 bp and has a 30% chance to poison! its playing on luck a little but i think using it on cradily might help out a little either way, love your vids and i assume you'll test this kind of stuff thoroughly on a future playthrough!

[@weebrahim]

There's just something glorious about using struggle to beat Steven