Guide Dang It/Pokémon

The Pokémon games have more than their fair share of Guide Dang Its. NOTE: Pokémon Stadium 2 provided information in-game for Gens I & II that couldn't be found elsewhere in those games, providing an exclusive guide to the games... in a different game.

Obtaining Pokémon

 * Finding Feebas was difficult in Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald, if only because the tiles Feebas appeared on were, for some inexplicable reason, tied to what phrase you tell a man in Dewford Town, a location NOWHERE NEAR the route Feebas appears on, and changing the phrase re-randomizes the tiles Feebas is on. There's no given reason for why Feebas was tied to this catchphrase, and nothing in game to even tell you that he is connected to it at all to begin with.
 * The three legendary golems in Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald . Each beast occupies its own inconspicuous cave; these caves are scattered throughout Hoenn. However, to even get into the caves, they need to be unlocked. To unlock them, you need to use Dive in a tiny patch of deep water on a route at the end of some very fast currents; simply getting to the spot is a result of either trial and error or pure chance. Once you Dive and get into the cavern, you need to be able to read Braille. With your eyes. Though, mercifully, there is a Braille alphabet right outside. On the other hand, you'd need to know Braille to know it was the Braille alphabet. The Braille writing tells you to how to progress - these clues include using Dig on a wall instead of using it to try to leave the cave like you normally would, as well as putting a Wailord and a Relicanth (two relatively hard-to-get Pokémon that most trainers never have in their parties, especially not simultaneously) in specific spots in your party. Then you have to FIND the now-open caves. What's even more annoying, each cave as their own little Braille test before you can even get to the Pokémon; one requires you to stand in place, not touching your Game Boy, for two minutes. After all that, battling the monsters.
 * The instruction manual includes a Braille alphabet, although some versions don't explain why.
 * Regirock and Registeel aren't even that hard to find. You probably should have noticed that those rock domes with stones around it and an archeologist investigating outside it should have been for something. The problem is Regice, which is on the westernmost water route in Hoenn on an island that you might never have thought to investigate, since the first time you traveled that route it was via boat.
 * But for those who bought a cheap used cartridge (without an instruction manual), not knowing to cut open the door to the Dotted Hole on Six Island in FireRed and LeafGreen is extremely frustrating because it says "cut" on the door, but in Japanese Braille. Name another door you have to cut open, and not just use a key if necessary and walk through it.
 * Spiritomb. The part about putting the Odd Keystone into the Ruined Tower is intuitive enough, as examining the latter suggests that something could be put in there and hints at what it is, but the other requirement involves interacting with other people in the Underground at least 32 times. There is one trainer on a nearby route who gives you a hint when you talk to him after beating him, though.
 * The person who gives you your first Odd Keystone does give you some hints on what to do with it... Although he's fairly vague, and nowhere does the game specify exactly how many people you're supposed to talk to while in the Underground.
 * The resident non-legendary Game Breaker Garchomp. Catch a Gible. Pokédex says it's in Wayward Cave, the cave accessed by cutting down some trees by the Bicycle Path and wandering past the grass there? After a couple hours of wandering (and helping Mira out), you'll probably figure out that there's no Gible there. Now go look for an alternate entrance to the cave, one which is blocked from view by the Bicycle Path running above you. You need a Pokémon with Strength and Flash. Then, go to the basement and catch one, while you complete a semi-difficult bike course, at the end of which you find the the Earthquake TM was.
 * Gible also appears in HeartGold and SoulSilver in the Safari Zone, but only if you've completed the two prerequisite quests to unlock the ability to combine certain areas, two of which are needed to find Gible. Good luck finding which areas. You still have to wait over a hundred days for the areas to level up and increase the chances of finding one from 0% to 5%.
 * Alternatively, you could just catch a Gabite at Victory Road.
 * There is a Guide Dang It with the Safari Zone itself. When the Warden tells you about objects, he doesn't really mention that you simply have to press "A" in the Safari Zone to place the objects. Thankfully, it's a mild example, but easy to miss if you didn't already know.
 * Another one, exclusive to Ruby and Sapphire: So it looks like there's a hole in your Hoenn Dex at No. 151. Turns out it's Chimecho. It can only be encountered in one place, the top of Mt. Pyre, which the player will probably only visit when he needs to progress the story. And even when the player is in the area, the grass is out of the way. And even if the player goes to the grass, the chance of encountering a Chimecho is only 1%. So you've got a very rare non-legendary who no one in the game uses or seems to know about hiding in a very out-of-the-way area with no hints that it's there. Well, after going through all that trouble to find this rare Pokémon, is it at least any good?
 * With the Gen II remakes HeartGold and SoulSilver, we have a few Pokémon of the third and fourth generations hiding in trees. Now, there are a handful of specimens that are found in very specific trees (and every single tree in the game can be headbutted, so we're talking about thousands of trees). One example: Taillow is found at Cherrygrove, the first city you visit in the game, after a pool of water and over a pile of rocks that can be only climbed after you beat all the 16 Gyms. There are four trees, and you need to headbutt the lower left tree. Even then you can still fight other Pokémon.
 * In Pokémon Black and White, in order to encounter Landorus you need both Tornadus and Thundurus in your party. However, make sure not to forget to bring your own Tornadus/Thundurus, because if the one available on the game you want to catch Landorus on is not yours, then you won't be able to get Landorus. Nowhere is this mentioned, and it can render Landorus Lost Forever.
 * Munchlax. First off, this Pokemon can only be found in Honey Trees, which involves lathering honey on trees, waiting at least 6 hours for a Pokemon to appear (and not more than 24 hours, or the Pokemon will disappear) and then checking the tree, but Munchlax only appear in 4 of the 21 Honey trees. The trees are spread randomly all over the region and you're likely to never come across at least a few. And these four trees aren't the same for everyone - they are randomised and different for each individual save file. And the game gives no indication or hint as to which trees have Munchlax in them. Also ach of those four trees have a 1% chance of attracting a Munchlax.
 * If you have Fire Red/Leaf Green or Heart Gold/Soul Silver, you can catch a Snorlax there, transfer it (Requires an older DS or two DS) and breed it with a Ditto or something while the Snorlax holds a Full Incense (Or simply breed the Snorlax in HGSS and transfer the Egg/newlybred Munchlax). Believe it or not, this is the simpler option.

Evolving Pokémon

 * Milotic in Diamond and Pearl. First you should have realized, by some epiphany of intuition, that the gigantic lake under Mt. Coronet might be hiding more than Barboach and Magikarp. Inspired by this, you should have obviously tried fishing in every single water tile. Because, see, out of the hundreds of water tiles only in four you may encounter anything out of the ordinary at all, and even then only at 35% probability. This means that if you were to try fishing in every single tile you would still end up with squat roughly one time out of five- not that you would know that there is anything special in there to begin with, of course. Now if you're exceptionally lucky you've found some ugly brown fish called Feebas which your Pokédex urges you to ignore and cannot do anything but Splash around. At this point if you have an ounce of Genre Savvy in you you'll go through the painful process of equipping it with Exp. Share and leveling it up, waiting in anticipation until the moment it evolves. Except it doesn't. You should then realize that making Feebas evolve is not just a matter of leveling, but also of beauty, a stat you only ever need for Pokémon Contests, and try to feed it blue Poffins. If you were to feed it Poffins that were not of high enough quality, or you were unlucky enough to have reeled up a Feebas that just hates blue Poffins, you'll end up with a not quite sufficiently beautiful ugly brown fish which will get you nowhere, and even if it might occur to you that something has gone wrong, you would have to go back to the lake and fish up another one. You might think yourself clever for remembering where you got the last one, but alas, the tiles where it appears are randomized every day. Now, given that you have acquired this brown fish, and GIVEN that you have managed to feed it beautifying Poffins of sufficient quality, the next time you level up your ugly brown fish it should evolve into Milotic.
 * You can also just catch one and breed it in hopes of getting one that doesn't hate blue Poffins...but only if the Feebas you caught is a girl (unless you have a Ditto, which would be far less likely in Ruby and Sapphire, the first games that Feebas and Milotic appear in, than in the aforementioned Diamond and Pearl).
 * HeartGold and SoulSilver are no fairer. Firstly, you can only get Feebas through the Pokéwalker in one route, this is also the last route you would normally get, Quiet Cave, which needs a massive 100,000 watts to unlock. Thankfully, Feebas is quite easy to catch in this one. You only need 500 steps on the route to make it appear, it shows up at a reasonable rate (20%). Saw a Chingling? You'd better send another Pokémon over because the game has randomly decided to not let you get a Feebas this time around! And once you caught it you still need to evolve it. But wait again! Poffins don't exist in Johto! How are you going to max out the beauty stat? Turns out that the only way is to let Daisy Groom your Feebas enough times to raise it's beauty. But she only grooms you Pokémon between 3pm and 4pm each day and she'll only do one groom per day. So you need to do this multiple times in the week and then level it up for it to evolve into the long-wanted Milotic. Most people either trade the Feebas over to raise beauty by Poffins, or grab one by the GTS.
 * Fortunately, when all is said and done, Black and White have greatly simplified the process: Feebas can be found on any tile in his route, there are special tiles you can fish on but they're marked this time!, and they include better chances at Feebas and even a chance at wild Milotic, and (as contest stats are no more) Feebas now evolves by being traded with the Prism Scale, which even mimics Milotic's color scheme (trade-with-item evolutions are still Guide Dang It material in most cases, but they're a lot less annoying than dealing with the contest stats, provided you have someone to trade with). However, (hardcore) gamers still can evolve the Feebas via old way in BW, if one trades a Feebas with maxed Beauty into one of these games.
 * Something that is required for Hundred-Percent Completion, however, is Shedinja (in Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald as well as the National Dex in every game past Ruby/Sapphire). Shedinja cannot be found in the wild and despite appearing in the Pokédex after Nincada and Ninjask and obviously being from the same evolution line, doesn't evolve from anything. To get it, the player must raise a Nincada to Level 20 and let it evolve with at least one empty slot in their party and at least one Poké Ball of any variety with them. Having the Poké Ball is very likely already, but most players go around with a full party for the entire game as soon as they are able to do so. Shedinja is also never mentioned in any of the games or used by anyone outside of the Battle Tower (where opponents are randomly generated) and, in HG/SS, Bugsy's rematch team.
 * In Generation IV, it has to be a regular red-and-white Poké Ball specifically.
 * A few Pokémon evolutions in general are Guide Dang It during in the more generations and especially in the fourth one, with what things like certain stat values, time of day, gender or even location affecting Pokémon evolutions. Want a Glaceon? Well, if you have an Eevee, and happen to level it up near an icy rock on Route 217... Consider that Eevee evolves in seven different ways: Used a a Water Stone on it? It evolves into Vaporeon. Got it too happy during the day? It evolves into Espeon. Got it too happy during the night? Yep, it evolves into Umbreon.
 * Luckily, you can just press B to cancel an evolution, although even that is a case of All There in the Manual.
 * It's worse than that; the only way Piloswine can learn AncientPower to begin with is via the Move Relearner, so if you don't know about how to evolve it, you'll very likely never teach it that move to begin with!
 * One better to add to the induced confusion: Piloswine used to be able to learn AncientPower in the earlier games, but it didn't evolve then even if it had the attack.
 * Magneton and Nosepass only evolve if leveled up in Mt. Coronet, which apparently exudes a magnetic field that affects the two magnet-based Pokémon. Tragically, nowhere in the game is it mentioned that Mt. Coronet is magnetic!. An NPC in Platinum tells you that certain Pokémon level up at Mt. Coronet, but they never hint as to which Pokémon or that Mt. Coronet is magnetic.
 * In Platinum, you can catch Nosepass in Mt. Coronet, which could possibly be seen as a hint... though that's still a pretty darn vague hint.
 * Baby Pokémon might count as this: you can only find some Pokémon by breeding their parents. This then requires a female evolution of the baby. Which Pokémon are only obtainable therein isn't really explained. To add insult to injury, in the case of any baby introduced from Generation III onwards this also requires the parent to be holding a certain type of incense. Using a Ditto will also work for breeding when you only have a male, but if you're trying to get certain egg moves (another aspect that isn't exactly mentioned in the games) you need the father to know the moves you want inherited, while the mother is the Pokémon you want it to be born as. Then there's also Volt Tackle, which can only be learned as an egg move if bred with a female Pikachu or Raichu carrying a Light Ball.
 * In Gen IV, a legendary Pokemon by the name of Manaphy was made available through various methods (the easiest being a downloadable mission for Pokemon Ranger). No problem so far, right? However, after trading it to your Gen. IV game, you find that there's still a Pokemon missing, (and no, not Arceus) and it's surrounded by other legendaries in your dex. But what could it be? Where is it found?
 * Certain Pokémon only evolve if traded while holding a certain item, or if leveled up holding a certain item. These items aren't labeled as influencing evolution, and many of them have a beneficial effect, so one might never realize they have a second use.
 * Others don't have any other effect, but are also extremely vague as to what they're used for. For example, the in-game description of the Protector reads, "A protective item of some sort. It is extremely stiff and heavy. It is loved by a certain Pokémon." This item cannot be found on a wild Pokémon, so there are no clues as to which Pokémon is being referred to. The Reaper Cloth has the same situation, although you might be able to get a minor hint, while the Magmarizer and Electirizer, albeit with similarly cryptic in-game descriptions, do not, as they are sometimes held by the wild Pokémon that would use them.
 * Tyrogue will evolve into one of three Pokémon based on whether its Attack and Defense are higher than each other or equal. Strangely, all three evolutions have similar stats and are all offensively-based. Wurmple evolves into one of two Pokémon based on a stat that's never alluded to in the game called personality values. While its evolutions can be caught in the wild, they won't know any offensive moves and will never learn any until their final evolution.

Game Mechanics

 * Wonder why a crucial stat of your Pokémon's seems weak for no justifiable reason? That's because of poor Individual Values (essentially, genes), and/or bad Effort Values (essentially, stat-based experience gained when you battle different Pokémon). The existence of these stats is only vaguely alluded to in-game, and fully understanding the process and its various formulas by oneself without hacking and digging deep into the game files is likely an impossible task. Knowing these stats and understanding them is essential for breeding Pokémon for competitive battling. In fact, this is specifically an Internet Guide Dang It, as even Nintendo's official guides include no information on IVs or EVs. Game Freak and/or Nintendo seems intent on disavowing their existence and making the games' level-up systems seem more like a standard RPG. It's worth noting that being aware of the EV and IV systems isn't required to beat the core game and even achieve Hundred-Percent Completion, but considering that the game alludes to and references the hidden stat systems, it would appear that Game Freak expected some players to know about them at some point.
 * The move Hidden Power is a huge pain because of IVs. Why, you ask? Because the move's type and damage are both determined by the user's IVs. Granted, Hidden Power isn't that great of a move overall, with a maximum base power of 70 if your Pokemon was somehow blessed with the best possible IVs... but when you consider that nearly every Pokemon can learn it and the move's type can be anything except Normal, you kind of understand why it's used a lot as type coverage in competitive battling.
 * The entire move list in the first generation of games was a Guide Dang It, because nowhere in the game did any of those moves get their effects described. So you really had no idea what that new move Charmander just learned actually does, you just know it's a Fire attack with 15 PP. Is it stronger or weaker than that other Fire attack it just forgot? Who knows?
 * And still, in Generation II, you don't know if a move is good or not until you actually learn it. Obviously, when you replace a decent move for Swift (60 power, Normal type and ignores accuracy and evasion modifications), this can be frustrating when you deleted a 100% accurate Normal move with 85 or so power.
 * The ins and outs of breeding for movesets is a Guide Dang It all on its own. Breeding can result in babies that know moves from their parents, which results in expanded move pools for most Pokémon. However, which moves can be inherited aren't told anywhere in the game. Some of them can be inferred (it's easy to figure out that you can breed Thunderbolt onto any Pokémon who can learn it via TM), some of them aren't that surprising (Mud Shot can be learned by an awful lot - but throwing mud around isn't the most mindblowing technique), but some are positively mind-boggling (Aron, a Rock/Steel type that weighs over a hundred pounds and eventually evolves into something weighing nearly 800 pounds, can inherit a move called Aerial Ace, a swordsman-inspired move). On top of that, there's the rule that many guides overlook, in that a baby will inherit a level-up move if both parents know it. Valuable for Pokémon with wildly divergent movelists upon level-up (like Seedot) or anyone looking to breed for Tournament Play (which sometimes imposes level restrictions, preventing you from acquiring moves via Level Grinding).
 * There's the Generation IV National Dex. It is unlocked by seeing (not catching) every Pokémon in the Sinnoh Dex (150 as of Diamond and Pearl--seeing Manaphy, the 151st in the Sinnoh Dex, wasn't necessary--and 210 in Platinum), and to help make this easier, they made it so that every non-legendary Pokémon in the Sinnoh Dex could be seen in a trainer battle at some point during the game. Furthermore, to increase the likelihood that you'd have to beat the game (or come up just short) to do so, the only trainer with a Garchomp, Spiritomb, or Milotic (and in Platinum, you can add Togekiss to this list) is the Pokémon League Champion. However, they didn't always make it entirely evident where to find some of these. Examples of Pokémon that could easily be missed:
 * Wormadam--in the party of a trainer on a part of Route 214 that you might not even end up visiting at all (in between Veilstone City and Lake Valor, since the first time you visit Lake Valor for plot purposes, you'll be coming from Pastoria City), whose gaze can easily be avoided as she isn't facing the main path.
 * Riolu--in the party of a trainer at Ravaged path. Platinum remedied this by giving one to another trainer on Route 217, but given the wide-open nature of that route, it's still no sure thing. Did we mention that the only way to get one for yourself is to go through a sidequest in an optional area while keeping a slot in your party open (which also means no catching Pokémon while you're there) and then hatching an egg?
 * A similar thing happens in Gen 5 with Larvesta, which can only be obtained by either breeding a Volcarona (single one per game, in an area you'll have to visit at least twice for plot, so not as bad) or getting an egg from a trainer at the far end of an otherwise optional, dead-end route. No trainers use it in battle, and it's part of the Regional dex. Fortunately, the National dex is opened by beating the Champion instead.
 * Palkia (Diamond)/Dialga (Pearl)/Manaphy (Platinum): In the original two, the Pokédex data for the legendary not appearing in your game could be obtained by returning to Celestic Town after Spear Pillar and talking to Cynthia's grandmother. In Platinum, both Dialga and Palkia are seen (and uncatchable) on your initial trip to Spear Pillar, but the expansion of the Sinnoh Dex to 210 means that data for the hidden number 151, Manaphy, must be collected. You can find this data in a similar fashion, but a different place: a book in Mr. Backlot's mansion.
 * Rotom. Without the guide letting you know you can only catch it in the Old Chateau at night, and that you need a certain key to unlock its various forms...you'd pretty much have no idea it even exists.
 * If you examine the TV during any other time, it at least hints that there's something special about it... However, it is kind of vague, and if you didn't already know about Rotom then you'd have little reason to examine the TV in the first place.
 * Before all of this, there was the original Guide Dang It of the series: physical versus special moves. You can hammer your way through the game without knowing the difference, but if you want to fight well, it's the very first thing you have to understand. But nowhere in the first three generations of Pokémon games are the nine physical and eight special types actually listed -- not even at the trainer schools! It does get listed in Earl's academy in Pokémon Stadium 2, but it's fair to assume not that many people played that one. Gen. IV uncoupled physical/special from move types, so it's no longer an issue.
 * The entire Pokemon series is pretty much one giant Guide Dang It, but one huge one is the whole Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors. The game does explain about super effective and not very effective hits, and it gives some tips before Gyms, but you don't see a chart anywhere detailing the full list of what resists and what's weak to what. Some can be intuited, like Fire against Grass or Bug, Water against Fire, or Electric against Flying or Ground against Electric, but quite a lot of them make you scratch your head. Rock strong against Bug and Flying ? Dragon weak to Ice ? Rock weak to Ground ? You can only find this out through trial and error, which can take a while. Luckily, you can get a type-matcher app in the Gen. IV games which helps.
 * Well, nowhere except the original Gen. I instruction book, anyway--although it wasn't very clear that "Bad" was supposed to mean "no effect" in that chart. And of course, it didn't cover Steel and Dark, or any type-matchups that were changed for Gen II.
 * What's more, the type matchups in the original RBY series were glitched so that while according to the manual, Ghost was supposed to be super effective against Psychic, it was in fact completely ineffective. Which rendered the already powerful Psychic type a Game Breaker, since it had no weaknesses outside of Bug, a type with few useful Pokemon or moves at the time. Good luck figuring out why your manual was lying to you.
 * Rock strong against Flying.. "Kill two birds with one stone."
 * Fighting weak against Flying. Have you ever tried to punch a bird?
 * Transferring your HG/SS Celebi and/or Beast Trio to get your Zorua/Zoroark.
 * Purifying Shadow Lugia in Gale of Darkness. It's said multiple times throughout the games that it cannot be purified, and you're led to believe they're right; using it in battle, giving it Scents, even putting it in the Purify Chamber does absolutely nothing to drop its Heart Gauge. Well, to purify it, you need all 9 sets of the Purify Chamber to be at full tempo, and then you need to put Lugia into any of the sets (making sure that it connects to something it's super-effective against). This instantly drops the gauge to zero, giving you the ability to purify Lugia. Now, if just putting Lugia into the Chamber regularly doesn't do anything, how the hell would you know to have 9 perfect sets going at the same time?
 * What makes this worse is the fact that the Purification Chamber itself is otherwise fairly intuitive. Having sets at max tempo does help you purify more quickly, so if you've been using the Chamber much it's likely that you already have at least a few sets at max tempo. Still, nothing at all in the game hints that you need all sets at max tempo to purify Lugia.