Published on March 19th, 2014 | by mattj
Efficiently Capturing Your Roamer in Pokémon X and Y
Have you tried to capture a usable Zapdos, Articuno, or Moltres on your X or Y game yet? Based on previous generation game mechanics, one might reasonably assume it would be mathematically impossible (or at least impractical) to capture a flawless IV, specific nature, usable Hidden Power Kanto legendary bird solely through resetting. Luckily, this isn’t past generations. If you set things up to be as efficient as possible it shouldn’t take you more than a few days to get your own VGC-legal bird. I’ve done it twice now; here’s how you can do it, too!
For those of you who would like this info in list form:
Repeatedly Encountering Your Roamer
- Purchase 10-20 Max Repels.
- Put a high, but sub-level-70 Pokémon in the lead spot of your party.
- Bring along any Pokémon that knows Fly.
- Fly to any town that has access to multiple routes.
- Check your roamer’s Pokedex entry.
- If it’s not near, keep flying to your same location and checking your roamer’s Pokedex entry until it is.
- If it’s near, walk, skate, or bike to that route, but do not fly.
- Check your roamer’s Pokedex entry every time you change areas.
- Use a max repel and run around in the grass until your roamer pops out.
- Repeat the flying and checking and biking part around 11 times till your roamer’s Pokedex entry shows that it’s at Sea Spirit’s Den.
Preparing to Capture Your Roamer
- Figure out what Nature, Hidden Power, and IVs you want.
- Head to somewhere like Pokémon Showdown to figure out what its stats should be at level 70 and write them down.
- Obtain a Masterball.
- Obtain a synchronizer with the nature you want your roamer to be, knock it out, and put it in the first spot in your party.
- Put any Pokémon that knows Surf and any Pokémon that knows Fly in your party.
- Fill out your roamer’s Pokedex entry by either Pokebanking an old gen one, or having a friend touch trade you one.
- Put in the second spot in your party any Pokémon with an ability that announces itself at the beginning of the battle, (preferably Pressure but definitely not Unnerve), that happens to be EXACTLY one speed point below your roamer’s expected speed stat.
- Surf to Sea Spirit’s Den.
- Enter the cave, then STOP, and save one step away from that dark circle right in front of you.
- Get out those stats you wrote down.
Resetting Your Roamer
- Step forward to activate the battle.
- If your roamer’s ability does not announce itself first, reset immediately and try again.
- If your roamer’s ability does announce itself first, masterball it and mash B to get through the nick name screen.
- If your roamer’s HP on the Pokemon select screen isn’t what it should be, reset immediately and try again.
- If your roamer’s HP on the Pokemon select screen is what its supposed to be, check all the rest of its stats.
- If its stats are not what they’re supposed to be, reset immediately and try again.
- If its stats are what they’re supposed to be, fly to Anistar city and check its Hidden Power.
- If its Hidden Power isn’t something you could live with, reset immediately and try again.
- If its Hidden Power is something you could live with, fly to Kiloude City and check its IVs.
- Go to Metalkid’s IV checker and put all the info in to determine your roamer’s IVs.
- If its IVs aren’t close enough to what you’re looking for, reset immediately and try again.
Do. Not. Settle.
If you keep trying you WILL soon capture exactly what you’re looking for.
I owe a big thanks to both lucariojr for supplying the Master Ball for this project and DaWoblefet for reminding me to use a “one-under” lead. I couldn’t have done this without you two. Thanks!
About the Author
mattj started playing VGC at the end of 2008. He enjoys reading the Bible, shooting guns, and voting for Republicans.
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nice article matt. time to get another game to get a better bird.
Hey, I am confused about the section here
6.Fill out your roamer’s Pokedex entry by either Pokebanking an old gen one, or having a friend touch trade you one.
Have someone trade you the bird, just to get its Pokedex entry. This way you know where it’ll be to begin with instead of waiting a while to get lucky to see it the first time.
The idea behind getting the full entry is to save time after you capture it, so you don’t have to repeatedly see the Pokedex entry several hundred times over. Love the article though, currently hunting down my Zapdos in the wild on my secondary file and plan to make use of the suggestions going forward for capture. Also used the tips here for my main file; Didn’t get the HP Ice Zapdos like I wanted, but 31/31/31/29/31/31 Timid was too painful to pass up. XD
Never mind! Did not see the vid!
“If you keep trying you WILL soon capture exactly what you’re looking for.”
Unless what you’re looking for is a HP Flying Zapdos that doesn’t suck. (1/500 (approx), had HP Flying, and it completely sucked) (31/31/31/E/E/E for those wondering).
I found this article to be extremely helpful. Thank you very much
Also, holy, that Moltres. If my math is correct that’s a 1/12,288 chance of getting it. Or, roughly 50% worse odds than getting a shiny the “natural” way. O_o
Did you account for Synchronize, and the 3 IVs that are locked flawless?
Actually, the math ends up being 33/131072, or 1/3972. This includes the guaranteed 3 IVs, Synchronize chance, as well as well as the slim chance of flawless 6 ivs.
That being said mattj, do you plan to distribute your Moltres in any way? I’m not sure if cloning is considered fine by the community, but 1/3972 is an incredibly small chance. I for one am sort of worried about the time players will invest trying to look for one, and hopefully people will understand what they will put themselves through doing so. Myself included, after calculating these numbers makes me very discouraged to attempt for a flawless legendary.
He just took his time to make a video and demonstrate how to get one. I don’t think he will be planning on distributing his Moltres. It honestly isn’t that hard. Just takes some time so go and try it out.
If you’re aiming for max speed and you follow the steps in that video the vast majority of your resets will take less than 30 seconds (the roamer’s ability didn’t go first). A small number of the resets that take more than 30 seconds will take about a minute tops (the HP or then the other stats are wrong). I did somewhere toward 2,000 resets in 2 1/2 very late evenings and only had to check the IVs like 5 times. It was just Nope reset Nope reset Nope reset at as rapid a pace as possible. I realize that you may be looking for something specific that may only have a 1/X,000 chance of appearing, but understand that if you make this as efficient as possible and dedicate a good chunk of focused time to it each evening, its realistic to reset nearly 1,000 times per night (>30 seconds per reset x 8 hours = 960 resets). Putting 8 hours per night into resetting is probably not going to be something everyone wants to do, but it is doable. Other than being tedious and annoying, there’s nothing but laziness stopping anyone else from accomplishing this in a matter of days.
I went:
1/32 one stat is flawless
1/32 a second stat is flawless
1/6 one of those flawless stats isn’t Atk
1/2 for the nature
= 1/12,288
I think that’s right.
A tip for anyone trying to get those initial encounters with their roamer over with as quickly as possible: if you go to the west exit of Santalune City, you can dart out of the exit into the tall grass just outside and back in again on your bicycle repeatedly for quick encounters due to the constantly changing routes. It means you don’t have to check your Pokedex entry every time and since the roamer’s encounter rate is so high with the max repels and a Pokemon that is lower level than 70 you rarely miss any chances. Certainly managed to get all my encounters in less than the couple of hours stated in the video.
Nice guide though, glad that it’s up as it’s something I can direct my friends to who ask the same questions. Would have saved me a lot of time doing the research myself if I’d had it before my own captures.
Wow I wish I thought of killing my syncronizer when I was SRing for my 31/x/31/31/31/31 Articuno, It added so much time to each reset because it was at a low level. But great guide anyway, I think it will be really helpful to the uninformed.
Thank you so much! I’m definitely going to read this over again before going after Zapdos on X.
Lol! the effing smeargle has fly…. I now need to make an ultimate HM slave Smeargle. If for some reason I need to use Surf/Fly/Strength/Cut Smeargle will be ready to help me out.
Wowza, my Moltres is 31/9/31/31/31/31, Modest. It’s the one speed under thing that did it. Thanks again Matt!
Do NOT settle.
Getting a specific Hidden Power if you’re looking for it is definitely worth the effort.
31/18/30/31/31/29 Modest Zapdos with… HP Ice!
One thing missing is the movement rules for wandering Legendaries:
If you transition from one area to another (Ie from a route to a city) and its not a covered transition (like a route gate), the wanderer will jump to a random adjacent route.
IE if you are in South Lumiose City and your wanderer is in Route 16, transitioning to North Lumiose City will cause the wanderer to move to a nearby route (such as Route 15 or Route 14). But if your wanderer is in Route 5, and you transition from South Lumiose City to Route 5 via the Route Gate, it will not move.
Not true, I’ve gone from Route 5 > Town > Route 7 (It stayed on Route 7 the entire time). It jumped from Route 5 to Route 7 when I left Lumiose.
31/31/31/x/31/x timid Hp-ice zapdos. Close enough. (that was 2013-me)
Great Vid and set up for Mewtwo and other mons maybe in the future? (Heatran would be nice)
After using this method, I have to admit settling for 29/22/30/31/31/31 hp ice timid Zapdos. 1hp off (2iv’s) missing
I may give it at least 4 ev’s in hp lol
But will definitely be using this method again! Most likely for a Modest one!! Thank you Matt!
It took me 2 hours to get a 30/3/31/29/31/31 timid Moltres. Should I settle for this?
I don’t really think the above two are “settling”. You don’t need five perfect stats.
Its really up to you. I was, and still am, perfectly fine with my 31/8/30/29/31/31 Timid Zapdos. But if you seriously want a 31 SAtk, keep going and you will eventually get it. Personally, I’d say that’s totally usable, but its your mon.
Great article! Should help speed things up when I go for a HP Ice Zapdos
Got lucky with getting my 30/31/31/31/31/31 bold Articuno in under an hour and HP Zapdos shouldn’t take too long either with this article’s help so thanks! *bows*
Thanks! I’ve been wanting to use a really good Kalos-region Zapdos, but I didn’t know how to do it!
| 1,1 | Articuno | Calm | Pressure | 29.21.31.31.30.31 |
I will admit I have a save back-up that’s right in front of Articuno in case I want to get another one but for now I think I’ll just use this one.
Thanks a lot!
Used this to catch a decent Articuno. Thanks a lot!