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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51 Responses to Efficiently Capturing Your Roamer in Pokémon X and Y
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This is a great tutorial. I’m on my way to getting a Zapdos!
Thank you so much, I captured my Bold Articuno 30/3 or 4/31/31/31/31 in just 4 hours or less using your method, very helpful.
Thanks for the awesome tips, person from across the United States! I will now catch my -89 (+5/4) IV HP Ice Pikachu (Zapdos) without any complications after I restart my Pokemon Z (X) Version! 😀
What do you propose with someone like myself that doesnt have another poke with pressure to check Zapdos. Would I skip that and go to checking HP?
I really wouldn’t recommend that. It’s not hard to catch a Pokemon with an appropriate ability and speed stat, and using this trick was what made capturing my Moltres possible in that time
Hatch a weather inducer or pressure mon, do the EV math, and level it up to the needed level like a true man.
I mean Hit points and not Hidden Power
Same story. You can chop off time checking half the Pokemon that has no chance of being what you want
Pokecheck is still around for a while. Just get something public off of there with Pressure and a speed stat just 1 point under. Then Bank it to your X or Y. There’s plenty of stuff there.
Is the fainted Synchro poke suppose to give you the nature you want all the time or just most?
A Synch in the front, dead or alive, passes their nature 50% of the time.
Was there anything else you did to progress the likelihood of getting the desired legends stats? Past couple of days I havent been getting anywhere. Is Zapdos useless w/o HP ice?
I think Ice makes the most sense in this meta. Flying is also usable because of STAB. Grass would be usable in a ’13 style format with Gastrodon, Swampert, etc. But I can’t think of anything common in this format that Grass would hit harder than TBolt, etc. Not that its unusable, its just not ideal.
And about increasing the likelyhood of the stats you want, the trick is to set everything up to be absolutely as efficient as possible. Then CYCLECYCLECYCLECYCLECYCLE through resets at light speed. There’s no better way.
Just got my Moltres after nine tries, I was expecting it to take much much longer.
Lucky
Yeah, I might go buy a lottery ticket later.
Isn’t it easier to put a Screenshot or a note with the needed IVs next to the 3DS and compare them to the Roamer-stats instead of flying to Anistar City and check the HP? Sure, this is only meant for the Roamer that need the 31/30/30/31/31/31-IVs for a Lv. 70-Zapdos.
Or just subtract the actual stats from the needed and you know what the IVs are: XY-Zapdos has 225 statpoints which is 2 under 227, which is 31 IVs.
just sayin’ 😀
You kind of do have to hack to do it this efficiently because you need a pokemon with -1 speed stat from pokebank which lets face it to get one quickly you need to hack, not that this video isn’t helpful its just a little sad that pokemon will always have hacks being a major part of the game; also you wouldve been even more efficient if your articuno wasnt shiny
It’s absolutely not necessary. A lot of people have such a large back-catalog of Pokemon from previous generations that very often they will have something close to their desired one under lead with no effort at all, but even if you’re new to the series in Generation 6 Pressure Pokemon like Weavile and Aerodactyl, which are native to Kalos, will reach the required speeds around Level 50 (ie. a round of Triple Battles in Restaurant Le WoW), you just add a few EVs to get your exact number. In regards to the Articuno: it was most likely a previous generation RNG that was just lying around, and getting the most out of older Pokemon certainly seems efficient to me.
OK I’m trying to check the probability of the HP Ice Zapdos, but I’m not sure if I’m getting my numbers right.
-Nature pass (50%)
-31 picked is not Atk and Def (??? %)
-one unpicked is 31 (1/32)
-Def is 30 (???)
There’s also the possibility of having 31/31/31/31/31/30, which fortunately is the same as a 31/31/31/31/31/31 level 70 Zapdos, Modest or Timid.
-nature pass (50%)
-31 picked is not Spe (1/6???)
-one unpicked is 31 (1/32)
-second unpicked is 31 (1/32)
-Atk is Odd (1/2???)
Reading this part reminds me again how sucky my country is when it comes to labor laws.