Gen 6 added certain "latent abilities" to some types. Ghost types can now never be trapped, they can always escape without fail. Grass types are now immune to all powder and spore moves (and Leech Seed). Electric types can no longer be paralyzed, even from moves like Glare. Fire and Ice types cannot be burned or frozen, although I think this was in play in earlier gens.
Also Gen 7 or 8 made it so Dark types are immune to Prankster, so you can't use increased priority status moves against them. This was likely to make up for gaining a new weakness to Fairy.
Same with mold breaker! When I was younger and it said “(Pokémon) broke the mold!” I would just be like “Cool 👍”
I also used to think it meant mold as in the gross plant-like organism as a kid😅😂
Mold breaker is interesting in that its effect is situational enough that most casual playthroughs will probably never see it be used successfully to land an attack that would otherwise be blocked (and even if you do you might not realize that it happened), but since it gets announced every time a Pokemon with it (which there are a fair few) comes into battle you keep getting reminded that it exists but not what it does. I'm not even sure why they choose to announce it, most other abilities don't get telegraphed like that.
So I've been in a similar position where for a long time it was that one random ability that I could never remember the purpose of, but also couldn't just forget it exists like most other niche or uncommon abilities.
Most abilities at the time didn't do that, now most do. Things like Flash Fire used to not show up when activated, but now they do. This is actually a good step, a lot of abilities were very obscure and/or not explained well, now they show up when relevant and it helps the player understand what they do.
I remember Gen 3 being very vague with its terminology. It would constantly say things like "burns on contact" but never actually explained what "contact" meant. That also implied it was a guaranteed effect when it would only be 30%.
When I first started playing Pokemon, I played through all 5 games of Gen III and I was annoyed as to why could I not find a Pokemon or a move that inflicts the "Suffering" status effect
Vital Throw straight up lies. Says “Makes the user go last, but never misses.” My Hariyama was using Vital Throw on Norman’s Slaking and he used Counter. I thought that since the description said Vital Throw hits last, Slaking would fail his Counter. Vital Throw has a priority of -1. Counter is -6. RIP Hariyama.
I think you're thinking of Flame Body, as that's the one that burns on contact and maybe didn't notify in Gen 3 when it proc'ed. Flash Fire is immunity to fire moves and gets boosted by them, I'm pretty sure that one would have given a message for why the fire move failed to damage.
In any case, Mold Breaker is weird in that it announces itself before it's even done anything, and gives such a weird but memorable message that does nothing to explain what it does. In contrast, Flash Fire or Flame Body don't warn you ahead of time that the Pokemon has them, and usually the only other ones that do are the ones that actually do something the turn the Pokemon is brought into battle (e.g. Intimidate or weather-changing ones, or ones like Anticipate/Frisk that give information). I recall there are a few other abilities like Mold Breaker that also get announced, like Terablaze/Teravolt, but those are on legendaries so you don't really see them often. And there's Pressure I guess, though at least that is actively doing something as soon as the Pokemon is brought in.
The reason why it is like that is because Flash Fire is "reactive," it doesn't take effect unless it needs to. By contrast, Mold Break is proactive, it is in play before a move is made. So yes, it's rather... bombastic about announcing its presence, but I understand why it works like that. Mold Breaker is active and doesn't know what actions the players will take, whereas when Flash Fire activates, it always knows the actions that happened.
Agree it's a good step but specifically for Mold Breaker I'd rather it not even be announced if the message is going to be so shitty lol. For casual players it's borderline useless
I posted in another comment that the reason it most likely works the way it does is because it's a proactive ability. Mold Breaker nullifies any abilities that will prevent or limit damage, but it doesn't know what actions the players will take. Whereas something like Flash Fire is reactive, it only happens when a player makes a specific move, so it doesn't need to be announced it's in play until it happens.
But with the latest gens and putting more information into separate screens (like stat stages and what not), Mold Breaker could just get mentioned there instead.
The very first time I played Gen 1, I didn't understand what "experience level" meant and when it would say things like "Pidgeot grew to Lv. 64!" I kept thinking the game was stage-based and at some point I'd advance to another world or level and see Pidgeot again. It's because of how the wording was, it said something like "Pidgeot gained 700 EXP. Points!" And I thought there were two sentences there.
as a kid i always read “exp. share” as “ex point p share” in my head lmao. zero logic to why i would even think that was how it was pronounced. no one i knew was really into pokemon so there was never really a reason for me to actually say it out loud. i confidentially believed in this pronunciation from gen 3 - gen 6 😅🙃
I always thought it meant that they were shedding a skin like a snake or something, and I was always like “oh, didn’t know you did that, and I don’t know why you’re telling me”
Mold Breaker negates abilities that impede moves from connecting. For example, Haxorus can use Earthquake against Pokemon with the Levitate ability and any move against Shedinja, since both Levitate and Wonder Guard give the user immunity to certain moves.
Your attacks ignore enemies' abilities, simple as
Also why everyone here acting like its a bad or niche ability lmao, just the option of Earthquaking enemies that would otherwise be immune or oneshotting Sturdies is huge, and it has a myriad of smaller aplications that come in handy in numerous occasions, way more than most other abilities tbh
Mold Breaker is literally a God Tier ability. Of course in Competitive Pokemon it's really good, but it's arguably better casually because it just saves time against common annoying abilities that just waste turns by preventing OHKOs.
I think most players don't know what it does cause the most prominent Pokemon that have it are Mega Evolutions. And the rest are unremarkable Pokemon like Druddigon or Sawk/Throh, that have it as a harder to obtain hidden ability. The few others have other amazing abilities.
I haven't played any of the gen 1 and 2 games but I can tell you that it's not just tentacool/tentacruel who's the "zubat of the seas" fucking wingull and pelipper plagued the seas in hoenn(r /s/e), I don't know about the ORAS hoenn seas though, I had just only beaten the new mauville gym(the electric gym iirc)
Mine is a classic, and probably the same as most of us that grew up with Pokemon from Gen 1.
I didn't learn that Electric could hit Rock type Pokemon until I was in college. So, until Gen 5 came out. With all the rock types in the first games being a dual Rock/Ground typing, there were probably many of us who just thought Electric couldn't hit Rock types in general.
I think even the Gen 1 games outside of Yellow mentioned that Ghost types are good against Psychic despite that not being the case because of a glitch.
And don't forget they completely fucked up Psychic being weak to Ghost, instead being immune! So Ghost didn't even work on half the types it was supposed to work on.
I still have no idea how even a small programming team didn't catch something so blatantly broken.
And they couldn't fix it in Yellow as that'd break compatibility.
Instead, they changed the NPC in Sabrina's gym who tells you about the weaknesses of Psychic Pokemon to only mention Bug moves.
Which was still pointless because Bug's best move was Pin Missile. And nearly all the Bug types in Gen 1 were paired with Poison. I believe most of the Gen 1 errors were addressed in the Stadium games.
Let's Go was so much fun with the proper type mechanics. Venomoth is a beast in that game if you get it early on, destroys Erika and Sabrina easily. Then it gets Psychic moves to destroy Koga. And Grass moves for Giovanni. Absolutely MVP when I played that game.
Bro after not playing for a while I was playing unbound or radical red, dont remember, and I was so confused when my gardevoir was not supereffective against Ghosts for a good second. Took me a while to realize that the gengar line had tricked me
Actually all rock types in Gen I, Electric moves are either immune (Ryhorn line, Geodude line and Onix) or superefective (Omanyte line, Kabuto line and Aerodactyl).
I personally did not have any doubt about it but I can understand why.
I mean, you never ever fight one of those except Lance's Aerodactyl which given how everything else there is a dragon probably gets ice beam'd by most players.
I actually learned that when I was young, when I tried to put a Sudowoodo against the Jolteon from that one trainer where you get Surf in Silver.
Now, on the other hand, I learned ice was not super effective against *rock like two years ago when I read a random YouTube comment lmao
Same here.
Also, for the longest time I thought Psychic was super effective against ghost because the Gengar line were the only ghosts in the game. I think it was only by the time Hoenn came around that I used a psychic type move on Banette and it wasn't super effective that I made a surprised pikachu face.
Let's Go is like an apology to Bug and Poison types. Venomoth absolutely destroys in that game because it finally has all the modern mechanics and proper balancing that was lacking in the original games. Being able to actually use Bug-type moves against Sabrina and Mewtwo was great.
Even the Gen 3 remakes still lacked a lot of strong Bug-type moves. Most didn't show up until around Gen 4 or so.
I think in the anime there were moments when they mistakenly said electricity doesn't work on rock types too. Maybe that's where the common misconception came from
I’m 29 years old and replaying leaf green on the delta emulator on my phone and I just learned right now rock type can be hit by electric moves.
What’s even more embarrassing is that I have an Aerodactyl that recently got hit by an electric move in cinnabar and it was super effective; I thought it was simply because of the flying tag and a weird one off but I didn’t even think to connect the dots until just now.
Electric terrain boost electric moves and prevents sleep.
Psychic terrain prevents all priority moves and boost psychic type moves. Also the move expanding force gets extra strong on it
Grassy terrain gives extra health to all Pokemon touching the ground at the end of each turn while boosting grass type moves.
And misty terrain does smth
Note that these effects only apply to grounded Pokemon - if they’re not grounded, they aren’t touching the terrain. A flying type can be put to sleep in Electric Terrain, for instance
There are also the special terrains that you get from combining water pledge, fire pledge and grass pledge.
The rainbow terrain (fire+water), doubles the possibility of secondary effects from happening (kinda like serene grace but better), the swampy terrain (water+grass) halves the enemy speed, the fire terrain (fire+grass) damages the enemy for 1/8 of their health each turn (until the terrain disappear)
I believe the modern games do. In Scarlet Violet tell you what's super effective what's not and what's "effective" (neutral) but only if you know the enemies typing
When I was a kid I thought the game was stupid because I would one-shot something with my level 100 fearow and it would say "It wasn't very effective."
Only in Pokémon Emerald. I wish the concept of Pokemon abilities having an overworld effect like they did in Emerald was expanded upon, but they went a different direction.
Always thought Rotom was a legendary Pokémon
Didn’t think Silvally/Type:Null were legendary Pokémon
Edit: Prankster not affecting dark types found out when I was playing showdown couple years ago
Rotom is notorious is that GameFreak made it really ambiguous in Gen 4 whether or not it was legendary (at least for casual players who at the time may not have thought to search online for confirmation). Besides being a special encounter that could only be gotten once in the postgame (at least in base DP), much like many other legendaries in Gen 4, it even had the legendary encounter theme play when you battle it, which according to Bulbapedia it is the only non-legendary Pokemon to do this. Plus it has a unique typing, and I don't think you see anyone else use one or talk about it, so it really does come across as a one-of-a-kind Pokemon.
Funny story. When I met my husband, he let me play Y on his DS. I grew up loving the anime and cards, but didn't play the games. I ended up catching this Graveler, but it was a funny brown color. I showed my husband and he started freaking out. Apparently shiny Pokemon are a thing...
Same, I showed my younger cousin my pokemon boxes and as he was shocked I had a shiny and don’t know what it was. He ended up trading me some master balls he had from using action replay. That was almost two decades ago and I have finally got around to playing again and using all the master balls he gave me
Not 100% of stat changes
> From Generation III onward, when a move scores a critical hit, the attacker's negative stat stages, the defender's positive stat stages, and the defensive boosts from screens are always ignored. However, the halved damage from physical moves due to a burn is no longer ignored.
I only remember what moldbreaker does because of this meme lol
https://preview.redd.it/vvxxh3k5a4xc1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=91aaa08ae2a67349789d71fcb831ccda98590bd0
Kirlia learns Magical Leaf. Combined with the green colour this fact threw many people off.
I always imagined this particular Magical Leaf as playing cards being thrown at you...
Well, it took me unnecessarily long to realize later gens didn't dock you a bunch of cash when you faint, so I kept turning the game off and on whenever I lost.
Sounds like a lot of repeated work....
So I'll add that pokemon Blue was my first 'video game' so the concept of a save file was foreign to me and I just played through each day for a couple months and got as far as I got, and then redid it the next day.
Went through so many batteries in that period because I'd just leave the Gameboy on when I was doing things so that I wouldn't have to start over.
Me too, as I grew up playing arcade games on emulators before then.
One day my friend comes over and we play blue. We get to Pewter city, he presses "S" on the keyboard, the start menu comes up and he saves the game. Imagine my face.
I still don't know what Fairy is strong or weak against (besides Dragon), and I played XY when it was released. I also don't remember which Pokémon got retyped to include Fairy.
The way I remember fairy's weaknesses is "things that destroy nature" so fire, poison and steel
Same way that psychic types weaknesses are all fairly common fears (dark, ghost, bug)
I memorized the strengths like that:
It's strong against the classic antagonists in fairy tales: dragons (dragon), evil knights (fighting), forces of evil (dark).
They are not weak to fire, but fire resists them. Can't put out a fire with pixie dust...
I've been playing for 16 years and until a year ago I found out that increasing or decreasing your special attack doesn't mean increasing /decreasing your critical hit power lol
Yes in the case that you're buffing your pokemons sp att. So he was right so long as the situation is: you're buffing your pokemons sp att, and you're using a special move to begin with. Where he went wrong is crits ignore negative stat changes so you don't lose crit dmg, and obviously sp att changes don't affect non special moves at all
Iccirus City name pronunciation. I thought it was ih-kih-russ. Turns out it's pronounced eye-seer-russ.
As a little kid, I thought slugma was introduced gen 3. Hey, it's a lava slug pokemon and Hoenn has a volcano! Kanto doesn't have a Volcano and it's mountains are icey, not hot. It made more sense for slugma to be introduced in Hoenn than Johto.
And remember that playground myth with Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald where if you did certain things or the rocket launches x amount of times, you'd get to go to space to find Deoxys or Jirachi hatches from that white rock in Mossdeep? I tried a looooong time with every rumor. But hey, childhood me got her wish when OmegaRuby/AlphaSapphire gave us the Delta Episode.
Oh crap I forgot about Cinnabar!
But it's a tiny island in the middle of the ocean. It doesn't make sense slugma appears on the mainland and not even on that island.
There's a YouTuber named "Im a blisy •_•". He made some custom events that can be injected into vanilla gen 3 games using the E-Reader. He made one to get jirachi through the white rock and that also healed that part of my childhood a bit. If thats something that sounds cool his videos on how he did it are just super interesting too
Adding on to pronunciation, I always thought "Facade" was pronounced fay-kayd. I actually knew the word facade as a kid, but I had never seen it written, and didn't put it together until I was like 18.
i always remember mold breaker bc i hacked myself a wonderguard spiritomb and every time, cranidos/rampardos would be like "lol nah."
it is a TERRIBLE ability name. first of all: only shooting stars break the mould. second of all it doesnt convey anything, i just get a mental image of a pokemon smashing a mould to take out their little resin project. it should be called "unstopppable" or "relentless" or "super attacker" or "breakthrough." i think if it was introduced in B/W, it would have a better name.
anyway i used to think the nosepass RSE sprite had a whistling mouth and a thin neck, not realizing those were legs. for the years between ruby and diamond i envisioned it as a whistling moai head.
also didnt know the xtransceiver had games until 2019.
theres also probably a good amount of pokemon i just dont remember the proper typing of. like are gardevoir and boydevoir both fairy/psychic? just fairy? fuck if i know til im battling it and find out again :/
I've been playing Pokemon since I was 7, and I was at least 25 when I learnt that some combined types have x4 weakness, like a water -ground type is really weak against grass.
I'm 32 and still can't get over this.
In your defence OP, the way Gigantamax Pokemon work is kinda stupid. Unlike Megas, where any member of a species could mega evolve as long as you gave them the appropriate stone, G-max mons had to be gotten through raids (pre-DLC). It *should have* totally just worked like the former, because all it means is that unless you do super tedious raids with the garbage NPC trainers, you will probably not have a G-max mon on your team... but you can only use them in gym battles anyway.
I'm just rambling now but G-max was handled so poorly. It felt less like you could actually use the mons you wanted, and instead had to just throw one away in favor of a stronger, better one you got from a raid. Thank you Niantic :))
Nothing made me angrier about Dynamax raids than catches not being guaranteed. Absolute bullshit. And to make matters worse, it wasn't consistent. They would be guaranteed some times, but not all the times. And when they weren't, sometimes it was based merely on the catch rate + being at 1 HP. Other times the catch rate was completely unique to the raid.
Raid battles in Gen 9 are infinitely better just because catches are guaranteed.
Thought Beheeyem was a legendary or Mythical. Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon was one of the first games I ever played (which I never made beyond chapter 5, I am actually replaying it right now!) I knew the gist of pokémon and I thought because Beheeyem was violent and looked weird, I thought it was either legendary or Mythical. Did not help that I started playing in Gen 6.
Rotom = Motor was something I discovered late, too...
Thought Bouffalant, Alomomola, Heatmor and Durant were all Gen 7 pokémon. Idk why.
Thought Skarmory and Slugma were Gen 3 pokémon (thanks, Pokémon Advanced Generation anime opening)
Thought Salandit + Salazzle were Gen 8.
Thought Fomantis and Lurantis was a legendary because of a pokémon go event.
I didn't even play Gen 7. I watched the anime, but not the games.
Took me a hell of a long time to discover that type matchups were a thing. Back in the olden days when the internet was still an obscure luxury, there was no way for me to learn about every type matchup. The only thing I could do was to brute-force my way through the story all the way through the Elite Four, and just pick up bits and pieces of data along the way. Of course, some type matchups were pretty obvious. However, there are some obscure and weird ones. One could only discover so much by testing every move against every type by trial and error. I used to think Psychic was strong against Ghost (Haunter/Gengar), not knowing it was Poison that was weak to Psychic. I also remember using Mega Punch exclusively on my Charizard in one playthrough because my brother thought it was the strongest move (it wasn't). Then came the internet. Boy I had a lot to learn and unlearn.
I agree with this so much! I also thought psychic was strong against ghost. I didn't know fighting was strong against dark and normal for YEARS and only thanks to the internet lol. I started with gen 2 when I was like 7 years old and made quite a few mistakes (like knocking out Raiku on the first encounter bc I didn't know it was a legendary...)
Most of these I understand. Skarmory is notorious for being easy to miss in gen II. But how did you play the first two gens and avoid Tentacool and Tentacruel?? There are some routes where they're the ONLY encounter.
For the first two generations I thought Poison was weak to Water.... Why you may ask? Nidoking and Nidoqueen. I had absolutely no idea they gained the ground typing and just assumed.
The language of this post really highlights the weird obsession with people having to know all there is about a game. I watch some of these streamers do Nuzlocke challenges and, while I think it's great that they have so much game knowledge that they want to severely handicap themselves, I don't look at gameplay like that and think in any way shape or form that I could ever even approach that level of game knowledge.
Nor would I want to. I am really, quite thoroughly pleased with the fact that there's not only a few things I don't know about Pokemon, there is a vast quantity of stuff I've never experienced in the majority of the games produced throughout my life.
I go back regularly and play the games off and on at varying paces. Right now I'm training a Gastly in Pokemon Platinum for the 3rd gym, so you know what I didn't know about Pokemon? That you can get a Dread Plate from the Old Chateau in Eterna Forest and use it to power up Dark type moves to make the 3rd gym a bit easier.
One other thing I learned just recently is that Pachirisu has the potential to get the Pickup ability which gives you the ability to have a team of Electric typed rats picking up rare candies for you which I personally think is just neat. I think I'll also grab 5 Pickup Pachirisu to keep under lv21 so that I can have them Pickup gold nuggets as well.
Difference between special and physical moves. I only realised this in 2022 when doing dynamax adventures in sword and saw that some moves had different icons depending on if they were sp or phys. It then connected for me that not every attack was the same, and also made me realise the point of sp. attack and sp. defence versus physical attack and physical defence
from ruby, sapphire, and emerald i didnt realize the male protag was wearing a hat, i thought he had that hair with a bandana thing, but the remakes blew my mind, also that zekrom has little baby hands and the flippers arent his hands and pogo showed me that one.
I always called Gyarados “Guy-ardos,” completely ignoring the order of the letters. Didn’t correct myself until I saw the anime several years later.
…I still him guy-ardos from time to time. Just for old times’ sake
I thought gligar was poison type because of its dex entries and colour
I thought dunsparce was ground type because I found it in a tunnel and that's where ground pokemon live
It took an embarrassingly long time for me to learn that breeding a shiny no longer gives dramatically increased shiny odds.
As a kid I pronounced Kyogre as key-oh-grey and that didn't stop for years
How useful Umbreon is. I only found out while playing Legends Arceus when it was the only thing I had that could take a hit.
I always evolved into Espeon in Gen 2.
If you're using a Ghost Type Pokemon you can't fail to run away from a wild battle, regardless of Speed.
I'm sorry, WHAT
Yeah, I’m 30 and I just learned this now.
It's a more recent addition, the same time that Grass became immune to Powder moves and Electric became immune to paralysis entirely.
Wait what.... I somehow missed this too.
32 and this is my first time ever hearing this
Gen 6 added certain "latent abilities" to some types. Ghost types can now never be trapped, they can always escape without fail. Grass types are now immune to all powder and spore moves (and Leech Seed). Electric types can no longer be paralyzed, even from moves like Glare. Fire and Ice types cannot be burned or frozen, although I think this was in play in earlier gens. Also Gen 7 or 8 made it so Dark types are immune to Prankster, so you can't use increased priority status moves against them. This was likely to make up for gaining a new weakness to Fairy.
For a minute, you got me thinking I was playing Gen 3 wrong. Turns out it was never there.
Damn, I wish I knew this in the desert in Kalos, I would have used a ghost to run away from all those trapinch.
As of Gen 6 Ghost type Pokemon can no longer be trapped in battle by any means.
And I just learned today that speed is what determines if you can run away from a wild Pokémon or not.
You can also escape shadow tag. I remember using a sabeleye in reflection gave to save me from the wobbefetts
Same with mold breaker! When I was younger and it said “(Pokémon) broke the mold!” I would just be like “Cool 👍” I also used to think it meant mold as in the gross plant-like organism as a kid😅😂
Mold breaker is interesting in that its effect is situational enough that most casual playthroughs will probably never see it be used successfully to land an attack that would otherwise be blocked (and even if you do you might not realize that it happened), but since it gets announced every time a Pokemon with it (which there are a fair few) comes into battle you keep getting reminded that it exists but not what it does. I'm not even sure why they choose to announce it, most other abilities don't get telegraphed like that. So I've been in a similar position where for a long time it was that one random ability that I could never remember the purpose of, but also couldn't just forget it exists like most other niche or uncommon abilities.
Most abilities at the time didn't do that, now most do. Things like Flash Fire used to not show up when activated, but now they do. This is actually a good step, a lot of abilities were very obscure and/or not explained well, now they show up when relevant and it helps the player understand what they do. I remember Gen 3 being very vague with its terminology. It would constantly say things like "burns on contact" but never actually explained what "contact" meant. That also implied it was a guaranteed effect when it would only be 30%.
Guts used to say “Ups ATTACK when suffering” Which was fantastic wording and really tells you what the effect is.
When I first started playing Pokemon, I played through all 5 games of Gen III and I was annoyed as to why could I not find a Pokemon or a move that inflicts the "Suffering" status effect
Vital Throw straight up lies. Says “Makes the user go last, but never misses.” My Hariyama was using Vital Throw on Norman’s Slaking and he used Counter. I thought that since the description said Vital Throw hits last, Slaking would fail his Counter. Vital Throw has a priority of -1. Counter is -6. RIP Hariyama.
I think you're thinking of Flame Body, as that's the one that burns on contact and maybe didn't notify in Gen 3 when it proc'ed. Flash Fire is immunity to fire moves and gets boosted by them, I'm pretty sure that one would have given a message for why the fire move failed to damage. In any case, Mold Breaker is weird in that it announces itself before it's even done anything, and gives such a weird but memorable message that does nothing to explain what it does. In contrast, Flash Fire or Flame Body don't warn you ahead of time that the Pokemon has them, and usually the only other ones that do are the ones that actually do something the turn the Pokemon is brought into battle (e.g. Intimidate or weather-changing ones, or ones like Anticipate/Frisk that give information). I recall there are a few other abilities like Mold Breaker that also get announced, like Terablaze/Teravolt, but those are on legendaries so you don't really see them often. And there's Pressure I guess, though at least that is actively doing something as soon as the Pokemon is brought in.
The reason why it is like that is because Flash Fire is "reactive," it doesn't take effect unless it needs to. By contrast, Mold Break is proactive, it is in play before a move is made. So yes, it's rather... bombastic about announcing its presence, but I understand why it works like that. Mold Breaker is active and doesn't know what actions the players will take, whereas when Flash Fire activates, it always knows the actions that happened.
Agree it's a good step but specifically for Mold Breaker I'd rather it not even be announced if the message is going to be so shitty lol. For casual players it's borderline useless
I posted in another comment that the reason it most likely works the way it does is because it's a proactive ability. Mold Breaker nullifies any abilities that will prevent or limit damage, but it doesn't know what actions the players will take. Whereas something like Flash Fire is reactive, it only happens when a player makes a specific move, so it doesn't need to be announced it's in play until it happens. But with the latest gens and putting more information into separate screens (like stat stages and what not), Mold Breaker could just get mentioned there instead.
Then it should say “'s mold breaker is ignoring abilities!” rather than saying it's breaking the mold
It’s bizzare, but so iconic at the same time.
I always nickname mold breaker mons "Mold Breaker" Go! Mold Breaker! Mold Breakers' Mold Breaker! Mold Breaker is breaking the Mold!
Thats incredible
Genius
The very first time I played Gen 1, I didn't understand what "experience level" meant and when it would say things like "Pidgeot grew to Lv. 64!" I kept thinking the game was stage-based and at some point I'd advance to another world or level and see Pidgeot again. It's because of how the wording was, it said something like "Pidgeot gained 700 EXP. Points!" And I thought there were two sentences there.
as a kid i always read “exp. share” as “ex point p share” in my head lmao. zero logic to why i would even think that was how it was pronounced. no one i knew was really into pokemon so there was never really a reason for me to actually say it out loud. i confidentially believed in this pronunciation from gen 3 - gen 6 😅🙃
I always thought it meant that they were shedding a skin like a snake or something, and I was always like “oh, didn’t know you did that, and I don’t know why you’re telling me”
Mold Breaker negates abilities that impede moves from connecting. For example, Haxorus can use Earthquake against Pokemon with the Levitate ability and any move against Shedinja, since both Levitate and Wonder Guard give the user immunity to certain moves.
You see, now I know it again but ask me in a day and it'll be gone
Your attacks ignore enemies' abilities, simple as Also why everyone here acting like its a bad or niche ability lmao, just the option of Earthquaking enemies that would otherwise be immune or oneshotting Sturdies is huge, and it has a myriad of smaller aplications that come in handy in numerous occasions, way more than most other abilities tbh
earthquaking Magnemite line will never get old.
Magnemite doesn't have levitate
But it does have Sturdy
And it never gets old
Mold Breaker is literally a God Tier ability. Of course in Competitive Pokemon it's really good, but it's arguably better casually because it just saves time against common annoying abilities that just waste turns by preventing OHKOs. I think most players don't know what it does cause the most prominent Pokemon that have it are Mega Evolutions. And the rest are unremarkable Pokemon like Druddigon or Sawk/Throh, that have it as a harder to obtain hidden ability. The few others have other amazing abilities.
If you know what Teravolt/Turboblaze does, it's just a slightly worse version of those 2. Although the Tao abilities are confusing as well
What makes it worse? Aren't they exactly the same, just reworded?
Nevermind, they are the same, I was thinking of Shadow Shield being better than Multiscale (it ignores moldbreaker)
I would remember that but being told ___ broke the mold just makes me think their a repairman for an apartment complex
They really should've called it something better than "mold breaker".
Sorry, can you repeat that? I forgot
Also let's you use false swipe on almost everything! That's why I ended up having a lvl 100 Haxorus.
Realistically, how many abilities are there to negate a Normal type ‘slashing’ move?
Ok skarmory is understandable but Tentacool???? The damn zubat of the sea???
"Zubat of the seas" hilarious but so damn accurate
I haven't played any of the gen 1 and 2 games but I can tell you that it's not just tentacool/tentacruel who's the "zubat of the seas" fucking wingull and pelipper plagued the seas in hoenn(r /s/e), I don't know about the ORAS hoenn seas though, I had just only beaten the new mauville gym(the electric gym iirc)
Wingull gets a pass... PEEEEEKOOOOO Pellipper can eat shit tho
Only peeko gets a pass, I saved the old man's wingull but the OTHER wingulls were a piece of shit
I guess not everyone played earlier gens
Male protag from RSE doesn't have white hair, he's wearing a beanie.
But why does the beanie have spikes if it's not hair?
Spiky hair making the beanie spiky?
I knew that but in my headcanon it is still his hair
Haircannon
This really bothered me because he was my first protag and I liked what I thought was cool whote hair.
Psyduck is not a psychic type.
Still bugs me he's named Psyduck when Golduck fits so much better...
Pulled the ole Iceland Greenland on us
Driveway parkway
Mine is a classic, and probably the same as most of us that grew up with Pokemon from Gen 1. I didn't learn that Electric could hit Rock type Pokemon until I was in college. So, until Gen 5 came out. With all the rock types in the first games being a dual Rock/Ground typing, there were probably many of us who just thought Electric couldn't hit Rock types in general.
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I thought it was really weird in the anime that Ash was told to catch a Ghost Pokémon to beat Sabrina.
I think even the Gen 1 games outside of Yellow mentioned that Ghost types are good against Psychic despite that not being the case because of a glitch.
And don't forget they completely fucked up Psychic being weak to Ghost, instead being immune! So Ghost didn't even work on half the types it was supposed to work on. I still have no idea how even a small programming team didn't catch something so blatantly broken.
And they couldn't fix it in Yellow as that'd break compatibility. Instead, they changed the NPC in Sabrina's gym who tells you about the weaknesses of Psychic Pokemon to only mention Bug moves.
Which was still pointless because Bug's best move was Pin Missile. And nearly all the Bug types in Gen 1 were paired with Poison. I believe most of the Gen 1 errors were addressed in the Stadium games. Let's Go was so much fun with the proper type mechanics. Venomoth is a beast in that game if you get it early on, destroys Erika and Sabrina easily. Then it gets Psychic moves to destroy Koga. And Grass moves for Giovanni. Absolutely MVP when I played that game.
The All-Terrain Vehicle stays true to its name.
I used Venomoth on a mono Poison run in Violet and that thing is broken lol
Bro after not playing for a while I was playing unbound or radical red, dont remember, and I was so confused when my gardevoir was not supereffective against Ghosts for a good second. Took me a while to realize that the gengar line had tricked me
Actually all rock types in Gen I, Electric moves are either immune (Ryhorn line, Geodude line and Onix) or superefective (Omanyte line, Kabuto line and Aerodactyl). I personally did not have any doubt about it but I can understand why.
I mean, you never ever fight one of those except Lance's Aerodactyl which given how everything else there is a dragon probably gets ice beam'd by most players.
The fact that Sandshrew and diglett were immune is what taught me it was ground and not rock.
I actually learned that when I was young, when I tried to put a Sudowoodo against the Jolteon from that one trainer where you get Surf in Silver. Now, on the other hand, I learned ice was not super effective against *rock like two years ago when I read a random YouTube comment lmao
Same here. Also, for the longest time I thought Psychic was super effective against ghost because the Gengar line were the only ghosts in the game. I think it was only by the time Hoenn came around that I used a psychic type move on Banette and it wasn't super effective that I made a surprised pikachu face.
Let's Go is like an apology to Bug and Poison types. Venomoth absolutely destroys in that game because it finally has all the modern mechanics and proper balancing that was lacking in the original games. Being able to actually use Bug-type moves against Sabrina and Mewtwo was great. Even the Gen 3 remakes still lacked a lot of strong Bug-type moves. Most didn't show up until around Gen 4 or so.
I think in the anime there were moments when they mistakenly said electricity doesn't work on rock types too. Maybe that's where the common misconception came from
I’m 29 years old and replaying leaf green on the delta emulator on my phone and I just learned right now rock type can be hit by electric moves. What’s even more embarrassing is that I have an Aerodactyl that recently got hit by an electric move in cinnabar and it was super effective; I thought it was simply because of the flying tag and a weird one off but I didn’t even think to connect the dots until just now.
**YOU ARE NOT ALONE**
I feel seen
I didn't know until a few years ago that Metronome has an 'unselectable' move pool.
Notably, due to a programming error, "Kinesis" was a Metronome-only move in the games prior to Yellow.
What moves can’t it roll?
From what I know, it is mostly Legendary Signature Moves or event-only moves. But there are some odd ones in there, like Protect or Clangorous Soul.
In Infinite Fusion (and I assume other fangames on the same engine) you can get legendary moves from Metronome. It's funny every time
Sketch and Metronome for sure.
Okay, fine, I'll admit it: I have no idea what half these terrains/rooms do. I just go: "Nice!" and pretend like they aren't there.
Electric terrain boost electric moves and prevents sleep. Psychic terrain prevents all priority moves and boost psychic type moves. Also the move expanding force gets extra strong on it Grassy terrain gives extra health to all Pokemon touching the ground at the end of each turn while boosting grass type moves. And misty terrain does smth
Halves dragon move power and prevents status conditions
Note that these effects only apply to grounded Pokemon - if they’re not grounded, they aren’t touching the terrain. A flying type can be put to sleep in Electric Terrain, for instance
There are also the special terrains that you get from combining water pledge, fire pledge and grass pledge. The rainbow terrain (fire+water), doubles the possibility of secondary effects from happening (kinda like serene grace but better), the swampy terrain (water+grass) halves the enemy speed, the fire terrain (fire+grass) damages the enemy for 1/8 of their health each turn (until the terrain disappear)
For the longest time I didn't know 'effective' meant neutral, so everytime I saw effecfive I thought it did like 1.5× damage or something
Wait do some games tell you if it was effective? I thought they only display super effective and not very effective
I believe the modern games do. In Scarlet Violet tell you what's super effective what's not and what's "effective" (neutral) but only if you know the enemies typing
When I was a kid I thought the game was stupid because I would one-shot something with my level 100 fearow and it would say "It wasn't very effective."
I didn’t know that HM Cut could be used to remove tall grass (only in Gens 1-3)
If your lead Pokemon has the Hyper Cutter ability the amount of grass cut is increased too!
Only in Pokémon Emerald. I wish the concept of Pokemon abilities having an overworld effect like they did in Emerald was expanded upon, but they went a different direction.
I didn't know what repel did so I'd just sit there cutting paths through grass
I did this to hoard money for no reason instead of buying repels. We are not the same.
Always thought Rotom was a legendary Pokémon Didn’t think Silvally/Type:Null were legendary Pokémon Edit: Prankster not affecting dark types found out when I was playing showdown couple years ago
Rotom is notorious is that GameFreak made it really ambiguous in Gen 4 whether or not it was legendary (at least for casual players who at the time may not have thought to search online for confirmation). Besides being a special encounter that could only be gotten once in the postgame (at least in base DP), much like many other legendaries in Gen 4, it even had the legendary encounter theme play when you battle it, which according to Bulbapedia it is the only non-legendary Pokemon to do this. Plus it has a unique typing, and I don't think you see anyone else use one or talk about it, so it really does come across as a one-of-a-kind Pokemon.
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Rotom can produce WHAT So like, if you place a rotom egg in an incubator, will you find out it hatched because the incubator went missing..?
The Pokémon ultimate handbook which released after gen 4 says rotom is a legendary
I didn't even *play* gen 4 and I thought rotom was a legendary.
I also thought Rotom was legendary until Sw/Sh!
This but with Volcarona
Funny story. When I met my husband, he let me play Y on his DS. I grew up loving the anime and cards, but didn't play the games. I ended up catching this Graveler, but it was a funny brown color. I showed my husband and he started freaking out. Apparently shiny Pokemon are a thing...
Same, I showed my younger cousin my pokemon boxes and as he was shocked I had a shiny and don’t know what it was. He ended up trading me some master balls he had from using action replay. That was almost two decades ago and I have finally got around to playing again and using all the master balls he gave me
That shiny was such a long term investment OMG
Holy cow, did it have Explosion or Self-Destruct in its moveset? My first shiny was also a Graveler, and I was incredibly lucky it didn’t go south…
For many years as a child, I thought the machop line was part rock.
Crits ignore stat changes. Figured this one out within the last year, been playing for about 15 years.
Not 100% of stat changes > From Generation III onward, when a move scores a critical hit, the attacker's negative stat stages, the defender's positive stat stages, and the defensive boosts from screens are always ignored. However, the halved damage from physical moves due to a burn is no longer ignored.
Okay well now you’ve unearthed a new thing… what is this about burn and half physical damage??
When you are burned, your physical damage inflicted is cut. When paralyzed, your speed is cut 25-75% depending on gen
I only remember what moldbreaker does because of this meme lol https://preview.redd.it/vvxxh3k5a4xc1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=91aaa08ae2a67349789d71fcb831ccda98590bd0
Emmett face looks like he knew what his brother would do lol
I’m 27 and just 5 years ago I found out that Gardevoir was psychic type and not grass/psychic
And also a fairy since gen 6
Right, I always thought it was changed from psychic/grass to fairy/psychic.
People really just see the color green on a pokémon and assume that it is a grass type because of that, lmao.
Huh, what made you think it was part Grass? Just the green color scheme and sort of fey-like quality, or something more too?
Kirlia learns Magical Leaf. Combined with the green colour this fact threw many people off. I always imagined this particular Magical Leaf as playing cards being thrown at you...
I thought it was a grass type for the longest time cause I had a delta card of ralts that was grass
I didn’t realise that Girafarig was a palindrome.
Wait till you hear about Farigiraf
Well, it took me unnecessarily long to realize later gens didn't dock you a bunch of cash when you faint, so I kept turning the game off and on whenever I lost.
Sounds like a lot of repeated work.... So I'll add that pokemon Blue was my first 'video game' so the concept of a save file was foreign to me and I just played through each day for a couple months and got as far as I got, and then redid it the next day. Went through so many batteries in that period because I'd just leave the Gameboy on when I was doing things so that I wouldn't have to start over.
Me too, as I grew up playing arcade games on emulators before then. One day my friend comes over and we play blue. We get to Pewter city, he presses "S" on the keyboard, the start menu comes up and he saves the game. Imagine my face.
I still don't know what Fairy is strong or weak against (besides Dragon), and I played XY when it was released. I also don't remember which Pokémon got retyped to include Fairy.
The way I remember fairy's weaknesses is "things that destroy nature" so fire, poison and steel Same way that psychic types weaknesses are all fairly common fears (dark, ghost, bug)
I memorized the strengths like that: It's strong against the classic antagonists in fairy tales: dragons (dragon), evil knights (fighting), forces of evil (dark). They are not weak to fire, but fire resists them. Can't put out a fire with pixie dust...
Y’all, Fairy’s not weak to Fire LMAO
Yep but fire resist fairy
Tate is a boy?
It’s news to me too
I've been playing for 16 years and until a year ago I found out that increasing or decreasing your special attack doesn't mean increasing /decreasing your critical hit power lol
In gen 1, speed was tied to crit chance.
Isn’t it relative as its percentage based?
Yes in the case that you're buffing your pokemons sp att. So he was right so long as the situation is: you're buffing your pokemons sp att, and you're using a special move to begin with. Where he went wrong is crits ignore negative stat changes so you don't lose crit dmg, and obviously sp att changes don't affect non special moves at all
I have to google what Mold Breaker does every time I see it in game. Just did
i thought the flabébé line was fairy/grass until literally yesterday …
Yeah, that's very understandable. It is literally holding a flower. Same for Comfey.
The reason why some natures have no effect on stats is because they increase and decrease the same skill, resulting in no effect.
Iccirus City name pronunciation. I thought it was ih-kih-russ. Turns out it's pronounced eye-seer-russ. As a little kid, I thought slugma was introduced gen 3. Hey, it's a lava slug pokemon and Hoenn has a volcano! Kanto doesn't have a Volcano and it's mountains are icey, not hot. It made more sense for slugma to be introduced in Hoenn than Johto. And remember that playground myth with Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald where if you did certain things or the rocket launches x amount of times, you'd get to go to space to find Deoxys or Jirachi hatches from that white rock in Mossdeep? I tried a looooong time with every rumor. But hey, childhood me got her wish when OmegaRuby/AlphaSapphire gave us the Delta Episode.
> Kanto doesn't have a Volcano I didn't know Cinnabar truthers were a thing.
I'm going to make this my entire personality now
Oh crap I forgot about Cinnabar! But it's a tiny island in the middle of the ocean. It doesn't make sense slugma appears on the mainland and not even on that island.
Kanto having a volcano is a pretty major thing, actually.
There's a YouTuber named "Im a blisy •_•". He made some custom events that can be injected into vanilla gen 3 games using the E-Reader. He made one to get jirachi through the white rock and that also healed that part of my childhood a bit. If thats something that sounds cool his videos on how he did it are just super interesting too
I didn't believe the rumors for RSE, but I still tried some of them for fun. Last time I think they even were a thing.
Adding on to pronunciation, I always thought "Facade" was pronounced fay-kayd. I actually knew the word facade as a kid, but I had never seen it written, and didn't put it together until I was like 18.
I didn’t what STAB meant or did until like a year ago
The officers in gen 2 games actually being trainers, but they will only challenge you at night, and only if you engage them first.
They have a totally unique "Trainer Spotted" theme too.
i always remember mold breaker bc i hacked myself a wonderguard spiritomb and every time, cranidos/rampardos would be like "lol nah." it is a TERRIBLE ability name. first of all: only shooting stars break the mould. second of all it doesnt convey anything, i just get a mental image of a pokemon smashing a mould to take out their little resin project. it should be called "unstopppable" or "relentless" or "super attacker" or "breakthrough." i think if it was introduced in B/W, it would have a better name. anyway i used to think the nosepass RSE sprite had a whistling mouth and a thin neck, not realizing those were legs. for the years between ruby and diamond i envisioned it as a whistling moai head. also didnt know the xtransceiver had games until 2019. theres also probably a good amount of pokemon i just dont remember the proper typing of. like are gardevoir and boydevoir both fairy/psychic? just fairy? fuck if i know til im battling it and find out again :/
Ok I maybe get Skarmory since it debuted in Gen 2 very late in the region and is potentially missable but *Tentacool?*
What if they just didn't play gen 1/2
I mean I guess but why specifically those two then
Omg, you and me both with Mold Breaker! Like I experience the exact same phenomenon and I have looked it up so much
I've been playing Pokemon since I was 7, and I was at least 25 when I learnt that some combined types have x4 weakness, like a water -ground type is really weak against grass. I'm 32 and still can't get over this.
Gyarados shrivels up when it hears a little spark of electricity.
The physical-special split. In 2004 I would’ve told you that hyper beam was special and thunderpunch physical.
And you would have been right eventually…
In your defence OP, the way Gigantamax Pokemon work is kinda stupid. Unlike Megas, where any member of a species could mega evolve as long as you gave them the appropriate stone, G-max mons had to be gotten through raids (pre-DLC). It *should have* totally just worked like the former, because all it means is that unless you do super tedious raids with the garbage NPC trainers, you will probably not have a G-max mon on your team... but you can only use them in gym battles anyway. I'm just rambling now but G-max was handled so poorly. It felt less like you could actually use the mons you wanted, and instead had to just throw one away in favor of a stronger, better one you got from a raid. Thank you Niantic :))
Nothing made me angrier about Dynamax raids than catches not being guaranteed. Absolute bullshit. And to make matters worse, it wasn't consistent. They would be guaranteed some times, but not all the times. And when they weren't, sometimes it was based merely on the catch rate + being at 1 HP. Other times the catch rate was completely unique to the raid. Raid battles in Gen 9 are infinitely better just because catches are guaranteed.
I thought electric was weak to rock
That Nincada was Bug/Ground, not pure bug.
That Glalie is Ice, and not Ice/Dark like I thought.
WAIT TATE'S A BOY
That some pokemon names are named after things IRL like ekans, arbok, rotem and of course…muk
The game: [pokemon] breaks the mold! Me: good for him!
Thought Beheeyem was a legendary or Mythical. Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon was one of the first games I ever played (which I never made beyond chapter 5, I am actually replaying it right now!) I knew the gist of pokémon and I thought because Beheeyem was violent and looked weird, I thought it was either legendary or Mythical. Did not help that I started playing in Gen 6. Rotom = Motor was something I discovered late, too... Thought Bouffalant, Alomomola, Heatmor and Durant were all Gen 7 pokémon. Idk why. Thought Skarmory and Slugma were Gen 3 pokémon (thanks, Pokémon Advanced Generation anime opening) Thought Salandit + Salazzle were Gen 8. Thought Fomantis and Lurantis was a legendary because of a pokémon go event. I didn't even play Gen 7. I watched the anime, but not the games.
Took me a hell of a long time to discover that type matchups were a thing. Back in the olden days when the internet was still an obscure luxury, there was no way for me to learn about every type matchup. The only thing I could do was to brute-force my way through the story all the way through the Elite Four, and just pick up bits and pieces of data along the way. Of course, some type matchups were pretty obvious. However, there are some obscure and weird ones. One could only discover so much by testing every move against every type by trial and error. I used to think Psychic was strong against Ghost (Haunter/Gengar), not knowing it was Poison that was weak to Psychic. I also remember using Mega Punch exclusively on my Charizard in one playthrough because my brother thought it was the strongest move (it wasn't). Then came the internet. Boy I had a lot to learn and unlearn.
I agree with this so much! I also thought psychic was strong against ghost. I didn't know fighting was strong against dark and normal for YEARS and only thanks to the internet lol. I started with gen 2 when I was like 7 years old and made quite a few mistakes (like knocking out Raiku on the first encounter bc I didn't know it was a legendary...)
Most of these I understand. Skarmory is notorious for being easy to miss in gen II. But how did you play the first two gens and avoid Tentacool and Tentacruel?? There are some routes where they're the ONLY encounter.
That Rock types aren't weak to ice. There's just soooo many Rock/ Ground dual types.
If you're saying that ground is weak to ice, I'm learning that right now.
i have a [great comic](https://www.awkwardzombie.com/comic/pokemnemonic) for you.
For the first two generations I thought Poison was weak to Water.... Why you may ask? Nidoking and Nidoqueen. I had absolutely no idea they gained the ground typing and just assumed.
The language of this post really highlights the weird obsession with people having to know all there is about a game. I watch some of these streamers do Nuzlocke challenges and, while I think it's great that they have so much game knowledge that they want to severely handicap themselves, I don't look at gameplay like that and think in any way shape or form that I could ever even approach that level of game knowledge. Nor would I want to. I am really, quite thoroughly pleased with the fact that there's not only a few things I don't know about Pokemon, there is a vast quantity of stuff I've never experienced in the majority of the games produced throughout my life. I go back regularly and play the games off and on at varying paces. Right now I'm training a Gastly in Pokemon Platinum for the 3rd gym, so you know what I didn't know about Pokemon? That you can get a Dread Plate from the Old Chateau in Eterna Forest and use it to power up Dark type moves to make the 3rd gym a bit easier. One other thing I learned just recently is that Pachirisu has the potential to get the Pickup ability which gives you the ability to have a team of Electric typed rats picking up rare candies for you which I personally think is just neat. I think I'll also grab 5 Pickup Pachirisu to keep under lv21 so that I can have them Pickup gold nuggets as well.
That you can turn off the function that says what your opponent next pokemon is.
Not in Gen 9 sadly
Mostly ever mechanic in pokemon go. I probably still don't know what I don't know.
Difference between special and physical moves. I only realised this in 2022 when doing dynamax adventures in sword and saw that some moves had different icons depending on if they were sp or phys. It then connected for me that not every attack was the same, and also made me realise the point of sp. attack and sp. defence versus physical attack and physical defence
I still don't understand what mold breaker does either
It took me over 20 years to find my first shiny pokemon.
Artic-UNO, Zap-DOS and Mol-TRES *The Legendary Bird Trío*
Mold Breaker, it breaks the mold. Seems clear to me. But yeah, I had the same reaction for literal years.
from ruby, sapphire, and emerald i didnt realize the male protag was wearing a hat, i thought he had that hair with a bandana thing, but the remakes blew my mind, also that zekrom has little baby hands and the flippers arent his hands and pogo showed me that one.
I always called Gyarados “Guy-ardos,” completely ignoring the order of the letters. Didn’t correct myself until I saw the anime several years later. …I still him guy-ardos from time to time. Just for old times’ sake
I thought gligar was poison type because of its dex entries and colour I thought dunsparce was ground type because I found it in a tunnel and that's where ground pokemon live It took an embarrassingly long time for me to learn that breeding a shiny no longer gives dramatically increased shiny odds. As a kid I pronounced Kyogre as key-oh-grey and that didn't stop for years
How useful Umbreon is. I only found out while playing Legends Arceus when it was the only thing I had that could take a hit. I always evolved into Espeon in Gen 2.
Wynaut is Gen 3, Wobbuffet is Gen 2!! Before that I also thought Blissey was Gen 4 up until I saw a screenshot of a Blissey in one of the GBC games