The Hardest Pokemon to Get in Every Region

Do we really Gotta Catch 'Em All? Today I go over rarest finds that every Pokemon region has to offer!

Good Morning!: (0:00)
Kanto: (1:53)
Johto: (4:00)
Hoenn: (6:07)
Sinnoh: (8:39)
Unova: (10:17)
Kalos: (11:47)
Alola: (13:05)
Galar: (14:27)

[castform]

I find it extremely funny that Barry, the guy who can barely sit still for 2 minutes, has two of the most rare honey encounters. Either Barry's extremely lucky or wanted to beat his dad so bad he played the waiting game for strong team members.

[dobeeeeval]

Larvitar wasn't available in gen 2 until after you got all 16 badges. Had a 5% encounter rate, and a max level of 20, so you'd have to level it up 35 times to finally get a Tyranitar. All just for 1 remaining fight against Red.

[Ikcatcher]

I encountered Raikou in Leafgreen when I was young and it used Roar on me to flee. Cue me spending the next two years trying to search for it only to give and now for JPR to tell me it was a glitch.

[kartiksaraf]

In Post game in UM I caught the level 10 Sala in a beast ball. Real sense of achievement on that one. I also caught imposter ditto in B2 which was another tough hunt

[DynamoTwentyTwo]

I didn't know Chansey was that rare in gen 2 so I was getting frustrated at how long it was taking me to find one and I said to myself "I swear I'm going to find a shiny Noctowl first at this rate". I did.

[DCG]

In regards to Regigigas.
During the OG Ruby & Sapphire time, when Internet was still somewhat scarce, I heard the rumor that you could catch a pumpkin headded pokemon, with one whip and a regular arm, when the space center reached a certain number of launches.
You would go up with the rocket to space and get to fight this mysterious pokemon.

When I reached the end of the Delta episode, I let out a tear thinking back at those days and how insane it was they actually implemented something rather close to it in the actual game.

[StickMaster]

Props to the people that managed to get these rarest Pokemon shiny!

[wutangklan]

I remember playing Pearl and thinking ‘I want my water type to be Milotic’ and then spending tedious hours trying to find one of the 4 random squares with feebas, followed by more tedious hours looking around the park for pamtre berries. That sort of grind made those Pokémon special

[johngilbert]

Having attempted them all, I can tell you that while Salamence was undoubtedly a pain, it is topped by volcarona in ultra sun/moon, which has the same 1%/1% encounter rate, but from a higher level pokemon with a recoil move. Even so, the real worst pokemon to get for all of alola if you don't have access to trading is definitely Politoed. The reason is that it must be night, raining (which only occurs naturally between 5-6pm in Ultra Sun and 5-6am in Ultra Moon, otherwise you have to set it manually) and seems to have a similar encounter rate or even lower from the SOS to salamence and volcarona. However, the crowning glory of this encounter is that the politoed naturally knows perish song, which it will immediately use and give you just 3 turns to wear it down sufficiently to capture (with a catch rate of 45, this is less of a given than you might think). While no Honey tree munchlax in difficulty, my drizzle politoed remains the most ridiculously difficult thing i have ever caught (and yes, I am including shinies)

[DarthBenneth]

My biggest rare encounter flex had got to be Salamence in Ultra Sun. Accidentally ran into a Bagon that automatically summoned an SOS Salamence that I managed to catch. Fully evolved Pseudo before Hala's battle was awesome, even had an attack-raising nature.

[luigiRobs]

For the Darmanitan you can also get an ability patch from the Dynamax Adventures but it’ll take a bit of grinding to do but hey you can possibly get shinies out of it

[BurakkuHishou]

I instantly knew Feebas was gonna get the mention, it was stupid rare.

[MidwestArtMan]

I caught a Feebas in Ruby when I was 9 and didn't know how it's spawn mechanics worked. I screwed up the pokeblocks and it never evolved. I remember it getting to level 70-something, though. I think I was going for 100.

[joshernsteen]

Some reason a Nintendo employee was talking about the exact reasons as to why Chimecho was 2% in Mt. Pyre. They did not notice until the game was about to be finished getting coded, and it was added as one of the last pokemon to get added into the game as a whole.

[thesuperthingymabob]

I honestly didn't find out until really recently that regigigas was even in oras because all the guide writers at the time or release didn't even know about it lol

[cs]

As someone who has completed a Professor Oak challenge in every pokemon game, I personally had the most trouble catching a wild Gengar in Sun. Twenty to thirty hours of having Haunter call out for help...

[DryBones]

yeah, but you could visit the safari zone, then fly to Cinnabar surf the east coast, and the Pokémon that show up (aside from Missingno) are Pokémon from whatever "dungeon" you just went to, thus making Chansey and all the other Safari Zone encounters easier to get, since you can weaken them.

[pathos]

I think my boi Volcarona deserves consideration for Gen 7, only found in the small cave section of Lush Jungle and only in the Ultra games. There it’s a 1% chance of finding a Larvesta, which unlike Corsola provides no chance of boosted encounter odds. Then on SOS chaining there is a 1% chance of it actually being Volcarona, 99% to just be another Larvesta. Bear in mind, this is the times it ACTUALLY summons something, at least half the time it will summon nothing. Purely from a math perspective, this Volcarona is more difficult to find than a shiny. I ought to know, I literally found a random full odds shiny Alolan Dugtrio before I finally got it. 💯

“But remember, if you can find an earlier stage in a line and evolve it, it’s not actually that rare. Why wouldn’t you do that instead?” Well here’s the catch: Volcarona normally evolves at 59, while these are underleveled similar to the Relic Castle static spawn in B2W2, in this case found at level 41-44. This matters because the Elite 4’s teams on first go range 56-57, and Hau’s for the Champion title defense match caps at 60. This means if you are going for evolving one of the Larvesta instead, you’ll basically be super grinding it at the very end of the game and overleveling the Elite 4 with it to have access to Volcarona for JUST that set of five battles. If you actually want Volcarona to be on your team for a good length of time, including your last handful of trials, Legendary fights and final rival battles, along with a ton of other Trainers along the way, then you HAVE to use this method after you first gain access to Strength on Poni Island.

Though it doesn’t affect encounter odds, it’s worth noting that the Larvesta you have to deal with to find one of these Volcarona are a pain. Like any SOS hunt of something you want to get them in the red and use Adrenaline Orbs, but these Larvesta have Absorb so they can always heal themselves out of red range to where they won’t call for help nearly as often, or on the other side of things they have Take Down and could simply kill themselves while you are waiting for them to summon something so you can keep the chain alive as you work toward finding Volcarona. They also have Flame Body, so if you are weakening them with physical attacks like False Swipe, they’re likely to burn you and mess with your damage calcs. Handling this the right way takes a LOT of care and decent amount of strategy.

So yeah, you can see why this thing is hard to find but still justified to hunt down. Getting one for me felt as satisfying as getting any shiny because it took that much work, but had a great payoff going on my team for the rest of my playthrough.

[BryanRainey]

I found the authentic forms of Sinistea and Polteageist harder than Zen Mode Galarian Darmanitan

[fernandthefern]

Will never forget going into Pokémon Black completely blind and encountering Cryogonal for the first time. I was completely shocked, and fainted it thinking it would be a common Pokémon to find. Boy was I wrong.