Even a piece of crap Pokémon can result in a legendary trade. The trick? Patience, and an eye for trading up.
It’s sort of like the Pokémon equivalent of One Red Paperclip, where blogger Kyle MacDonald managed to barter his way from a paperclip to an actual house over the course of a year. Only in this case, instead of starting with a paperclip, you start the challenge with a lackluster Pokémon — something that isn’t valuable, or that nobody really wants.
At least, that’s how imagur user cornpop16 started out. They took Fletchling, a Pokemon you can capture early in Pokemon X & Y. As you may know, Fletchling is not exactly the hottest, most wanted Pokemon by any stretch of the imagination. Still, with that in hand, they set out to try to trade their way up to “the best Pokemon possible” on the online trading network, GTS.
The first trade, in a way, sounds like one of the hardest. Cornpop describes it as The Shit Zone, or “the zone of Pokemon that pretty much nobody wants.” Still, within hours, they managed to trade the Fletchling for a Pikachu. Not bad. People like Pikachu, Pikachu can be traded for some good stuff.
That Pikachu, in turn, was traded up for a Floatzel, which was then traded up for a Gurdurr — which immediately evolved into a Conkeldurr through the trade. Conkeldurr was traded for a Bouffalant, which may not seem like a trade up, until you consider it’s a Pokemon unique to Black and White — which makes it rarer. From here, cornpop traded their Bouffalant for a Milotic, a Pokemon that’s well-known for its beauty and relative rarity: players have players have to level up a Feebas with a high beauty stat, or trade Feebas holding a Prism scale.
From here, things got tricky. Cornpop tried to trade up to a Entei, but nobody bit. So after a while, they changed the trade for a Xerneas — and boom. That did the trick. Someone traded them a Xerneas, a Pokemon on the cover of the latest games, for Cornpop’s Milotic. From here, things got significantly easier: Xerneas was traded for an Entei, which in turn was traded for a Dialga. For starting out with a Fletchling, that’s pretty good!
Funnily enough, after all the time spent trading up for that Dialga, cornpop put the Dialga in the Wonder Trade, just for funsies. The result? Someone randomly gave them a Charmander. Could have been worse!
In any case, cornpop isn’t the only person undertaking this red paper clip-like challenge on the GTS, either. Reddit user SgtTamama recently posted about being able to trade their way up from a Fletchling to a Lugia through the course of eight trades:
Think you can do the same? Try the challenge! The rules are simple:
1) All trades must be done on GTS with strangers. 2) Pokemon may not be leveled or modified in any way. 3) No ridiculous trades, such as going from Fletchling straight to legendary.
Happy trading, and remember: even that garbage Pokemon you don’t love can be traded for something awesome.
Comments
9 responses to “Terrible Pokémon Can Be Traded, Eventually, For Legendaries”
It’s kinda easy using version exclusive pokemon, baby pokemon, pokemon not in that particular game, or the best option item evolution pokemon that there are a limited amount of items in game or have to be earned points for.
Because of the BS I went through with my 2DS, I managed to get an extra download copy of Pokemon X on top of my copy of Y. Because of that, I managed to trade myself the other starter Pokemon I didn’t have.
By the way, if anybody wants some starter Pokemon just give me a buzz.
Wouldn’t mind a spare Chespin if you are willing to trade?
I can set that up in 15 minutes.
I’ll also be nicknaming the Chespin.
Awesome 🙂
FC: 2509-0954-5501
3583-0772-4131
This would have been fairly easy on the Pearl/Diamond edition of the Trading Centre, due to the large number of duped and hacked pokemon.
b/w/b2/w2 was even worse thanks to the generators.
I did a fair bit of this on Y and the trick is to offer up the trade, rather than search through other peoples offers.
I hadn’t played a Pokemon game in ages, so I had no data to transfer over, but I currently have about 90% of all Ledgendaries, as well as a few cool shinies and Lvl 100’s.
Patience is key. Make a (reasonable) offer, go do something else with your day, then check it at night and 9 times out of 10, the trade will be done.