My Ribbon Quest

I got this Vaporeon in my childhood copy of FireRed! I did not stress over IVs, but I did make sure to hatch a female Eevee.

I know it's cheesy to explain Pokémon nicknames, but I called it 'Marea', Italian for 'tides'.

Yes, I skipped Orre. I never had a GameCube, so I never played Colosseum/XD. Maybe one day I will want to attempt this again (ha!) and I will start from Orre, but for now I am happy to start this journey in Generation III.

One big thing I wanted to make sure of was to only use re-obtainable items for the entire challenge, meaning that any berries, TMs, etc. could be purchased again at any time or easily planted again. Luckily, I managed to make this happen by growing berries in my copy of Emerald and only using purchasable TMs.

Also, make sure to use Scarves in the Constests.

Contests were fairly easy. The Battle Tower not so much.

There is a reason why every guide suggests to use the Ruby/Sapphire Battle Tower to get this ribbon. Sets are much more predictable. (Don't forget that the Lv. 50 ribbon can only be otained if your team is Lv. 50 or lower, so make sure not to overlevel!)

This is the team I used. I reset for Latias and Metagross in Emerald so I could get good natures and decent IVs, but I didn't stress over them being perfect.

I had access to FireRed, Emerald and Ruby for this, which meant that I could use the Game Corner in all these games to get optimal TMs.

Gen IV contests were fairly easy. Just a few tricks:

• Makes sure you have a variety of accessories. You can receive good accessories by getting a massage once a day in Veilstone City;

• Once the theme is announced at the beginning of the contest, close your DS screen and check which accessories will work best;

• Dance Competitions are absolutely based on the music. Pay attention to the rhythm of the song and press the button on the beat, not just when it appears on screen!

You can also get a Leaf Crown in HGSS. Not a ribbon per se, but Lyra will give you a cool certificate. Unfortunately it does not come back in later generations, but it should only take around 15-30 minutes to get.

The Battle Tower in Gen IV has a lot more modes than the previous games. The likelihood of getting hit by random OHKO moves is quite high and can be catastrophic, especially in Singles.

Surprisingly, I did not have many problems with the other modes. I decided to keep my team from Gen III (with different spreads and moves) and add an Infernape for Doubles.

Good purchasable TMs are hard to come by in Gen IV, so I was glad that 10-year-old me once had a friend hack x99 of each TM in my original copy of Pearl. I was thinking ahead in 2006. So I let myself 'cheat' a little here, for old times' sake.

After taking quite a long break from this quest, I decided to pick it back up in 2024, as Nintendo announced the shut down of 3DS servers. At the time of writing the servers have shut down, but Pokémon Bank is still alive and kicking (for now), like the promised us a few months ago.

Regardless of this, I had the feeling that something could happen at any point with Bank, so I decided to hurry up and complete the last two generations and find peace of mind by transferring Marea to HOME.

The contests were, once again, the easiest part. This is also due to the fact that sheen is no longer a limitation to your stats, so you can pretty much max out everything and you will probably never lose a contest if you use Scarves.

The Battle Maison, however, required a bit more thinking and preparation.

I ended up going for a classic Mega-Kangaskhan team for Super Singles, and the Shell Smash + Icicle Spear Cloyster for Nita's 50th battle.

It was a fairly straightforward run (except for my encounter with a Vespiquen that caused my team to hit themselves in confusion for about 6 turns in a row) and I managed to get through all 50 battle in one attempt.

Despite not being infallible, the advantage of using such an aggressive strategy is how quickly you can get through battles. This is only really possible by checking your opponents' sets pretty much every time after battle 20-ish. If you can take advantage of their first team member to set up, you are pretty much bound to win.

At this point, a few days before the 3DS server shut down, I knew that I would not have enough time to get all the Gen VII ribbons, especially the Battle Tree ones.

However, fun fact about the Gen VII Battle Tree, when I first got Ultra Sun I made it my life mission to get a Starf Berry from 200 Straight Wins. Now, while I never managed to get beyond 155 Straight Wins, I had miraculously interrupted my last run at 42 Straight Wins.

This meant that, as long as I could win the final 8 battles in a row, I would be getting the Battle Tree ribbons I needed at record speed. It also helped that my team was ready to go from all the time I spent at the Battle Tree, no training needed.

The rest of the ribbons were a breeze to get and, within less than a day, I'd received all the Alola ribbons.

While it was great to know that I would be able to complete the HOME transfer earlier than I predicted, I wanted to make sure to leave Gen VII with a few special memories, including trying out some Z-moves and visiting the Alola Photo Club.

We are now taking a well-deserved break in HOME before moving on the Switch games...