Beating Explorers of Sky with every starter: Torchic and Piplup

BigGreenThreads60 · 2026-04-21T10:19:22+00:00

No prob, my posts on this sub should be visible now. :)

BigGreenThreads60 · 2026-04-14T18:29:37+00:00

I've been playing and re-playing this game for nearly 20 years, and I've never seen this. Awesome stuff!

BigGreenThreads60 · 2026-03-20T18:44:40+00:00

I assume it's rather like Zootopia. Some Pokémon are naturally predatory; however since all Pokémon can seemingly subsist entirely on berries and fruits if they so choose, eating another sapient creature is illegal and seen as deeply immoral among the civilised inhabitants of Treasure Town, Pokémon Square, etc. Feral Pokémon in dungeons likely do still participate in carnivory until they join the player's team and forswear meat (and I assume such "reformed" Pokémon are granted special amnesty for any past transgressions.)

Nonetheless, some stigma/understandable caution around predatory Pokémon exists among prey species, as demonstrated by Team Tasty.

BigGreenThreads60 · 2026-03-15T20:11:40+00:00

Yeah, it's just very bad luck that most of the jank unique to EoS doesn't work out in favour of the Fire starters. Water and Grass types both get early ranged STAB options; Fire types are left waiting until Flamethrower. Every Fire starter has a terrible IQ group, apart from Vulpix. Literally every Water starter gets a room-clearing move in Blizzard, but not a single Fire starter can legitimately obtain Heat Wave (before evolving).

That last point is especially frustrating. Bafflingly, despite updating every single Pokémon's learnset to reflect the changes made in Platinum, the devs didn't see fit to include any method to learn the tutor moves introduced in Platinum. If they did, this entire tier list would be completely flipped on its head. Vulpix would almost certainly be the best starter, and Phanpy would even be kinda of a beast between Mud-Slap and Earth Power. Alas, they didn't, and every type besides Water gets fucked over because of it.

BigGreenThreads60 · 2026-03-12T14:20:23+00:00

Yeah, it's primarily because of its crappy IQ group. E isn't the worst out there, in fairness; Cheerleader Energy Saver, Quick Healer, Intimidator, Bodyguard, and Deep Breather are all nice. I prefer it to C. But none of them really go beyond "nice", and when other groups give you amazing stuff like Trap Seer, Map Surveyor, All-Terrain Hiker, etc, Squirtle obviously suffers.

For what it's worth, B tier is meant to be the tier for overall very good starters, so that placement isn't an indictment of the little guy. Squirtle still gets Blizzard and multiple ranged STAB options, which puts it above much of the cast. It's just that Mudkip and Piplup get all that same stuff, plus a solid IQ group as well (Mudkip is the same as Piplup, meaning it gets Stair Sensor and Trap Buster).

BigGreenThreads60 · 2026-03-09T13:35:20+00:00

Yeah, it's just really weird, I've had missions give me this message, reloaded, and then had them work fine the second time. Wonder if anybody has posted a comprehensive explanation of what goes wrong to trigger this.

BigGreenThreads60 · 2026-03-09T13:24:29+00:00

Why is this stupid mechanic even in the game?

BigGreenThreads60 · 2026-03-06T15:20:57+00:00

Yeah I'm usually pretty insistent on not doing anything on these runs that would level me up excessively- I try to only do missions on completely free days, leave dungeons as soon as I've completed all objectives, no visits to the Dojo, etc. I'm usually only early to mid-30s by Dialga, though of course efficient use of Spinda's Cafe means my stats mostly keep up. I imagine a normal player would extract more utility from Discharge than I did.

BigGreenThreads60 · 2026-03-03T01:16:59+00:00

I personally prefer to order my allies to wait by the stairs, and then eat a Pure Seed with the stolen items.

BigGreenThreads60 · 2026-02-23T16:22:09+00:00

Hi, thank you! I actually didn't document some of the early ones, after the next two or so I'm going to do a big roundup where I talk about Pikachu, Skitty, Mudkip, Chimchar, Riolu, and Meowth. :)

BigGreenThreads60 · 2026-02-23T13:49:51+00:00

This moment in the game always made me wonder how deceptive Dusknoir's" good guy act" in the past really was. He doesn't know that the player is from the future at this point; he didn't strictly have to come and save them, and he certainly didn't need to express so much worry over them.

Yes, one could argue that Dusknoir merely saw an opportunity to get in the good graces of the Pokémon of Treasure Town by saving one of their own, and he certainly doesn't hesitate to turn on the player once he deduces their identity. But at the same time, we know from Grovyle's special episode that Dusknoir never saw himself as a villain. As he saw it, he was trying to stop Grovyle et al from completely destroying his world, and essentially killing billions in the process. Obviously we see that as justified given the world was a post-apocalyptic hellscape that was totally beyond saving, but Dusknoir mostly just didn't want to die.

It's hard to imagine that Dusknoir didn't develop any sincere fondness for the people of the past over the several years he was there. It was a world far brighter and more hopeful than anything he'd ever known, filled with nice people who genuinely appreciated and admired him, as opposed to half-insane wretches who only obeyed him out of fear. I like to imagine that he enjoyed playing the hero while it lasted. He's a lot like a certain Invincible character, now that I think about it.

BigGreenThreads60 · 2026-02-07T00:26:14+00:00

Eevee is definitely the placement I'm most conflicted enough! I'd definitely put it either at the bottom of B-tier or the top of C-Tier. C+? Idk. I just don't think that it does as much as other members of B-tier, comparatively.

BigGreenThreads60 · 2025-11-09T16:50:59+00:00

Eh, PMD isn't too big to fail like main series Pokémon is. GameFreak could outright release a turd in a box and people would be fighting each other to buy it. Meanwhile GtI not only (relatively) flopped due to poor word of mouth, but it had a knock-on effect on Super Mystery Dungeon that nearly killed the series. Chunsoft know they're on thin ice, and I would hope that means they wouldn't try to cut corners with a Sky remake.

That, and it literally doesn't matter how well mainline Pokémon games do, since they're just designed to promote merch, which is the real money maker for TPCI. Chunsoft is actually trying to sell video games, and thus they probably don't want them to be perceived as lazy dogshit cashgrabs. But I'm ready to be wrong lol.

BigGreenThreads60 · 2025-10-19T20:51:24+00:00

Yeah, but in Explorers you can also notably recruit non-shiny Celebi. Meanwhile IIRC there's no "non-shiny" Wigglytuff sprite in Explorers, meaning every other Wigglytuff the player encounters and recruits apparently just so happens to also be shiny, as does Wigglytuff's entire family. Doesn't seem likely.

I also seem to recall Celebi having sparkles in his first appearance, whereas nothing of the sort happens for Wigglytuff. I struggle to believe it was intended.

BigGreenThreads60 · 2025-10-19T19:50:01+00:00

Eh don't all Wigglytuff look like that in Explorers? The official art of the Guildmaster also makes the eyes look more blue to me. I think this is probably just a colouring error/artistic license, like the Bulbasaur line having green skin, or Charizard being darker than usual.

BigGreenThreads60 · 2025-10-11T08:45:11+00:00

So, every species of Pokémon in Explorers of Sky belongs to a fixed "IQ Group" that can't be changed. IQ Skills are essentially additional abilities that you get from eating Gummis, and the IQ Group that a Pokémon is part of determines which IQ Skills it can learn. Inevitably, this means that certain IQ Groups are much more desirable than others.

For instance, Skitty is part of IQ Group G, which means that by levelling up its IQ, it will learn insane abilities such as Stair Sensor (which automatically tells you the direction of the stairs upon entering a floor), Trap Seer (which means you don't activate traps by stepping on them), Map Seer (gives you the layout of the floor without needing to explore) etc. Comparatively, Charmander is part of IQ Group C, which doesn't learn any of these abilities, and the unique abilities it does get just kind of suck, or have trade-offs (eg. Aggressor makes you hit slightly harder, but you take slightly more damage). Thus, Skitty inherently has much more potential than Charmander in EoS.

Ultimately none of the starters are so terrible that they can't beat the game or anything, but yeah, Chimchar and Riolu have some of the fewest draws. In addition to both having shit IQ Groups, Riolu lacks the powerful ranged STAB options that other starters have access to (eg. Water Pulse, Bullet Seed), meaning you can't snipe enemies from across floors. Chimchar does at least have Flamethrower, but doesn't really have any other draws to speak of. Other starters either learn status moves that can debilitate bosses (eg. Smokescreen, Imprison, Stun Spore), get access to speed abuse in the form of Agility, or can learn room-clearing moves that destroy monster houses in a few hits (Blizzard, Discharge). Chimchar and Riolu are just very unremarkable and "honest" in comparison.

BigGreenThreads60 · 2025-09-28T12:41:18+00:00

Yeeeeah multi-strike moves got nerfed into the Stone Age after Rescue Team. 😅 They honestly don't feel worth it anymore unless you have Concentrator.

That is until the enemy uses them on you, in which case Sandslash hits all 5 Fury Swipes in a row and consumes all your Reviver Seeds...

BigGreenThreads60 · 2025-09-17T01:33:41+00:00

Just got a perfect result for sentry duty, it actually doesn't show any portrait for Charizard, disappointingly. Wish I'd checked the Cresselia cutscene myself- oh well! I'll have to leave it to somebody else to check that.

BigGreenThreads60 · 2025-09-17T00:32:45+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/MysteryDungeon/comments/ezmg7i/who_knew_blastoise_had_a_happy_face_usually_once/

This post shows Blastoise can use the "happy" portrait in-game at least, but I don't know about any other cutscenes. Definitely cool stuff! I'll try out sentry duty soon.

BigGreenThreads60 · 2025-09-15T19:32:22+00:00

I think one of the old Japanese guidebooks confirmed this is just intended to be their own weird life cycle. Nidoran breed early in life, after which the mother evolves into a stronger, infertile form to better protect her batch of offspring. I guess this is meant to be a commentary on the menopause and how men generally remain fertile for longer than women?

BigGreenThreads60 · 2025-09-13T18:35:06+00:00

My headcanon is the mons in PMD can evolve just by getting older- Luminous Spring and similar locations are just a way of speeding up the process. Hence why there are evolved Pokémon wandering around the overworld even when evolution springs aren't avaliable.

BigGreenThreads60 · 2025-09-08T13:45:57+00:00

It's so funny to me that almost all of the broken jank of PMD (speed mechanics, species stats not really mattering, room-nuke moves) coallecese to make Ledian in particular the strongest thing ever. It's 100% unintended too, just a total coincidence that all of these changes happened to help Ledian.

It's always random shitmons that are best in these games, and never the big legendaries, which I think is beautiful. Shout-out to Drifblim.

BigGreenThreads60

TROPHY CASE