Top 10 Tips for Beginners in Pokemon

Seriously! Don't miss on shinies. I only caught like 6 shinies in my life, and two of them are the red gyarados, and the shiny Metagross of ORAS.

To show you the usefulness of moves of different types, let's take Conkeldurr as an example. It is a fighting type so you might want to only give fighting type moves for STAB. However, that leaves you vulnerable to psychic, ghost, flying, and fairy types. That's why instead of four fighting type moves it is better to have only one fighting type move, and have knock off to deal super effective damage against ghost and psychic type, ice punch for flying types, and poison jab for fairy types. There are some cases however where you might want to use two moves of the same type, but that serves different purpose. To go back on Conkeldurr, I can for example have Drain Punch as my main way to deal damage, as well as recover, and Mach Punch in case the opponent is at low HP, and I need to go first on the next turn.

Of course, if you are playing any games from Sun and Moon and onwards (until they may or may not bring them back in the Sinnoh remakes, cause who knows?), HMs are not a thing anymore, so you don't have to worry about that. However, in the games where HMs are a thing, I recommend you using an HM slave, which is basically a pokemon that exist in your party only to use HM. For example, in ORAS, I used a Slaking who learned Strength, cut, nature power, and rock smash. It was surprisingly useful in moments where I had to use it in battle, but its main purpose was to use those HMs to make me progress through the game. The reason why I recommend you to do this, is because HMs are often not very good to use in battles, even in a playthrough (Surf and Fly being exceptions). And you can't make your pokemon forget about those moves until you find a NPC that makes you forget those moves, or in the case of older games, you are stuck with those moves forever.

You pretty much should train your pokemon equally to have your stats well spread. It not only makes the game easier since you are not reliant on only one pokemon, but also, it is just more fun if you ask to me. I mean having a full team of 6 and learning how to use each of them in the situations they are strong, is way more fun than just playing one pokemon through the whole game. At least in my opinion.

You can do that if you want a challenge or just want to have fun, and in fact, with double types, you might do something cool with your team, but if you want to be the strongest as possible in your playthrough, let's just say this is not optimal, and you better try not having more than two or three pokemon of the same type, for covering the whole type chart.

In other words, learn your type chart. Don't use ground type attack on a flying type. It's a bad idea. This is useful for both playthroughs, and especially competitive play.

When I was younger, I thought status moves, which are the moves that makes no direct damage, were bad, because I didn't see the point of not directly attacking. However, I now know, and want to let you guys know that those moves can legit be some of the most useful moves ever. Poisoning the opponent is super useful on the long term, burning your opponent with Will O Wisp makes physical attacker hit way less hard than usual, paralyzing an opponent makes the opponent way slower, on top of preventing the opponent from attacking, boosting moves like swords dance or dragon dance raises your stats, allowing you to sweep your opponent, etc. Status moves can be very useful in playthroughs (status moves actually make the unfamous Whitney and her Miltank much easier to beat), and even more in competitive, where they are so common that Taunt, a move that prevents the opponent from using status moves, is considered a very good move. So yeah, don't underestimate those moves.

You should always consider the stats of the pokemon you use in order to choose the move it learns. The most obvious thing to look at are the offensive stats. Let's take Salazzle for example. This is a pokemon with a much higher special attack, than physical attack, therefore, sludge bomb, a special move, is a way better move for it than poison jab, a physical move. However, you might wanna look at the defensive stats, and speed stats as well. For example, Close Combat is a fighting type move with very high power, but lowers the defenses of the user, therefore a pokemon like Infernape, who is really fast, but has low defenses, which therefore relies on outspeeding his opponent and killing them in one hit to prevent them from killing him, is good with that move. However, a more defensive fighting type, like Conkeldurr might, who is slow, but can tank a lot of hits, might prefer Drain Punch, which has a lower power, but has no drawback, and even gives you more HP back.

It is utterly miserable when you work super hard, such as gaining badges and evolving your pokemon and then you forget to save. The fact that you have to redo everything alone is a pain and even more so if you caught a legendary, beat the champion or found a shiny pokemon just makes it more frustrating.