1000 Team Rocket Fights Later…

In July of 2019, Team GO Rocket appeared in Pokemon Go, attacking Pokestops and stealing items. While Team GO Rocket hasn’t had much effect on daily gameplay, it’s always been a thing. There’s even a multitude of medals to get, all related to Team GO Rocket. The problem is that, because they’re basically a side task, you can safely ignore Team Go Rocket and their myriad of grunts.

Me though? I wanted to get the gold medal for defeating grunts. On September 15th 2020, I finally got that gold medal. 1000 grunts defeated.

Seems like a long time

I mean, 1000 grunt battles doesn’t seem that difficult when you glance at it. But it’s easy to forget that 1. fights take at least 2 minutes each and 2. not everyone lives close to Pokestops. Even if you do love close to a Pokestop, there’s often no real reason to do the fight. Especially if it’s that damn Stunky/Stuntank/Stuntank combo.

Sure, we do have the balloons now, but that still limits you to 4 battles a day. Assuming you never equipped a rocket radar and did all 4 battles every day, it would still take you 250 days to get the gold medal. Maybe a bit less if you get lucky with Jessie and James. But the Team Rocket balloons haven’t been available for that long.

Funnily enough, the 1000th battle was James

My last two battles were against Jessie and James, spawning in on their Meowth balloon. I was actually going to equip a Rocket Radar and fight one of the Team Leaders for the 1000th battle, but how could I skip out on a chance for a shiny Koffing? Plus, there’s always a chance I’d end up with Sierra and her double Lapras setup, which is a colossal pain in the ass to fight against.

No, I didn’t get a shiny shadow Koffing.

What have I gotten from all those battles?

You’d think though, after 1000 battles, I’d have a ton of cool Pokemon, right? Eh, I guess? My biggest prizes are my 100% Shadow Tyranitar and Shadow Suicune, and I’ve managed to get two shadow shiny Pokemon: Sneasel and Ekans. I have a few 90-98% Pokemon as well, but most of them aren’t that noteworthy, aside from maybe a Dragonair. However I do have 3 Purified 100% Pokemon – Gardevoir, Rattata and Beldum, all of which were purified before the Shadow buff came out.

I’m not counting the Shadow Mewtwo though. Mine’s pretty good (a 3-star at least) but that was a GO Fest thing. More specifically, the shadow Legendaries from that GO Fest research had a minimum IV floor of 10/10/10 (meaning the lowest they could be is 67%). But wild Team Rocket battles have no IV floor, meaning they could be anywhere from 0% to 100%.

Now I have the medal, I guess I can ease up a bit.

I mean, I’m still going to check each balloon. You never know when there’s a Dragon or Fighting Grunt to be battled. But I can now happily skip those damn Skuntank battles. Those annoy me way too much, not just because they drag on for ages, but because there’s more interesting Dark types that could have been used. And I swear, the Dark Grunts seem to be insanely common, on par with the Grass and Psychic ones.

Screw the Purifying medal though.

The Team Rocket fights are somewhat easy and, once you’re used to them, you don’t need to do much. At most, it costs 1 super potion, maybe a revive to do them. But purifying Pokemon requires candy and stardust. And most of the current Grunts right now leave Pokemon that require 3000-5000 stardust and 3-5 candy. I haven’t seen a Zubat, Ratatta or Magikarp in ages, which sucks because they only cost 1000 stardust and 1 candy to purify.

Sure, I have the resources to purify Pokemon, but there’s no reason for me to. Not only are purified Pokemon strictly worse, but, well, I’m going to delete them anyway.

Oh well.