On Catching 100 Different Species of Pokemon

In both the Paldean Adventure special research and the Master Ball timed research, there is a particular task that I thought would be quite difficult. The task is to catch 100 different species of Pokemon.

Now, I originally assumed that this task would be difficult. After all, most events only spawn like 5-6 different Pokemon, and the time between events, the spawns aren’t much better. However, I got this research task for A Paldean Adventure only a few days ago (at the time of writing) and I’ve somehow pretty much finished it. And this was just after the Psychic Spectacular event, which ended before I started the task. With the next event (and certainly before this article gets published), most people should be able to finish the task completely. Or maybe they’ll finish it via Team Rocket fights, Incense and daily spawns. Either way, I’ve gotten through this task very quickly. The last Pokemon I caught to reach 100 different species was actually a shiny Galarian Zigzagoon.

And I haven’t even been playing very hard, since I finished the previous stage of A Paldean Adventure. Mostly just caught whatever I saw on my walks or at home. The only thing I went out of my way for was a Beldum, because, well, who doesn’t need Metagross candy?

This surprises me, because we’ve always complained that the number of different species we come across aren’t actually that numerous or that varied. And I regularly agreed with that idea. Most of the spawns we see are pretty repetitive. In events, there are generally only a few Pokemon that spawn regularly, a couple of rare event Pokemon and anything else is a spawn from the season. And seasonal spawns have always been a bit funny, with most Pokemon being pretty useless. The variety is definitely there.

That being said, ‘different species’ of Pokemon does include evolutions. So catching a Poochyena and a Mightyena both count towards the task. Odd, but sure, I’ll take it. They are technically different, after all. But still, even if half my catches were of evolved Pokemon (which they weren’t), that does leave quite a few different species of Pokemon in the wild.

The problem is, most of these Pokemon aren’t Pokemon we want. There’s only so many pidgeys one person wishes to catch. And there are some Pokemon which just won’t go away, and hang around every season. I’m looking at you, Sandshrew. For every Beldum someone sees, they probably see like five Woopers and seven Pidoves and countless other ‘trash’ Pokemon that most of us already have. And on top of that, seasons don’t really change that much. There’s always a lot of stuff you have to filter through before you find something good.

But yeah, I am kinda surprised. There are a lot more Pokemon out there than I thought. It’s just that, most of the time, we don’t want to catch them. The only reason some of them get caught is because of tasks like catching 100 different species, or having to catch tons of Pokemon in general.