In a recent Reddit thread created by user PokemanBall, fans of the Pokémon franchise have been discussing which creature is the strangest to obtain. Plenty of excellent ideas were suggested, with the Water-type ‘Magikarp clone’ Feebas emerging as the strongest contender.
With their post garnering a mighty 1,000 upvotes, CheatingZubat was the one to capture the most support out of all responses. “I didn’t think it existed,” they said in reference to just how difficult it was to find one. This isn’t an exaggeration, either, since in their debut games of Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire, Feebas were only found in six randomly generated fishing spots. These spots could be reset by changing your trendy phrase in Dewford Town, but there really was little point.
You wouldn’t think it could get worse than that, and yet in Diamond and Pearl it did. Instead of six spots, Feebas now only appeared in four. The real kicker was that these spots changed daily without any input from the player. Revolting does not do this heinous crime of development justice.
“I had always wanted to use a Milotic but its rarity made it impossible to feasibly do,” added emeraldwolf34. The sea serpent has a solid reputation in competition as a good source of sustain, although other defender-style Pokémon fill the role better these days. On top of your harrowing ordeal to obtain Feebas in the first place, you then had to either trade it with a Prism Scale or max out its Beautiful contest stats to evolve the thing.
A truly outrageous amount of work for nothing more than a solid competitive option. Entirely deserving of the confusion surrounding it.
What of the honorable mentions, though? PokemanBall themselves gave Lickitung a spotlight, citing how perplexed they were when discovering the Pokémon late in their game only to find out how underwhelming its stats were. “At that point, you could get infinitely better pure Normal Pokémon like Chansey, Tauros, and Kangaskhan,” they bemoaned.
Vikavolt was also a very popular answer, offered by chafos. Evolving from Charjabug, the succeeding form of early-game Bug-type Grubbin, Vikavolt is hardly a game-changer despite a strong Special Attack stat. It follows a long line of similar creatures going all the way back to Butterfree and Beedrill in Kanto. But Vikavolt demanded a late-game Thunder Stone or the special magnetic field found in Vast Poni Canyon rather than evolving in the early teens.
By this point, many Charjabug found their permanent homes in a PC Box.
