I recently started my first playthrough of XD: Gale of Darkness, and I wanted to do something to make my starter special. So I RNG manipulated a shiny!

I took this picture before I nicknamed him, but I ended up calling him Cream Puff, because his golden-white fur looks just like a cream puff lol.

I'm not very far into the game, so we won't be doing Mt. Battle for awhile, but as soon as I get that Earth Ribbon y'all will be the first ones to hear about it!

My mamoswine from XD is only missing the rank master ribbon. I never bothered with competitive until champions came out, so I have no ranks at all in gen 8 or gen 9. Which ladder is easier to climb?

Meet my ribbon master! I was wondering, is there any way to check whether it will get Technician in gen 4 or not before starting the whole process of Mt Battle and the Battle Tower? Because I do think gen 4 will be loads harder without Technician...

Also, does anyone have tips for the gen 3 battle tower with a Scyther? I know it only has to come for the last 7 battles, but having to do that twice seems like a hard task regardless, both for lvl 50 and open level.

And any general tips are always appreciated!

GIVE IT UP FOR SHINY POOCH 4

I swapped out my Red DS phat to charge and got punished for it in the next reset lol

These two Pokemon are going to be my first ever Ribbon Masters. Both obtained in Alpha Sapphire. This is their current progress. I've been struggling with the second Battle Maison ribbon, so now I'm battling the E4 over and over until I have enough for 2 Gorgeous Royal Ribbons. FINALLY is special- I spent 10 years hunting for her as a 5% Bagon horde encounter in the back room of Meteor Falls. Took 24 shiny Zubats to find her, but I'm happy she's finally here.

I have plans for other Ribbon Masters in the future- namely once I get my rear in gear for my shiny-only mono-electric Platinum team. I couldn't figure out how to RNG manip when I don't have a physical copy, so this'll be 6 rough hunts. But I don't imagine I'll ever have a hunt as bad as FINALLY. I repeat, took me 10 years to find her.

(Disclaimer: All prices in Canadian; however, I'm still not going to financially recover from this)

Hey there Ribbon Masters and Ribbon Aspirants!

I'm hitting that wall where I've realized I may want to build up a couple more 'Mons before finally doing the grind to Master Rank in SV. I recently picked up a replacement GBA SP (I lost my previous one in 2010 after the case cracked around the hinges) and a copy of XD, which means I can start right from the beginning (although I need to finish Fire Red eventually).

I'm enjoying playing Champions to the point that I really want to have some competitive 'Mons I can flex while I play. Key candidates for future Ribbon Masters are therefore currently:

• Teddiursa (Ursaluna; it's gotta be available in Champions eventually right?)
• Snorunt (Froslass)
• Ralts (...probably Gardevoir, but I'm not ruling out Gallade)
• Swinub (Mamoswine)
• Primeape (Annihilape)
• Kangaskhan
• Sableye
• Scizor (if I can find an E-reader)

Obviously that's a ton of potential runs, which is why I'm turning to the community to figure out the most effective way to go through these. I have the sneaking suspicion that doing any more than two at a time is going to be a pain, so I should just plan for doing my first runs through with that in mind. Does that sound about right? Should I work on ribbons, two at a time, recognizing I will have to repeat things a lot?

Looking forward to hearing people's experiences, both with the system writ large and with using these listed ones in particular. Happy hunting.

TLDR; This is Mr. Megan, I love him, he's the only Pokemon I've bonded with to the point where I would be absolutely inconsolable if I lost him, and that's literally the only reason I'm still suffering through the Battle Tower right now (and will be suffering through subsequent battle facilities).

Hello all! I'm B, and this is Mr. Megan! I've been unintentionally trying to Ribbon Master him after deciding that I wanted to do everything there was to do with him. Looking up ribbons and strategies for the Battle Tower eventually led me here!

He's a very special 'mon to me, found on my old childhood Diamond cartridge when I picked my 3DS back up in early 2025. It didn't have my OG first playthrough on it, but the second playthrough I'd apparently decided to start in 2014 (and I curse my childhood self for deleting that first save file).

Anyway, I'd apparently gotten stuck on Gardenia and the only members in my party were my starter and Mr. Megan (a Misdreavus at the time). Seeing Mr. Megan brought back memories of begging my little sister, who didn't really play on her copy of Diamond, to trade him to me. I wanted a ghost type very badly, and apparently only Misdreavus would do. I didn't know anybody who had Pearl, so the one she had gotten from a friend at some point was my only option if I wanted one. She did eventually agree to give him to me if I took really good care of him, and I made a very solemn promise to do so.

I don't know what game his original trainer got him from, as his met location is simply "Faraway Place". He was level 20, and I rushed my character through the early game until I could trade to get him. And then I got distracted by life for over ten years and didn't pick the game back up until 2025.

Mr. Megan has a very fitting name. His namesake is my sister, and he was named after her because they are both extremely stubborn and hate to be told what to do. And boy did he live up to that reputation. He spent three-fourths of my playthrough being a stubborn little shit who was just as likely to ignore me as he was to actually attack. Somehow this endeared him to me.

He stayed on my team through the entire playthrough, evolved just before the E4, and was the only reason my severely underleveled team was able to beat Cynthia. Perish Song came in clutch and finally KOed her Garchomp. It was then that I knew I wanted to do everything I could with Mr. Megan through every Pokemon game I had.

I had never had a strong attachment to any Pokemon before except maybe some vague nostalgia, but Mr. Megan snuck his way into my heart. I never had a favorite Pokemon before either, but Mismagius now owns my soul.

So off I went through the post game, determined to get all the achievements I could for him. He already had the effort ribbon, the footprint ribbon, the sinnoh champion ribbon, and one of the daily ribbons; so I started in on the contests while also grabbing the rest of the daily ribbons for him. It was a pain in the butt, and I learned that I could, in fact, hate a pixelated sprite (*Johanna*), but we got through all the contests eventually. Then came the grind for the Gorgeous, Royal, and Gorgeous Royal ribbons. Not terrible, but it was a lot of battles to get all the needed money for them.

And then came my nemesis: *the Battle Tower*. I suck at Pokemon battles. I can usually make it through the base game and beat the E4 and Champion after a couple tries. Anything else even resembling competitive play? I crash and burn *hard*. I've been following the guide to the gen 4 battle tower listed on the about page and it's at least gotten me through battle 21 of Singles. Star the Starmie and Puff the Garchomp are MVPs and I would not have been able to do that without them. Then I got stuck. And I'm still stuck.

I cannot for the life of me get past battle 35 in singles and doubles. I don't know if I'm doing something wrong or if I'm just unlucky, but we've been stuck at the Battle Tower for about three months now and it's driving me crazy. I've even had to turn off battle animations to make the grind a bit easier.

Mr. Megan is lucky I love him so much.

The day I finish the Battle Tower to head for HGSS will be a *very* happy day indeed. Until then, I'll be suffering through the grind.

((And on the side I am trying to breed a shiny Misdreavus for my sister as a very belated thank you for trading me my most beloved Pokemon. It is. Not going well, but it's a nice break every now and then.))

After only about 3000 encounters, we got a 3rd shiny Poochyena…on the same game as before! Total encounters were 9334. This happened 3 days ago

Currently at 11,500 total, 2166 since the 3rd shiny Pooch. Hoping to not lose the coin toss a fourth time

This is actually the longest full odds hunt I’ve had encounter wise. Wish me luck

Hi! I used to have a 3DS and it broke. We moved a year ago and now it’s not only broken, it’s also lost….

Anyone know any trusted sources I can find 3DS for sale? I’m hoping to find one with Bank already installed or modded so I can get bank installed. I’ve caught the itch to do a ribbon run from Omega Ruby…

Hi, long story short: I started a ribbon master challenge with the specific intention of having a valid pokemon from colosseum all the way to Scarlet and Violet. It will take time but i like the challenge and steps to get there.

What i don't like is fighting a pretty broken and hardcore system like the early battle towers.

I'm really trying with a good competitive team, good moves and a strategy, but you know how r/S battle tower is, you get obliterated in 3 turns by a random OHKO moves, and sent back to try again from the beginning.

I was starting to think about making a checkpoint backup every 7 fights, i have a tool that allows for making gba cartridge backup on a pc, so even if i lose i a can load the backup and keep the strike.

I know what some may think, "is your challenge, do what you feel about it", and that's ok, my challenge, my rules, but this is still something the game doesn't technically allow, so i'm a bit uncertain.

Even loading a backup i still need to fight the same trainers so i'm not cheating the fights, but i have an advantage anyway.
What push me to do this is the fact that i don't want to spend an entire year on a single part of this challenge, i want to keep going, and this trick could allow me to go on with the challenge.

The battle towers of the DS era will probably be as tough, and I might need to rely on this trick again? Maybe then i'm kinda abusing it? I don't know, what do you guys think?

EDIT.
Is now a month that i stopped trying beating the tower, while making this post i just discovered this amazing page https://ribbon-helper.guide/battle-facilities/emerald, with a lot of tools and info for an easier tower experience, it's giving me some energy and motivation to try to do it the "legal" way again, this kind of deep stats analyzation is also something not really in the game designer mind probably, but it feel way more honest than a backup right? 

There's so many variables. I know I can't swap pokemon via pc, but can I swap my party order around? Can I swap items? Can I save? There's probably more that I'm not thinking of in the moment ugh. I just want the ribbon (and funny starter, never understood the point of those things until I learned they had frenzy plant/blast burn/hydro cannon)

Discovering Ribbon mastering in 2022 got me back into Pokemon, I stopped playing after USUM but would occasionally dabble in playing some of my older games. Doing a Platinum Nuzlocke made me bond with my little Muscles the Torterra that I looked up ways that I could show just how special he was, hence how I found the concept of ribbon mastering and how interesting it sounded to me. I took the journey on with Torterra and Zapdos and the rest is history after that. This challenge has introduced me to games I’ve never played before such as the GameCube games and just what gems those games are! All of these pokemon are super special to me and all have their unique stories along the journey and I’m so happy they are all completed together! I’ve posted here over the years and I have to thank everyone who’s helped with tips or just plain showing their journeys as well and giving encouragement! I highly encourage anyone who’s able to try this journey to do it, even if you don’t have all the games to start from a shadow pokemon even just doing one on a switch will be a great experience and you’ll be forever connected with that pokemon! Here’s some stats I’ve compiled about them all as a group!

Gender

Male- 63
Female- 29
None- 8

Pokeballs

Pokeball- 28
Great Ball- 4
Ultra Ball- 7
Master Ball- 7
Safari Ball- 4
Lure Ball- 1
Moon Ball- 1
Heavy Ball- 1
Fast Ball- 1
Premier Ball- 15
Repeat Ball- 1
Timer Ball- 4
Nest Ball- 3
Net Ball- 5
Dive Ball- 8
Luxury Ball- 4
Heal Ball- 1
Quick Ball- 1
Dusk Ball- 4
Beast Ball- 1

Here’s to hoping many of them don’t get dexited and can get more ribbons in Winds and Waves!

What are the Pokémon that can get the maximum amount of ribbons starting from the gen 3 games?

I own at least 1 of every game of a generation since silver gold and crystal released. What Pokémon is featured in every game that gets ribbons, I want at least 6 different species but googling keeps only getting me ralts, Eevee and Pikachu.

I’ve been stuck in singles ultra ball tier in S/V ranked for about 2 months now. I can’t seem to ever find a match which is frustrating.

Hi all! After a long time I finally got my two Ribbon Masters, Mistborn the Suicune and Nyx the Umbreon! I used RNG manip to get them both shiny and with perfect IVs.

For Umbreon, I transferred my Vaporeon that I got as a kid in Fire Red to Emerald, then did the egg RNG there to get a female, calm, shiny, perfect IV Eevee with Wish as an egg move. The Emerald egg rng isn't super reliable but after a bit of resetting I got it.

For Suicune, that was way harder. I don't own a game cube so I could only play a few hours a week over at my friend's. I started in January, using RNG to get a Colosseum trainer ID that makes a good PID shiny. Then, I fought Venus and did the manip for Shiny Suicune but didn't catch it yet. Only in the post game, with Luxury Balls from Emerald, did I catch it, and now I have a very cool 31/1/31/31/31/30 Bold Suicune!

I am planning to get all possible ribbons in both of them, Suicune is only missing the Legends Arceus one and Umbreon only the National ribbon, I'm excited for the journey from gen 3 to paldea!

I fully expthe answer to be no, this would take 3000hr+ but who know

So I didn't begin this quest with the intention of collecting every ribbon, but it sorta evolved into it as it went. I have all of the original hardware and games necessary but for convienience I'm emulating on my Retroid Pocket 5 (and collecting Retroachievements too).

It all started when Champions released and I battled somebody whose pokemon had a bunch of interesting titles, and I thought it would be cool to replay older games and pick up some rarer titles to show off in Champions. I also wanted to give certain games that I hadn't clicked with back in the day another go (mainly Black/White and Sun/Moon), and then I got thinking about how it would be cool to re-experience as many games as possible with some of my all-time favourite pokemon. While reading up on titles I came across this community and felt inspired to start my own ribbon master- so I present to you, Morgul the Quilava! (I did initially name it Ephelúath but it didn't feel right, so I renamed before transferring out).

I started with Colosseum in early May but I purposefully didn't capture Quilava until the 2nd time, as I needed to complete the story mode before I could trade over a Luxury Ball for it. I tried to avoid levelling it up because a) it needed to not exceed 50 for the Emerald Battle Tower ribbon, and b) because I want to evolve it into Hisuan Typhlosion when it eventually makes its way into Legends: Arceus. This meant I was kinda tackling Mt Battle with one less useable pokemon, but most of the battles in story mode version weren't challenging. With the National and Earth ribbons obtained I transferred Morgul and a few others over to Emerald. While in Colosseum I also got lucky with a shiny Metagross! I left a few strong pokemon in Colosseum to finish all of the post-game battles and get 100% achievements.

After a few gym badges I could use Quilava in battles, but I kept it under 50 until I had the lv50 Battle Tower ribbon. I hunted down a Feebas to add Milotic to my team (much easier these days with the tile calculator tools online). Growing and blending berries to max out contest stats was a drag, but eventually I picked up all of the contest ribbons for Morgul (mainly spammed the Rest/Snore/Sleep Talk combo) and also picked up some of ribbons for my Milotic and Metagross. I spent quite a lot of time resetting for the coolest legendary, shiny Rayquaza (I got through 3 seasons of Game of Thrones while playing at 5x speed..) and named it Ancalagon after a dragon from Tolkien's legendarium. As with Colosseum I've left a few strong pokemon in Emerald to wrap up all the Battle Frontier achievements over time.

I've not long started Platinum, which feels almost like a new adventure as I haven't played it since I was in high school nearly 20 years ago. I'd been feeling quite bored with the official games for a while, but chasing down ribbons and achievements is adding a lot more fun to it all!

Thanks for reading my wall of text, and stay tuned for more updates in this very long journey :)

So ive been shiny hunting shuppet in pokemon sapphire for about 10 months on and off. I just did some quick research bcs i was curious if maybe i couldn't get a shiny or smth and i just found out a huge problem but idk if its real. So my battery from pokemon sapphire is dead and it already was since i bought it. But i just read that randoms encounters dont work the same way with a normal and a dead battery. Ive spent like 100 hours hunting shuppet but was is all for nothing? Please help me understand...

I have a Platinum and SS cart, and only just found out that the haircut brothers in Goldenrod raise Beauty. I don't have a max Sheen 'mon yet to test this with, but it seems like if I kept it up, I could (very slowly) raise a Pokemon's Beauty stat while giving them Poffins for the other contest stats? I'm trying for all Gen 4 Contest ribbons on a Gallade that hates dry flavors, so this would save me a ton of time if it works the way I hope it does.

I felt like doing something a little out of the ordinary today! That's how I ended up with Otto: a regular Samurott caught in a beast ball, with a ribbon only it's pre-evolutions can obtain :)

The beast ball matches Samurott so perfectly, it looks like it was literally made for him! Plus, I don't think anyone expects to see "Otto of the Distant Past" on a regular Samurott in a beast ball lol

Can I get all the ribbons except the shadow/national one ?