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Pokémon Myths

Catching

These are some of the most common Pokémon myths that just won't die. Most of this information is available in other sections of the site, but we hope this collection helps you win a bet or two with some of your nerdiest friends.

This kind of thing is usually beyond the scope of our site, but this is possibly the single most popular and enduring Pokémon myth. Any Pokémon myths page worth its salt has got to address this one.

OK, here it comes...pay attention now: You cannot get Mew without either winning it in a contest, receiving it as a gift (eg, at a Nintendo-sponsored tournament), using a cheating device, or trading with somone who has done one of the above.

No amount of futzing with "the truck" or the Missingno. bug will get you a Mew. Honest.

You can't. Not even with a Game Shark. They simply don't exist in the RBY games.

MegaKarp was going to make L100 anyway, and the faint wisp of a hope that he might be almost on the very edge of usefulness was almost too much to bear. Sadly, however, unlike Pikachu, Karp don't Surf.

This is a huge one. For some reason, certain people will argue to the death that Normal Pokémon don't get the type-matching bonus for Normal attacks. Pay them no mind. As my Wigglytuff can attest, he most definitely does get his bonus whilst Body Slamming Mewtwo's candy ass.

There is no penalty for being a dual-type, with regards to the type-matching bonus. For example, a Starmie and a Mr.Mime with equivalent Special scores will do the same amount of damage with a typical Psychic attack. Starmie does not get penalized for being half-Water.

This myth was propagated by numerous episodes in the show where the writers took great pains to explain why a Ghost Pokémon is just the trick to take on a Psychic Pokémon. The situation wasn't helped by the fact that lots of Nintendo manuals incorrectly claimed that Ghost attacks are super-effective against Psychics.

In fact, regular Ghost attacks are completely ineffective against Psychics. Note that the only Ghost attack that takes type into consideration is Lick, which almost no one uses. Confuse Ray and Night Shade operate independently of type modifiers, which probably also has something to do with the persistence of this myth.

Additionally, all Ghosts are half-Poison and therefore weak to Psychic attacks!

In short...Gengar is no Mewtwo-killer.

This is another myth that started from bad information straight from the horse's mouth. The original instruction manuals said that Ice attacks are strong vs. Rock, but this is simply not true. The myth has probably persisted because many common Rock Pokémon (such as Onix and Golem) are half-Ground, and Ice attacks are bad news for Groundlings.

Many guides report this, and if you poke into the ROM you will see that Blizzard does indeed freeze 30% of the time, if a certain condition is true. We just don't know what that condition is, or even if that condition can be met within the realm of normal game play. It has been theorized that the Blizzard freeze rate is 30% in matches with CPU trainers, but we have no evidence to support or refute that hypothesis.

This myth was further propagated by the Pokémon Yellow instruction booklets, which claim that Blizzard freezes less frequently in Colosseum2 link battles. In reality, however, Blizzard freezes 10% of the time in all link battles.

Counter is effective vs. both Normal and Fighting attacks, but that's it. (Dreams of my Hitmonlee valiantly absorbing a Zapdos' Fly and dishing the damage back twofold have been quashed.) Interestingly, Counter even counters Seismic Toss.

Nope, that's Jump Kick. Hi Jump Kick does just one HP of damage if you miss, no matter what the guides (or Pokémon Stadium) tell you.

Not true. That's actually kind of a pain, because if you put a nice Tri Attack on your Porygon, you won't get much out of it as soon as you Convert. In order to get a type-matching bonus after Conversion, you have to Convert to a type for which you already have a matching attack.

Considering that you've got to take up one of four slots just for Conversion, that Porygon's TM compatibility is not exactly Mew-quality, and that most Pokémon are not vulnerable to attacks of their own type, it's pretty difficult to benefit from the type-matching bonus. And, given Pory's stats, most Pokémon will be much better at using their own attacks than our computer-generated friend.

Poor guy.

While Swift does ignore Evade/Accuracy modifiers and can allow your Pokémon to hit both Digging and Flying opponents, its accuracy is constant at roughly 99.6%. In other words, it will miss about 1 out of every 256 times it is used.

Swift does not affect the order of attacks. This myth probably came about as a result of the attack's deceptive name and confusion with Quick Attack.

While it is true that the attacking Pokémon's Speed must be either equal to or greater than its victim's to hit at all with a one-hit KO attack, increasing the Speed difference past this point will have no effect on the accuracy of the attack.

For example, if your Dragonite is faster than your opponent's Muk, using Agility will not increase its chances of hitting with Horn Drill. The chance to hit would be the same (about 29.7%) before and after the use of the Speed-altering attack. See the One-hit KOs page for more information.

Despite the fact that Ash's Pikachu can kill nearly anything, delaying evolution does not have any direct effect on statistics. It is possible that using an unevolved Pokémon will cause you to fight weaker wild Pokémon, and thus gain more stat experience, but you could fight those same Pokémon with your final evolution and get the same effect.

One benefit of delaying evolution is that unevolved Pokémon often learn powerful attacks earlier than their subsequent evolutions. Some evolved Pokémon also lose the ability to learn certain attacks. See our Pokédex for information on the Levels at which Pokémon learn their attacks.