"Zero to Hero in 22 Days - L29 Machamp Solo Raid"

#PokemonGO: After hitting L40 in August I set myself a few goals, male and female Pokedex and soloing T3 raids. By October I’d completed these and felt like I needed something more of a challenge.Originally I considered a speed run to L30, giving myself a month to complete it, however later on I decided to make it more interesting, I would attempt to solo a Machamp raid in the same timescale.I started a fresh account on 7th October and headed on my usual walk into town, reaching L5 and choosing Valor within about 15 minutes. By the following day, with a couple of Suicune raids under my belt I was L18. A lucky egg evolve run to take into account my first 7 day streak on the 13th (starting at 23:35 on the 12th) took me to L24.By this time I was starting to consider my main counters for my raid. My usual L40 team consists of 3 Espeons between 2500 and 2700, Alakazam, 100% legacy Gengar, 100% Lugia. Whilst two of those unobtainable I made the decision to have at least 2 Espeons (cheap and easy to obtain), an Alakazam (I could get help with a raid boss and fortunately the Friday Halloween nest change rotated our town centre nest from Poliwag to Abra), an Exeggutor (easily obtainable from a raid) and a Gengar (another raid boss, but Halloween was also coming up…). My final slot was open to anything depending on the results of various Pokebattler simulations and what I would end up with, with the right movesets and the candy to power up.By Day 15 I was up to L28, I was up to 3 Alakazam raids completed, 2 Eggys, a handful of worthy Eevees and more than enough Gastly candy (thanks Halloween!). The L29 slog lasted most of the week, finishing with another lucky egg on my third 7 day streak and being the point where I summed up what I’d manage to catch, what candy I had and what to use the 450k stardust I’d gathered on (having spent none at this point). I’d also managed 65 rare candy, 2 Fast TM and a solitary Charged TM with which to gamble.Espeons:I walked 3 separate Eevees (not using my name trick… yet) to make Espeons, all three of which got ZH and a different charge move. The L25 with FS was a definite to make the team and I ultimately decided on the hatched 10/10/15 with Psychic as my second, giving it one of my TMs for Confusion.Eggys:It took 3 Eggy raids to get a double Psychic straight out of the box, this made the team straight away, I had just enough candy to make it L30. I decided to keep my double grass BS/SoB for better uses and gave the second fast TM to BS/Psy to fill my wildcard slot. After walking an Eggy for a day I used a fair proportion of my rare candy (50ish) purely based on the fact the Eggys were coming out as crucial in the Pokebattler calculations. Given the patience I could have easily done more raids for the extra candy.Zams:Alakazams were equal to Gengar with frustrating movesets. I wasn’t bothered over Confusion or PC, I like the damage of Confusion but I love the ease of use of PC, however 3 raid bosses and 2 evolves gave me 3x Shadow Ball and 2x Focus Blast. Despite the Abra nest, this was running me thin on Abra candy and running out of usable options. I gambled my Charged TM on a L27 that I had evolved… Future Sight! This gave me a single 13/13/6 with PC/FS which was sufficient.Gengars:Here the candy was plentiful, the right moveset was not. I had hatched a 98% (15/14/15) which I’d have loved to power up and use but sadly my first Gengar got Sludge, as did my second through to fifth, with a mixture of fast moves. The sixth Gengar, evolved from a mid 20s average IV Haunter finally got the right moveset and I was good to go.The final team being:Espeon 10/10/15 C/Psy - The first out would be the strongest fast move, given it would likely be out the longest before getting hit with a charge.Eggy 12/11/15 Ex/PsyZam 13/13/6 PC/FS - The wild Abra that got evolved, I love how quickly he powered up his FS but sadly he got one shot by Close Combat with a missed dodge.Espeon 10/10/3 ZH/FS - One of the wild Eevees that I caught which had half decent stats.Eggy 14/12/10 Ex/PsyGengar 11/2/9 Hex/ShB - The only mon with a 2 bar move would make sense to go last and get as much damage in the closing seconds. I love Gengar’s resistance to fighting combined with the awesomeness of Shadow Ball, this guy saved the day.Two days later, the raid finally came around. I walked half way across town after being alerted to a Machamp raid, arriving with 15 minutes remaining. I expected I’d have a couple of attempts and went straight in. To my unbelievable luck, it had Counter/Close Combat and despite my shocking attempts at dodging (see video, poor Alakazam) the Machamp fell with 4 seconds to spare, it was such a buzz.VideoIn terms of the raid, my L40 experience knew it was an ‘easy’ raid but I was still very surprised how easy for a L29 player in such a short space of time, I’d encourage everyone to give it a go, considering how useful Machamp is in the game.In terms of the speed run, I reached L30 this evening a few hours later. I accidentally did a lucky egg without the lucky egg (doh) but being 20k short I stuck an egg on and evolved a few more thankfully. Again, experience was the key here, knowing how best to use lucky eggs (half hour route through town with PoGo Plus, eggs hatching and evolving 80ish mons for 90-100k a time. I used my freebie pass to take part in a Suicune raid almost daily, with my premium pass (every other day) to do a different raid. I did the whole experience using just the coins from being in no more than 3 gyms a day (usually 1), using the items from levelling up, buying only raid passes and one pack of 8 lucky eggs. New players starting now certainly have a much easier ride but it was fun all the same.Some stats:22 days 2 million XP 271km walked 8 gold type badges 28 raids 89 eggs hatched 689 Pokemon evolved13 Eevees evolved, 3 Espeons (intentional), 5 Vapes, 5 Flareons. Erm, where’s my Jolteon, RNG dammit? via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2hlz9ht