Respectfully, this is a weird gripe.
Magby and Elekid are uncommon compared to their evolutions, but they still appear regularly in exactly the places where those evolutions will try to zap you. Likewise, Elekid is a guaranteed spawn in the Icebound Falls area. They should not be hard to find.
Furthermore... yeah, you toss them berries. I understand the impulse to catch the first Munchlax you see instead of leading it around with 20 berries for dex completion, having made the same mistake myself at first contact, but open-wide-here-comes-the-plane is a pretty consistent pattern. It's never "Punt Happiny with a Fighting-type move 1/3/5/7/10." It's always "Render unto Pichu as thou didst unto Mime Jr."
OK in order
1. Magby is a
4-6% spawn and requires time to either clear out the spawns or wait them out by cycling through rest camps, which invovles a lot of little time sinks (warping back to the camp, resting, warp back to the volcano, fly around [possibly rekill/catch everyone], repeat as needed). This becomes just very tedious and hey!
guess what! When I was doing this for the trio of Happiny, Munchlax & Pichu I saw in order about 2, 2, and
1 over hte period of about 3 hours across 2 days and as many different areas. It sucked shit. I have
still not seen another Pichu outside of the extremely lucky swarm despite constantly going back to those areas for other, non-baby related purposes. It's insane.
2. At the time of writing this I was not aware Elekid had the guaranteed spawns. I found that out on my own when I went back to the icelands. Because you see
following the pattern implied by Happiny, Pichu, Munchlax & Magby, I had made the assumption that it, too, would be similar. Mercifully no it was like Riolu with its guaranteed spawns (& maybe more akin to cleffa, who was a lovely baby with a gimmick that its entire line shows up in one area at night farily common).
3. And yeah the berry thing is a pattern. That's why I made a joke about putting u pthe sticky note. Unfortunately it was a pattern that
I did not notice until having to clear out the dex so when I'm going through the game the first time and not looking up things ahead of time I'm not thinking the babies are meant to be rare spawns (i was theorizing weather-based spawns or they were inconsistently uncommon) nor was I looking up their stuff before capturing them the first time.
I... do not understand this comment. What takes 25 uses of a move? Unless you're talking about 100% maxed out research for every Pokémon in the dex, which is a fool's errand that demands far more than Leafage x25, most entries can be filled (Lv. 10) in only 3 moves. For example, Samurott gives 2 levels just for obtaining it and 8 more levels for using Strong-style Ceaseless Edge three times. It can be completed in one swoop by aggroing a trio of Geodude. Obtaining one of each stage in the family for a living dex takes some spacetime distortion voodoo, but that is just a matter of chucking a ball at the right place and the right time. Neither of these goals involves the tedium of spamming a move 25 times. What exactly is so awful?
Here is how Magby's Research Level 10 maths out if yo uhave exactly one of them
Number caught 1 = 2 points
Mine was lucky, i got it without being spotted, so we're up to 3 points
I didnt get it while it was sleeping and I gave it no food (granted in retrospect this would've been difficult anyway, the volcano is very cramped and it spawned around all thsoe other magmar, but whatever), so those won't give any points
So if I want Level 10 the only thing I can do if I don't (or can't, because the RNG is not being kind) catch more is spam flame wheel
25 times. AND THEN evolve it. And had I not managed to get that first one unnoticed I'd have no choice, I would have to just keep doing the reset loops again and again until one spawned.
For most pokemon this isn't necessarily an issue, though it sure comes close at times. Spreading the tasks around
Much mercy upon me, however, the trade exploit was a thing I could do so once my pal & I managed to align our watches and swap magby back & forth a number of times I was saved from either tediously hunting for another one or tediously grinding out flame wheels.
(Incidentally Magby doesn't seem to show up in rifts at all, I was disappointed, I saw so many magmars and even a magmortar.)
Anyway all that grousing aside I put the nose to the grindstone and finished everything out today. The exact details of the rifts (their times, the chances of things happening, what pauses the timer, what resets them, the exact spawns to expect and where) meant I could wait things out and got lucky in the spawns (my FIFTH rift finalyl had another cranidos, good lord) so I completed the living dex too. I even found a Cherubi on mt coronet, something that is apparently much more common there but just...never had the right trees shaking, apparently. Or bad rolls on who would show up....RNG is the real name of this game. I'm very happy with that, I was willing to just write the whole thing off because rifts felt so RNG based (honestly they still kind of are, Coronet & the Mirelands are very stuffed with Exclusive Pokemon and Cherubi just never wanted to spawn, but everything aligned. Happy end!
