Over and under-leveling

Pendraflare

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    When you play through a Pokémon game, whether it be a normal playthrough, a Nuzlocke or some other kind of challenge, how are you about leveling your Pokémon?

    In normal plays I don't really care. I used to go through Emerald with only three Pokémon for a majority of the game and would have a Level 46+ starter and two over Level 35 before I would arrive in Fortree City. In my main White 2 play, my entire team was over Iris' highest (all 60) when I got past Victory Road, and in my main X I used the Exp. Share most of the game but when I reached the league my levels were around theirs, haha. So yeah, just goes to show how much I am with that.

    In Nuzlockes and Wedlockes, however, I often try to stay ahead of the game, but i'm not that guy who levels up like 5 levels past the Gym Leader (unless I was doing an un-evolved Nuzlocke or something). All my recent Wedlockes (White, White 2, X and Heart Gold) I used a level cap to not exceed the next Gym Leader (but for Kanto in HGSS it hardly matters). In the Gen III games and earlier I wouldn't really care but would't deliberately exceed it.

    When it comes to other challenges like Monotypes and Mono-Colors? That's when I feel like YOLO'ing it and trying to be as low level as possible, except against the particularly brutal Gym Leaders (i.e. Norman), and N and Ghetsis in BW. In a Normal Monotype on Y I recently marathoned for the Stadium Arcadium event, my entire team was Level 51/52 upon reaching Wulfric, for example, and I only trained them to 59 before I took on the Elite Four, all of which was being done with no bag items in battle. The same was with my Red Mono-Color I did back in the spring.

    How about you guys? How are you with your leveling? Discuss.
     
    I haven't been overleveled for a long time in any of the games (well, maybe X, because of the Exp Share), because it simply wasn't neccessary. I've destroyed the Gen 1 League using mostly Lv. 40 Pokemon and managed to beat the Hoenn League with a full team of Lv. 50s (Heracross really wrecks those people)

    If you know what you are doing it gets a lot easier and also: never trust Strategy Guides, because they are wrong most of the time ("You need a Lv. 74 Pokemon in order to beat the gen 1 Pokemon League.").

    But I have to admit, I've never played a challenge, so I don't know how I would handle these situations.
     
    I tend to over level purely due to my love of battling. I battle as much as I can whenever I feel like it, so I end up very over leveled. On my first pokemon game, Soul Silver, I was Level 10 BEFORE the first Rival battle. :3c
     
    I have a tendency to over-level my mons. Just recently, I restarted Pokemon XD and I was already between levels 21-23 by the time I fought the first Cipher Admin.
     
    In regular playthroughs, I usually have a team of about 5-6 Pokemon, though preferably 6. The way I go about leveling up is I make sure every team member is equal. Is Team Member #3 four levels under the rest of the team? Better use just him against a Gym Leader that specializes in a type which this Pokemon weak against! And so on. Hyper Potions and Revives help a lot.
     
    If I just need to beat the game, I'll generally use 2-3 pokemon and some hm slaves. Get's the job done fairly quickly without too much thought.

    EDIT: I should have mentioned that the means that the 2-3 are generally overleveled (and generally without the need to grind).
     
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    Formerly, what I would do is focus only on one Pokémon pre-game (as in, before defeating Elite Four and Champion), and train it as much as I possibly can. It was indeed tough to rely on it every once in a while when in a match, but that was easily fixable with recovery and battle items. Later, I began to grow out of this, and started training more of my Pokémon an equal amount, and was quite enjoying it. Now, I just simply can't live without having all my teammates in some balanced level, haha.
     
    I find myself always being under leveled. The only time I was over-leveled was in X/Y. I find being under leveled more challenging.Especially when doing a challenge like a nuzlocke, or wedlocke. lThe only time I had to train up before taking on the Elite 4 and champion was in Pokemon Platinum. I was perfectly fine with under leveled Pokemon in all other Generations.
     
    In Platinum understandably you'd want to be high leveled because of Cynthia, and possibly BW for N and Ghetsis, but Nuzlockes and Wedlockes are THE LAST thing you want to be under-leveled in, especially Wedlockes. But yeah, in other challenges I go in at lower levels pretty commonly.
     
    I'm like never a victim over over levelling my Pokémon. I don't ever think I've done it, but if you count emulators I have. (speed button ftw) Yeah, but I tend have my Pokémon under-levelled like in every playthrough because I'm legit lazy, or I just don't know why, I've even been grinding and I'm so genuinely confused, haha.

    Like in my on-going run of White 2. I level up my Pokémon to 30 when I reach Elesa, and once I'm at Twist Mountain I'm once again under levelled. Thank god for Audinos. They just make my life SO easier.
     
    I think the only time I was over-levelled was when I was playing Silver for the first time, and everything was just so new and exciting that I battled anything that moved lol xD


    Now I only battle trainers to get experience so I tend to be under-levelled, as that previous experience made me sweep through certain parts far too easily whereas now I enjoy being stopped in my tracks by a particularly difficult Gym Leader and having to train harder. Besides, even when I'm lower-levelled the speed and attack of my homegrown pokés tends to outweigh the defences of my opponents at the best of times so I'd hate to think what it'd be like if I was 10 levels ahead or something lol :) Finally I've also become a bit obsessive over making sure all my pokés are on or at least around the same level lol whereas I didn't care as much in the past :)
     
    I have a policy to have all my Pokemon around similar levels at all times. When it comes to gym leader and elite 4 matches, my team will usually be either at least a few levels below or above that of my opponents and I get along with the game just fine. I usually check up on my opponent's Pokemon's levels beforehand just to be on the safe side. If they're too low, I'd train them all up equally until they're at reasonably safe levels before taking them on.
     
    I like to keep them the same level, just so it doesn't look wonky. I overleveled my Ampharos by quite a bit in Gold, but that was just because it hit so much harder than my other Pokemon, so I used it more. I still end up a bit underleveled, though, like I was for N/Ghetsis in my White. I was only saved by Zekrom having a Modest nature and Dragonbreath. I don't train that much, but I usually do if I'm horribly underleveled for, say, gym battles. I go for lower levels generally because I don't wanna just plow through the game so easily.
     
    I usually go with a strategy of very rarely grinding on wild pokemon, but fighting most trainers, even the avoidable ones, and that tends to work out pretty well in terms of meeting Gym Leaders and Elite 4 members at compatible levels. To achieve that in gen 6 though, you obviously have to turn off Exp Share too.

    I also liked that in gen 5, you were rewarded for using pokemon at a lower level, as they'd get more exp points if they defeated higher leveled pokemon. I found it very helpful in terms of getting newly caught pokemon up to the same level as the rest of the party.
     
    Usually when I have a team of 6 I'm a little bit underleveled because I absolutely hate grinding @_@ It provides a bit of a challenge though, since I'm never drastically underleveled unless I just caught the Pokemon I want to use.

    Vinnie Vegas said:
    I usually go with a strategy of very rarely grinding on wild pokemon, but fighting most trainers, even the avoidable ones, and that tends to work out pretty well in terms of meeting Gym Leaders and Elite 4 members at compatible levels. To achieve that in gen 6 though, you obviously have to turn off Exp Share too.

    I also liked that in gen 5, you were rewarded for using pokemon at a lower level, as they'd get more exp points if they defeated higher leveled pokemon. I found it very helpful in terms of getting newly caught pokemon up to the same level as the rest of the party.
    Click to expand...

    I really liked this, too, until you had higher-level Pokemon, because in order to gain any EXP you basically had to use the Lucky Egg. It also made it almost necessary to go Audino-searching or else you'd be underleveled, so I didn't really like this system that much.
     
    Oh, right, Lucky Egg--I'd completely forgotten about this item after being introduced to XY's Experience Share. It's very useful, though; makes leveling-up much faster and easier.
     
    For the most part, I rely on Trainers for leveling my Pokemon; I rarely train them against wild Pokemon unless they're severely underleveled, or if I'm EV Training via Hordes. I almost always never have problems fighting tougher Trainers, even if my Pokemon are levels below theirs. Of course, in XY Amie + the Exp. Share made it much easier for my Pokemon to become overleveled. The Lucky Egg + Exp. Power help as well. Generally, I try to keep my team members around the same level, though I've had some that were much higher leveled than others due to their being more useful.

    In Nuzlockes/difficult challenges, I will train my Pokemon by having them fight wild Pokemon. In the case of Nuzlockes, I don't want any of my team members dying, so it's vital they're strong enough to take on opponents.
     
    I am usually under levelled I usually have 6 Pokémon pretty early and try to use them all pretty evenly and when I see something that catches my interest I catch them and usually have to spend a lot of time catching them up to my current team.
     
    Typically, I'm always slightly over-leveled. I always battle every single available trainer on each route and actually take on wild encounters, with the exception of wild encounters in caves. Usually, this leads to my team bloated with way more experience than they should. Back when I was younger though, it was seldom of me using beyond four pokemon. Whenever I did this, my teams level was much higher than they should be. My first run of Diamond was criminal of this, as my Empoleon had reached Lv. 75 by the time I finished the Elite Four with three other pokemon hovering around at the mid Lv. 60 range.

    For challenge runs, I forcefully keep my levels on par with the next major trainer. Wouldn't be a very challenging run if I was curbstomping everything, now would it?
     
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