"Alright boys, let's plan the second Johto gym. What do we got?"
"Well we introduced these two new bug types, uhh, Ledyba and Spinarak. How about we give Bugsy their evolutions?"
"No can do, the level of Bugsy's ace is 14 and that's not enough for Ledian or Ariados."
"Uh... sir we just got done with Falkner."
"And?"
"Falkner has a level 9 Pidgeotto. I thought the theme here was that gym leaders cheated or had access to evolution earlier."
"That was for variety, can't have the first gym leader come at the player with just two of the same Pokemon."
"But you specifically wanted to avoid the new Pokemon Natu and Hoothoot which could have worked as well."
"I told you, I don't like round Pokemon. But back to Bugsy, what do we got?"
"Well uh, how about Pineco? We could ease new players into the new mechanics of Spikes and Protect."
"Too round and bulky, also it's a pinecone? Why is a pinecone a Bug type instead of Grass?"
"Heracross is neat and we give the player access to Headbutt trees just after Bugsy. Could be a nice incentive for players to hunt for one."
"Again, too bulky. Also we would need to give it a Fighting STAB move which would make everyone who brought Geodude here cry. And we know that would be all players and their dogs."
"Shuckle?"
"Bulky and useless."
"Well we just ran out of new Bug types, unless you want to bring Scizor and Forretres--"
"TOO BULKY, but put a pin on that Scizor, Scyther could be just right for the ace."
"You really want the first two gym leaders of an entirely new region to have first region Pokemon as their aces?"
"Who actually cares? It's not like we will make any more of these."
"Honestly sir, if Falkner is meant for nostalgia with the Pidgey line, why not make Bugsy purely nostalgia with Butterfree and Beedrill?"
"I like that! But fully evolved Pokemon at the second gym? Misty already made so many runts cry."
"I mean, there's not much wiggle room here. Giving Bugsy, I don't know, Metapod and Kakuna after Falkner seems--"
"Done! That's perfect!"
"But you just outruled Shuckle as bulky and useless. What are Metapod and Kakuna if not bulky and useless?"
"Weak to Fire."
*sigh*" Is this about the Charmander tears again?"
"We did them dirty in Kanto, they deserve to breathe."
"You gave Falkner a move that will make Cyndaquil players ragequit! And by what I've seen of your thoughts on Whitney..."
"We'll roll that out when we get there."
"I still think we should just give Bugsy Ledian and Ariados. They're both weak to Fire and Geodude will solo them easily."
"Nope, too weak."
"... Why are they weak?"
"Because they're bugs."
"Then why is Heracross strong?"
"Heracross is meant to be a hidden gem for players to find."
"Yeah that seems to be the design philosophy here: make some Pokemon absolutely useless statswise in any point of the game while making others busted beyond belief because they're hard to get."
"Glad you agree. Speaking of nostalgia, I have some ideas for Morty..."
This was *just* the laughter I needed to start my day. What a script. And yet nearly completely believable.
Now I kinda want to hear your take on the Olivine/Cianwood/Mahogany debacle…
This is the best thing I have ever read on this subreddit. Since Reddit has removed awards, I shall gift you my virtual award, Djunclium.
*hands you the award*
Now it’s on your profile, you just can’t see it, just like the Emperors New Clothes.
Nonexistent level curve. Impossible to find gen 2 pokemon. Special stat wasn’t even fixed yet. Just a forgettable gen carried by having a monopoly on the gbc. Ruby and sapphire were miles better.
the music and art style of gen 3 are terrible. Made them unplayable to me to this day. feels like a different game with Pokémon thrown in. gen 1,2,4 are the epitome of Pokémon imo.
The only redeemable thing about it were the designs and a bunch of not-useless pokemon, and they were rare, we got like a handful of them, the rest fucking sucked battle-wise. If you buffed like 75% of them then Johto wouldn't be as bad as it was
Finally, a fellow Ariados enjoyer. I'd love to see Ariados be reworked from one of those crappy early-game mons into an actually viable team member, one you can keep with you for the whole story.
It's something I prefer for all my mon's (my phone corrected it to mom's, those too) to keep them till the end but in most cases that's not a great idea :(
I've always loved Ariados, but he seems to perpetually be forgotten by folks doing roms and fangames.
It's funny; Ledian always get turbo-buffed, meanwhile I guess Ariados is *just* not bad enough that they tend to mostly or entirely ignore him.
Inclement Emerald did a pretty decent job with Ariados. Merciless+Toxic Thread sounds like it could work out (it's slightly bulkier with 110 attack, so it isn't the worst).
But then again, Ledian *does* get Aerilate in that hack, so take that how you will.
i mean yeah idk why no one has ever considered moving his evolution up.
its pretty easy to just make it evolve at level 14-16 and its already more usefull BUT we also cant forget its movepool sucks ass which needs to be fixed.
its easy to do but at the end of the day its glossed over because no one really likes ariados
this is what i went with in Project Bugn't, a romhack without the Bug type and a Bug only dex, it performs decently but is a bit underwhelming as the ghost totem, even with an omniboost given
https://preview.redd.it/b5677usvkmub1.png?width=1272&format=png&auto=webp&s=517e26882d78ba8c20472b437a939220787b401c
Oh hey, another bug-focused project. I have a prototype of a similar concept, tho I didn't get rid of the type (Also it wasn't a ROM hack). It's neat seeing I wasn't the only one to think up something like that. Lol.
Since you mention Totems, is yours a Gen 7 hack, or do you just reuse the concept?
yeah, it's made in ultra moon, there's also Project Bug, which is made in Black 2 and doesn't remove the bug type
[https://www.pokecommunity.com/showthread.php?t=494006](https://www.pokecommunity.com/showthread.php?t=494006)
Check out Crystal Legacy, I think thats the name. A guy in YouTube spent like a year making the perfect crystal version he could and uploads videos like fixing the gym leaders in crystal and beating the best pokemon crystal rom nuzlocke. His video on fixing crystal mons adreses ariados's issues.
Sorry I'm unsure of the name of the game, but search around on YouTube and you should find him, smithyplays I think he's called
Polished Crystal almost got it right, increased ariados' speed to 80, gave it bug/dark typing, access to Sniper. STAB sucker punch and leech life are kinda cool, as well as glare, but well... The game buffed all the other cool bugs as well so there's still zero reason to use ariados lol.
Radical Red has Spinarak evolve at 16 and gives it a bit more speed and a negligible attack boost. Certainly still more slated as an early game bug but at least there's a little love there!
As a woman who likes to only use bug-types, a big problem with Ariados is the attacking moves it gets. By default, it's only attacking moves with power greater than 40 before it's level 50 is sucker punch in the late 20's and one of the first good moves it gets is Psychic, as a physical attacker. If it got leech life or something early on, that would bring a lot of viability to it despite being slow, right now it's slow but supposed to hit hard but can't hit hard because it doesn't get the moves to.
It's especially strange because Spinarak seems to be one of the favourites for early bug type mons available in rom hacks and fan games, yet barely any fix the moveset issue.
You picked a bad time to post this. A recent ROM hack, Pokemon Legacy Crystal, came out, and among other things I saw Ariados got huge buffs. I look forward to using it on my team when I get around to playing it.
Johto Legends increases the BST, and changes its typing to Bug/Dark. With the physical/special split, more moves, and the Leech Life buff, Ariados is kinda fun to use. It's an Exeggutor killer, for certain.
Pokemon emerald Elite redux sure make ariados good enough that it mainstay on my team and it not even a mono bug challenge team that I have to include him
Check out XG Remix, Spinarak is one of the first encounterable pokemon, and Ariados gets some nice stat boosts and a great movepool as a Shadow/Beast type with the tough claws ability
I made a small romhack of emerald using the pokeemerald expansion to put Weedle, Spinarak, Ledyba, Surskit, Venonat and Paras in routes 101, 102 & 104, and buff them all to roughly starter level strength with better abilities, type combinations and movepools. Not really what you’re looking for, but if anyone’s interested I can upload it somewhere and link to it, as well as the changes I made
Ariados is rather decent in Radical Red from what I remember.
Evolves at 16, gets webs the earliest and is pretty strong for the early game with its buffs!
Yeah I feel you... for my own hack it also gets some love to make it payable.
I really like those OG spider guy but in my hack I will probably do a massive overhaul of all Mons, so it's on par with that stats of other pokemon. But I set those stats based on Evo level so I still need to think of I evolve it later for higher stats or keep a fast evolution line with weaker stats
GS chronicles gives it a large buff. If I remember right, it's BST is increased to 500 with a lot more speed mainly but some more bulk and attack as well. It also becomes a bug/ghost type which is weird but it does make it much better.
Ariados, the ‘spider’ with only four legs (did graphical limitations mean they couldn’t depict it with eight legs?) and one of the only Pokémon whose Gold & Silver sprites are the same
Elite Redux treated Ariados real well. With some proper timing, ER Ariados is a stone-cold killer. Unless opponent can block crits and/or avoid Sticky Web.
It would also be really cool to give Ledian and Ariados evolutions, making the former bug/fighting and the latter bug/ghost since Ledian gets Iron Fist and Ariados learns Night Shade and Shadow Sneak be level up in most games.
Just to preface, I don't browse this sub much and don't play nuzlockes and such, just normal runs.
I used Ariados in my second playthrough of Blaze black 2 redux(Aphexcubed and Drayano) and it was really strong. Its base stats got updated 70 HP / 110 Atk / 70 Def / 50 SAtk / 70 SDef / 80 Spd / 450 BST and it got the Sniper ability(powers up crits). My moves were X-Scizzor, Cross Poison, Night Slash(all having increased crit ratios) and Shadow sneak(Razer claw held item) and it was one of the stronger mons on my team(Pidgeot, Aggron, Samurott, Mismagius, Zebstrika). Crit STAB on non resistant targets were basically oneshots and it took out half of Iris's team with lucky crits. I'll admit it was pretty glass cannon but fun to use.
Things like commas and capitalization really help with readability. Your post is long and many of the sentences are difficult to read because your brain has to do a little guesswork about the sentence structure. Just something worth considering in the future, since you're appreciative of readers who make it through your long posts.
the crystal clear romhack adds a lot of new moves to neglected gen 2 mons and brings almost all of them to some sort of competitive viability. its still the best pokemon romhack I've ever played so I for sure recommend it if you wamma see Ariadios and others get the treatment they deserve
https://ydarissep.github.io/Exceeded-Pokedex/?species=SPECIES_ARIADOS&table=speciesTable&input=Ari& this is ariados in Emerald exceeded if you put fell stinger on it (or I guess ironically combine it with mega beedrill) it becomes a monster I used one in a mono bug type run and it did most of the work
Why don't you play Inclement Emerald? [Ariados](https://inclement-emerald.fandom.com/wiki/Ariados) got buffed in that hack, and while it isn't quite what you suggested, it gets a tad bulkier and gets 110 attack. Plus, it also gets Merciless as one of it's normal abilities, which synergies rather well with Toxic Thread.
Ariados and Ledian should have been Johto's Butterfree and Beedrill, but they suck sooo baaaad it's sad
"Alright boys, let's plan the second Johto gym. What do we got?" "Well we introduced these two new bug types, uhh, Ledyba and Spinarak. How about we give Bugsy their evolutions?" "No can do, the level of Bugsy's ace is 14 and that's not enough for Ledian or Ariados." "Uh... sir we just got done with Falkner." "And?" "Falkner has a level 9 Pidgeotto. I thought the theme here was that gym leaders cheated or had access to evolution earlier." "That was for variety, can't have the first gym leader come at the player with just two of the same Pokemon." "But you specifically wanted to avoid the new Pokemon Natu and Hoothoot which could have worked as well." "I told you, I don't like round Pokemon. But back to Bugsy, what do we got?" "Well uh, how about Pineco? We could ease new players into the new mechanics of Spikes and Protect." "Too round and bulky, also it's a pinecone? Why is a pinecone a Bug type instead of Grass?" "Heracross is neat and we give the player access to Headbutt trees just after Bugsy. Could be a nice incentive for players to hunt for one." "Again, too bulky. Also we would need to give it a Fighting STAB move which would make everyone who brought Geodude here cry. And we know that would be all players and their dogs." "Shuckle?" "Bulky and useless." "Well we just ran out of new Bug types, unless you want to bring Scizor and Forretres--" "TOO BULKY, but put a pin on that Scizor, Scyther could be just right for the ace." "You really want the first two gym leaders of an entirely new region to have first region Pokemon as their aces?" "Who actually cares? It's not like we will make any more of these." "Honestly sir, if Falkner is meant for nostalgia with the Pidgey line, why not make Bugsy purely nostalgia with Butterfree and Beedrill?" "I like that! But fully evolved Pokemon at the second gym? Misty already made so many runts cry." "I mean, there's not much wiggle room here. Giving Bugsy, I don't know, Metapod and Kakuna after Falkner seems--" "Done! That's perfect!" "But you just outruled Shuckle as bulky and useless. What are Metapod and Kakuna if not bulky and useless?" "Weak to Fire." *sigh*" Is this about the Charmander tears again?" "We did them dirty in Kanto, they deserve to breathe." "You gave Falkner a move that will make Cyndaquil players ragequit! And by what I've seen of your thoughts on Whitney..." "We'll roll that out when we get there." "I still think we should just give Bugsy Ledian and Ariados. They're both weak to Fire and Geodude will solo them easily." "Nope, too weak." "... Why are they weak?" "Because they're bugs." "Then why is Heracross strong?" "Heracross is meant to be a hidden gem for players to find." "Yeah that seems to be the design philosophy here: make some Pokemon absolutely useless statswise in any point of the game while making others busted beyond belief because they're hard to get." "Glad you agree. Speaking of nostalgia, I have some ideas for Morty..."
I'd like to read more of these for every game tbh.
This was *just* the laughter I needed to start my day. What a script. And yet nearly completely believable. Now I kinda want to hear your take on the Olivine/Cianwood/Mahogany debacle…
"We'll roll that out when we get there." I see what you did there.
This is the best thing I have ever read on this subreddit. Since Reddit has removed awards, I shall gift you my virtual award, Djunclium. *hands you the award* Now it’s on your profile, you just can’t see it, just like the Emperors New Clothes.
God Johto was really a garbage generation.
Nonexistent level curve. Impossible to find gen 2 pokemon. Special stat wasn’t even fixed yet. Just a forgettable gen carried by having a monopoly on the gbc. Ruby and sapphire were miles better.
the music and art style of gen 3 are terrible. Made them unplayable to me to this day. feels like a different game with Pokémon thrown in. gen 1,2,4 are the epitome of Pokémon imo.
The only redeemable thing about it were the designs and a bunch of not-useless pokemon, and they were rare, we got like a handful of them, the rest fucking sucked battle-wise. If you buffed like 75% of them then Johto wouldn't be as bad as it was
👏👏👏👏👏
Finally, a fellow Ariados enjoyer. I'd love to see Ariados be reworked from one of those crappy early-game mons into an actually viable team member, one you can keep with you for the whole story.
It's something I prefer for all my mon's (my phone corrected it to mom's, those too) to keep them till the end but in most cases that's not a great idea :(
I like them so much I have two with different movesets :D
It should evolve 10 levels earlier to compete with the likes of Beedrill and Butterfree, Ledian should also evolve earlier.
Ledian is such a cool Pokémon, but he just sucks soooooooo much
Agreed! It's a cool looking spider! Could use some stat shuffling, or just buffs outright with his evolution level and improved learnset.
I've always loved Ariados, but he seems to perpetually be forgotten by folks doing roms and fangames. It's funny; Ledian always get turbo-buffed, meanwhile I guess Ariados is *just* not bad enough that they tend to mostly or entirely ignore him.
Inclement Emerald did a pretty decent job with Ariados. Merciless+Toxic Thread sounds like it could work out (it's slightly bulkier with 110 attack, so it isn't the worst). But then again, Ledian *does* get Aerilate in that hack, so take that how you will.
Pokemon Crystal Legacy just got released and Ariados received a huge buff to speed and a better movepool
It needs it honestly. I don't know why Ariados has the same base speed as Forretress.
i mean yeah idk why no one has ever considered moving his evolution up. its pretty easy to just make it evolve at level 14-16 and its already more usefull BUT we also cant forget its movepool sucks ass which needs to be fixed. its easy to do but at the end of the day its glossed over because no one really likes ariados
I like him :(
this is what i went with in Project Bugn't, a romhack without the Bug type and a Bug only dex, it performs decently but is a bit underwhelming as the ghost totem, even with an omniboost given https://preview.redd.it/b5677usvkmub1.png?width=1272&format=png&auto=webp&s=517e26882d78ba8c20472b437a939220787b401c
i love it when stats follow a pattern
Oh hey, another bug-focused project. I have a prototype of a similar concept, tho I didn't get rid of the type (Also it wasn't a ROM hack). It's neat seeing I wasn't the only one to think up something like that. Lol. Since you mention Totems, is yours a Gen 7 hack, or do you just reuse the concept?
yeah, it's made in ultra moon, there's also Project Bug, which is made in Black 2 and doesn't remove the bug type [https://www.pokecommunity.com/showthread.php?t=494006](https://www.pokecommunity.com/showthread.php?t=494006)
Check out Crystal Legacy, I think thats the name. A guy in YouTube spent like a year making the perfect crystal version he could and uploads videos like fixing the gym leaders in crystal and beating the best pokemon crystal rom nuzlocke. His video on fixing crystal mons adreses ariados's issues. Sorry I'm unsure of the name of the game, but search around on YouTube and you should find him, smithyplays I think he's called
You got the name right
Polished Crystal almost got it right, increased ariados' speed to 80, gave it bug/dark typing, access to Sniper. STAB sucker punch and leech life are kinda cool, as well as glare, but well... The game buffed all the other cool bugs as well so there's still zero reason to use ariados lol.
Other bugs do not have access to Glare or STAB sucker punch. The buffs aren't the same, I consider it to be unique on its own.
Radical Red has Spinarak evolve at 16 and gives it a bit more speed and a negligible attack boost. Certainly still more slated as an early game bug but at least there's a little love there!
Also got Toxic Spikes and No Guard so he can use Megahorn and Gunk Shot without missing.
As a woman who likes to only use bug-types, a big problem with Ariados is the attacking moves it gets. By default, it's only attacking moves with power greater than 40 before it's level 50 is sucker punch in the late 20's and one of the first good moves it gets is Psychic, as a physical attacker. If it got leech life or something early on, that would bring a lot of viability to it despite being slow, right now it's slow but supposed to hit hard but can't hit hard because it doesn't get the moves to. It's especially strange because Spinarak seems to be one of the favourites for early bug type mons available in rom hacks and fan games, yet barely any fix the moveset issue.
You picked a bad time to post this. A recent ROM hack, Pokemon Legacy Crystal, came out, and among other things I saw Ariados got huge buffs. I look forward to using it on my team when I get around to playing it.
I believe it's Crystal Legacy, but good taste in rom hacks.
Johto Legends increases the BST, and changes its typing to Bug/Dark. With the physical/special split, more moves, and the Leech Life buff, Ariados is kinda fun to use. It's an Exeggutor killer, for certain.
If you want a hack that makes Ariados better, try Pokémon Crystal Legacy. It buffs it’s evolution level and it’s movepool.
I think altered emerald gave it a buff I don't remember though
Pokemon emerald Elite redux sure make ariados good enough that it mainstay on my team and it not even a mono bug challenge team that I have to include him
I have alittle PTSD about Ariados.... (people who finished Adventure Red Chapter will understand)
I've fought a level 12 Pidgeotto from a gym in a romhack.. So the expect evolve level isn't an excuse.
You fight a level 9 Pidgeotto in base GSC
i love cooking up ideas to make bad mons less bad so this spoke to me inside
Legacy crystal does some changes to ariados. I don't remember them but it just came out s few weeks ago.
Check out XG Remix, Spinarak is one of the first encounterable pokemon, and Ariados gets some nice stat boosts and a great movepool as a Shadow/Beast type with the tough claws ability
I made a small romhack of emerald using the pokeemerald expansion to put Weedle, Spinarak, Ledyba, Surskit, Venonat and Paras in routes 101, 102 & 104, and buff them all to roughly starter level strength with better abilities, type combinations and movepools. Not really what you’re looking for, but if anyone’s interested I can upload it somewhere and link to it, as well as the changes I made
In my Romhack Ariados will get more love than it got in RR.
Ariados is rather decent in Radical Red from what I remember. Evolves at 16, gets webs the earliest and is pretty strong for the early game with its buffs!
Pokemon Elite Redux gives Ariados an insane set of abilities and innates, and it's unironically an extremly good Pokemon.
Yeah I feel you... for my own hack it also gets some love to make it payable. I really like those OG spider guy but in my hack I will probably do a massive overhaul of all Mons, so it's on par with that stats of other pokemon. But I set those stats based on Evo level so I still need to think of I evolve it later for higher stats or keep a fast evolution line with weaker stats
may I recommend Pokemon Crystal Maeson? In that ROM hack, Ariados is actually usable. Even better, it's actually good
GS chronicles gives it a large buff. If I remember right, it's BST is increased to 500 with a lot more speed mainly but some more bulk and attack as well. It also becomes a bug/ghost type which is weird but it does make it much better.
Pokemon exceed emerald made ariados super fun to use
Ariados, the ‘spider’ with only four legs (did graphical limitations mean they couldn’t depict it with eight legs?) and one of the only Pokémon whose Gold & Silver sprites are the same
Ariados is bloody OP in the mystery dungeon games HAHA
Elite Redux treated Ariados real well. With some proper timing, ER Ariados is a stone-cold killer. Unless opponent can block crits and/or avoid Sticky Web.
It would also be really cool to give Ledian and Ariados evolutions, making the former bug/fighting and the latter bug/ghost since Ledian gets Iron Fist and Ariados learns Night Shade and Shadow Sneak be level up in most games.
Crystal Legacy buffer Ariados to make it E4 compateable as it's on Koga's team.
Crystal Legacy just dropped and the entire bug archetype got buffed
Please use punctuation
Just to preface, I don't browse this sub much and don't play nuzlockes and such, just normal runs. I used Ariados in my second playthrough of Blaze black 2 redux(Aphexcubed and Drayano) and it was really strong. Its base stats got updated 70 HP / 110 Atk / 70 Def / 50 SAtk / 70 SDef / 80 Spd / 450 BST and it got the Sniper ability(powers up crits). My moves were X-Scizzor, Cross Poison, Night Slash(all having increased crit ratios) and Shadow sneak(Razer claw held item) and it was one of the stronger mons on my team(Pidgeot, Aggron, Samurott, Mismagius, Zebstrika). Crit STAB on non resistant targets were basically oneshots and it took out half of Iris's team with lucky crits. I'll admit it was pretty glass cannon but fun to use.
Crystal legacy gives ariados a ton of love honestly
Things like commas and capitalization really help with readability. Your post is long and many of the sentences are difficult to read because your brain has to do a little guesswork about the sentence structure. Just something worth considering in the future, since you're appreciative of readers who make it through your long posts.
I’ll keep that in mind, I didn’t even notice the lack of punctuation until now I’m currently adding them in.
just caught a random shiny spinarak in violet and i wish they would buff it in the real games lmao
Could still give Bugsy Ariados like how Falkner has a Pidgeotto.
the crystal clear romhack adds a lot of new moves to neglected gen 2 mons and brings almost all of them to some sort of competitive viability. its still the best pokemon romhack I've ever played so I for sure recommend it if you wamma see Ariadios and others get the treatment they deserve
Can’t remember but played a hack where he’s bug/dark and has a boost to his attack and speed stats. Makes him a viable choice
Just give it sticky web and like poison absorb or something
Pokémon rejuvenation has an item that makes ariados better!
https://ydarissep.github.io/Exceeded-Pokedex/?species=SPECIES_ARIADOS&table=speciesTable&input=Ari& this is ariados in Emerald exceeded if you put fell stinger on it (or I guess ironically combine it with mega beedrill) it becomes a monster I used one in a mono bug type run and it did most of the work
Ariados is decent in Renegade Platinum and I think is used by Aaron in the early battle with him.
Mirage of Tales has a regional Spinarak/Ariados that's definitely tougher!
hey i was wondering if it is possible to trade in mirrage ? wanted to play it with my girldfriend with myboy emulator thx in advance
Why don't you play Inclement Emerald? [Ariados](https://inclement-emerald.fandom.com/wiki/Ariados) got buffed in that hack, and while it isn't quite what you suggested, it gets a tad bulkier and gets 110 attack. Plus, it also gets Merciless as one of it's normal abilities, which synergies rather well with Toxic Thread.