Looking for Serperior
Posted May 19, 2024There is an always-shiny Haxorus in Pokémon Black 2 and White 2. But to capture it, you need to see every Pokémon in the Unova Pokédex. All 297 of them.
Shiny on the right
Now, you don’t actually have to see every Pokémon in the Unova Pokédex - the event legendaries are excluded (Victini, Genesect, Keldeo, and Meloetta). But if you want to see them to get to 301 then you can.
This post isn’t really about the shiny Haxorus though. It’s about how you find all of the Unova dex Pokémon. Specifically, for me, Serperior.
Did you know Serperior has hands?
As usual, there are version exclusives between the two games, like Vullaby, Mandibuzz, Rufflet, and Braviary (and some others). But I have both games and enough DSes to solve that problem myself. My problem was the starters.
With advance planning, two copies of the game is enough. But I hadn’t planned for this in advance, and my starters were already in Bank, inaccessible to these two Generation 5 games.
Throughout the game, assuming you level up your starter, you’ll see one of the three evolutionary lines that way (Tepig, Pignite, and Emboar for me, in this case). And you will also see all three evolutions of the starter that has a type advantage against you, because of your rival (Oshawott, Dewott, and Samurott for me).
Your rival Hugh was in it to help you all along
But what about the third one? The starters are not found in the wild. Part way through the story, you fight a double battle alongside the other player character (whichever of the girl or boy you didn’t pick for yourself), and they use the middle evolution of the third starter line (Servine for me).
So you need to find Snivy and Serperior. Conventional wisdom is that you have to trade to do this. Start a new game and trade over the missing starter to you and raise it. A lot of forums and Q&A websites make that seem like the only option.
But then I found this GameFAQs post from 2013. It turns out you can find Serperior in the game, and GameFAQs user Scizoreon is here to tell us how.
If you have a copy of Black or White (the first Generation 5 games) where you did not choose Snivy and you do a Memory Link (which has come up on this blog before) with that game, then some special trainer battles will occur. And two trainers will spawn, using the final evolutions of the two starters you didn’t choose in the original game.
And Scizoreon was even nice enough to avoid spoiling who the trainers are, so I will do the same!
This allows you to see Serperior!
Success! Now you, too, have seen Serperior. Twice!
But what about Snivy? Sorry, it does seem like you have to trade for that one!