Should I keep my current Trapinch or catch a new one?

Question

Hey folks, I'm playing through Emerald for the first time along with a friend that I battle with after every gym.
So I wanna use a Trapinch in my team, so I leveled one up so far to lv. 30 and taught it Dig with the TM... however its ability is Hyper Cutter...
After catching a second Trapinch, I noticed it also has Arena Trap for an ability, which would be useful against my friend in battle.

Should I keep the Trapinch I have, or raise the new one with the better ability, but without Dig?

Answer 1

I'm quite confident that raising the Trapinch with Arena Trap would do you well in the long run. As you've identified, it's a much better ability for player v. player use, and choosing it shouldn't disadvantage you too much in the short-term either. It's more about where you are in the game and how soon you can correct the mistake.

You indicated that you have trained a Pokemon to level 30 'so far' -- how high can you actually go at the moment? Trapinch can learn Dig at level 41 if you hold back its evolution, so the Trapinch with Arena Trap won't have to go long without Dig. Also, if you can access the Seafloor Cavern, there is an Earthquake TM there which makes for a much better move than Dig anyway.

If you're at the point where you're training level 30 Pokemon then you'll probably be off to the Seafloor Cavern soon, so I'd be picking up the Earthquake TM there and teaching it to the Trapinch with Arena Trap. I don't think Dig is worth the fuss; you'll only have it for a while before you replace it with Earthquake.

Comments

Thanks for the reply! I'm at the point in the game of beating the 5th gym, and being able to use Surf.  My friend and i meet up once a week to play, and we are due to battle straight up so we've promised not to progress in the game till we meet up. But i can still level up a pokemon via wild battles in towns already visited.

Perhaps i may need to use the dig level 30 for our next battle but have the new trapinch ready for the next round.  He has a hectic rock and fire type pokemon i would love to trap and win the battle. He's better at the game than me

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Sounds like a plan! Trapping Magcargo (assuming that's the Pokemon he has?) should be pretty smooth if you can get the hit in first -- maybe just evolve to Vibrava instead if it's too much of a concern? Magcargo has 3x Trapinch's base Speed as strange as that sounds, so I'd definitely be careful.

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Your Trapinch's ability will eventually become levitate regardless of its current ability, so I don't think the temporary arena trap will be worth it.

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Like sumwun said, why use a different trapinch that you need to level up more to get a vibrava when it's ability become levitate regardless.  So, I might as well just grind to get a vibrava using the hyper cutter trapinch.

Answer 2

Naturally, it dosent matter if your not keeping it as a Trapinch. Vibrava and Flygon are stuck with Levitate, making it a waste of time trying to get good abilities.

So your good enough with any Trapinch if you evolve it before the next gym.

Otherwise, I'd go for Arena Trap for when your against Rock/Steel/Fire/Electric/Poison Pokemon.

Comments

thanks for the replies. It didn't take long for me to evolve to  vibrava. I taught it fly, and it has dig too! It's an awesome pokemon