How to S.O.S chain ditto for iv's (and potential shinys)?

Question

i really want to start getting those 4 iv dittos but I cant because of the whole transforming/stat taking issue... any ideas?

Answer 1

1. As usual for SOS chains, if you're looking for a Ditto with a particular nature, lead with a Pokemon that has that nature. It doesn't matter what else it has.
2. Switch to something that has Recycle and no other moves (by going to the Move Deleter in Hau'oli City). Let Ditto transform into that.
3. Immediately switch to something that has either Trick or Switcheroo while Ditto uses its first pointless Recycle, then use that move to give it your Leppa Berry. (It has to be Trick or Switcheroo, not Bestow, because wild Dittos often come with their powder held items, and Bestow, unlike the other moves, will fail if the target already has an item.) Now the transformed Ditto is stuck in a loop of using Recycle to get back its Leppa Berry every fifth turn, can never run out of PP, and can never do anything else.
4. If your Trick user also has False Swipe, or a similar move like Super Fang that can guarantee bringing Ditto into the red without KOing it, use that now. Otherwise, switch to something that does have such a move, perhaps your nature-setter from the beginning.
5. Switch in a Spiritomb with Pressure. Make sure it has Memento and you deleted all its other moves, and that it's at least level 49 (so that no matter how much it may level up from gaining XP, it will never be prompted to learn any more moves). If you want to be extra-prepared, you can give it a Choice Scarf.
6. Go to the bag, put the cursor on Adrenaline Orb, press A, and just keep pressing A once or twice a second. You don't need to do anything else at this point: you have a low-health Ditto that can never run out of PP, Pressure on your side (to make its calls for help more likely to be answered), and when Ditto does call for help, all the help is ever capable of doing is transforming into your Spiritomb, then KOing themselves with Memento next turn (since there are no other moves they can pick). Meanwhile, you're not using up PP or items either, only spamming the Adrenaline Orb. You can keep this going as long as you want without even paying attention to the game as long as you keep tapping A, and the only resource it costs is time (and I guess electricity, from having the console's battery charging).
7. After about 20 minutes, Ditto should have had enough time to make 30 calls for help. This gets you into the 4IV section of the chain, and you can either switch to your Synchronize user at this point if you want better odds of a certain nature on the next Ditto (at which point you switch to the Recycler to let it transform into that, assuming it doesn't show Imposter and transform into the Synchronizer instead), or switch directly to the Recycle user if you'll simply take any Ditto after 30 as good enough, or even leave Spiritomb out if your plan is to keep passively mashing A for as long as it takes until you hear the shiny sound effect on an incoming Ditto.
8. If you get a 4IV Ditto to transform into your Recycle user, the next step is to go back to the Trick user, take back the first Ditto's Leppa Berry (possibly waiting one turn if you're at the wrong point in the 5-turn cycle), then give it to the second Ditto. The first Ditto will shortly run out of PP on Recycle and KO itself with Struggle, while the second now takes over the situation of never running out of PP. You'll want some way of paralyzing the second Ditto as well, to stop it from calling for help so you can throw a consistent stream of balls instead of having to dispatch more Dittos.
9. The real complication arises if you chose to leave the Spiritomb active and farm passively for a shiny Ditto, but not only do you get the shiny, it also has Imposter and transforms immediately. This means you can't get it to transform into a harmless Recycler to perform the previous step. Instead, it's irrevocably transformed into something whose only move will KO itself, and of course you can't throw balls while are two Pokemon out. This situation is why Spiritomb should have the Choice Scarf: both Spiritombs have the exact same speed stat by design, and this would remain true even if you used X Speeds or Roto Boosts earlier (since Ditto also copies those boosts), but you get to take advantage of the scarf and they don't (even if the wild Ditto holds Quick Powder, they don't get to benefit from that while transformed either). That means you're guaranteed to be faster, so you use Memento on them, then their Memento fails because they don't have a target. Even when Memento can't drop the stats any lower, it still succeeds and causes you to faint, but when the move fails such as for lack of target, they do not faint, which gives you the opportunity to bring a new Pokemon in at the end of the turn and still have the transformed Ditto-Spiritomb to face down.
10. This next Pokemon absolutely needs to use Substitute as its first move, which also makes Memento fail, and that's that. (The other benefit to using Pressure Spiritomb: its only other legal ability is Infiltrator, which would allow it to KO itself with Memento in spite of your Substitute, and you really don't want that if you got into this case.) It should follow this up with a way to paralyze Spiritomb (probably Thunder Wave), then any damaging move to finish off the original Recycle Ditto. Don't even bother trying to weaken the Ditto-Spiritomb, just start throwing balls while it's at full health. If you catch it early on, great. If not, Ditto can only use Memento 5 times, then it will move on to using Struggle. (It's possible that the Struggle may break your Substitute, but since Ditto is out of Memento PP at this point by definition, that's not a problem.) If you haven't caught it by the time it uses Struggle twice (reducing itself to 50% health), then you should use a Roto Catch Power on the following turn instead of a ball. Ditto will Struggle one more time down to 25% health, and then you can throw a Timer Ball, Repeat Ball, Dusk Ball (if it's night), or Level Ball (if your current Pokemon is at least level 61), which will have a 100% guaranteed catch rate and you don't have to worry about squandering your shiny Imposter Ditto.

Comments

That seems overly complicated