How can I stop Beldum from KOing itself with Take Down in SOS chains?

Question

I'm trying to shiny hunt beldum in sun but it has Take Down and keeps fainting itself before I can catch it. So is there anyway I can prevent it.

Comments

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Et_oh1_zbY

I used this to get Shiny Beldums.

Answer 1

This is the team I use for a Beldum chain.

• If you want Beldum to have a particular nature (or at least a 52% chance at it), lead with (slot 1) a Pokemon with that nature. It doesn't matter what it is, but if you want to set up Sticky Web, your best opportunity lies in having your fixed-nature Pokemon also be the Sticky Web user, and use that move right away. This will allow you to see whether an incoming Beldum has Clear Body (in which case the ability will pop up and prevent the stat drop) or the hidden ability, Light Metal, which has no particular interaction with Sticky Web and will take the stat drop just fine, if you care about one of those abilities. In exchange for that fore-knowledge about the ability, it will make every single call (whether it's one you want to keep or reject) take longer from the extra messages that appear; you'll have to decide if that trade-off is worth it to you.
• Immediately switch to (slot 2) Trevenant, Skill Swap for Harvest and Trick for Leppa Berry, as is useful in almost all chains. Apart from possibly the first turn if you decided to set Sticky Web, you will never again present a non-ghost for Beldum to hit with Take Down.
• Switch to (slot 3) Decidueye and use False Swipe until Beldum is in the red. If it calls in help during this time, feel free to KO the newcomer. Decidueye should hold a rather unusual item called the Lagging Tail (or Full Incense, its equivalent that you can buy at the incense shop), though the purpose of that item isn't relevant yet.
• Switch to (slot 4) Gourgeist (or Pumpkaboo, either one works). Neither of these Pokemon are available in any Alola game, so they have to be transferred up from Kalos, or you can crawl the GTS in search of one, but their role is absolutely irreplaceable: use Trick-or-Treat to add Ghost to Beldum's types.
• Switch back to Decidueye, and this is where the Lagging Tail becomes relevant. Use Baton Pass so that you get to switch, but not until after Beldum has already moved this turn, because you want to switch in a non-Ghost-type here but can't allow Beldum to hit itself to death with recoil. Specifically, you should switch to (slot 5) Mew, provided that you've picked up one of the many Mew events that have been available over the years. Baton Pass is an egg move for the Rowlet line; if you don't have that move handy, what you can do instead is let Beldum call for help, and KO the newcomer with Lagging Tail U-turn instead.
• You have Mew out for a reason, but it's a non-ghost type, and you still need to prevent Beldum from hitting. For that reason, the first move Mew uses needs to be Reflect Type, taking Beldum's Steel/Psychic/Ghost typing for itself, so that Take Down keeps failing as before.
• Now use the Adrenaline Orb if you haven't already, and everything is in place. You have Mew's Synchronize active, but it doesn't look at Mew's own nature--it looks at whatever nature you had in slot 1 way back at the beginning of the battle. All incoming Beldums will have a 52% chance of having that nature, and a 2% chance of any other random nature. You can have Sticky Web up, if you chose to use that back at the beginning, to let you scout for Beldum's ability. And you have Beldum in the red, unable to hit you and thus unable to take recoil, unless Harvest fails to trigger for ten turns in a row after using the last PP. If you're worried about a cold streak like that, you can have one of Mew's moves be Sunny Day. This gives Harvest a 100% chance to trigger as long as the sun's up and the item slot is eligible to be recovered.
• Mew's other moves should be high-PP moves that are super effective against Beldum, preferably don't have a miss chance, and definitely aren't spread moves (so no Brutal Swing or Bulldoze, since you only want to hit the newcomer slot, not the passive slot). Thief is ideal for this, and then you can choose a move like Knock Off or Flame Charge to round things out. If Beldum calls for help and you dispatch that help right away with a super-effective move, you get a momentum bonus to make the call rate higher, which is why type is relevant here even if your Mew significantly outlevels the Beldum and could OHKO them with weaker moves.
• Keep going until you see the shiny Beldum called in. Make sure not to hit the original caller at any point; if it fails to call in help, use Adrenaline Orb again (which won't consume the item) just to avoid having to use a move that turn. You can also use your own Leppa Berries or Roto PP Restores from the bag as necessary if Mew is getting low on PP. After 30 successful calls, you reach the maximum tier for shiny rate (about 1 out of 273), hidden ability rate (3 out of 20), and are assured four stats with maximum IVs for everything that answers the call for help afterward. (If you're playing on original Sun/Moon and you let a chain get to 256 successful calls, it wraps around to 0 and you have to face a depressed rate for all these things for 30 more calls before you get back to the usual point. The Ultra games don't have this issue.)
• So now you've found the shiny Beldum. Success! Now you just have to catch it.
• Switch back to Trevenant, use Trick to take back your Leppa Berry (if it doesn't have one, wait a few turns for it to be harvested back), then Trick again to give it to the shiny Beldum. Don't forget to Skill Swap so the shiny one has Harvest as well.
• Switch to (slot 6) original, ghost-form Rotom. Use Thunder Wave to paralyze the shiny Beldum. Now it can never call for help again, which is important because you can't throw a ball on turns where two opposing Pokemon are active. Sleep would give a higher catch rate bonus than paralysis, but you have to keep replenishing it every 2-4 turns; paralysis is something you use once and it sticks around for good.
• Switch back to Decidueye and False Swipe down to 1 HP. The original Beldum will probably run out of PP at some point (since it no longer has a Leppa Berry to harvest) and Struggle away its last bit of health; just let it, or else put it out of its misery to get down to only the shiny Beldum left.
• Throw whatever sort of Poke Ball you want to catch the Beldum in, and keep going until you catch it. Unless you're using a Master Ball, you might as well use a Roto Catch Power first if you have one available, as Beldum has the lowest catch rate in the game and you'll want all the luck you can get.
• Without Roto Catch Power, you'll have about a 1-in-7 chance to catch if you're using a Timer Ball, 1-in-12 with an Ultra Ball, 1-in-20 with a regular Poke Ball, or 1-in-117 with a Beast Ball if you're looking for a particular status symbol to show off with. In original Sun and Moon, Heavy Balls have exactly zero chance to catch Beldum; the formula was edited slightly in Ultra to give you a 1-in-47 chance without Roto Catch, or 1-in-23 with it, but those balls are also in very limited supply in all such games.

Answer 2

There are two good options:

1) Rock head. You can Skill Swap rock head onto it, so that it will deal damage, but won't take recoil.

2) Ghost types. Ghost types are immune to take down, and will therefore prevent any recoil. Optionally, you could hold a Leppa Berry and trick beldum the Leppa Berry so it can never hit you, and then use recycle to get your berry back. I'm not sure if you can use recycle like that, but if you can then it's possible to create more berries to keep giving beldum so it has ininite pp.

Beware that both of these will eventually lead to it struggling to death, but hopefully you can catch it before then.

Please comment any other suggestions! Hope I helped!

Comments

You could always teach a Pokémon Heal Pulse as well to heal the Beldum.  It doesn't remove the recoil, but it stops it from killing the Beldum.

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They asked to remove recoil, not how to heal them. In addition, beldum has the same catch rate as many legendaries, so it needs low health to get the catch rate as high as possible.

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The more effective choice, to prevent Struggle from ever becoming relevant, is to use a Pokemon with Recycle, a move such as Trick to swap hold items, and a Leppa Berry.  Give the Leppa Berry to the wild Beldum, when it's PP gets low it will eat the Leppa.  Your Pokemon uses Recycle to get the Berry back, then gives it back to the Beldum again.

Are there any Ghosts capable of that moveset?

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Any ghost types with trick. Rotom would do fine.

Answer 3

The three best options are:

Skill swapping Rock head onto it so it does not take any recoil damage from take down.

Using Heal pulse to keep it alive.

And having a ghost type in the front of your party.