Even a piece of crap Pokémon can result in a legendary trade. The trick? Patience, and an eye for trading up.
It's sort of like the Pokémon equivalent of One Red Paperclip, where blogger Kyle MacDonald managed to barter his way from a paperclip to an actual house over the course of a year. Only in this case, instead of starting with a paperclip, you start the challenge with a lackluster Pokémon—something that isn't valuable, or that nobody really wants.
At least, that's how imagur user cornpop16 started out. They took Fletchling, a Pokemon you can capture early in Pokemon X & Y. As you may know, Fletchling is not exactly the hottest, most wanted Pokemon by any stretch of the imagination. Still, with that in hand, they set out to try to trade their way up to "the best Pokemon possible" on the online trading network, GTS.
The first trade, in a way, sounds like one of the hardest. Cornpop describes it as The Shit Zone, or "the zone of Pokemon that pretty much nobody wants." Still, within hours, they managed to trade the Fletchling for a Pikachu. Not bad. People like Pikachu, Pikachu can be traded for some good stuff.
That Pikachu, in turn, was traded up for a Floatzel, which was then traded up for a Gurdurr—which immediately evolved into a Conkeldurr through the trade. Conkeldurr was traded for a Bouffalant, which may not seem like a trade up, until you consider it's a Pokemon unique to Black and White—which makes it rarer. From here, cornpop traded their Bouffalant for a Milotic, a Pokemon that's well-known for its beauty and relative rarity: players have players have to level up a Feebas with a high beauty stat, or trade Feebas holding a Prism scale.
From here, things got tricky. Cornpop tried to trade up to a Entei, but nobody bit. So after a while, they changed the trade for a Xerneas—and boom. That did the trick. Someone traded them a Xerneas, a Pokemon on the cover of the latest games, for Cornpop's Milotic. From here, things got significantly easier: Xerneas was traded for an Entei, which in turn was traded for a Dialga. For starting out with a Fletchling, that's pretty good!
Funnily enough, after all the time spent trading up for that Dialga, cornpop put the Dialga in the Wonder Trade, just for funsies. The result? Someone randomly gave them a Charmander. Could have been worse!
In any case, cornpop isn't the only person undertaking this red paper clip-like challenge on the GTS, either. Reddit user SgtTamama recently posted about being able to trade their way up from a Fletchling to a Lugia through the course of eight trades:
Think you can do the same? Try the challenge! The rules are simple:
1) All trades must be done on GTS with strangers. 2) Pokemon may not be leveled or modified in any way. 3) No ridiculous trades, such as going from Fletchling straight to legendary.
Happy trading, and remember: even that garbage Pokemon you don't love can be traded for something awesome.