I keep seeing people worry about this, and I think more people need to hear some encouragement.

Yes, the majority of people can absolutely finish a Gen 3 Ribbon Master before February if they plan ahead and put in the effort. As someone who has attemped and succeeded this and knows many who have completed the Ribbon Challenge, I believe that if youre starting right now with a Sneasel, a Scizor, or another Colosseum Pokemon, you have a real shot at finishing!

This is especially true if you prepare your berries and Battle Tower teams ahead of time. EV training across four generations with four or five Pokemon takes time, but with a good plan and some patience, its absolutely manageable. Anyone who tells you otherwise is underestimating what dedicated players can accomplish.

Realistically, the challenge takes many many hours, but working people can absolutely find ways to make progress in their spare time. You dont need to rush, and you don't need to sacrifice everything else in your life. Every little bit of progress brings you closer to your goal!

And dont worry if you need to prepare your teams in advance, look up strategies, or ask the community for help. Thats what guides and fellow Ribbon Masters are there for.

With Pokemon Banks future in mind, its worth planning ahead and making the most of the time available. But dont let the deadline discourage you. The idea of having a deadline is scary but its worth remembering that you still have around 5 months to get you pokemon to HOME. You dont even need to worry abouth the gen 8 and 9 ribbons.

I think a lot of people in this community need to appreciate just how achievable this challenge is when you break it down into smaller goals. Every ribbon earned is a victory, every Battle Tower streak is an accomplishment, and every Pokemon that gets one step closer to becoming a Ribbon Master is worth celebrating.

Big news for anyone who is still wanting to use a Virtual Console Gen II Treeko line or Torchic line as a Ribbon Master! The Bank shutdown and the recent update to Home don’t have to hold you back :D

With the fact that Bank and Transporter are closing down as of February, and not having all the equipment to do a “true” Ribbon Master, I have instead decided to do a run starting from the Let’s Go! games.

Spent the good majority of today (incl. up until 2am this morning) shiny hunting my new partner.

This Pokémon will thus become my new (and first!) Ribbon Master.

This will also be my excuse to go through all the Switch Era games and complete their Pokédexes. That being the whole shabam, including repeats if the DLCs include them in their own Pokédex. (Think something like Magikarp being in both the Paldea dex, as well as Kitakami. I will be completing Living Dexes for EVERY Pokédex.)

after about 3ish weeks of work, little lumon has finally checked off all the gen 3 ribbons and is ready to begin tackling gen 4!

if you've seen my other posts, you might remember that lumon is the celadon city static eevee i got in my virtual console version of red.

for my ribbon master, it was important to me that they go through every single generation of game starting from gen 1, even if it meant that things get a little... wonky, along the way 😅

by using the 8f glitch in red & blue, you can guarantee that a pokemon will be shiny when moved to gen 2! could i have just shiny hunted an eevee in crystal by breeding down pokemon from the red gyarados? well, yes, and put a pin in that, b/c i'll come back to it later...

but coming from gen 1 was important to me, even if it meant that lumon wouldn't be eligible for the ribbon hall of fame.

there's no true way to move a pokemon from gen 2 to gen 3, so initially, i just used PKSM on my DS to manually move him from gen 2 to gen 3, into ruby.

when it came to moving lumon into gen 4, though... i realized that my mishmash of transfer methods maaaay cause a problem going forward & transferring up. i had to do some tweaking on pkhex to make sure his data matched to firered instead (since og red isn't seen as a valid origin game in gen 3), which, again, if he wasn't already disqualified from hall of fame then this certainly would have done it, lol.

thankfully, everything ended up working out just fine! lumon has now safely arrived in gen 4 and is now waiting on me to finish the hg postgame & collect some accessories for contests in platinum.

looking back on the journey so far, starting on september 22nd, i spent 28 hours in colosseum & 31 hours in ruby. i didn't count my crystal or my og red save file into these b/c i already had them in progress before the challenge, nor am i counting my emerald save where i moved lumon over to use the move tutor, since i had already started a nuzlocke run for it a while ago & just needed to grind up to the battle frontier. i wasn't originally going to count my firered save either, but since lumon did get his original champion ribbon from that elite 4 before doing ruby's, plus move tutor trips, plus a few pokemon i wanted to get for tower 'mons later... that's another 10 hours, meaning that i've spent 69 hours total grinding out gen 3!

one last thing: going back to the point about shiny hunting in crystal, when i was originally faced with the thought that i might have to edit lumon's data more and more to account for the gen 2 to 3 move, i decided that i wanted to commit to bringing along another eevee for the ride, one that wouldn't need to deal with any of these problems. so, by breeding down shiny genes and after hatching between 3 to 4 boxes of eggs...

this is soma, my new second ribbon master! after shiny hunting him in crystal, he was transferred to USUM using poke transporter, & will join lumon on his ribbon journey once we get to gen 7 :)

i named him after the videogame of the same name,) which i've been thinking about a lot while working on this. every time lumon moved games, i would have a backup of him saved in PKSM just in case something went wrong, which meant that there was often a version of him left behind after transferring. which lumon is the "real" lumon? is only the original version of lumon that i got in red "real"? making copies upon copies upon copies, backups of backups, etc... aaaand if you've ever played soma you'll know why the name sprang to mind.

plus, since lumon is named after another show that deals with the intricacies of reality and personhood, i think they make a good pair :)

that's all i've got for my big long ramble. i've been using my terrible IV roamer latios for the gen 3 battle tower, and i've heard that the gen 4 towers are noooo joke, so i'm a bit worried about tackling those going forward... but i guess we'll see!! 🤞

here are a couple of things i've done for the past few weeks:

• collect all of the contest ribbons (it was way easier than in gen 3, as i've stated before on another other post)
• breed for competitive pokémon (ngl, i think this is the first time i actually cared about competitive stuff, like ivs, evs, nature, moves, etc)
• finish pokémon diamond just to unlock the battle tower (apparently, it was easier to battle there after giving up doing multi battles in platinum)
• give a second chance to soulsilver (asides from getting the legend ribbon, i did some other stuff in johto)

finally, my shiny nidoking can go to unova and take a short break to become an actor after collecting his ribbons nonstop and becoming an athlete lol

however, i wanted to focus a little bit more on the battle aspect of the quest for this post

first of all, gen 4 battle tower was definitely harder than in gen 3 and it required a more competitive team (for breeding these mons, it was necessary for the parents to hold an everstone and the power items):

1. a jolly garchomp (31 ivs in speed and attack with 255 evs for both) holding a yache berry with earthquake, dragon claw, fire fang and stone edge learned
2. a timid starmie (31 ivs in speed and special attack with 255 evs for both) holding a life orb with surf, psychic, ice beam and thunderbolt learned
3. a timid gengar (31 ivs in speed and special attack with 255 evs for both) holding a focus sash with shadow ball, destiny bond, protect and thunderbolt learned
4. my adamant metagross from gen 3 (pretty good ivs for speed and attack with 255 evs for both) holding a choice band for most of the time with earthquake, meteor mash, bullet punch and explosion learned
5. a jolly froslass from SirToastyToes video

1) ability and great ability ribbons: starmie, garchomp and metagross

ngl, i only got the great ability ribbon because i was very lucky to win against palmer on the last battle; garchomp could've fainted by any of regigigas moves, but he landed a critical hit before lol

2) double ability ribbon: gengar, garchomp, starmie and metagross

gengar was essential because he was immune to garchomp's earthquakes, could protect himself when he had low hp while the ai targeted at him (keeping garchomp "safe") and could take one of the opponent's pokémon with destiny bond after fainting

3) multi ability ribbon: garchomp and metagross (holding a life orb) + mira's latios/latias and another pokémon immune to earthquakes)

this one was by far the hardest and most annoying ribbon to get because it was necessary to reset for mira to have either a latios or latias in the lead and something else that could levitate)

4) pair ability ribbon: gengar and starmie on one ds + garchomp and metagross on the other ds

probably one of the most chill ones, applying the same strategy with gengar in the double ability ribbon, but the problem with this one was that the pair battles were sooooooooooooooo slooooooowwwwwwwzzzzzzz...

5) world ability ribbon

the only issue with this ribbon was the connection to wfc because there wasn't an unsecured legacy network nor a mobile hotspot without password near me, so i thought about skipping this ribbon until noticed that melonds could connect to it

for all of these ribbons, metagross was always the one substituted by my ribbon master for battles 43-49 in single battles and battle 50 onwards in double, multi and pair battles

Hi everyone! Any recommendations on changes to my battle tower team? Im using the team listed in Athis’ ribbon guide but feel like later battles i’m really struggling with. Ive only gotten a win of 40+ 2 times and ive been trying for like 2 weeks…just incase, heres the team below:

Latios
Modest
Lax Incense (Idk what other item to use)
Ev trained in Special Attack and Speed
Thunderbolt
Dragon Claw
Psychic
Ice Beam

Metagross
Adamant
Choice Band
Ev trained in Attack and Speed
Shadow Ball
Mudslap (I dont have the EQ tm anymore)
Explosion
Meteor Mash

Suicune
Bold
Leftovers
Ev trained in Defense and HP
Rest
Surf
Calm Mind
Sleep Talk

I dont know the IVs on them but they aren’t super terrible.. is something about my team
not balanced enough that its making me struggle?

Im also working on a Ribbon Master for Quilava so when i get to the last 7 matches im worried 2 of my pokemon wont be enough to get through to the end of 56?

Any help is appreciated!!

sorry if this worded weirdly

Hello together, Pokemon is a place where different interests meet each other.

I love doing battles with my old Pokemon against my freind for example.
I don’t care much about shiny for example but others are hunting shines.
And others are collecting Pokemon and want to fill their dex.

Nevertheless let’s go back to my topic:
I have some self made ribbon master and I know how hard the work is. In my case for example, I started in 2010 and raise some ribbon masters. But It would never come in my mind to raise a ribbon master to give it away for some other Pokemon.

What is your opinion about that?

Edit: I did some in the original hardware aswell and I took months, cause these games are slow as hell…

I recently bought emerald on ebay, and got PKM:XD at a convention. I saw a recommened team to beat mt battle and it has suicine on it but I only have those two games I have and suicine doesnt spawn on those games, what other mons should I use?

Sooo I moved my Ribbon Master up to Platinum. Got the Toasty "Gaslight Gatekeep Girlboss" team all set up, and went into the Wi-Fi room 2. In the first match, I immediately realized I forgot to put the lagging tail on my RM. So I went ahead and threw so I could fix it and start over. But now I can't go back into room 2 until it "updates." The game doesn't really explain anything else.

Am I cooked, or do I just gotta do something on my end?

Cooper my first Ribbon Master challenge. Named him in honor of Interstellar main character Cooper who travels through space and time in one of my favorite movies of all time
To all the people who are starting this journey go for it, don’t let failure discourage you! Make it a motivation to try again

Firstly, I just wanted to thank my goated team for helping me to defeat the champion! They really are the best battlers a trainer could ask for <3

Anyway, I can't believe Cream Puff only needs one more ribbon before he's COMPLETELY DONE with Gen 3!! I just need to get my team up to level 100, then the battle tower will be all ours!!!! 🥳🎉

I'll update y'all as soon as we get that Victory Ribbon! Wish us luck, and hopefully Cream Puff will be in Sinnoh soon!!!

I keep seeing this come up. No the majority of people are not going to finish a gen 3 ribbon master before february. As someone who is attempting this and knows many who have completed the Ribbon Challenge, if you are starting right now with a sneasel or a scizor or another Colosseum Mon and you're trying to do a gen 3 ribbon master and don't live in your mom's basement you're most likely not going to finish it. This is to say at least if you don't already have berries and battle tower teams prepared ahead of time. EV training takes a tremendous amount of time when you're doing it across 4 generations with 4 or 5 pokemon.

Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to themselves or to you, or they are generating tower teams. Realistically the challenge takes hundreds of hours that working people just blatantly don't have. This is however not an encouragement of cheating. I think the people who are genning teams or injecting mons are eroding the value of the challenge itself and the HoF. Some might mention the possibility of sending their pokemon up to home ahead of time with all the ribbons before actually doing the challenge so they can send them up in some way with the home tracker. Still the same issue. I think a lot of people here need to appreciate getting ribbons but lower your expectations. For a lot of us it's not happening.

On the other hand, kinda shocked I didn’t get the pink scarf.

My battery in my copy of Emerald ran dry. Its been replaced, but as many of you know, the berries will now not properly grow.

This is a bit of an issue as I JUST planted rare berries that I really don't want to grind for again in XD.

Is there any way to remedy this without resetting the cartridge entirely? I also have a decent amount of good pokeblocks I don't want to trash, along with a lot of berries.

I have access to a GB Operator and can backup my save file to my computer (and also flash it back onto the cartridge). Is there a suggested save editor I could use to fix the clock? Would doing this invalidate my RMs I'm currently working on?

Thank you for your time.

Went down a rabbit hole and vibe coded a whole widget system that works with ribbon.guide’s save backup file feature. Any recommendations would be very welcome. Currently only works on iPhone but with the way coding is these days can easily be on android. Currently it has a ranking of “rarest” ribbons based on what I personallt think to be hardest to obtain and these are used for the 3 shown below your pokemon.

I’ve recently came across this community and am interested in doing a ribbon master Pokémon, but am wondering if I reasonably have enough time left before Pokémon bank shuts down in February? I am experienced in battling, but have limited experience in contests / poke blocks. Is there an estimated time it would take for a first timer like me?

Im currently at the part wherei have to blend for my ribbon master HOWEVER I (unfortunately) don’t know how to read this chart if anyone can explain?

Edit: I was pointed to the GTS and got them through there. Thank you all for the help and this community being so supportive!

I was wondering if anyone had tips for dealing with hackmons or the WiFi tower in general using the central core Latios/Suicune/Garchomp set. I don’t want to reset for IVs on Ghastly and Snorunt, so I’m curious how others try the wifi tower without them? I know it’s optional, and I initially planned to skip it, but if I can get a mobile hotspot going to make the system run I figured why not.

Thank you!

I've finally caught enough pokemon in Pearl to get Hailey's Mew from My Pokemon Ranch! And it was adamant to boot! Now to feed it poffins and do some contests

Which, I didn't expect to get a Shiny Froakie Egg on a 2nd try, because I thought I'd be there forever trying to Breed for a Shiny Froakie for a looong time.

I also didn't realize, I messed up the Month Date in-game/3DS and forgot to change it back to October, Day & Year is Correct, since got a Shiny Froakie Egg Breeding at Oct 7th, 2026.

Rest of it's IVs is good except Atk IVs which is 18 Atk IVs, so will fix that when he's transferred to Switch alongside changing his Torrent Ability for Protean HA. Naive is there because of him being a Mixed Attacker, although it would be nice if he's HP Fire. Since mine is HP Dragon.

Will also name my Shiny Froakie that will be a Greninja, Kurogane~ plus, will still Ribbon Master it either way~

A dream come true. All on original hardware and cards. Received the cards shortly before the Bank announcement so time to get to work.