Can you complete Pokemon Platinum without taking damage?

Completing Pokemon Platinum is pretty easy. Completing it without taking any damage whatsoever on the other hand, is not. That’s what one trainer set out to try and accomplish, though.

Twitch streamer and YouTuber Smallant1 undertook the challenge of completing Pokemon Platinum while taking zero damage. That’s right, not one hit point of damage was allowed for the entire game.

Ground rules

There were some ground rules, however. Mistakes are bound to happen, so Smallant1 agreed with his chat that resets were allowed but the game could only be saved after completing each gym battle.

So, if it had been eight hours (which happened a couple of times) after completing a gym battle, then those eight hours of play would have to be written off. If he encountered damage in a battle just after completing a gym then it was less of a blow.

Challenges along the way

There were several highlights (and lowlights) throughout the challenge and, of course, a lot of resets. This was understandable though, given the gravity of the task ahead.

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The first issue came at the very beginning when Smallant1 selected Piplup as his starter. This was because Piplup had Pound, which unlike Tackle, has 100% accuracy.

Unfortunately, that didn’t help too much. To win the first battle without getting a critical hit from Piplup, Turtwig would need to use Withdraw six times in a row and then miss two Tackles. This is extremely unlikely — 0.004% unlikely!

Rather than waiting for this unlikely scenario to happen, the challenger changed to Turtwig, which meant battling against Chimchar. The difference here is Chimchar uses Leer and therefore won’t reduce the effectiveness of Tackle.

To win the battle without taking damage, Chimchar simply had to use Leer four times in a row — a 1 in 16 chance.

Other problems manifested along the way which included:

• Getting and building up a Starly to compete against Quick Attack.
• Accidentally turning the Power Off (great way to waste eight hours).
• Grinding through the levels while only battling against a Kricketot (10% chance of spawn at night).
• Overcoming awkward team battles.
• Earning money from rich kids to buy overpriced TMs.

Challenge completed

After all these problems (and more along the way) Smallant1 managed to complete the seemingly impossible challenge. He did so with 70 resets.

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The total challenge time was a smidgen under 40 hours, but this didn’t include the time wasted doing resets. It would have obviously been significantly longer if these had been added.

You can watch the entirety of the challenge in the embedded YouTube clip above. There you have it, Pokemon Platinum can be completed without taking any damage — impressive!