Welcome to day two of Dragon Week. For today’s post I’ll be skipping ahead to Generation Three and cover a Pokemon that doesn’t even start out as a dragon. Presenting Trapinch, Vibrava, and Flygon.
The third generation was very good to the Dragon type. Not only did it expand the pool of Dragon-type moves, but it also gave us a wider variety of dragons, including the first Legendary Dragon Pokemon. The Flygon evolution line is certainly among the most unique among the dragon. Known for being able to create powerful sandstorms, Flygon is often called the Desert Spirit. Even though Flygon isn’t considered a pseudo-Legendary Pokemon, it’s still quite powerful. And, since Trapinch can be caught mid-game in Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald, one has a good way to raise a dragon in time to face the Elite Four.
In the Games: In Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald, Trapinch can be captured in the desert on Route 111. In Diamond and Pearl, Trapinch and even Vibrava can be found on Route 228 using the Pokeradar. And in HeartGold and SoulSilver you can find Trapinch in the Johto Safari Zone. In Generation Five, Trapinch are just a tad harder to find. In the original White Version, Trapinch can only be found in White Forest. But in both Black 2 and White 2 they can be found at the Desert Resort and in Reversal Mountain.
Evolution: Back when I played Ruby and Sapphire originally, I ended up learning about most of the Hoenn Region’s Pokemon on the fly. At the time I didn’t know about sites like Bulbapedia and seribii.net. And I didn’t have any sort of strategy guide either. I only knew about Flygon because one was under the ownership of Elite Four member, Drake. One day I began to wonder just where to capture Flygon in the games. I figured it had to be the evolved form of something. So I looked at the Pokedex and found that there seemed to be a missing link between Trapinch and Flygon. With that discovery, I took a Trapinch that I had captured previously and began training it. And in that way I discovered the missing link, Vibrava.
So as I said before, the Flygon evolution line is a very unique one. At level thirty-five, Trapinch evolves into Vibrava, at which point it goes through a startling metamorphosis. After evolution, Vibrava bares absolutely no resemblance to its pre-evolution and looks more like a dragonfly. Not only that, it becomes an actual dragon. At level forty-five, Vibrava finally evolves into Flygon. Flygon looks more like a dragon, though it still has many insect qualities. The red bug eyes it has are actually lenses covering its real eyes grown in order to protect them from blowing sand.
For Beginners: The more I think about it, Flygon seems to be a good Pokemon for those new to training Dragon-types. They seem a little easier to train than most dragons. And even though it still takes awhile to evolve, Vibrava evolves into Flygon ten levels sooner than it takes Dragonair to evolve into Dragonite. Plus Trapinch is a fairly common Pokemon out in the desert. And for some trainers their evolution might be a pleasant surprise to some trainers.
So that’s it for day two of Dragon Week. For tomorrow I’ll be covering another set of dragons from the Hoenn Region. So until then, stay tuned.
