Welcome to day four of my spur of the moment Dragon Week event. For today’s post, I’ll be covering a well-known evolution line of dragons from the Sinnoh Region. Presenting Gible, Gabite, and Garchomp.
The Garchomp evolution line reminds me a lot of this old bit from the original Saturday Night Live known as Land Shark. In fact Gible are known as Land Shark Pokemon in the Pokedex. I actually would’ve liked to close this post with a clip of the Land Shark bit, but I couldn’t find one on Youtube. Anyway, Garchomp is another pseudo-Legendary Pokemon, and is the most powerful Pokemon of Sinnoh Region champion, Cynthia. I actually don’t have any experience using Garchomp, as it’s from Generation Four, but I certainly wouldn’t mind giving it a shot given the opportunity.
In the Games: Like most Dragon Pokemon, you can’t capture Garchomp itself in the wild. Instead you must raise it from its base form. The only place to find Gible in Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum is in the Wayward Cave beneath Sinnoh’s Cycling Road, while in HeartGold and SoulSilver they can be found in the Johto Safari Zone. Also in Platinum you can find Gabite in Victory Road. In Generation Five, the only way to get Gible without trading or transferring from previous games is the Shiny Gible that you get from Alder in Black 2.
At this point I’d like to make a little correction concerning my post on Dragonite. After doing some checking it turns out that the Shiny Dratini you get from Alder is in White 2 only. I thought you could switch between the two versions and get both, but I got that wrong. It is possible to switch between Black City and White Forest in the two versions. But if you were say playing Black 2 and switched over to White Forest, you wouldn’t be battling Alder’s grandson at the end, but another trainer. So I apologize for making that little error.
Evolution: Garchomp might be one of the easier Dragon Pokemon to train. Perhaps not as easy as the Flygon evolution line, but pretty close. At level twenty-four, Gible evolves into Gabite, at which point its body becomes more dragon-like. The change from Gible to Gabite takes place way sooner than even Dratini’s evolution to Dragonair. Of course Gabite doesn’t evolve into Garchomp until level forty-eight. Not as quick as Vibrava’s evolution to Flygon, but just a tad quicker than say Shelgon’s evolution to Salamence.
Dual Chop: Okay, so I thought that an interesting way to close this post would be to talk about a Dragon-type move that while is not Garchomp’s signature move, is one that seems quite appropriate. Dual Chop is a powerful move that strikes the opponent twice. It’s a move learned naturally by all the members of the dragon evolution line I’ll be covering in tomorrow’s post, but as of Generation Five is now learned by Gabite upon evolution. The reason this attack seems so appropriate is because when sharks attack their prey they go in and take a fatal bit out of them, and then come back around quickly to finish them off. So imagine if you will Gabite or Garchomp flying by at high speeds and striking the opponent with one of their wings, and then coming back around and hitting the opponent with the other.
That covers it for today’s post I think. For tomorrow I’ll be covering a Dragon line from Generation Five. So until tomorrow, stay tuned.
