While the franchise’s slogan “Gotta Catch ’em All” has become increasingly difficult to take seriously as the series has progressed, two Pokémon fans have taken the task to the next level. With over 900 creatures in the franchise, many choose not to capture every animal available, but two brave trainers rose to the challenge.

It’s no easy task to complete a standard Pokédex in any game in the series, but these trainers went above and beyond by completing a Living Master Dex featuring creatures from across the franchise. A Living Master Dex is much more difficult to complete than a standard Pokédex, as it requires one of each type of creature.

Considering the monumental feat of achieving this, the Pokémon community has nothing but praise for both Trainers taking on and achieving this goal.

Everything that goes into completing a Living Master Dex in the Pokemon franchise

Yesterday, Reddit user u/SpaceBornKiller posted about a monumental achievement. They announced that they had completed a Living Master Dex. The Master Dex is the type of Pokedex found in the Pokemon Home application. It is used as a kind of real national dex.

Completing a Living Dex gets complicated as players must have one of each type of Pokemon to complete it. This means that trainers cannot simply evolve a Venusaur from a Bulbasaur and have that count as three entries. A separate Bulbasaur, Ivysaur, and Venusaur are required.

Given how notoriously difficult it can be to evolve some Pokémon and even obtain some baby forms, it really is a daunting task. However, some creatures aren’t available in modern Switch titles, and the two dedicated trainers also had to carry over some of the pocket monsters from different consoles.

In the comments section of the post, the team had help from a friend, u/shinymetroid, to legally obtain most of the mythical pocket monsters exclusive to the event. That meant the team found a way to replicate distributions and in-game events to capture some of the franchise’s most difficult creatures.

Since the original Game Boy and Game Boy Color games cannot connect to other devices, they had to use the Kanto remake titles to get second and first generation creatures. They also played Colosseum and XD: Gales of Darkness to get a majority of Johto’s creatures.

Despite having to trek through two spin-off Gamecube titles, the two have commented that the creatures in Fire Red and Leaf Green’s Safari Zone gave them the hardest time in their quest. This was followed by Colosseum’s Ho-oh as the player must complete 100 battles at Mt. Battle to get it.

The effort it took the team to fill their Living Master Dex with every type of creature in the franchise is truly an impressive feat. It’s unclear whether or not they included all variants of a creature, like Vivillon’s many forms, but nonetheless, their journey to becoming a Pokémon master has borne fruit.