Burmy has to participate in a battle at the ideal environment before evolving. Using a Rare Candy alone won't do anything to change its form.

I'm guessing the Galactic Grunts have all departed at this point. However, the factory next to Eterna Forest should have some wild Pokemon for your Burmy to battle with.

Damn, otherwise you wind up with the grass form, huh? And the factory you're talking about is Fuego Ironworks (love the name) right? I don't remember there being wild pokemon in there, or will being near the building be enough?

And I'm guessing the ground form requires you to complete a battle near Mt. Coronet or somewhere with dirt and rocks?

Bah, I checked Fuego Ironworks (I couldn't remember its name), and I seem to be mistaken about Fuego Ironworks itself being inhabited by wild Pokemon. I remember a few battles from inside because of a couple of Engineers that I had to face. Sorry about that. >_>

Anyway, fighting in a cave will change Burmy's form into that which will net you a Bug/Ground Wormadam.

So the grass around the factory is a good place for Burmy to pick up steel so it can go down the Bug/Steel path? The ground evolution is pretty simple it seems, and the grass one's a cinch.

I saw your post about two minutes ago, but I don't think I edited in time. I'll re-post what I stated in case you missed it.

I just Googled up the best way to get a Steel Wormadam. Burmy has to battle inside a building, but all you have to do is use it in battle against the person/people who show up daily at the Jubilife TV Station next to where the Loto Tickets are given away. Every day there's someone new who wants to battle, and the Pokemon all have fairly low levels. I haven't tried it myself, but hopefully this works!

How about if Burmy's just the one in the battle before switching to something else? This thing is pathetic and I doubt it'd win even against what they've got in there.

Edit: Thanks IC, it worked like a charm. The other ones shouldn't be as problematic.

I just recently bought Diamond and it's been a while (about five years) since I played any of the standard Pokémon games.

Now there are a few things I would like to know about stats and how they are affected as a Pokémon grows in level.

1.In Red & Blue there was a glitch which allowed you to duplicate any item of choice. My instant choice was the Rare Candy, for obvious reasons. However I later discovered (or I think I did, it was a long time ago and I was like 11 years old) that using rare candies to level up penalizes stat gain, so that when your pokémon reaches lv 100, it's pretty much useless if you want to have any chance in link battles. Is it still like that in Pearl & Diamond?

2. I always thought that if you delay the evolution of a Pokémon, or if you wait until trading/using evolution-triggering items until it's high in level, the final stats when it gets to lv 100 will be lower than normal. Is that true?

3. I really don't know where I got this from but somehow I had the idea that leveling against wild pokémon gives better end (lv 100) stats than trainers (or the elite four). I always avoided leveling at the elite four for that reason.

The answers to these questions are probably obvious to most of you but i've been racking my brains over them for a few days now and i'd be really glad if someone could help me :D

1. I suppose this is true if you haven't EV trained your pokemon beforehand. If you don't know what EV training is well then read this:
2. I don't know about that, so I can't confirm this :(.

3. From what I can see it makes no difference in fighting against trainers or wild pokemon. You can still earn EVs from either battle, but it would appear to be easier to simply fight trainers the whole time. Since their levels are generally higher. But if you know anything about EVs you don't want to keep fighting the same pokemon over and over because you will not be maximizing your stats (remember, 255 EV points is the max you can earn per stat. While the total spread cannot exceed 510 EV points.)

I hope that made sense, even I'm a bit new to the whole idea of EV training.

Going a bit back to Crash Landon post, I wanted to try this out so I literally release all my Pokémon and the only Pokémon that "came back" was "HM SLAVE 2" aka Bibarel (it has learn 4 HM move, Rock Smash, Strength, Rock Climb and Waterfall). I have to go to Move Deleter to delete all the HM move (or course I had to let it learn something as it need to know one move) and THEN release it. The sucker never return. lol

I had "HM SLAVE 1" aka Bidoof which only learn Cut and it never came back when I release it.

So that's from my experiment.

I can confirm that 2 is not true. An unevolved pokemon will catch up in stats when it finally does evolve.

Of course, if it remains unevolved at level 100, its stats will be lower.

I caught a shiny Shellos last night (It's blue rather than pink) which is the first shiny I've ever had in a pokemon game. Are they in any way different from normal pokemon apart from their appearance and if I evolve it, would it be a standard coloured version of whatever it evolves in to? Also, if I put it up on the GTS, would people be able to see it was a shiny (And therefore a better trade I guess)?

Hmm I'm not so sure. Are you sure it's not a Shellos from the east side of Sinnoh? It fooled me too at first. The only reason I didn't think it was a shiny pokemon was because it didn't "sparkle" or anything. So I looked it up and found out there were two versions of the same pokemon ._.

As for Shiny pokemon and their attributes, there are no differences. Just a different color palette. If they're legit they do make good trading material.

As for putting a shiny pokemon up on GTS, I wouldn't recommend it. Most of the people there do all sorts of hacks and you'll probably end up with something you didn't want in the first place. Or a massive glitch of some kind.

I didn't realise there were two versions of Shellos, I got all excited for nothing. :(

Oh well, thanks for the info anyway.

Yeah, I wondered about the first time I came across the blue one, then I checked online and found out it was just a variation. I do have shiny Golbat though that I randomly caught.

Yeah, shinies usually have that sparkly aura around then when they come out of Pokeballs or something.

Thanks for the answers, they were enlightening :)

I didn't know about EV training at all. I understand now why leveling your Pokémon solely on rare candies would create a bad result. And since leveling at the Elite Four involves fighting the same Pokémon all over again, it's not so strange you'd get less EV training...

Now I'll just have to read everything there is to know about EV training and grasp the full concept :)

BTW: As you're talking about shiny Pokémon I'd like to know, what's the chance of actually encountering one? I played Pokémon Gold for hundreds of hours but the only way I ever got a shiny was through my cheat adapter.

1 in 8,192 battles. <_<

Your odds increase however, if you try it with Poke Radar Pokemon. Not saying it will happen every time, but there's a lot to it. <_<

Well, checking out the Pokeradar guide over on Gamefaqs, apparently if it does improve your chances it isn't by much. I'd say the only real benefit the radar has if you're looking for a sparkling specimen is that the grass is pretty hard to miss when there's a shiny present.

Yeah, which baffles me when people get a shiny in only three chains. <_<

Some people are just ridiculously lucky. So far the only shiny I've gotten is Ditto, and it was great in LeafGreen since I could use Transform and he'd turn into a shiny version of the target pokemon.

Migrated him over to Diamond and he can't do that anymore. Most of the shiny ones aren't that great, since most look like little more than adding a bit more green hue to the monsters.

I've encountered two shinies so far, being the Steelix on Iron Island and Giratina I've mentioned before. Before that though, I'd never actually found a random one. Just the red Gyarados of Gold and Silver.

Honestly, once you find one, try to trade it for one you like. Most shinies are equal in value.

As far as those TMs are going, Sphere. I'm planning to get a new DS by Tuesday when that Big Brain 2 package comes out. By then, i'll be forced to change my Friend Code that I just so happened to memorize. <_<

Anyway, I'll probably have everything ready by then.

Also, I'm still trying to compose my new team. I transferred in a couple of good Pokemon from my Emerald and deciding who should go on my team. <_<

I'm still nowhere near ready for regular tournaments or even the higher levels of Battle Revolution. The goddamn offspring of my Ice Punch/Dragon Dance Totodile have absolutely shit IVs, and it turns out so does my Larvitar and Skarmory. Kind of frustrating.

Either way, your Pokemon don't have to be all at Level 100 or anything since you have the choice to have a Level 100 Battle anyway. <_<

Whatever your level is they'll just boost it up. <_< At that point, it's really all luck. T_T

I lucked out against Kairyu and got murdered every other battle. T_T

Also, I'm not sure how many Pokemon on the team I had from the previous tournament will be returning. I still need to re-breed most of them and I don't have a reliable DS to do it on. On top of that, I'm off to college soon and I'm not sure how much time I'll have for being online then. Hopefully, if I can't get a wireless connection at my college, I could use my USB Wi-Fi Adapter.

You can transfer your Nintendo ID Connection (forgot exactly what it called) so you can keep your FC intact.