Hello everyone,
as the game is relatively new and all sorts of players/runners coming up with different things to try and break all sorts of things, I would like to propose an idea for a category: tradable%
This should provide a nice entrypoint to speedrunning the game, and also trying out a few things regarding laguage and textskipping for other categories as well. I came upon this by a liar on gamefaqs, because this person claimed you only needed around 5 Minutes in game to get to the point where you could trade with other people, to try and get all three starters (as Pokémon Home support will only be added in spring 2023).
So I tried and optimized a sort-of speedrun for this and it turns out, I came in around 35 minutes, optimized a bit further and am around close under 31 minutes now.
We got a bit of RNG in it (Pokémon stats and nature, also crits obviously end the two mandatory trainer fights much easier), also we have one Pokémon we MUST catch: the Lechonk which serves as the catching-"tutorial". You can proceed the game if you just faint it, but to be able to trade you NEED at least a second Pokémon in your team.
You could circumvent the need for the Lechonk by getting the Mystery Gift Pikachu (which is only available until the end of February 2023), but as this is only temporary let's catch the Lechonk. Also, setting up the online-connection to download the Pikachu in the first place takes probably a bit longer than just catching the Lechonk.
For the rest, it is pretty straightforward. Shortest route walking/running, avoiding other Pokémon. A short but sweet little challenge.
I would love to talk more about this as soon as possible, also in setting up the rules for this.