On October 5, 2023, I wrote an article about catching Dragonair in the Safari Zone in the Nintendo 3DS virtual console version of Pokémon Yellow in 2019. This article is intended to be a follow-up to my personal anecdote with new information that I have since learned about Dragonair in the classic Pokémon Yellow.

Photograph of my Nintendo 3DS screen showing my Safari Zone-captured Dragonair in Yellow.

I strongly recommend reading that article before coming back to this one. But for those of you who either read my first article or are very familiar with Safari Zone mechanics in the generation 1 Pokémon games, I offer a quick recap.

Table of Contents

• Recapping My Original Dragonair-Yellow Safari Zone Article
• My Original Dragonair Speculation
• Learning More About Dragonair on The Cave of the Dragonflies
• The External Significance of Pokémon Yellow Dragonair’s Catch Rate
• Returning to the Purpose of the Safari Zone Dragonair
• Conclusion

Recapping My Original Dragonair-Yellow Safari Zone Article

• The Safari Zone is a special area in the generation 1 Pokémon games where you are only allowed to catch Pokémon using Safari Balls. Instead of battling the wild Pokémon to weaken them, the player can throw a Safari Ball to try to capture the Pokémon or use bait or rocks to try to enhance the odds of catching the wild Pokémon. In general, throwing Safari Balls and ignoring bait and rocks is almost always the best approach.
• The chance a Pokémon then stays in a Safari Ball is mainly determined by its innate species capture rate. The chance a Pokémon flees is determined by its actual speed stat and some degree of randomness.
• Dragonair is a second stage dragon Pokémon. It was inaccessible in the wild in Pokémon Red and Blue (it could only be evolved from its base-stage counterpart, Dratini), but it was added to the Safari Zone in Pokémon Yellow.
• I wanted to catch Dragonair because the wild ones in the Safari Zone are level 15. This is peculiar because Dragonair evolves from Dratini at level 35, meaning the only way to have a Dragonair at a lower level than 15 in the generation 1 and 2 Pokémon games is to catch it in Yellow.
• Dragonair is comically hard to catch in the Yellow Safari Zone. By default, it has a 21.88% chance of fleeing every turn and only a 3.72% chance of staying in a Safari Ball. These odds can be modified with rocks and bait but the math says the best method is to chuck Safari Balls and hope for the 3.72% chance that Dragonair stays in.
• I eventually caught the 31st Dragonair that I encountered after having thrown somewhere in the neighborhood of 110-120 Safari Balls.

I used a resource on the long-standing Pokémon website The Cave of the Dragonflies to learn about the mechanics of the Pokémon Red, Blue, and Yellow Safari Zone and the odds of concluding a Dragonair encounter with a capture. The Cave of the Dragonflies will come up again soon, but let us take a brief detour back to my original article.

My Original Dragonair Speculation

The penultimate section of my Dragonair anecdote was titled “Why is Dragonair in the Pokémon Yellow Safari Zone?” Dragonair’s inclusion was peculiar in several respects. Firstly, Dragonair was specifically added to the Safari Zone in Pokémon Yellow – it was not available for capture in Pokémon Red and Blue. Moreover, Dratini, Dragonair’s pre-evolution, was already available in the Safari Zone in Pokémon Red and Blue. There was no obvious reason to add Dragonair.

Another strange point was that the wild Dragonair is that it appears at level 15 despite the fact that it evolves from Dratini at level 35. This anomaly is not without prior precedent in Yellow itself. In Yellow only (not Red and Blue), Pidgeotto is available for capture in Viridian Forest at level 9, notwithstanding the fact that Pidgeotto evolves from Pidgey at level 18. Of course, Pidgeotto has a 1% encounter rate in Viridian Forest, so most first-time players most likely never saw one. (See my separate article on a Viridian Forest capture horror story.)

While both Pidgeotto and Dragonair are available in the wild in Yellow at impossibly low levels, it is easy to explain why the developers made an under-leveled Pidgeotto available in Viridian Forest. Pokémon Yellow adopts some story and game-play inspiration from the Pokémon anime. In the anime, the second wild Pokémon Ash captures is a Pidgeotto in Viridian Forest. There is no analogous explanation for the level 15 Dragonair in the Safari Zone.

Separate from the strange level, I suspected that Dragonair was added to the Safari Zone because the developers of Pokémon Yellow were fans of it (it is admittedly one of the most aesthetic Pokémon of the original 151).

My “catching” a Dragonair in a short-lived Google Search based game which had people catch the original 151 Pokémon by searching for them. As you can see, the modern rendition of Dragonair is aesthetic. See my article on the Google Search game to learn more.

Perhaps they correctly noted that most kids would not go through the trouble of raising a Dratini into a Dragonair (granted fewer kids would go through the trouble of spending upwards of an hour trying to catch a Dragonair). On the level point issue, I offered the following speculation:

According to Cave of the Dragonflies, a level 35 Dragonair would have had a 46.09% chance of running to go along with its Safari Zone-low 3.67% catch rate. It seems possible to me that Game Freak decided that a level 35 Dragonair, without additional intervention, would be too difficult to catch. Of course, this is just a theory. Perhaps someone at Game Freak simply liked the idea of a level 15 Dragonair raising questions by merely existing.

After writing that first Dragonair article, I stumbled upon additional information about Dragonair in Pokémon Yellow.

Learning More About Dragonair on The Cave of the Dragonflies

On December 12, 2012, The Cave of Dragonflies published a “breaking news” report. I recall having stumbled upon this update only sometime after publishing my Dragonair article while searching for something using the Marginalia search engine. The first sentence of the report caught my attention:

Apparently, unnoticed by the Internet, Dragonair and Dragonite’s catch rates were changed to 27 and 9 respectively in Yellow and then changed back to the R/B value of 45 for all the subsequent games.

Every Pokémon in the mainline Pokémon games has a “catch rate.” The catch rate is a numerical value between 3 and 255. While there are small number of exceptions, with Pokémon Yellow Dragonair being one, the Pokémon series has usually kept the capture rates of individual Pokémon the same throughout the nine generations. The vast majority of the original 151 Pokémon have had a constant capture rate in every one of the nine generations of games they have appeared in. The Cave of Dragonflies explained how the one game Dragonair capture rate change was discovered:

One lordjoe sent me an error report about having been using my R/B/Y catch rate calculator and getting the wrong number of wobbles for Dragonair but no other Pokémon, and since I needed to be testing stuff in the Safari Zone anyway for the Safari Zone mechanics, I found myself a Dragonair on a Yellow ROM and discovered the catch rate was 27.

(I appreciated learning that other people have embarked on the unnecessary Dragonair Safari.)

Dragonair’s and Dragonite’s catch rates were lowered in Pokémon Yellow – and only in Pokémon Yellow – thus making Dragonair significantly more difficult to capture in the Safari Zone than had it would have been had it been included in Pokémon Red or Blue with its normal catch rate of 45. But why? It seems unlikely that Dragonair’s capture rate was lowered to make it more difficult to catch in the Safari Zone in Yellow – that could have been accomplished to some extent by raising its level (the chance a Pokémon flees from a Safari Zone encounter is based on its actual speed stat, which goes up with its level). Why then was Dragonair’s catch rate lowered to 27 in Pokémon Yellow and then immediately restored to its original 45 in all subsequent games. More curious still, why was the catch rate of Dragonair’s evolution Dragonite changed in Pokémon Yellow when Dragonite cannot be legitimately caught in the wild in Pokémon Red/Blue/Yellow (Dragonite can only be legitimately acquired through being evolved from Dragonair).

The External Significance of Pokémon Yellow Dragonair’s Catch Rate

The Cave of Dragonflies report did not speculate about the reason for Dragonair’s catch rate change in Pokémon Yellow, focusing only on its effect in the Safari Zone. I looked for an explanation of why Dragonair’s and Dragonite’s capture rates were changed in Pokémon Yellow and found it on a Bulbapedia page listing the capture rates for all Pokémon:

In Pokémon Yellow, four Pokémon will have different held items than their Red/Blue counterparts when traded to Generation II. The partner Pikachu’s “catch rate” value is set to 163 (as opposed to 190), which causes it to hold a Light Ball when traded over. A wild Kadabra’s catch rate value is set to 96 upon capture (as opposed to 100), which gives it a TwistedSpoon when traded over. A wild Dragonair’s catch rate is 27 (as opposed to 45), which gives it a Protein when traded over. Finally, a wild Dragonite’s catch rate is 9 (as opposed to 45), which gives it an Antidote when traded over. However, wild Dragonite cannot normally be encountered in Pokémon Yellow, and Dragonite that were evolved will not be holding an Antidote when transferred.

The first two generations of Pokémon games were released for Game Boy and Game Boy Color (Generation 1 is Red/Blue/Yellow and Green (JP only) and Generation 2 is Gold/Silver/Crystal). It was possible to trade between the first two generation games subject to caveats that are beyond the scope of this article. The generation two games, Gold and Silver, introduced a mechanic wherein Pokémon could “hold” items. When Pokémon are traded from generation 1 games to generation 2 games, they arrive in the generation two game with a held item. The developers decided to tie this held item mechanic to a Pokémon’s catch rate. Most Pokémon species in the first two generations have a small number of catch rates. Thus, where the developers wanted to ensure that a specific Pokémon came with a unique item upon being traded from generation one to two, the way to do this was to give the Pokémon a unique catch rate.

Bulbapedia explains that the developers gave four Pokémon in Yellow – but not in Red and Blue – unique catch rates.

• The partner Pikachu is the starter Pokémon in Yellow. Pikachu ordinarily has a catch rate of 190 (Pikachu can be captured in Viridian Forest in Pokémon Red and Blue, but is not available for capture in Yellow). The partner Pikachu in Yellow is assigned a catch rate of 163 when it is given to the player. (Partner Pikachu in Yellow otherwise has the same subpar stats as a normal Pikachu, unlike in the 2018 re-imagining of Yellow, Pokémon Let’s Go Pikachu, where partner Pikachu has better stats than a normal Pikachu.)
• Kadabra ordinarily has a catch rate of 100. However, a Kadabra caught in the wild in Yellow is given a catch rate of 96. Bulbapedia’s wording suggests that a Kadabra evolved from an Abra in Pokémon Yellow would have a catch rate of 100 instead of the non-standard 96.
• Dragonair ordinarily has a catch rate of 45. However, a Dragonair caught in the Pokémon Yellow Safari Zone has a non-standard catch rate of 27.
• Dragonite is the evolution of Dragonair. Were someone to catch a Dragonite in the wild in Yellow, it would have a catch rate of 9. However, Bulbapedia notes as I did above that Dragonite is not available for capture in Yellow. The only way to legitimately obtain a Dragonite is by evolving it from Dragonair at level 55 or higher. Thus, according to Bulbapedia, a legitimately obtained Dragonite traded from Red, Blue, or Yellow to generation two would not be holding an Antidote associated with its non-standard 9 catch rate.

I was unsure when I first dug into Dragonair’s catch rate whether any Dragonair traded from Yellow would be holding a protein upon arriving in Gold/Silver, or Crystal, or whether the 27 catch rate was unique to a Dragonair actually captured in Pokémon Yellow as opposed to evolved from a Dratini or traded from Red or Blue. Before continuing, please note that I am relying on Bulbapedia for the following information and have not personally tested trading differently acquired Dragonair from Red/Blue/Yellow to Gold/Silver/Crystal (perhaps that will be a future project). A separate Bulbapedia article appears to answer my question:

Four species of Pokémon have different held items when traded to Generation II depending on whether they were caught in Pokémon Red and Blue (Pokémon Red, Green, and Blue in Japan) or Pokémon Yellow.

Based on the articles from Cave of the Dragonflies and Bulbapedia, my understanding is that the only Dragonair with a 27 catch rate is a Dragonair caught in Pokémon Yellow. The only place to catch a Dragonair in Pokémon Yellow is the Safari Zone. Thus, a Dragonair traded from Pokémon Red or Blue to Yellow would presumably have a catch rate of 45 instead of 27.

The notes about Dragonite are also instructive. As we discussed above, Dragonite can only be legitimately acquired through evolution in Pokémon Red, Blue, and Yellow. It is not available as a wild Pokémon encounter. Thus, changing its catch rate would seem to be pointless, and I suspect “wild” Dragonite’s catch rate was changed solely because if it had remained 45, it would have had a higher catch rate than its pre-evolution Dragonaire. Moreover, the nugatory effect of the change is evinced by the item that would come with a catch rate 9 Dragonite upon being traded. The partner Pikachu, Kadabra, and Dragonair all hold good items upon being traded from generation one to two. Pikachu’s Light Ball powers up Pikachu’s attacks, Kadabra’s Twisted Spoon powers up psychic moves, and Dragonair’s Protein is an expensive item which permanently boosts a Pokémon’s attack stat. Conversely, a Dragonite with a level 9 catch rate would be holding an Antidote, a one-time use item which cures poison status and is available for purchase for a low price in the very first Poké Mart in both the generation one and two games. But while Dragonite’s “catch rate” has no practical effect since it cannot be legitimately captured, the Dragonite information presumably resolves one point of potential ambiguity. I was unsure when I first tried to make sense of this information whether a Dragonair evolved from a Dratini captured in Pokémon Yellow would have a non-standard 27 catch rate like a Dragonair caught directly. Bulbapedia’s notes on Dragonite suggest that it would not. The Bulbapedia article states that Dragonite’s catch rate “normally has no effect,” which presumably means a Dragonite evolved from a Dragonair with a 27 catch rate does not have a 9 catch rate. If this is the case, it would seem that a Dragonair evolved from a Dratini would not have a 27 catch rate even if the Dratini were captured in Yellow. However, note again that I have not tested this – so it is entirely possible that I or Bulbapedia is missing a part of the equation.

Additional Note

Before returning to my original question about why Dragonair was set to level 15 in the Pokémon Yellow Safari Zone, I found an interesting question and reply on the Bulbpaedia discussion page for catch rate based trade items between Pokémon Red and Blue (see discussion). User SatoMew2 asked what would happen if someone traded his or her starter Pikachu from Pokémon Yellow to Pokémon Red or Blue, evolved it into a Raichu, and then traded it to a generation two game. The starter Pikachu cannot be evolved in Pokémon Yellow but can be evolved if it is traded to a different game. User SnorlaxMonster responded: “Since the ‘catch rate’ value [of starter Pikachu] (163) corresponds to the item index number (163) in Gen II, the Gen II game wouldn’t be able to distinguish between a Raichu obtained in Gen II that was traded to Gen I…” I will concede I am not sure if this is true. On one hand, it seems inconsistent with my understanding that it is impossible to legitimately obtain a Dragonite with Pokémon Yellow’s 9 catch rate, including through evolution from a Dragonair with a 27 catch rate. However, it is possible the Pokémon Yellow Pikachu works differently. I noted while looking through Pokémon Yellow dissasembly files that while Dragonair’s catch rate is 27, Pikachu’s is the normal 190 instead of partner Pikachu’s 163. While I cannot say for certain without testing myself, it does seem possible that a Raichu evolved from the *unique *partner Pikachu in Red or Blue may behave differently than a Dragonite evolved from a Yellow-caught Dragonair.

Returning to the Purpose of the Safari Zone Dragonair

Some thought must have gone into dropping Dragonair into the Safari Zone. Not only was it oddly set 20 levels below the level at which it can normally be obtained through evolving Dratini, it is one of only three Pokémon in Yellow that will be holding an item upon being traded to Gold or Silver. While a Pokémon Yellow-captured Dragonair does arrive in the generation two games with a valuable item (Protein), its unique item is comparatively generic to partner Pikachu’s Light Ball and Kadabra’s Twisted Spoon. There is nothing obviously connecting Protein to Dragonair. Dragonair being singled out for special honor and holding a protein – which to be sure has no obvious connection to Dragonair – suggests that the creators had some special affection for the second of three dragon-type Pokémon in the original games.

I think that my original theory that Dragonair’s odd level 15 was a concession to make it easier to catch is correct – albeit not in the way I originally thought. Dragonair’s ordinary non-Yellow catch rate of 45 is consistent with some of the other more difficult Safari Zone Pokémon to catch such as Tauros, Kangaskhan, Tangela, Scyther, and Pinsir. Only Chansey, with a horrifying capture rate of 30, is lower than Dragonaire’s. In Yellow, Dragonair has Chansey beat by 3 for the worst capture rate in the Safari Zone. While I am not a Safari Zone scholar, I understand from reading The Cave of Dragonflies guide that the chance that a Pokémon runs from a Safari Zone encounter is based on its actual speed stat.

Had Dragonair kept its capture rate of 45 from generation one, it would not have been unreasonable to make it available at level 35 in the Safari Zone. To illustrate the effect of Dragonair’s lower catch rate in Yellow, I present a chart with stats taken from the Cave of the Dragonflies’ Safari Zone Calculator. I looked at what the chances of catching a level 35 and 15 Dragonairs would have been in Red and Blue with Dragonair’s normal 45 catch rate and what it would have been for a level 35 Dragonair in Yellow, compared to the level 15 Dragonair in Yellow which is the only one available in the games.

Game	Dragonair Level	Catch Chance Per Ball (Neutral)	Run Rate (Neutral)	Balls Only Catch Chance Per Encounter
RB	35	6.47	46.09	13.04
RB	15	6.54	21.88	24.22
Y	35	3.67	46.09	7.64
Y	15	3.72	21.88	15.00

Dragonair’s level does not make much difference in terms of the chance of catching Dragonair with each Safari ball throw, but you can see that each Safari Ball is 43-44% less likely to catch Dragonair with the 27 catch rate instead of the normal 45 catch rate. The real difference, as I suggested before, comes in the run rate. A level 35 Dragonair is more than twice as likely to flee after a failed capture attempt than a level 15 Dragonair. While a level 35 Dragonair would not be as flighty as the level 33 Kangaskhan available in Yellow (53.91%) due to its being slower, it is more difficult to catch at level 15, much less at level 35, due to the much lower catch rate. It is worth noting that a level 35 Dragonair in Red and Blue would have been slightly more difficult to catch than the level 15 Dragonair in Yellow, but not so much so that it would have been absurd to make it available. A level 35 Dragonair in Pokémon Yellow would be more than twice as difficult to catch as the next most difficult Safari Zone Pokémon (level 21 Chansey at 15.94%). Thus, taken together, Dragonair’s low catch level helps balance things out. While the level 15 Dragonair in the Pokémon Safari Zone has the worst per-ball capture rate of all Safari Zone Pokémon (3.72% vs 4.12% for a level 21 Chansey), it has the lowest chance of running (21.88%) on any given turn of any Pokémon with a catch rate worse than 10% and a run rate more than 20% thanks to its level-depressed speed stat.

Conclusion

I caught Dragonair in the Pokémon Yellow Safari Zone before I understood the odds I was up against. I published my article on the odds before learning about Dragonair’s unique catch rate in Pokémon Yellow. With this article, we now understand why Dragonair has a catch rate of 27 in Yellow (and only Yellow) and how that likely influenced the developers to set it to level 15 in the Pokémon Yellow Safari Zone. Of course, we do not know for certain why Dragonair is available for capture in Yellow, but it seems likely to me that at least one of the developers was partial to one of the best-designed Pokémon in the original set of 151. Having resolved my Dragonair questions, I look forward to possibly exploring some of the catch rate issues discussed above in future articles.