Results of survival mode itemless grinding 7 times

Background
After reading this post and this post, I decided to try out grinding survival mode itemless once per day for a week to see how difficult and how profitable it was. Each run took about 1.5 hrs (give or take a half hour) and of course 3 hearts. The only metric I recorded to measure progress (other than ending stage, which turned out to be 50 every time) was the number of remaining moves when I hit stage 50 (before I played through the stage). For 3 hearts you get 2500 XP worth of boosters and 1000 gold, if you have the free time. I had a long road trip so it was convenient to do lazily while I wasn't doing much else.

 

Results

Moves remaining at 50	Win?	Mega	Slot 2	Slot 3	Slot 4
17	Yes	Beedrill^12/12 (6)	Charizard (15)	Landorus T^SL5 (10)	Hoopa U^SL3 (10)
27	Yes	Beedrill^12/12 (6)	Larvitar^SL5 (15)	Landorus T^SL5 (10)	Hoopa U^SL3 (10)
38	Yes	Beedrill^12/12 (7)	Larvitar^SL5 (15)	Landorus T^SL5 (10)	Hoopa U^SL3 (10)
12	Yes	Beedrill^12/12 (7)	Larvitar^SL5 (15)	Landorus T^SL5 (10)	Hoopa U^SL3 (10)
33	Yes	Beedrill^12/12 (8)	Larvitar^SL5 (15)	Landorus T^SL5 (10)	Hoopa U^SL5 (10)
24	Yes	Beedrill^12/12 (8)	Larvitar^SL5 (15)	Landorus T^SL5 (10)	Hoopa U^SL5 (10)
25	Yes	Beedrill^12/12 (8)	Larvitar^SL5 (15)	Landorus T^SL5 (10)	Hoopa U^SL5 (10)

 

Notes and proof
Proof is that I have lots of xp boosters now (21,250 in total, including a few from safari and EBs but most from survival mode): proof.

 

As for team, I found the level of Beedrill to be largely irrelevant. Risk-taker SL3 is probably good enough, but SL5 on your pokemon will definitely give more consistency to the runs. Larvitar was a personal choice and performed better than Charizard due to having Risk-taker and similar type coverage. However now that Emboar can eat RMLs and can get Risk-taker, I'd recommend that as a probably better option.

 

tl;dr - Confirmed previous posts that survival mode can be done itemless virtually every time, provided you have a good team and enough time to kill (waiting room, road trip, etc).

 

EDIT - No ShuffleMove
No ShuffleMove (it'd take way too long and force you to be at a computer). Just practice/intuition with the stages and the Bee!

EDIT2 - Credit due
Forgot to thank u/RoyM_ and u/KillerKev666 for their initial posts on itemless survival mode.

EDIT3 - Tips from my experience with the Bee
In response to a comment from u/jameslfc here are some tips from my experience with using the Bee (purely anecdotal but hopefully someone finds it helpful):

On any low HP stage where you have a SE Risk-taker, always take a 4 or 5 match (or 3 if that's all you have) of that to try to finish out the stage quick and bank a lot of moves. If you can get some combos or evolve M-Beedrill while doing that, even better. If you don't know how much HP a stage has, you can just estimate from the health bar after you've done a move (and you'll have a better idea for next time).

 

For any 3-pokemon stage, just try to get two matches of Beedrill on your starting combo so you can clear any disruptions/non-support pokemon and get the pseudo C-1 to get the combos and damage rolling. Risk-taker is less important on a 3-pokemon stage where you can get more damage by combo-ing and usually finish in 1 or 2 turns. This helps the Raichu stage become very easy to do in few moves, for example.

 

For the stages with really bad disruptions and high HP (like M-Mawile, M-Glalie, Zoroark, Gengar, M-Gengar, Mewtwo, etc) you're gonna have to spend a few moves, but you'll want to focus on matching Beedrill to stall disruptions and trying to get combos / set up 4 or 5 matches of your SE Risk-taker to do some damage.

 

With your Beedrill taps, you want to 1) try to line up a horizontal match, 2) remove disruptions, 3) remove other M-Beedrill icons to get a pseudo C-1, 4) remove non-support pokemon, 5) remove your NVE pokemon.

 

If you haven't practiced much yet with M-Beedrill, you want to typically tap on the bottom two rows in order to combo. By tapping near the edge, you can lower rows by only 2 instead of the normal 3 (since it makes a 2x3 box instead of a 3x3 to remove). Tapping in the lower corners removes a 2x2 box instead of the usual 3x3. So you'll want to look for two icons that match horizontally that have a matching icon next to them but 2 or 3 rows higher or lower. Then you can use your Beedrill tap to line up that match. Don't worry about trying to do more than one match, just try to get rid of M-Beedrill icons and get one match resulting from the tap near the bottom of the screen, which will allow some combos to flow with decent RNG (although sometimes it takes a few tries).

 

One last tip: the stages with the added non-support pokemon are usually the ones where you spend the most moves. They typically are boss stages that have bad disruptions too. So you usually have to match M-Beedrill any time you can (to stall disruptions), try to remove the non-support pokemon with the taps, and then grab SE Risk-taker matches in between.

 

Anyway, hope that helps! Let me know if you need any clarification on the massive wall of text.

 

EDIT4 - Discussion about teams

As per the discussion in response to u/Alnian: I've been thinking a lot of type coverage with all the new Risk-takers now (even including less broad type-covering ones like Mawile and Azumarill), so I'll give you my thoughts, though most of it is speculation and untested thus far.

 

Speaking for survival mode specifically, I don't pay too much attention to the NVE types and more just look at the SE coverage. The reason is that most of your damage comes from SE Risk-taker (or neutral Risk-taker if you're on one of those unlucky stages where you don't have a SE) rather than combos. Even at a match of 3, your SE Risk-taker will put out lots of damage. In my current team, the stages where I have one NVE vs two NVE supports don't seem all that different in terms of how I play and how quickly I deal damage.

 

So for me it's all about getting at least one SE Risk-taker for as many of the stages as I can, with extra weight given to the boss stages / hard stages since they're the same every time and are the place where you'll lose the most moves. The survival mode guide has a good list of boss stages.

 

So with Machamp instead of Larvitar you keep the SE against Ice (important for mega Glalie) and pick up Normal (good for lots of Normal type bosses), Dark (good for Sableye, Zoroark), a 2nd SE against Steel (nice for mega Mawile), and a 2nd Rock (not really that important). You lose Bug and Flying SE, but there aren't many bugs, and most of the flying stages are low HP and/or 3 pokemon stages where you don't need a SE Risk-taker.

 

As for Emboar in place of Larvitar, you'd keep the SE against Ice (good) and Bug (nice but not necessary) and get a 2nd SE against Steel (also good) and Grass (nice but again not necessary). You'd lose SE against Fire and Flying (but neither is that important anyway).

 

So while I think any of them could work, I think Emboar is probably better than Larvitar, but Machamp is likely the best. Not to mention Machamp can get more BP with RMLs, which can be more significant when you're getting ridiculous multipliers with Risk-taker. Of course when you're investing RMLs and SS and such you'll want to consider other stages as well, in which case I still think Machamp SL5 and Lvl 15 or higher should be a top priority.

 

As a sidenote about teams, I think M-Beedrill, Lando-T and Hoopa-U are non-negotiable (as of the currently available pokemon). The Bee is needed for obvious reasons. Lando-T has great type coverage and is crucial to getting through Ampharos, mega Ampharos, mega Mawile, Raichu, etc without losing too many moves. And Hoopa-U very uniquely gives you the SE you need against Psychic and Ghost to get through Slowpoke / Slowbro / mega Slowbro, Gengar / mega Gengar, and of course mega Mewtwo.

 

The final slot I think there is room to play around with, and a couple different options that could work.