o.O Only takes weeks if you are looking for some super rare beast. Pretty sure if you just want a regular joe, it would take you all of at most a week, even with SZ refs being slightly lax.

Eragam, yes. The Approval Tower used to be the place to buy Pokemon, but we recently ended that. The best bet for an exact Pokemon would be the Safari Zone. As long as you have a reasonable idea of where they might be, you could find the Pokemon you were looking for in as little as 4 posts.

Side note. Ay-no they wouldn't have to hoard points. Newbies get 2 points to start-which they can use to go into the Zone and grab up a 5th Pokemon if they wish. Then they'd have their new Pokemon and can get into battles and gain points and experience just like everyone else.

Or...they could also take up SZ quests as a ref, make a quick cash of points and then be able to fuel a larger adventure.