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kafus · 1 year

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i did some ridiculous technical BS in pokemon again

NOTE: not only is this post a very very long infodump from yours truly, it is also specifically an infodump involving a lot of pokemon glitches and exploits. even though i don't tamper with my games and everything achieved here can be done on original hardware with no hacking or what-have-you, some people still may consider this Cheating based on their own personal standards of legitimate gameplay. i ask that you please don't try to start arguments with me about pokemon legality and just take it all as an interesting technical infodump about gen 3 pokemon okay thank you <3

SO. i decided that before pokemon bank eventually shuts down one day in the probably-not-so-distant future and makes old gen transfer impossible, i need more ribbon master pokemon (AKA a pokemon with all the ribbons it can possibly receive from its gen of origin to the most recent gen it can transfer to) from gens 3 and 4. i've been meaning to ribbon master a pokemon from gen 3 based on my favorite singer, KAF (you don't need to know anything about kaf for this story whatsoever but you should check her out LMAO) and while musing over what pokemon would suit her best, it came to me.

FARIGIRAF IS JUST KAF'S FURSONA!! the monster teeth hoodie with the eyes. even has the dangly bits. like come on it's perfect. AND girafarig is obviously available in gen 3 so i could RM a kaf girafarig and then evolve her once i got to SV. Cool! Awesome! but here's the problem. I CAN'T SETTLE FOR JUST A NORMAL GIRAFARIG. I HAVE TO GO ALL OUT!!

i started brainstorming my ideal gen 3 kaf girafarig, and came to the following conclusions:

i obviously want the girafarig to be shiny. i mean come on

i want her to be a girl for obvious reasons, and gentle nature to match her personality. just because Armor Tail is better on Farigiraf i also want it to have girafarig's second ability, Early Bird. i'm not concerned with IVs because i think random IVs add flavor and that would add more tedium than i was already dealing with

i want her to be japanese language origin since kaf is a japanese singer (i can nickname her かふ that way too!)

i want the original trainer (OT) name to be PPさん (PP-san) in reference to the person who scouted out kaf's talent in the first place - he goes by Piedpiper online and my friends and i call him PP as a joke sometimes

i want the trainer ID to be 02018 because 2018 is kaf's debut year

since girafarig only spawns in gen 3 in the ruby/sapphire/emerald safari zone, i wanted to hatch a girafarig egg in firered/leafgreen for the kanto origin, which is impossible otherwise. FRLG are also really important games to me, leafgreen being the first pokemon game i ever owned or played, so that's a bonus

now you may be looking at this entire list and being like. What the fuck. how do you intend to shiny hunt girafarig with all of these hyperspecific parameters, especially in FRLG where the everstone passing nature doesn't exist and flame body doesn't even exist to hatch eggs faster. you will be doing that long after bank shuts down. and you're intending on doing this on original hardware too??? WELL. that's where ACE and RNG manipulation comes in babey. i am GOING to attempt to make this comprehensible even if you've never touched ACE or RNG manip in your life, even tangentially, but sorry if this is a bit of a mess it's pretty technical LOL. the rest of this post is going below a cut cause it Goes Places!!

ACE and RNG manipulation explained (kinda)

first off a quick overview of ACE, ACE stands for arbitrary code execution, which is the ability to run your own (arbitrary!) code within the game. this can be set up with a series of elaborate glitches, that break open the gen 3 pokemon games into letting you run your PC box names as code, enabling you to do pretty much anything you want. to be upfront, i'm not an expert on ACE - i understand it in an overarching conceptual sense and am able to follow ACE guides just fine, but i cannot write my own ACE code, which essentially requires you to know some GBA assembly. doesn't really matter for the purpose of this story though.

you can see an example of a tiny snippet of a larger ACE code with the PC box name below. it looks like gibberish but that's because every character used in the name corresponds to a specific internal value, which when all run together, is code!

i need ACE in FRLG because resetting for, or RNG manipulating (more on that in a moment), trainer ID (and secret ID, also more on that later) is pretty much impossible. ACE will allow me to change my TID to 02018 by essentially just telling the game to do so with my PC boxes. this requires me to set up ACE in emerald first since that's the only game with a viable entrypoint, and then use emerald ACE to make glitch pokemon that can activate ACE in FRLG when traded over.

as for RNG manipulation, that's a bit more straightforward, especially if you've ever watched a speedrun of... pretty much anything with random chance in it. games with random chance are not actually fully random because computers can't really be fully random, and in the older pokemon games with unencrypted and less advanced RNG (random number generator) algorithms, this is pretty easy to exploit.

this is a heavy simplification, but whenever you encounter a wild pokemon in RSE or FRLG, the amount of frames that have passed since the game was turned on are compared to a number that was generated upon boot, called the RNG seed. if you've ever played minecraft you can compare this to world seeds - the pokemon RNG seed determines all possible wild encounters in that play session in a similar fashion as minecraft determining the infinite terrain layout. this comparison determines every aspect of an encountered pokemon; its species, nature, IVs, and so on. so, if you were able to time your wild encounter (or any other type of pokemon encounter) down to the 1/60th of a second frame, you can get the game to spit out whatever pokemon you want at you! you just need a bit of typically invisible information first - the RNG seed, and if you're RNGing a shiny, your secret ID aka SID, which is like an invisible second trainer ID generated alongside your TID that is paired up with the TID and compared against any pokemon you encounter to determine if it should be shiny or not. both of these things can be figured out without hacking or tampering with games/save files.

the most common program used for all things RNG manipulation is called pokefinder and you can see an example of it spitting out what shinies are available on hoenn's first route in the first 100000 frames of the game being on with an RNG seed of 0 and my old TID/SID combo below. it's pretty damn cool to me tbh, i love RNG manipulation and i'm way more versed on it/experienced than i am with ACE

TLDR; rng manipulation is essentially a frame perfect, speedrunning-adjacent trick to get the game to roll the RNG in your favor, including for perfect IVs or shininess. for reasons that will become clear later, this is much easier to do in emerald than any other gen 3 game, so i will be using emerald for the RNG manipulation of the girafarig egg

with ALL of that context out of the way, this was the gameplan:

play through a fresh file of japanese firered (i don't own japanese leafgreen, RIP) all the way through the postgame to unlock trading with hoenn with the name PPさん, not worrying about TID for now. the guide i was following did not have a code for changing name with ACE in japanese FRLG specifically, so i figured playing the game again real quick would be a better alternative to trying to teach myself assembly in an afternoon LOL

set up ACE in my new emerald file i completed recently

use ACE in emerald to generate the glitch pokemon needed to run ACE in FRLG and trade them over. finalize the setup process over in FRLG too

look up possible gentle, ability 2, female, and shiny egg frames, and pick one that looks good to RNG manipulate in emerald, noting its PID (an encounter-specific ID number, pretty much)

figure out what SID, when combined with a TID of 02018, will cause that egg frame to be shiny - that way when the egg is traded over and hatched in firered, it will be shiny

do the RNG in emerald, trade over the to-be-shiny egg to firered, and hatch it after changing the TID/SID with ACE appropriately!! bam female, gentle, early bird, shiny, JP origin girafarig with an OT of PPさん and a visible TID of 02018. Pog!!

to execute that gameplan would take me an entire day, though...

step 1: play through firered

ok gonna be honest this is the ONE part of this entire process that i did not play on original hardware. i wanted to get to the Cool Parts of this process so i decided to play through firered on emulator. absolutely terrible picture sorry but i do actually own japanese firered, so i could dump the game legally to my computer to use speedup in mGBA with a little device called the Joey JR which connects the cart to my computer by USB like so

after that it was pretty much a relatively normal playthrough but obviously with emulator speedup. i used solely my starter blastoise to, well, blast through the rest of the game LMAO. after just a couple of hours or so i was right before the elite four, which i completed while in the car after moving the save file back to my cartridge with the same device, since i had to leave the house to go to a doctor appointment. i tried to take pictures of me beating the game but the sun was not doing the photos any favors lol. blastoise ended up being level 76 by the end. was easy with surf and an ice beam TM from the game corner (i just bought the coins)

unfortunately beating the game isn't the only requirement for trading with the hoenn games, so i also had to complete the whole sevii islands postgame quest... which required me to have 60 registered owned entries in the pokedex, which i wasn't really doing while speeding through the game initially, so i had a lot of mons to catch. i was still out of the house at this point (and playing at normal speed lol) so i wasn't really taking pictures, but i did make a stop at the power plant to look for an electabuzz despite it being an inefficient 5% since i needed a spare anyways for my leafgreen file unrelated to this story lmao. took a pic of it since it took a while to show up. anyway soon enough the dex had 60+ entries! i've played FRLG so many times that the encounter locations are memorized in my mind... i did all of this with no googling asdfkasfd

at this point i got home and was able to do the ruby/sapphire postgame quest on emulator with speedup again, so it was pretty easy. moved the save back to cart and i was done with step 1! obviously this didn't actually take me 21 hours of playtime, that was the emulator speedup's fault loool. from here on out i didn't touch any emulators again!

step 2: set up ACE in emerald

ACE time! i've actually set up ACE in an old emerald file before but i wanted to do it again fresh. i was following a guide pretty much to a T so i'm actually going to skip over the details of some of the steps since you can read about those more in depth over at the guide i was using if you want

TLDR; you have to trade for the NPC trade pokemon, DOTS the seedot and PLUSES the plusle, then EV train DOTS a specific way. these EV values cause DOTS to turn into a glitch pokemon egg 0x0611 when corrupted with the pomeg glitch (more on that in a bit), which, when hatched, runs the PC box names as code, aka ACE! why does it work? if you really want to know, there's plenty of stuff online about it, i'm not the best person to ask haha

it's worth noting that volbeat is really annoying to capture in emerald as it's literally only available as a 1% in one patch of grass, so i caught an illumise instead and bred them until a volbeat hatched lol. was much more efficient

also lol "Take good care of DOTS!" sorry i will be corrupting your son into demonspawn that lets me wield godlike control over your universe

after getting the necessary NPC trade pokemon all ready and moving them into a specific pattern in box 2 (i cloned them with the emerald tower cloning glitch) i had to perform the pomeg glitch. this involves using a pomeg berry to decrease a pokemon's health to 0 without causing a whiteout. this is achieved by getting a pokemon with at least 8 HP EVs to 1 HP and then using the pomeg berry on it, decreasing the EVs and taking off a point of health in the process (it's slightly more steps than this but whatever). i decided to use the camerupt i had during my playthrough of the game for this purpose. just took him to fiery path to get poisoned and walked until he was on 1 HP and healed him with an antidote lol

by doing the pomeg glitch and entering a wild battle, the game gets a bit confused since all the pokemon in your party are fainted and just sends out some sort of glitch decamark pokemon. in this situation, after viewing my camerupt's summary in battle and exiting back out of the summary screen, i was able to corrupt the DOTS and PLUSES sitting in my PC by scrolling up above the usual limit of the party menu, which reaches into data used by the first two PC boxes and fucks them up, ending up with, assuming that i EV trained correctly, a glitched egg that is about to hatch in a nest ball named DOTS with pokerus. this will run ACE when hatched! (if you want more info on this corruption pomeg stuff, check out the bulbapedia article for glitzer popping. yes that's what they named it)

step 3: use emerald ACE to set up firered ACE

so once again you can find a lot more detail on this process over at the guide i was using, but the TLDR of the matter was, i needed to put a bunch of codes into my PC box names to generate a few different glitch mons. specifically, i needed a egg that would hatch into a crobat (yes, fully evolved lol) with a singular glitched out move, that when used in battle in firered, would cause ACE to happen similar to how hatching the corrupted DOTS egg causes ACE to happen in emerald. i also needed a specific buggy shiny umbreon and a very strange glitchy egg.

even though this step was mostly a lot of tedious typing on the gen 3 keyboard (+ i had to redo things once because i made a typo at one point in the process LOL) it was so much fun! the game breaks in so many ways that you would just... never see during normal gameplay and it makes for some really good pictures and whatnot

first of all, when you hatch the 0x0611 egg, it hatches into a decamark of varying colors, in the case of the picture below it's almost imperceptible because the whole sprite is just a black circle, blending in with the background (sorry for the quality on this one, it's a screencap of a video clip i took).

additionally, trying to scroll over the hatched decamark in the PC or viewing its summary screen will crash the game, so to get rid of it, it has to be moved to the front of your party in the party menu, and then you go to the PC to release it through the deposit menu. since the cursor just defaults to the first position of the party and you don't have to scroll over to it, it's possible to release it from here.

oh yes and the umbreon/other glitch egg? similarly screwy - actually after generating them, their sprites are glitched out until you reset the game, so they look like this. behold their nonsense summaries:

after i had all i needed to trade to FRLG, i cloned an extra set of them with the emerald tower glitch again just in case i messed something up and got to trading! here's me receiving them on the firered side:

and last but not least, i'm a little obsessed with the way the glitch move looks in FRLG on the hatched crobat, absolute nonsense:

i finalized setting up the FRLG ACE (check out the guide i linked earlier for more info) and put everything into their proper positions, but before i could actually execute any code... i needed to know what SID i was going for!

step 4 + 5: look up potential egg frames in emerald and find an SID

soo now for looking at potential girafarig eggs. instead of using the program pokefinder which i mentioned earlier, i used a program called pokenav egg rng tool, which is exactly what it sounds like, a tool specialized for rng manipulating eggs with the pokenav in emerald. using it, i was quickly able to generate a whole list of gentle, female, ability 2 (early bird) eggs, and i picked one that was around 1300 frames in since that made for quick resetting attempts, but not so quick that i could barely make my inputs in time. the one i picked was frame 1381. with a TID of 02018, the PID D2C5EF55 would be shiny with an SID of 14962, so i noted that for later in firered. (i figured this out using an old program called RNG Reporter which is what i'm familiar with but i don't recommend using lmao. it's the "Pandora's Box" feature of that software though if you happen to look it up)

i won't make an entire guide on how to do emerald egg RNG here because it's a lot of steps, but i might at some point because the most up to date method isn't super well documented. anyways, here's a very paraphrased version of the process (this is also assuming that you aren't dealing with "redraws", which i wasn't... like i said very paraphrased):

get a pokemon with the ability lightningrod in the front of your party (i used electrike) to make pokenav calls happen more frequently, and a pokemon with flame body or magma armor (i used slugma) to make eggs hatch faster

get a male and a female of the pokemon you want to hatch, in my case girafarig. if you were RNGing IVs, the parent's IVs would be relevant, but i am not RNGing IVs so i didn't care and just caught the first girafarig i could in the safari zone

an egg is attempted to be generated every 255 steps after the parents are deposited in the daycare together, so by timing the usage of a max repel in such a way, it's easy to save the game exactly 10 steps before an egg is generated. do this

using a timer such as eontimer, soft reset and try to take that last 10th step on your target frame. this will also trigger a pokenav call (or lack thereof) and by looking for the phone call you got in the call column of the egg rng tool and whether or not an egg generated at the daycare, you can tell what frame you hit. didn't hit your target? just soft reset and try again, calibrating the timer for your own human error. this can take a while since the timing is precise to 1/60th of a second

once you hit your target frame, woohoo you did it just take the egg and hatch it! if you're RNGing IVs you would actually save before taking the egg and then RNG the IVs separately but that's a whole different thing i'm not explaining here since i wasn't RNGing IVs

i've avoided mentioning it this entire time till now, but emerald is particularly easy to do rng manipulation in because due to a programming error, the rng seed is always 0 - all encounters are predictable and you don't have to dedicate a frame perfect input to getting the right seed, making emerald rng a matter of one frame perfect input instead of two (there ARE ways to get emerald to generate a proper rng seed but that's unrelated here). additionally, its pokenav system means you can see if you got the right egg BEFORE taking it and hatching it... doing egg RNG in any other gen 3 game is basically a death sentence due to multiple untelegraphed frame perfect inputs that have to be executed in a row, plus really long wait times due to hatching eggs on a slower bike without flame body. there's a reason i was not doing this on four island in frlg.

but yeah now i knew what egg frame i was going for and was all prepared to do the RNG, so now it was onto actually executing it all:

step 6: getting kaf girafarig babey!!

before doing the RNG manipulation in emerald, i needed to change my SID and TID in firered finally! this required me to run two different codes, one for SID and one for TID. it was actually pretty painless since the code is nearly identical for both, you just swap out the values of each ID and one character changes in one box name to decide whether you're changing TID or SID. you can find the list of codes i was referencing here.

i was saving my one allotted video clip in this post for changing the TID with the glitched crobat move though because LMAO

^ shoutout to my qpp @/spikyearr for this one i fucking chokedSKFDDSFK

anyway, after doing that i went through the process of the egg rng in emerald (unfortunately no pictures because it's kind of hard to take pics mid-rng) and actually saved before taking the egg so that i'd be able to soft reset after hatching it - i just needed to check to make sure it was gentle and everything, and then i could soft reset, take the egg again, bike around to decrease the egg cycles in emerald since hatching in firered is super slow, and then trade it off before hatching it to go be hatched in firered. i knew it wouldn't be shiny in emerald, so i wasn't concerned with that. it only took 40 or so minutes of attempts before i got her!

and then AT LAST after spending my ENTIRE DAY ON THIS SHIT (like 10x the amount of time on the ACE stuff for the TID instead of the actual RNG itself LOOOL) i just had to trade the egg to firered and hatch it and i was golden!!!!! AAAGH here she is next to my kaf plushies!!!

also a picture of her summary screen after being traded to my english leafgreen!! i am assuming this will be easier to read for most of the people reading this post LOL

THAT'S IT. POST OVER THIS WAS SO LONG. IF YOU MADE IT THROUGH MY RAMBLING GOOD JOB. I HIT THE PHOTO LIMIT HELP ME

anyways yeah i'm gonna be ribbon mastering her and idk i might post about the process as i go. not immediately though i have a platinum playthrough to finish teehee. also if any of this was interesting to you i highly recommend trying out RNG manipulation, it's a really fun way to play pokemon games! gen 5, BW specifically and not their sequels, is REALLY beginner friendly for RNG manipulation as the timing is a lot less precise. check it out, there's plenty of guides online!!

#pokemon #pokemon rse #rse #pokemon frlg #frlg #rng manipulation #arbitrary code execution #girafarig #ribbon mastering #kiki was here #kiki.txt #long post #kiki plays games

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synthaphone · 1 year

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my shiny fails:

shiny Bibarel in Diamond, 2007: first shiny ever, i was like 11 and SUPER excited. unfortunately in was in the safari zone and ended up running away

shiny Charmeleon in Emerald, 2008: i'm counting this as a fail even though it was uncatchable- i was at a Quiznos playing the Battle Factory and one of my opponents rolled a shiny charmeleon as a rental. i did end up swapping for it after beating them and using it for the rest of my factory run, but like. nothing you can do there, RIP

shiny Sunkern in GO, 2018 or something idk: it busted out and ran away. rip

shiny Spheal in Legends Arceus, 2022 probably: rolled away... so sad.........

shiny Dragonite in Lets Go Pikachu, 2023: another 'couldn't catch it before it ran away'

shiny Houndstone in Scarlet, yesterday: I saved in front of it so i thought I was safe- it burst out of 3 moon balls and I decided I didn't want to lose that many of such a rare resource on one pokemon. so i reset and all of the spawns refreshed 🙃

#i was like 'why is this one upsetting me so bad' but making this list i understand now. this one was MY fuckup #and also was because the mechanics of this game are inconsistent so it felt unfair #some people are able to recover shinies that have seemingly not respawned; by resetting their games again or changing the time/date #but for ME this did not work. i think its because i hadn't restarted my game in a while so resetting was more impactful???#idk. stupid ass game #pokemon #i need a text post tag

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shinysamurott9 · 9 months

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How I nuked my 400 Hour Save of Pokemon Heartgold

So, recently I've been playing through the Pokemon Generations doing a Ribbon Master Quest, obtaining every Ribbon a single or set of Pokemon can possibly obtain by sending them up through the series. Just yesterday I was on the tail end of finishing the Gen 4 segment of the challenge.

I have a team of 5 Ribbon Masters currently; Mushi, my Shiny Heracross from Pokemon Colosseum which I hunted specifically for this Ribbon Master Quest, Velos and Seibzehn, a Latios and Metagross I raised to use in Emerald's Battle Frontier, Sparda, my Shiny Arceus I hunted using the void glitch in Pearl and Nero, my Shiny Giratina from Sinjoh Ruins. The only ribbons left for them to get was the Legend Ribbon for beating Red and most pertinent to this story, the World Ability Ribbon.

For those unaware, the World Ability Ribbon is obtained by reaching Rank 5 or higher in the Wifi Room in Gen 4's Battle Tower. Despite what you may think, this is still obtainable thanks to fan made servers which restore old wifi functionalities in Generations 4 & 5. The thing is though the Wifi room is bullshit. The opponents you fight are recorded teams from other players and unfortunately, on top of the highly optimised teams you’ll encounter, you'll also encounter many teams of blatantly hacked stuff like Machamps with OHKO Moves or Sturdy Shedinjas.

This is where I mention the fact that I just so happen to have a modded 3ds, which, among other things, let's me backup save data. So since the game was blatantly cheating anyway, I decided "Fuck it, I'm cheating too". How I did this was to fight one battle in the Wifi Room, and after winning, I'd use the rest option to save and exit the game. Then I'd backup that save file, so if I lost the next battle, I could restore that backup and try again, letting me continue my streak. A slow process but it would mean eventually, I would be able to climb the ranks high enough to get the World Ability Ribbon.

As you can imagine though, I was doing this process of reloading and backing up a lot, and at one point I restored a file incorrectly, taking out the game too early, causing the file to go blank. No problem I'll just restore the file again and if I was competent, that's wherethis would have ended. But, because of how much I was using Checkpoint, my muscle memory got a lite crosswired, so instead of restoring my file, I made a new backup over it, effectively erasing the entire thing.

For reference this included:

400 hrs of Gameplay, A Pokedex roughly 2/3rds complete, A fully developed Safari Zone, Several Pokemon from my various Gen 4 Playthroughs over the years, Every Arceus Plate, (Which are actually pretty difficult to get in HGSS), All 5 of my Ribbon Masters

And perhaps worst of all, my entire collection of Gen 4 shinies. This included:

My near back to back Shiny Luxio and Luxray from Platinum,

A shiny Darkrai and Shaymin I hunted with the Void Glitch

Several Radar and Safari Week Shinies

And a shiny of each Sinjoh Dragon.

Needless to say I was both pissed and devestated. There was some consolation, since I had backups of Gen 3 and Platinum, my Ribbon Masters and Battle Tower mons were safe. Everything else though, initially I was resigned to either losing them forever or trying very likely in vain to recreate as much as I could in PKHex which has it's own issues both logistically and ensuring they were legal, not helped at all by how bad the legality checker in PKHex actually is.

BUT

There was, one, just one saving grace. Fucking POKEMON BATTLE REVOLUTION

The way that Battle Revolution works is that you connect a Gen 4 Save File and it will make an exact copy of your boxes so you can use them in BR's various Colosseums. And of course I just so happened to have copied my boxes from HG a few months ago just after Safari Week meaning every pokemon I had nuked still existed! I had to hack my Wii U to dump the save file but because of that I was able to completely restore almost every single pokemon by copy pasting them back onto Heartgold.

Obviously still lost a lot in other areas but I really can't complain considering what I managed to restore.

As a sidenote, there was a similar incident way back where I accidentally erased my friend's Ruby Master File no shinieswere lost just a lot of progress. I think his reaction speaks for itself.

#Fuck up of cosmic proportions #Pokemon #pokemon heartgold #pokemon battle revolution #Pokemon gen four #ribbon master #This will hopefully never happen again

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toaarcan · 7 months

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Stormbringer: A Pokemon Emerald Nuzlocke, Final Part

Alright, I had originally planned for a more thorough exploration of the postgame. I was going to get the other fossil, go to the new Safari Zone areas, catch Groudon and Kyogre, visit the Battle Frontier, and maybe even try to catch Latias.

Unfortunately, in light of the sudden corruption of Volt's data in the previous part, that's not what I'm going to do this time. I will probably do Emerald's postgame at some point in the future, but it won't be now, and it won't be on this file.

Instead, we're going direct to Steven.

It wasn't supposed to go this way.

I think what happened is that I made the mistake of leaving the Rare Candy code I used to skip grinding on when I closed the game yesterday. I never directly altered Volt's data, or any of my team's data, so either it's the Rare Candies or it's just a random glitch.

Either way... sorry, Volt.

Now we need to decide who is taking his place.

The smart thing to do would be to take Vulpix, make her a Ninetales, and use that.

The cool thing to do would be to take Rayquaza.

I think the answer is fairly clear.

Welcome aboard, Stormborn.

#Pokemon #Nuzlocke #Emerald Nuzlocke

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aparticularbandit · 1 month

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my current digimon emerald party is:

lillymon

zudomon

cyberdramon

angewoman

rapidmon

taomon

i had wizardmon for a while - and then he evolved into wisemon - but then i finally got to the safari zone to catch tanemon so. now i have lillymon instead. (wizemon is a strong psychic type than taomon, but i don't need two psychic types and you really expect me to drop taomon?? hah, no.)

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burningfestivalpersona · 2 months

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While consolidating all of the Contest Halls into one place to make room for the Battle Tents was a sensible decision, and Lilycove was a logical place to put it geography-wise, it did have a few drawbacks.

First, of course, is that people who don't have a Pokeblock case are banned from the Safari Zone for some reason. I promise that real-life safaris don't make you attest to your ability to feed the wild animals. I don't actually think I've ever visited the Gen III Safari Zone because of this.

Second is that it makes acquiring a Milotic require even more masochism than it did before. In RS, you can at least prepare the Pokeblocks ahead of time and evolve Feebas immediately. In Emerald, not only do you need to go through the trouble of checking every tile, but then you're stuck with a useless fish until Lilycove.

#pokemon #pokemon emerald

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crystalelemental · 2 months

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Going on anon because I’ll get flamed for my opinions but replaying Gen 5 sucks

The story drags, pokemon locations are stupid (seriously why is deino only in VICTORY ROAD), you’ll be underleveled for the most part unless you want to Audino grind, and (my most controversial take) I really don’t like BW Bianca and Cheren. N’s alright but since everyone goes “we have different viewpoints :)” anytime N tries to challenge the status quo it’s grating after a while

Somehow I had more fun replaying X than Black, and I’m sure if I said that on Twitter I’d be killed on sight

Also why did the shadow triad walk us across that straight line bridge in chargestone cave and not instead walk us towards the exit, I was so lost and on low hp trying to get out

It's alright anon, you're safe here.

On the point of Cheren and Bianca...I liked them well enough because of when I first played, but replaying they are a lot less compelling. A lot of their dialogue is repetitive and focused on the same beats. Cheren is just "What is the meaning of my strength?" over and over, while Bianca does absolutely nothing but hang back wondering about what she should be doing. It takes the second game for them to truly complete their arc. I can't say they're my favorite. My hot take is I don't think N is that compelling. My wife and I talk a lot about modern games (Galar and Paldea) doing this annoying thing where you're a special person who just shitstomps everyone else's dreams for your personal whims (Hop, Marnie, Kieran), and I feel like Gen 5 is where that really started happening thanks to N. The player is instantly imbued with a sense of being special and superior, because only your Pokemon seems to be super happy enough for N to question what he believes. His response to this is then to seek you out but also act like any refusal you have to his call is a personal affront. He gets kinda nasty about you saying No to any of his questions and probes. And again, the whole situation could be an interesting ethical dilemma, but the game doesn't want to contend with it so anyone who believes the system could have a flaw is just completely out of their minds.

That said, I actually want to talk about the Deino thing because that touches on a fun mechanical thing within the games.

Deino, as a pseudo-legend, is interesting to the point of being downright unique. Its appearance isn't atypical; fully half of pseudo-legends are post-game exclusive. Larvitar is supremely late game, and Beldum only shows up in time for the superboss fight with Steven in Emerald, otherwise it has nothing to do. Bagon shows up only after you've cleared the gyms, it's later than your Legendary. Dratini and Gible are the odd ones out. Dratini can be found halfway through your gym challenge in the Safari Zone if you know where to look and are willing to deal with Safari Zone catch rates. It's earlier access, but harder to complete. Gible can be found after only two gyms, but in a missable location that is visually impossible to identify, but comes with Gabite in Victory Road as compensation if you missed it.

Deino continues the general trend of being just a late availability Pokemon, but loses Gible's early access opportunity. This in itself isn't too atypical. No, what makes Deino fascinating is that it sucks.

Take a look at the performance of the prior pseudo-legends. The the early RBY days, if you found Dratini, you had access to a Pokemon that gets its first evolution kinda early, and can learn Fire, Water, Ice, and Electric coverage, giving it tools that let it handle the majority of the League just fine. In GSC, Larvitar shows up super late, but if you get one and put in the work to evolve (and better, learn Crunch and Earthquake as Larvitar first), Tyranitar blanks fully half of Red's team. In RSE, Bagon shows up late, but if you stall evolution a bit for Crunch and teach it Brick Break, a level 50 final stage is perfectly achievable, and has options to beat the entire E4. With Earthquake you beat Steven, although Wallace is a lot more of a problem. Metagross only shows up post-game, but in Emerald its Steel typing does make it a good response to much of Steven's own team, because he can't really hurt it. In DPPt, Gible's early access room comes with the Earthquake TM, allowing you to set up a monster right away that never really slows down, and with Flamethrower and access to Crunch, answers 3 members of the League independently.

Then there's Hydreigon. As Deino, it offers only Crunch. Dragon Rush is too inaccurate with Hustle to hit anything, and Body Slam offers nothing for coverage. Reusable TMs mean all the cool options aren't available, not that Zweilous can learn any of it. And Zweilous evolves at 50, a level where it wouldn't be unexpected that your team can already beat the League before it evolves once. If you do put in that work, Zweilous...actually goes through the best part of its life, because it can take down Caitlin and Shauntal, provided attacks actually connect. Then you have the long haul of postgame level scaling, trying to get it to beat things way bigger than it through low speed, poor bulk, and Hustle, to arrive at Hydreigon. Who doesn't even learn Dark Pulse naturally, and whose coverage options do not substantially change its matchups. And also because Caitlin and Shauntal are bulky it can't OHKO anything and their coverage is actually good (Golurk will one-shot with Hammer Arm, Musharna has Reflect and Reuniclus can obliterate with Focus Blast). Hydreigon, uniquely, does not contribute much.

I find this interesting as a pivot in game structure. I do think the games are designed with intent for the most part, and Gen 5 feels like a step away from the idea that the big statistical monsters are the most important. I assume this was intentional because Volcarona suffers the same fate, getting a useful Quiver Dance and Heat Wave by 60, but having the same "pre-evo is functionally useless all its life, and doesn't get the other good moves it wants until way later if at all." Bug Buzz at 70 is like GSC Heracross: yeah it's a great move, too bad I'll never reach that level to get it. And despite having Psychic, Marshal has so much Rock coverage it won't get anywhere. Caitlin and Shauntal were handled better by Beheeyem's bulky Calm Mind set, and Marshal was handled best by a +Def nature Rocky Helmet Durant. Which is weird compared to the usual pseudo-legend approach. It makes them feel like a lot more work for a lot less reward.

#pokemon gen 5

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projectdreamball · 11 months

Text

This is an updated Project Dream Ball post to reflect on some facts I didn't know about rare balls. Furthermore, I made some mistakes while copying and pasting, and forgot to consider some regional Pokemon don't have a regional pre-evolution. 10/17/2023

Project Dream Ball is a project that aims to make Pokemon in special balls such as Apricorn Balls, Sport Balls, Safari Balls, Dream Balls and Beast Balls more readily available to players.

On the side, Project Dream Ball also aims to help newer players obtain ribbons exclusive to previous gen Pokemon games, such as old contest ribbons, the Legend ribbon, etc. Pokemon that can be legitimately obtained in a Safari Ball:

*Any regional variant Pokemon whose original or other variant forms can be obtained in Safari Balls via breeding *Pokemon that are catchable in Pokemon Sword/Shield (you can create Safari Balls with the Cram-o-matic)

*Pokemon that are catchable in Pokemon Scarlet/Violet (you can create Safari Balls with the Item Printer)

Pokemon that can be legitimately obtained in Apricorn Balls:

*Pokemon that are catchable in HeartGold/Soulsilver, EXCEPT for Safari-exclusive Pokemon.

*Pokemon that are catchable in Sun/Moon and Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon

*Pokemon that are catchable in Sword/Shield

*Pokemon that are catchable in Scarlet/Violet

Pokemon that can/could have been legitimately obtained in a Dream Ball:

*Pokemon that were available through the Dream World in Pokemon Black/White

*Pokemon that are obtained from Pokemon Dream Radar

*Pokemon that are catchable in Pokemon Sword/Shield

*Pokemon that are catchable in Pokemon Scarlet/Violet

*Regional Variants whose original or other forms can be obtained in a Dream Ball via breeding

Pokemon that can be obtained in a Sport Ball:

*Pokemon that are catchable in Pokemon Sword/Shield (you can create Sport Balls with the Cram-o-matic)

*Pokemon that are catchable in Pokemon Scarlet/Violet (you can create Sport Balls with the Item Printer) *Regional Variants whose original or other forms can be obtained in a Sport Ball via breeding

Pokemon that can be obtained in a Beast Ball:

*Pokemon that are catchable in Sun/Moon and Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon

*Pokemon that are catchable in Sword/Shield

*Pokemon that are catchable in Scarlet/Violet *Regional Variants whose original or other forms can be obtained in a Beast Ball via breeding

How Project Dream Ball operates:

While Pokemon Bank is no longer available for download anymore after March 27th, 2023, it is still usable, and it is also be free to use. This means that Project Dream Ball will still be able to bring forward Pokemon from previous generations into Pokemon Home until Nintendo shuts down online servers completely in April 2024. As such, if you have any requests for ribbons that can only be obtained in previous generations, please let me know before it's

Project Dream Ball wants to help trainers obtain Pokemon with ribbons available only through previous gens, and intends to do so via requests. Please understand that these kinds of requests may take time, and may not always be possible. For example, past contest ribbons from Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald and Diamond/Pearl/Platinum are fairly easy to get, but there is a limit to how many may be possible to obtain through gameplay. Meanwhile, ribbons that are obtained through battling may be more difficult to obtain. As far as ribbon requests go, it may be better in some cases to request a specific Pokemon and request a trade instead. Trading online is still possible in gens 4 and 5 using this method. A list of ribbons can be found here. Please keep in mind, not all of these ribbons can be obtained.

Project Dream Ball aims to provide trainers with better access to Pokemon in special Poke Balls, without the use of Action Replay, Powersaves, etc. However, Project Dream Ball will still use fan wifi servers in order to trade Pokemon to trainers who would like to use certain Pokemon in older gens.

While I am not against cheat devices such as Action Replay, Powersaves, etc, Project Dream Ball will not be using these means to generate or edit Pokemon to have any special balls, ribbons, etc. Yes, I do own some of these devices, but I have no intention of using these as I understand that some people find it to be a bit iffy. Furthermore, I do not want to mistakenly generate a Pokemon with a ball or ribbon that it normally would not be able to obtain. I hope that everybody reading this understands. No Pokemon obtained through Project Dream Ball will be generated or edited through any third-party devices.

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