Future Site of Tesseraction's Revamped RNG Guide, Under Construction (Majorly)

Tesseraction

Tesseraction

Now that my VGC career is effectively over, I will be delivering a revamped RNG guide, as promised.

I'm going to be reserving the ENTIAH FIRST PAGE because I'm going to go into depth on stuff I didn't go into depth for in my first guide (Calibration/wild captures/SID abuse, etc.)

Then you're free to post with suggestions!
 
Tesseraction

Tesseraction

Preliminary Step: Calibration

For each game cartridge you own, you will have to find your DS parameters (it seems contradictory, since they're called DS parameters and not cartridge parameters, but that's just the way it is). The parameters may remain consistent if you own two copies of the same version in the same language, but otherwise, Black carts tend to differ from White carts, etc. Parameters for different languages of the same version may vary, as well, but I'm not sure. To be safe, just calibrate all of your cartridges. It takes 15 minutes tops.

Prerequisites
  • A Nintendo DS or Nintendo DS Lite
  • A Retail Copy of Pokémom Black Version or Pokémon White Version*
  • The latest copy of RNG Reporter
  • Some way of checking a Pokémon's IVs**
  • Your DS's mac address.
  • You must be saved either in an area where you can use Sweet Scent immediately after loading the game (that means you must have a Sweet Scenter in your party!) OR in front of a Stationary Pokemon (Legendary, Amoonguss, Volcarona, etc.).

* I won't answer any questions regarding Flashcart or Emulator abuse. If it's a general question, that's fine, but I'm not going to waste my time trying to figure out why your parameters are fluctuating wildly and you can't hit your seed because you're too cheap to buy the game.
** There are a lot of ways to do this. Serebii and Metalkid have decent IV calculators, and RNG Reporter has the built in Pokédex/IV Checker. You can also use Pokécheck or IR-GTS. Please note that in general, I cannot assist you in getting Pokécheck or IR-GTS to work. They are, however, excellent tools for many things in the RNG process. If you want to use them for checking IVs/verifying PID frames, etc. and are having problems getting them to work, they have their own support outlets.

Special Note: If you wish to RNG the ID/SID of a new cartridge, you must first progress far enough in the game to where you can check the IVs of wild Pokémon reliably. If you can use Pokécheck, IR-GTS, or some "magical" means of checking IVs, this can be as early as getting access to the GTS (or route 1 in the magical case). If you have to use an IV calculator, and can't "magick" lots of rare candies into your game, you'll probably have to play up to at least Icirrus City or Twist Mountain to get a good calculation.

Brief Introduction to RNG Reporter

If you're following this guide, there's a chance you don't really know much about RNG manipulation in general and therefore do not have a working knowledge of RNG Reporter's interface. It's straightforward for the most part, but just for reference, here's a little roadmap of the Main Window of RNG Reporter. Keep that term in mind (main window), because in later parts of the guide I'll reference this screen by that name. Other important windows of RNG Reporter are Time Finder, Parameters Search, and Pandora's Box.


​

Finding your DS Parameters

Now that you're familiarized with the main window, we can move on to calibration. Go ahead and click on DS Parameters Search. In the following image, I've highlighted the areas you need to worry about:


  1. Version, DS Type, and MAC Address
  2. Seed Encryption Variables - You don't need to change anything once you've selected your version.
  3. Time and date of search
  4. Held Buttons - search with none for now
  5. IVs of the first Pokémon caught immediately after loading the game
  6. Search!

Start by filling in your Version, DS Type and DS MAC Address. You'll find your DS MAC Address under System Information in the Nintendo WFC Settings screen (you can get there from your C-Gear: the little wrench icon underneath GAME SYNC). Your DS Type will be DS Original/Lite always, as DSi abuse is not currently supported. When you've filled all this in, the Seed Encryption Variables will change. That's normal, and you shouldn't touch them once they've been filled in for you.

Now, start your DS by hitting A (and releasing it) on "Pokemon ____ Version" on the main menu of the DS (the one with the clock). Don't touch any buttons until after the white Pokemon Company logo screen disappears (more often than not, I wait until the Game Freak Shooting Star appears to be safe. I recommend this if you're new to this). Make note of the exact time (24-hour time) and date (e.g. 06/10/2011 23:00:15) at which you start the game. Record this time in the Time/Date area.

Immediately after the game loads, encounter a Pokémon, either through sweet scent or talking to a stationary Pokémon. Capture it, and then check its IVs. Input these IVs into the IV area (note: IVs can be entered as ranges if you are unable to get the exact IVs from a calculator). Now, hit Search.


In particular, we are interested in VCount, Timer0, GxStat, and VFrame. I don't believe GxStat and VFrame vary from 6 for retail cartridges, but I could be mistaken. VCount should be constant for your cartridge, and Timer0 is the one which will give you gray hair later on. It is highly likely that your game will fluctuate seemingly randomly between two different values, usually with one being more common than the other. I am going to state this once:

YOU CANNOT CONTROL YOUR TIMER0

Timer0 most often seems to fluctuate when multiple keypresses are involved, so if you're having a lot of trouble with it, you may want to re-calibrate with keypresses and start from there. In any case, if you're sure you are doing everything right, and nothing else is wrong on your end but you're still not hitting your seed, you are most likely hitting an adjacent Timer0 and there's nothing you can do but keep trying, try a different seed, or recalibrate. NOTHING.

Also take note of the Seconds and Actual Seconds. The difference between these is the differential. You don't input this value anywhere, but you do need to be aware of it. Note that I started the game at 3 seconds after, but the seed was generated 4 seconds after. This means that, in general, to hit a seed, I need to start the game one second before the time listed in RNG Reporter (I've never seen anyone with a differential not equal to 1 second on a retail cartridge).

You can import these results to time finder and start your RNG adventure right now, if you want! However, I'd recommend doing this multiple times (5-10 for good faith, although admittedly I usually only do it 1-2 times myself) to see which of your two possible timer0 values you hit most often. It's up to you. A little time spent now can prevent a lot of headache later.

 
Tesseraction

Tesseraction

Capturing Stationary Pokémon with Given IV Spreads

Prerequisites
  • A calibrated Black/White retail Cartridge and DS Pair
  • The latest version of RNG Reporter
  • You will eventually need to save in front of a stationary Pokémon such as Volcarona, Cobalion, Terrakion, Virizion, Foongus, or Amoonguss. Don't do it just yet, though.

After you have found your DS parameters, click Use Result in Time Finder to automatically import them into the Time Finder parameters tab. Just to be sure, we'll check to make sure everything is correct! From the main window of RNG Reporter, hit the Time Finder button:


  1. Search settings - allow you to search specific methods/months/encounter types.
  2. IV settings - allows you to search for specific spreads
  3. PIDRNG Restrictions - narrow your search to specific natures, abilities, etc. while allowing you to set a synchronize nature.
  4. Shiny search tools - more about this later
  5. Results area
  6. Shiny Egg Finder - more on this later
  7. DS Parameters Setup - where we're headed now!

On the DS Parameters Setup screen, ensure that the parameters on that screen match what you found in the parameter search, that your MAC Address is entered, and you should change the "Keypresses" from 0 to 1-3. In this case, we're going to set it to 3 so that we can find a flawless spread more easily.


Now, return to the Capture tab. For now, we're only going to worry about IVs. Set all the IVs in the IV Settings area to 31 by hitting the "==31" buttons. Set a month and set min/max frame to 1 and 6 respectively. Set Method to "Method 5 (Standard Seed)" and set Encounter Type to Stationary Pokémon (if you're sweet scenting use Wild Pokémon).

Pick a seed from your results. In this case, we're going to choose the seed with the frame 3 flawless spread, despite the existence of a frame 1 spread (frame 1 spreads are superior in most cases) to demonstrate how the IV RNG is advanced for captures. Note that for most other purposes, we will be only using IV spreads that do not require any advancement to reach.

Let's take a moment to talk about how the IV Frame can be advanced:

Advancing the MTIVRNG
Let the number Z be the number of Pokémon currently in your party. Eggs count.
  • Trip the 128 step counter in-game: advances MTIVRNG by Z
  • Withdraw a Pokémon from the PC : advances the MTIVRNG by 7
  • Depositing a Pokémon into the PC does not advance the MTIVRNG.
  • Evolve Nincada and adding Shedinja to your Party: does not advance the MTIVRNG.

RNG Exercise 1: Frame Advancement Calculations​
Starting at frame 1, propose a way or multiple ways (if possible) to arrive at the target frame with at least 2 Pokémon in the party (you don't have to START with 2 Pokémon in the Party). Solutions are hidden.

Example: 8
Example Answer: Withdraw one Pokémon from the PC, OR, walk 128 steps with 3 Pokemon including Nincada bringing MTIVRNG to frame 4. Evolve with Rare Candies to receive a Shedinja, and then walk another 128 steps to bring MTIVRNG to frame 8.

  1. 3
  2. 15
  3. 21
  4. 48

  1. Walk 128 steps with 2 Pokémon in your party.
  2. Withdraw 2 Pokémon from the PC or walk 896 steps with 2 Pokémon in your party.
  3. Walk 512 steps with 4 Pokémon in your Party
  4. Withdraw 5 Pokémon from the PC, then walk 256 steps with 6 Pokémon in your party.


As you can see, there are many ways to reach higher frames. After this point, I'll pretty much exclusively deal with frames that don't require any advancement, but this is still a good skill to have for capturing parents for breeding projects, etc.

Now, since we're using the frame 3 spread, I'll save in front of the stationary with 2 Pokémon in my party and turn the game off. If you're following along with a different frame spread, you'll have to adjust accordingly.

This is the part of the RNG Process that can be annoying, because timer0 will try to foil you. You have to hit your seed at this point, so change your DS date and time settings to be slightly before your target time. My frame is on 06/07/2010 at 07:09:31, so I'll set my date accordingly and my time to 07:09:00. Now, notice that this frame has keypresses: that means that immediately after I hit A to start the game, I need to hold down those keys until the white Pokémon company logo goes away (still, I say it's better to wait for the Game Freak star). In this case, my keypresses are B-Right-Y, so I'll hit A one second before my target time (as per my differential) at 07:09:30 and hold them down until the star appears.

After the game loads, it's just a matter of walking 128 steps (try not to go over due to the mechanics of the step counter, you could accidentally trigger another frame increase) and then encountering the stationary. After capturing it, check its IVs through some method that doesn't require saving. If they don't match, you likely hit an adjacent timer0.

To check, right click the seed in the results window and select Generate adjacent seeds (current frame).


The adjacent seeds you are most likely interested in are the seeds with the same target time, but differing timer0 values. An example is shown in the following image:


If nothing there matches up, you didn't do something right. You probably had the wrong date or time set, or one of your parameters was copied incorrectly. If you see you're hitting an adjacent timer0, and you consistently cannot hit your desired timer0, you may need to find a new seed with the "bad" timer0 (this is most likely a result of not enough trials during calibration).

Once you capture your stationary with the right IVs, chances are it has the wrong nature. You can try to rectify this with a synchronizer, or you can gain total control over your capture with PIDRNG, which is the subject of the next post.
 
Tesseraction

Tesseraction

ID/SID Abuse and Receiving a Shiny Starter

It's not necessary to abuse your ID/SID in Gen V for anything, really - as long as you're patient and don't mind occasionally having to advance PIDRNG to high numbers. It's pretty much required to do so if you want to RNG a shiny starter, however.

Still, abusing your ID/SID gives you an additional level of control, as you can force a specific frame on a specific seed to become shiny. For example, on my French Black Version, I have a hexflawless spread on frame 1 of a seed with a shiny, synchronizable PID on frame 63. It's very unlikely that you would find such a spread without abusing your TID/SID.

That being said, open up the 5th gen tools menu from the main window of RNG Reporter, and select TID\SID Manipulation "Pandora's Box".


We're not actually ready to begin the ID abuse process, yet, but I think it's good to practice using Pandora's box a little and get used to it. Let's find seeds to get us the TID 01337 on 03/06/2011 (the earliest possible date for an English cartridge). To do this, set the date in the Search Parameters to 3/6/2011 and make sure "Search entire month" is not checked. Then, all you need to do is hit Find ID Seeds. You'll end up with something like this:

 
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