Research Pokerus Changes in ORAS?

[DougJustDoug]

In ORAS, Pokerus appears to behave a little differently than past games.

1) Your pokemon can be cured of Pokerus (apparently with the same 1-4 day infection time) and then re-infected later. When you get re-infected, the pokemon is like any other active carrier of the Pokerus virus. It can infect other pokemon in your party, etc. In past games, once a pokemon was cured of Pokerus, it could no longer infect other pokemon.

2) When cured of Pokerus, apparently the accelerated EV gains stop. I haven't tested this yet, I just noticed it offhand, and need to confirm it. In past games, a cured pokemon would still continue to receive double EVs.

3) When cured of Pokerus, the little face symbol does not appear on the Pokemon summary like in other games. I have not tested if cured Pokemon traded from other games have the symbol or not, but all my cured pokemon that I caught on my ORAS cart have no indication of ever having Pokerus.

I haven't seen much mention of this on the internet, so this obviously needs more research to figure out exactly how much the mechanics of Pokerus have changed.

 

[Stellar]

This is a picture of my Leavanny that was bred and infected in ORAS. It has the usual indicator and I have not noticed anything out of the ordinary.

 

[DougJustDoug]

I've talked to a few people on IRC and there are definitely others that are experiencing the phenomenon of curing and re-infecting pokemon with Pokerus. So I am not an isolated case. But clearly others (like Stellar) are seeing the same Pokerus mechanics as always. Just guessing, but perhaps it has something to do with a new twist on different strains of Pokerus, which in the past was what determined the length of infection.

I'll do more testing and see if I can figure out what is going on.

 

[DougJustDoug]

The posts above were originally in the Quick and Dirty thread, but this should be a separate discussion so I moved it to a dedicated thread.

The OP of this thread was based on playing on my OR cart. I just confirmed the same behavior on my AS cart as well. I also reconfirmed that my entire active party in OR, which had active Pokerus two days ago, all of them are completely cured of Pokerus again, with no symbol or indication that they ever had Pokerus at all. This is now the second "cycle" of Pokerus on my party in OR, so it has all the appearances of being infinitely repeatable.

The Pokerus was originally received via a Wonder Trade on my OR cart, so the virus did not originate naturally for me. The Pokerus strain on my AS cart was passed via a trade of a mon from my OR cart, so it is the same strain on both carts. Maybe that is relevant.

If others could post with their experiences with Pokerus in ORAS, and include details of how you received Pokerus and possibly indicate how long your active Pokerus infection lasts (indicating the strain), that would be helpful for research.

I now have no doubt that the mechanics of Pokerus have changed a little with ORAS, I just don't know how much they have changed. More to come after further testing...

 

[Its_A_Random]

I managed to get an Electrike and a Diggersby from Wonder Trade with Pokérus. Both strains only last until midnight and anything affected that was in the party at the time would have it replaced with the pink smiley to indicate cured, i.e. basically the same thing as Stellar is experiencing.

I asked around on #oi last night about this and one user came forward and mentioned they are experiencing something similar to DJD but I will leave them to post about it if they want to.

 

[Teru_XD]

This is quite intriguing, as Pokérus in my Alpha Sapphire is working as it usually did on earlier games. From what the OP said when he noted that he got the Pokérus 'mon from Wonder Trade, it could be one of two possible scenarios:

A) Game Freak unleashed a new version of Pokérus through Wonder Trade 'mons without telling anyone, or
B) Pokérus obtained in ORAS behaves differently than that obtained from other games.

In my opinion, these are the two potential cases that should be tested. If anyone got Pokérus in ORAS, it would help a lot to clear this confusion. Oh, and I don't think option A is very realistic since Game Freak doesn't do stuff like that.

 

[Clone]

I have mons infected with Pokerus that originated from HG and Y, and all of them seem to be functioning normally. They were recently cured and have the small face indicating that they were once infected. No input on the EV s tho - they were already fully trained.

 

[SnorlaxMonster]

To me, it just sounds like somebody has hacked strain 0 Pokerus and sent it out over Wonder Trade. The details mentioned here are entirely consistent with this, as this is how strain 0 has always functioned.

If possible, it would be nice if someone were to extract the data of a Pokemon with this disappearing Pokerus from their game and check if it is strain 0.

 

[DougJustDoug]

I remember talk about a hacked version of Pokerus in the past, but I remembered it in the context of it causing problems to transfer pokemon to Pokebank. I just assumed bad Pokerus wouldn't pass through the GTS, which is a silly assumption considering how much garbage can go through the GTS.

This definitely looks like Strain 0 Pokerus, but I dont have any way to get to game data currently to verify it. But if the GTS allows it (apparently GTS has always allowed it), and considering I got the virus via Wonder Trade, it is the simplest explanation.

Ill just transfer over a Pokerus mon from another game and infect my party. If it behaves as normal, I will post here and close the thread.

 

[NoCheese]

I transferred in Pokerus from my copy of Pokemon Black and infected a few Pokemon in my party. It was a two-day strain that cleared up today, and left the standard "cured" face on all the Pokemon that were infected. So the hacked strain 0 Pokerus being the cause of the issue seems increasingly likely.

 

[.com]

Tested with clones of the same Pokémon with strains 0–5. When midnight rolled over strains 1–5 got the cured face, but strain 0 had it completely removed.

Quick reasoning

Pokérus is stored in a byte: XY (where X=0x0–0xF, and Y=0x0–0xF), with X representing the strain, and Y representing the days remaining.
00 = No Pokérus, but 01, 02, etc. = hacked strain 0, with 1,2 days remaining. When the day counter (Y) hits 0, the byte is now 00, so I'm guessing the game treats it as if it has never had Pokérus.

For other strains, X0 (X ≠ 0) gives it the cured face.

Just to confirm, the 00 Pokémon was then able to reobtain Pokérus after "forgetting" it.

Note: This was done in Pokémon Y, so guessing this is just new to Generation 6 in general.

 

[xJoelituh]

I was training a Salemence and I got very quickly the Pokerus from my Pokemon that are from the XY, and I infected the Bagon.
Now is 252/252 Atk/Spe. But, i checked the "Pokerus" Mark and it has dissapared and happens the same with all my team(My Swampert, Sharpedo and a Bisharp at that moment).

I remember that I did the training with only a few hordes and i remember the Pokerus Mark, so...

I attach a image from the dissapered Pokerus.

Hide

 

[Marina Erkhart]

I managed to get pokerus in Gen V somehow (I forget how) and spread it around to a bunch of stuff I'd caught. Then I migrated one that was still contagious and brought it into ORAS so I could give it to my party, and none of them show evidence of having ever had it.

 

[DougJustDoug]

I finally got around to putting a normal strain of Pokerus onto pokemon on my OR cartridge that previously had strain 0 pokerus. After a few days the active Pokerus was gone, but I have the normal face symbol and the pokemon cannot contract Pokerus again, as is normally the case with Pokerus.

It appears that the strain 0 that started this whole mess for me was hacked and passed to me via wondertrade. I'd like to point out that since I opened this thread, I have received two more pokemon via wondertrade that have Strain 0 Pokerus. So this hacked pokerus is being passed around quite a bit this gen, if my experience is any indication.

 

[AJC]

looks like code changed so that those hacked PKRS no longer stay active.

 

[mcFlareon]

I'm not exactly sure which strain I encountered on my Alpha Sapphire game. Just caught a legendary and went to a PC- Nurse Joy does the usual Pokerus message and when I checked, I just got a smiley face for like 2-3 members of my team. I didn't see the PKRS status bar anywhere and it seemed I couldn't spread it to anyone else anymore.

Couldn't exactly remember if it was like this in my Y game but at least I remember I was able to infect much more pokemon in that game at least.

 

[Empoleon_master]

I'm not exactly sure which strain I encountered on my Alpha Sapphire game. Just caught a legendary and went to a PC- Nurse Joy does the usual Pokerus message and when I checked, I just got a smiley face for like 2-3 members of my team. I didn't see the PKRS status bar anywhere and it seemed I couldn't spread it to anyone else anymore.

Couldn't exactly remember if it was like this in my Y game but at least I remember I was able to infect much more pokemon in that game at least.

The smiley face is a marker that the pokerus on your pokemon with it is no longer infectious and while it still gives the EV and XP boost it can no longer spread to other pokemon from that particular pokemon.

 

[JES]

Yeah, I've noticed this since I first found Pokérus in my Y Version.