Pokemon HG/SS 4 Trainer Star FAQ

	Pokemon Soul Silver 4 Trainer Star FAQ

Q: What is this run?
A: This run involves getting 4 stars on your Trainer Card.

In Pokemon games from Gen 3-6, there are different requirements you can fulfil to "upgrade" your Trainer Card, which change the colour, but more notably add a star! Depending on the game there are between 3-5 stars total.

Q: So Heart Gold / Soul Silver have 4 total?
A: No, there are actually 5 you can get. But only 4 of them are obtainable in a speedrun setting with one game - because one of them is to complete the National Pokedex (excluding mythicals), which is obviously not possible with 1 cart.

Q: So what are the conditions for the 4 Trainer Stars you get in this run?
A:
1) Get in the Hall of Fame (Beat Lance)
2) Beat records in all 10 Pokéathlon events
3) Get a Pokemon with a Shiny Leaf Crown
4) Get a 100+ win Battle Streak at the Battle Tower

Q: What does "Beat records in all 10 Pokéathlon events" mean?
A: At the Pokeathalon, there are 10 different events you can participate in. Beating the default records in all 10 of these gets you a Trainer Star! Note that you don't have to win all 5 courses, as you can do all 10 without doing Speed, so only 4 courses are done.

The default records to beat (equalling does not count) are:
Block Smash: 80
Circle Push: 40
Goal Roll: 3
Snow Throw: 30
Pennant Capture: 35
Ring Drop: 70
Relay Run: 12 laps
Lamp Jump: 350
Disc Catch: 40
Hurdle Dash: 100 seconds

Q: Are any of these hard?
A: Pennant capture is definitely the most difficult of the 10, that I have a somewhat decent chance of failing. Block Smash is harder than it should be only because I have no Pokemon with even slightly good Power or Stamina (since I ideally do Pokeathalon before getting Gyarados), but I do get 2 chances at it. The only other one I might have a chance of not getting is Disc Catch, if the NPCs super troll me and constantly push me off the stage.

Q: How do you go fast in the Pokeathalon?
A: There's very little you can do, it's all basically autoscrollers, but fun! Even in Relay Race, you need to wait for everyone to finish before moving on, so finishing faster yourself does not help.
Technically there are slight timesaves at the end of each course on the bonuses / points, where seeing less of them is faster. But I also need a certain amount of points, as I'm going to use them to buy 2 Heart Scales for Gyarados later, so I don't want want to tank all my points either.
So it's mostly just about going in straight away and winning straight away - not spending any time setting up to have good Pokes at all.

Q: What does "Get a Pokemon with a Shiny Leaf Crown" mean?
A: In this game, you can interact with your Pokemon. And on certain routes, if you talk to them when in the grass, they have a small chance (I think it's 5% from my testing) of finding a Shiny Leaf. They can find 1 Shiny Leaf each on 5 different routes, and the routes vary depending on what the nature of the Pokemon is, but for every nature at least 1 of them is in Kanto, so you have to go to Kanto.

After getting all 5, if you visit Ethan afterwards he turns it into a Shiny Leaf Crown, which gets you a Trainer Star!

The Shiny Leaf crown on this run will be obtained on Raikou, because Modest is the best nature of the Pokemon I get to get the Shiny Leafs the fastest.

Q: What does "Get a 100+ win Battle Streak at the Battle Tower" mean?
A: If you really need me to answer this, you probably aren't able to read my answer.
But yes, I'm going to need to win 100 battles at the Battle Tower for the final Trainer Star.

Q: So what is your team going to be?
A: Throughout the game, the team is similar to regular speedruns of this game, in that I'll pick Cyndaquil but then switch over to Raikou. But I'll also catch a L50 Magikarp on Route 43.
For the Battle Tower itself, I'll use a team of Raikou & Gyarados. I'm hoping that those 2 alone will suffice, so the third will simply be the L23 Quilava.

Q: What makes these the best Pokemon?
A: The choice of Raikou is obvious, it's the best Pokemon to beat the game with by a huge margin, and does very well at the Frontier too.
Gyarados is also a very obvious choice, the fact you can catch a Magikarp at L50 means you don't have to train it at all, whereas every other option needs a significant amount of levels to reach L50. It also compliments Raikou terrifically well, in that it takes no damage from Raikou's big weakness (Ground), hits them super effectively with STAB, and is also Physically based where Raikou is obviously Special.
The last slot goes to Quilava simply because it has Quick Attack, meaning it can finish off Focus Sash/Band users. There is one set where I use Kenya instead.

Q: What will their movesets and items be?
A:
Raikou @ Choice Specs
Thunderbolt
Shadow Ball
Hidden Power (Ice 70)
Spark

Gyarados @ Lum Berry
Dragon Dance
Waterfall
Earthquake
Ice Fang

Quilava @ Nothing
Cut
Strength
Quick Attack
Flame Wheel

Q: Is it really not worth getting a better third Pokemon than Quilava? It seems almost totally useless.
A: It is pretty much useless - but ultimately there's just nothing that's quick enough to actually raise that's worth it. The only other legendary you can get without going to Kanto is Entei, who is still only L40 and also not that great. Everything else you can catch would take a long time to raise, much longer the the potential time they could save by being able to kill some of the Pokemon at the frontier quicker.

Q: Is it really not better to have something other than Spark on Raikou?
A: Again, this is more of a timeloss problem to *get* something other than Spark. Technically the best move would be Signal Beam, but this requires lots of BP that I have to spend on Vitamins for Gyarados, so by the time I could teach it, it'd be too late to be useful. The other potential option is Hyper Beam, but there's only 2 battles where it's mildly helpful, which is not worth the time to go and buy/teach it.
Spark also has a small chance of being helpful against a Power Trick Shuckle with Brightpowder, so it's not entirely useless.

Q: Why don't you catch Lugia and use it as a third Pokemon?
A: Lugia isn't allowed in the Battle Frontier.

Q: Do you manipulate the Pokemon in this run?
A: Yes, there is a lot of RNG Manipulation in this run, and that includes the Pokemon I'll be using for the frontier. Specifially, the IVs are:
Raikou: 31 HP, 7 Att, 31 Def, 31 Sp Att, 31 Sp Def, 30 Speed with a Modest Nature
Gyarados: 29 HP, 31 Att, 31 Def, 0 Sp Att, 29 Sp Def, 31 Speed with an Adamant Nature

Q: Will you use any glitches?
A: No, this is a glitchless speedrun. I feel as though these types of completionist runs are best done without the use of glitches.

Q: What is your estimate for how long you think this will take?
A: Around 7 hours?

Q: Will you do this for other games too?
A: Sadly, in other games the Trainer Card requirements are either things that you can't do with a single player (require trading / WiFi) or aren't really interesting at all (like the Musicals in BW), so it's only fun in HG/SS.

-----

Q: What are you playing on, it is emulator?
A: No, I'm playing on a DS (phat) with a capture board installed allowing me to record game footage

Q: Why do you choose Cyndaquil?
A: Because the Cyndaquil evolution family is the best for the speedrun. Until you catch Raikou, that is.

Q: Why do you keep resetting and changing the time?
A: I need to use a specific time in order to use RNG manipulation, so I set the clock in such a way that I can use it.
 The timer counts down to when I need to reset for the correct second.

Q: What is RNG?
A: Random Number Generator, the thing that determines everything random within the game, such as stats, encounters and pokerus.

Q: What is RNG Manipulation?
A: RNG manipulation is used in this speedrun, which involves resetting on a specific second starting from a specific time, and hitting the correct frame for the correct seed after resetting. This allows for manipulating of the wild encounters, Cyndaquils starting stats, Pokerus, and the lottery so I win the Master Ball

Q: What causes the resets?
A: I missed initial starting seed. There are 2 ways to check whether I hit the correct seed:
1) I check my Trainer ID. The one I am aiming for is 39391. I know if I get this ID, I hit the right starting seed, as that is generated at the same time. This is what I used to do, as it is the first thing you can do to check, but it takes ~3 seconds to check so I tend to instead...
2) I check the movement of the NPCs in New Bark Town. Because their movement is derived from the RNG, I can tell I hit it based on their movements. If the girl faces Down, then turn Right, Down, and then Left, I got it
If not I didn't hit the right seed, so I reset. The RNG for the seed advances every frame, so it is a frame perfect trick

Q: Why is your movement so strange at the start of the run?
A: Because you can't get the best possible results off the bat. The movement that I do is designed specifically to manipulate the RNG (from NPCs movement around me, and the like) so that I get my great Cyndaquil, Pokerus off the first trainer battle, and no encounters to Falkner

Q: Why did you just talk to your Cyndaquil?
A: Because it advances the RNG! This is used at the start of the run to skip over patterns that would have encounters, but also to make the RNG advance by decently significant amounts to accelerate getting Pokerus, otherwise I would have to run around a lot more in the grass, which would be slower.

Q: Why don't you check Cyndaquils stats? What are Cyndaquils stats like?
A: Cyndaquils starting stats are the same every time RNG manipulation is used, and also quite decent using RNG manipulaton, but not perfect. The reason for this is because there are a limited amount of seeds you can RNG manipulate for, as you are manipulating so many things, it's literally a game limitation how good they can be. The Cyndaquils IVs are 4 HP, 23 Att, 21 Def, 28 SP Att, 5 Sp Def, 31 Speed with a Rash nature

Q: So why don't you just manipulate everything in the game?
A: 1) There are multiple RNGs at play, and not all of them can be controlled the same way. Battle RNG for example, advances just about every frame, including lag frames, making it totally unpredictable.
2) Some things simply aren't worth it, as they are limited by the amount of possibilities in the game. For example, having Cyndaquil be a Female would be better to avoid Attract on Miltank, but there are simply 0 seeds that have all the other requirements needed AND get a Female Cyndaquil, making it slower overall.

Q: Do you manipulate Voltorb Flip? How does it work?
A: Yes, I do. Voltorb Flip works off the Secondary RNG, not the main one that impacts encounters and IVs and such. The Secondary RNG advances only during the route between Union Cave and Azalea Town, because it is raining, and the rain advances the Secondary RNG.

Once at Voltorb Flip, I take specific patterns on the boards to manipulate future boards. The first thing you need to know about it Level 8. Level 8 is the highest level in Voltorb Flip, and as such where the most coins are. Accessing Level 8 is different to the prior levels, instead of beating the level 1 below, Level 8 is unlocked by having a continuous streak of 5 boards in a row, and all 5 of those boards having at least 8 panels flipped over. So after Level 5, I can jump straight to Level 8. Also note: The streak means you must win, except on the 5th board, so I actually quit out of that level and still get the jump.
Outside of that, the panels I flip also matter, as some panels do not advance the secondary RNG, where most do. The ones that don't are those that are on either a column or row that has no bombs.

Q: Why not Heart Gold?
A: Heart Gold and Soul Silver are the same for one key difference, the legendary Pokemon you must visit. Visiting Ho-Oh and Lugia take almost the exact same amount of time (Lugia is faster by like ~2 seconds assuming you have good movement), so I do Soul Silver as a result.

Q: Why do you play as the girl?
A: The counterpart does the catching tutorial, and the male does it faster, so it’s faster to choose the female for yourself