Pokemon Soul Silver All Gold Prints FAQ

	Pokemon Soul Silver All Gold Prints FAQ

Q: What is this run?
A: This run involves getting all the Gold Prnts from the Battle Frontier, from a fresh file. A Print is received for beating a Frontier Brain, you get a Gold one for beating them twice. They are very difficult to get, and involve winning several consecutive sets at the Battle Facilities without dying.

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 Frontier 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 / Focus Sash (Changes)
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.
In early routing I'd marked Mamoswine as a potential for the third slot - given its types cover the 2 remaining that Raikou and Gyarados struggle with the most (those being Electric and Grass) and it has access to priority, and so while it'd probably get the nod if the time to raise didn't matter, it does, and raising a L24 Swinub to a L50 Mamoswine is just far too long.
The only actual option that comes close to being worth getting as a third Pokemon, is actually getting a Level 30 to do the Battle Hall. As that would avoid lots of Pressure text from Raikou, and lower levels means lower HP, which means faster HP drain. If you could manipulate a Level 30 instantly and OHKO every Pokemon in the Hall, you would save about 1 minute. The best option for this would be a Golduck, however doing the manipulation for it first try, along with finding a path that it actually OHKOs everything is so unlikely, that is isn't worth considering at this stage at all.

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 facilities are the easiest or hardest? How does the Battle Frontier actually work?
A: This is too long to answer, so I made supplement FAQs to help with this.
General Battle Frontier FAQ: https://pastebin.com/XPxEtG9f
Battle Factory FAQ: https://pastebin.com/V71QyiMR
Battle Hall FAQ: https://pastebin.com/8Un4Vaun
Battle Castle FAQ: https://pastebin.com/2H1p05xW
Battle Arcade FAQ: https://pastebin.com/LMrKDyE7
Battle Tower FAQ: https://pastebin.com/QqXASAHS

Q: What is your estimate for how long you think this will take?
A: About 12 hours, maybe a bit more maybe a bit less. Ultimately I want a completely deathless run of this, so it shouldn't be too much more than that.

Q: What is the order you do the facilities in? And why that order?
A: The order is Factory -> Hall -> Castle -> Arcade -> Tower.
There are a number of reasons for this order, a few of them take care of themselves. Factory and Hall have to be the first 2, because I use the BP from those 2 facilities to buy vitamins for Gyarados, who isn't used in those 2 facilities, but is for the other 3. Of Factory/Hall, doing Factory first makes far more sense, given it allows me to search for Factory seeds without having to go through all of Hall first.

Doing Tower last is also a no-brainer, given the manipulation for Tower works completely differently and is entirely independent from the rest of the manip. So the only order you could reasonably change is Castle & Arcade, which don't really matter, but given I shop for Vitamins after the Hall which is slightly on the left side, it's slightly fewer tiles to do Castle 3rd, so that's what I do.

Q: Why are you doing HG/SS for this instead of Platinum?
A: The main reason I chose HG/SS is because it's more different for the segment of the game before the Battle Frontier. This is mostly because you only need to beat the Elite Four to unlock the Frontier, meaning the run doesn't have to go all the way up to Red.

Q: Will you do Platinum at some stage too?
A: I won't say no to this, but I won't say yes either. Even though the Frontier itself is the same between the games, the fights for a speedrun are entirely different because the team you use is totally different (likely Empoloeon/Azelf/Garchomp). So if I do do it at some stage, it won't be for a really long time.

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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 continious 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