Pokemon Platinum E4R2 FAQ

      Pokemon Platinum Elite Four Round 2 FAQ

Q: Did you figure out the Skorupi stuff from the previous run?
A: Yes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwBDwDQsjnE

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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 Piplup?
A: Because the Piplup evolution family is the best for the speedrun. Probably.

Q: Probably?
A: Chimchar is closer to Piplup for Elite Four Round 2 than it is for Glitchless. It ends up being very close. But I think Empoleon is still better. Just barely.
But also, I spent so much time routing this, I didn't have to have to route a whole new seed for doing Chimchar stuff on top of it.

Q: Is this a new route compared to PB or WR?
A: Well, technically now that I got WR with this route earlier in April, no.

But compared to the old route, this one skips a lot more trainers than the previous routes. It then does a chain manip after the first round of the Elite Four that is much longer, in order to encounter a lot of those Pokemon in the wild. And then finishes off by getting a Level 99 Magikarp at the end, to use a Level 100 Gyarados for the final 8 battles.

This route has ended up proving to be several minutes faster than the old one.

Q: What is Elite Four Round 2?
A: There is a second round of the Elite Four where they are about 20 levels higher that requires certain requirements to enter.

Q: What are the requirements in Platinum?
A: In Platinum you must complete the Sinnoh Dex - you must SEE every Pokemon (catching not required). To accomplish this I will be mostly fighting a few extra trainers in order to assure that I see those Pokemon.

But a decent amount of Pokemon will be seen in the wild as it is faster to do so.

You must also after completing round 1, you have to do the Stark Mountain side quest where you finish off Team Galactic for good before starting Round 2.

Q: What are the hard fights in this run? Are they the same as glitchless?
A: The hard fights are all right at the start, like normal. The fights towards the start are the same as glitchless, but towards the mid game they are a bit easier than in glitchless as you fight a few extra trainers for more experience.

So Roark is still the hardest, then Pachirisu Double into Gardenia into Jupiter are three back to back run killers. But Fantina / Rival 3 / Maylene are a bit easier than in glitchless because of slightly more experience (and the route having you keep more Revive fodder in your party in case you do die), and then Empoleon doesn't have any troubles with Fog Route because you get Defog, leading its biggest threat to just be Snow Cloak Froslass.

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, and Piplup's starting stats

Q: What causes the resets?
A: I missed the initial seed. There are 2 ways to check to see if I hit the right seed, one is to check my Trainer ID which should be 8229, and the other is to check to movements of the NPCs outside my house. Checking Trainer ID is faster for resets, but obviously takes a few seconds. The RNG for the seed advances every frame, so it is a frame perfect trick

Q: Why don't you check Piplup's stats? What are Piplup's stats like?
A: Piplup's starting stats are the same every time RNG manipulation is used, and also quite decent using RNG manipulation, 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 Piplups IVs are 23 HP, 30 Att, 31 Def, 30 SP Att, 31 SP Def, 31 Speed with a Mild nature.

Q: Why is your movement so strange at the start of the run?
A: This is to manipulate encounters. You can't just find a seed that gets no encounters with a perfect Piplup by just running straight through (again, game limitation; there isn't one), so I need to do specific movement to manipulate the RNG so that I can avoid these encounters

Q: What encounters will you get?
A: I will catch a Kricketot (for Metronome held item) and a Starly (For Fly) on Route 201 and then a Bidoof (For Cut/Rock Smash) on Route 202. All other HMs are given to Empoleon (It ends the game with Surf/Waterfall/Strength/Rock Climb)

There are plenty of other wild encounters used in the run, the complete the Pokedex. Most are at the end, but some wild Pokemon will be done during the first part of the run, like Machop, Shinx, Cascoon, Dustox, and Medicham.

Q: Krickeot for Metronome? What does that mean?
A: Metronome is a held item, Kricketot's have a 5% chance to hold one. In this run, I have also manipulated one to show up which does.

Q: What does Metronome do?
A: It increases the damage output by an additional 10% for each consecutive time you use a move. So 1.1x, 1.2x, 1.3x etc up to 2x. This may not seem like a lot, but it makes a big difference in the early game. Most notably on Rival 2, you do 3 damage to Turtwig instead of 2 per hit, and end up doing 5 (which saves like 6 turns since he has 29 HP), are able to OHKO Gardenia's Roserade, and numerous other occasions where it saves 1 turn, and/or eliminates what would be damage ranges without it.

Q: So why don't you just manipulate everything in the game?
A: 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.

Q: Is there anything else in the game you manipulate?
A: Yes! Pokerus is obtained off the trainer in Roark's Gym.

There's also chain manip at the end of the run, an extremely pivotal part of the run.

Q: What is chain manip?
A: Chain manip is where many encounters are chained together to appear as part of the same manip. Given you have to save after the first Elite Four round, it is done right after on a new seed. You need to change the time to be a seed on hour 3, so it is night for some encounters (Rotom, Snorunt) but changes to morning partway through the manip (for Chatot)

The chain manip will get 34 pokemon (sometimes 33 if I get Graveler in the run). Not all of them are wild random encounters though, just Pokemon that are better to get as part of the chain manip.

So after E4, I save and quit and try to hit the new seed. If i miss, I will continue until I hit it.
Then the route is to release Mespirit, Fly to Eterna and get Cleffa in Mt Coronet, Bike back and fish for Barboach, go into Old Chateau and get Gastly and Rotom.
Then Fly to Sandgem, go south and fish for Lumineon. Then encounter Tentacool, Tentacruel, and then Sudowoodo. Then fight Ivan for Togetic.
Then Fly to Snowpoint, and get Snorunt, Snover, and Swinub. Then go up to Lake Acuity and get Psyduck and Uxie.
Then Fly to Pastoria and go into the Great Marsh. There, encounter Skorupi, Tangela, Wooper, and Yanma.
Then Bike to Trophy Garden. Along the way, I fight trainers with Umbreon (and Espeon), Monferno, and Leafeon (and Marill). Then read the book for Manaphy, go into Trophy Garden and encounter Pichu, Pikachu, and Kricketune.
Then Fly to Veilstone, and go south. Encounter Hippopotas, Rhyhorn and then go into Sendoff Spring for Dusclops. If I don't have one, then encounter a Graveler (manip slightly varies for two separate paths at this point)
Then go to Lake Valor, get Goldeen and Azelf. Then Bike to Sunyshore, getting Chatot on the way. Then go through Sunyshore and fish for Octillery.

If I keep manip up to this point, I then try to extend it further into the Battle Zone.

Q: What does manip in the Battle Zone do once you've already got the National Dex?
A: This is part of the new route, an idea that I've had for many years but finally putting into practice. The idea is after the chain manip, I will slightly backtrack and pickup the Super Rod. Then after heading east for a bit, Bike down to the Resort Area, and fish for a Level 99 Magikarp.

In Resort Area, there's a 1% chance to fish Karp that are level 1-100. So 1/10000 for a level 99. You don't want 100, because you want to evolve it.

Q: How much faster is catching the level 99 Magikarp?
A: Overall, it's about a minute to a minute and a half. But that's including all the extra stuff you have to do (backtrack for Super Rod, evolve it, teach it Waterfall, etc). Over the course of just the battles, it's over 3 minutes faster.
And it's also assuming the top end (i.e. healing as little as possible), which Gyarados is much more likely to do.

Q: Why is Gyarados that much faster, is there even that many battles left in the run at that point?
A: There are only 9 battles in the run after you get the level 99 Magikarp. And you actually still use Empoleon for the first one! (because Sandstorm is on that route)

But in the 8 remaining battles, Gyarados saves a ton of time. Part of it is because level 100 just does a lot of damage, but a huge reason for it is at Level 100, you no longer get experience. So you save a ton of time not getting the experience text, experience bar, or level up screens.

If I don't keep manip all the way to Magikarp, I'll save and quit to hit a different seed that gets a backup Magikarp. I could do the last fights with Empoleon, but I'm routing for Magikarp so I don't want to, as I don't want to buy the extra X Speeds and Specials that Empoleon would need.

Q: What IVs does the Magikarp have?
A: The proper one has 4/31/16/0/28/31 with an Adamant nature. Perfect attack and speed the relevant thing there.
It's actually pretty damn lucky that a seed even exists with a Karp this perfect on a date and time and frame and rng frame that all work without wasting time.
For reference, there are only 27 L99 Magikarps with perfect attack and speed that don't waste more than 10 seconds to hit the RNG frame. The odds of any given seed actually being possible to work with for the hour and the minutes, is 1/100. So it's lucky that any works at all, and yet this one wastes less than 2 seconds, making it very lucky.
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The backup one has 8/27/21/2/11/31 with an Adamant nature. Slightly less than perfect attack, but only matters for 2 possible ranges that generally don't happen (Bronzong without X Att, and Milotic without Flail 80)

Q: Why do you play as the girl?
A: The counterpart talks less to you if you are the girl

Q: Why do you name yourself and Piplup 'I' or 'J'?
A: Because it's faster to name them one character for text purposes, and the letter 'I' gives a nice spin as if the game was self-narrating. J is simply very close the the OK button, making it easy to press quickly.

Q: Are there glitches in this run?
A: This run is done glitchless, as you can tweak past triggers to avoid completing the sinnoh dex, which defeats the entire purpose of this run.

Q: So what is your goal time?
A: A super clean run without anything bad happening will be about the 4:44 - 4:46 mark I imagine, so something within that range.

Q: What is WR?
A: http://www.speedrun.com/pkmnplat#Elite_Four_Round_2 (See: Splits)