Pokemon FireRed/LeafGreen Any% FAQ

Pokemon Fire Red/Leaf Green Any% FAQ

Q: What do you play this game on?
A: I play on an original Nintendo DS with a capture card installed into it.

Q: What are you trying to do?
A: Beat Pokemon Fire Red/Leaf Green as fast as possible.

Q: Are there any glitches used in this category?
A: There are no glitches used in the run.

Q: What is this New Route you've been going on about?
A: During my World Record run I was supposed to fight a different mandatory trainer. This mandatory trainer helped me formulate a brand new route that saves anywhere from 2-23 seconds.

Q: How does this trainer save time?
A: In exchange for 11 seconds this route ends up bouncing back with a ton of timesave due to delayed level ups that end up giving you timesave due to not only more consistency, but also faster fights due to the extra EVs we receive from these late level ups! For more information check here! https://pastebin.com/9NuECXf8

Q: Why do you play on LeafGreen instead of FireRed?
A: Sandshrew is a version exclusive backup HM Slave for Cut. It saves a few seconds as well over the normal Rattata catch since you can teach Strength to Sandshrew instead of teaching it to Blastoise later on.

Q: Why don't you just grab a Squirtle and run with it?
A: I know this can take a while, but I wouldn't run a Squirtle if I didn't know the stats ahead of time. This would be a huge disadvantage as well if I got a terrible nature.

Q: What stats are considered "runnable"
A: Modest, Mild, and Rash nature are the only runnable natures. You also need at least 28 IV Special Attack and 16 IV Speed.

Q: Why do you keep resetting?
A: I probably missed the RNG Manipulation for Squirtle or died.

Q: How do you know the stats you will get on your Squirtle?
A: We can predict the stats by knowing exactly what seed we get through the Trainer ID. Plugging this into the program with a few stats set beforehand will tell us which ones are runnable. Check here for the program! https://www.speedrun.com/tools/Gen3Predictor1.2a.jar_2ssx4.zip

Q: Why do you count when NPC's start moving?
A: FireRed/LeafGreen RNG Manipulation has recently found quite a huge improvement. NPCs have a way to change where your Squirtle frame is going to be based off of NPC movement. Because of this, it's always been based off of pure chance whether or not you land on a runnable Squirtle frame. Thanks to Shiru666 and Pokeguy, we can predict how those NPC movements will move the current Squirtle frame and adjust from there, making it way easier to get on a run.

Q: Why is this RNG Manipulation different from Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald RNG Manipulation?
A: R/S/E come with a internal battery that changes the way RNG works in a very convenient way for speedrunning when you save and quit. Instead of an internal battery, FireRed/LeafGreen compensates for this by having it's intro screen. This intro screen scrambles RNG in such a way that doing Save + Quit RNG Manipulation just ends up not being worth the insane amount of timeloss and precision to pass this screen.

Q: Why Squirtle instead of Charmander?
A: Not only is Squirtle bulky enough to tank a ton of things, but the Gen 3 mechanics lend so much better to Squirtle than they do Charmander. With Surf being so strong as well as Bite being a special move due to the Generation 3's physical/special split, this gives Squirtle a really nice advantage to the game.

Q: What are the differences between Charmander and Squirtle?
A: Check out this pastebin for detailed information! https://pastebin.com/G2DbcTzM

Q: What are these new route changes you've added recently?
A: Turns out Youngster Josh (A Mt.Moon trainer) has quite a few extra benefits! Click here to see the additions it adds to both Any% and Round 2! https://pastebin.com/wM6VqcnF

Q: Where can I find notes for this game?
A: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1j4fqPzBkLTsCEeLguL0I5xhiXimfVwhbLYwVpi4uRYA/edit?usp=sharing

Q: Why not Bulbasaur? Having a type advantage over the first two gyms has gotta mean something!
A: Have you ever seriously looked at Bulbasaur's entire movepool and typing vs everything besides the first two gyms and thought to yourself, wow this looks better than the other starters...? It's pretty terrible compared to both Charmander and Squirtle but has some extremely creative routing. Here's a solid route though if you wanna try it out for yourself. https://pastebin.com/uD5YmXAk

Q: Why are you risking getting encounters on certain tiles on routes, forest, and caves?
A: This game has an interesting encounter mechanic involving encounter route. The encounter on each new route is reduced to 1% for the first 6 tiles on regular routes, the first 7 tiles in Viridian Forest, and the first 8 tiles in Caves.

Q: What are the letters next to your splits?
A: The letters are basically a grading system. S = Best Split, A = Good Split, B = Okay split, C = Decent split, D = Below Average Split, F = Bad Split.

Q: Does gender affect anything like in Gen 2?
A: Picking the male trainer is slightly faster than picking the female trainer by an input and a couple of text frames from certain characters.

Q: You're at red health, why don't you heal?
A: Squirtle has an ability called torrent. Torrent boost your water moves power by 1.5× if I have less than or equal to 1/3 of its maximum HP remaining. This ability can save quite a bit of time in many different sections of the game, so you'll often see me go into fights with very low health. If you wanna see if I'm in torrent, type "!torrent [my current max hp]" in the chat

Q: What are the beeps I hear right before you grab your Squirtle?
A: I use a program called Flowtimer. I plug the time frame I want into the program. Then, once that exact time frame is about to come up, it will produce an audio queue in order to help me hit the time frame I am looking for. Click here if you'd like to download the timer for yourself! http://gunnermaniac.com/ft

Q: Why Any% instead of Round 2?
A: It's honestly my favorite category. I plan to eventually go to Round 2, but only after I get a 2:02 or lower.