Pokemon Crystal FAQ (Entei route)

Pokemon Crystal FAQ (Entei route)

Q: What are you trying to do?
A: Beat Pokemon Crystal as quickly as possible without using glitches.

Q: What are you playing on?
A: A GameCube using a GameBoy Player.

Q: What is the best time?
A: 3:13:48 by me.

Q: What is your goal time?
A: I'm not sure, since the route is improving every day.

Q: Why choose the girl?
A: https://www.twitch.tv/werster/v/38667384

Q: What Pokemon do you use?
A: Totodile (fastest starter for the early game), Poliwag (Whirlpool and Waterfall slave), Spearow (Fly slave) and Entei (fastest Pokemon to beat the game from Ecruteak City onward).

Q: Why Entei?
A: Entei saves 2+ minutes over Totodile if you encounter it quickly (see the final question). Most of that time comes from its huge level advantage at the start (L40 vs. L21). Here's a detailed breakdown: https://pastebin.com/w1HVcuPs

Q: Why not Raikou?
A: Raikou's only good move until Lv. 61 is Spark, as it doesn't have high enough Attack to make good use of physical moves like Strength and Iron Tail.

Q: How do you get the Master Ball every time?
A: By manipulating the lottery ID to be 01001, which matches the TID of the Spearow you receive for free on Route 35. The LID is set when you select NEW GAME, and it will always be the same as long as you execute the same inputs from a hard reset to NEW GAME. Inputs in the intro sequence have large buffer windows, so this execution is trivial. Conveniently, the LID stays the same until you clear all save data, so you don't have to do the manip before every reset.

Q: How do you get the Entei to appear?
A: Most of the time, I don't. The Pokemon community has not yet figured out how to RNG manipulate wild encounters consistently enough to use in runs. So I just roll the dice with Entei's location and stats. Thankfully, this isn't as big of a gamble as it sounds. After being released from Burned Tower, Entei's location is set to Route 37. From there, it will jump routes twice (once when I Escape Rope out, once when I bike to Route 37). It almost always jumps to an adjacent route, meaning it will often jump to Route 36, 38 or 42, then back to Route 37. The odds that Entei is on Route 37 when I enter it are roughly 26%. However, it is only 1% likely to appear on each tile, and if I haven't encountered it after ~150 steps, it's faster to reset and try again from a save in front of Route 37, even though there's a small chance it's on the route.

Resetting randomizes Entei's location, so it has a 1/16 chance of landing on Route 37 when I reset. However, I seem to get better odds with RNG manipulation (load my save file ~12.60 seconds after a hard reset), so I'll be attempting that. If I don't encounter Entei within 3-4 resets, I'll have lost time to the Totodile route.

If I encounter an Entei with bad stats, it's not enough to force a reset unless the run was already bad. Traditionally, Pokemon runners reset for good stats not because of potential time save, but because some fights are nearly unwinnable if a certain stat is too low. Entei's huge level advantage allows it to win every fight with basically no risk, except in cases of calculated risk (e.g., skip using an X Accuracy because it saves a turn) or extremely bad luck (getting crit after missing Iron Tail). The best stats save about 100 seconds over the worst, but there is much more variance in other forms of RNG (mainly encounters and spinners).