Pokémon Shining Pearl Any% Glitchless F.A.Q.

Pokémon Shining Pearl Any% Glitchless F.A.Q.

Q: What are you trying to do?
A: I am trying to complete Pokémon Shining Pearl as fast as possible without using glitches

Q: What is your best time?
A: My best time is 3:24:39

Q: What is the World Record?
A: The World Record time is 3:19:34 by crafted

Q: That's not you!
A: I know :(

Q: What are you playing this on? Is it emulator?
A: I am playing this on a Nintendo Switch (OLED) hooked up to my PC via a Capture Card

Q: Where can you save time?
A: Everywhere. The game is still new

Q: Glitchless? Are there Glitches?
A: Yes! A lot actually... too many to list here. Check out the Any% board to see how wild this game can be: https://www.speedrun.com/pkmnbdsp#Any

Q: What Pokémon do you use in the run?
A: I start with Chimchar, which I use until we just before the third badge (with the exception of Roark, who I beat with a Machop). Then, I switch to Kadabra which we receive via an in-game trade in Oreburgh. I then use Kadabra until right before the Elite 4, where I switch to Palkia for the rest of the game

Q: Why did you choose the girl?
A: There are slight text differences and I've been told that picking the girl is faster. The text moves so quickly though, so it's a pretty negligible thing

Q: Why do you name yourself a 1 character name?
A: We set our options to have a Text Speed of Fast, however text still scrolls onto the screen.  By naming the characters a 1 character name, we can save some time over the course of the run on text, with the cost of a second or two by bringing up the naming screen. I do not name any Pokémon since it does not save time

Q: Why did you turn off the Background Music?
A: Background Music is tied to certain jingles in the game (e.g. Item pickups, Badge acquisition, Level Ups, etc) and these get skipped if BGM is set to 0 in the options. We don't know an exact amount of time that it saves, however my guess is somewhere in the ballpark of 5-10 minutes

Q: That's not a glitch?
A: Nope. Think of Battle Animations. When you turn those off in options, the time that the animation would take gets skipped. I don't see it as any different for these jingles than it is for animations. It's a bit odd that the jingles are tied to Background Music as opposed to something else like SFX, but I didn't code the game so I know nothing

Q: Why did you not check stats on Chimchar when you received him?
A: The Chimchar is not used enough for me to be too picky for their stats. Eventually, I may have stat requirements (likely Attack and/or Sp. Atk)

Q: Is the traded Kadabra always the same?
A: Yes! The Abra we receive is always Level 9, Quiet Nature (+Sp. Atk, -Speed) with 28/10/9/11/3/31 IVs

Q: What are IVs?
A: IVs are the number, 0-31, given to a stat to determine the stat growth.  The higher the number, the better the stat

Q: Are there disobedience problems with an in-game traded main?
A: Yes! This game broke the tradition set by the recent games of having more lenient obedience thresholds and instead kept the thresholds from the originals. This means that only Pokémon up to Level 10 obey before Gardenia, 30 before Wake, 50 before Byron and 70 before Volkner:
- The Gardenia requirement makes Abra/Kadabra literally unusable before the second badge. Abra doesn't have attacking moves, and doesn't evolve until Level 16 which is past Level 10
- The Wake requirement makes our experience *EXTREMELY* tight. In addition to other level requirements we want to hit (for safety/offense), it gives us a 79 EXP Point window to hit the thresholds we want, and not overlevel. Given that there's Scaled Experience in this game, this is very hard to get correct
- The Byron and Volkner requirements are not an issue for the speedrun. You are typically in the low 40s for Byron, and mid 50s for Volkner

Q: What is Scaled Experience?
A: In Gen 1-4 and Gen 6, Experience was "static". This means that if you fight a Level 10 Geodude with any Pokémon, you'll receive the same experience (barring changes in yields between Generations). For example, that Level 10 Geodude will give you 153 EXP with no other modifiers as of Gen 6. In Gen 5, 7 and 8, Experience is "scaled". This means that the amount of experience you are given changes depending on the level of the Pokémon that is receiving the Experience. If you beat that Level 10 Geodude with a Level 5, you'd get 190, Level 10 you'd get 121 and Level 20 you'd get 59

This severely complicates things when you have such a tight window. The order you do fights, or the order you defeat Pokémon really matters when you have to get your Experience to be within a window of less than 100. There are a couple of times when you can fight Trainer A before Trainer B (or vice versa), and on an old experience route, I literally couldn't fight them in reverse. That's how complicated it can get

Q: Can you do this route on Brilliant Diamond?
A: You can. I'm not. The run would be identical outside the last 6 or so fights, so it's less interesting for me at this point in time

Q: Do you plan on running Brilliant Diamond?
A: If the route is significantly different, then probably yes. Currently, the fastest completed run for BD uses an extremely different route than the fastest run for SP, so it'd be cool to do both

Q: What is your goal time?
A: Better than my PB