Pokemon Red Dugtrio% FAQ

Pokemon Red Dugtrio% FAQ

Q: What are you trying to do?
A: Beat Pokemon Red as quickly as possible using Dugtrio as the main Pokemon.

Q: What are you playing on?
A: GambatteSpeedrun, an accurate emulator for Gen 1-2 Pokemon games.

Q: What is the world record?
A: 2:00:48 by ChillMagic.

Q: Why do you save and reset in the middle of the run?
A: This is RNG manipulation. The game almost always starts from the same RNG seed when you hard reset after a save. You can buffer every input from reset to file select, allowing you to frame perfectly load your game. As long as you continue to be frame perfect, you'll get the same RNG. So what you can manipulate depends on how easily you can be frame perfect. Movement is extremely easy to do frame perfectly.

Q: What do you manipulate?
A: Nidoran (fast encounter + perfect stats), Dugtrio (fast encounter + good stats), Mt. Moon (no encounters except Paras, your Cut slave), and trash cans (fastest possible puzzle solution).

Q: Is Dugtrio faster than Nidoking?
A: No, because it can't reliably hold red bar for the late game and it struggles mightily against Lance. Otherwise it's very fast and can probably get a time around 1:50.

Q: Why is Lance so hard?
A: He has good AI, which in Gen 1 means he always chooses super-effective moves when available. His lead Gyarados has one super-effective move against Dugtrio (Hydro Pump), and it easily OHKOs you. Even after an X Special, you don't always live. And you don't always 2HKO with Rock Slide. So usually you have to die and Revive once or twice.

Q: Besides Lance, what are the hardest fights for Dugtrio?
A: The only other difficult fight is the very last one, Champion. You can die to Sky Attack crit as always, but you also die if you critical his Gyarados, as criticals ignore your X item boosts. Dugtrio crits 23% of the time because of its high base Speed. Some midgame fights will be risky as well if I go for red bar strats.

Q: What route are you using?
A: https://pastebin.com/S8yiDwUz