Playthrough Chariblaze's Guide to B/W RNG Abuse

[Chariblaze]

So back in August, Red Striker was on staff, and while here, he went around asking if it would be cool for him to write a guide an RNG guide, specifically on breeding. I, with my awesome guide-writing skillz, got in contact with him. The plan was for me to write the bulk of the guide, with Red Striker doing the breeding part like he wanted. Well, I think that was the plan; maybe he wanted to write the bulk of the guide and leave me to cover stuff like capture and Wonder Card abuse. Either way, I began writing pretty quickly, and I ended up with what you see below, minus some edits here and there I did to pretty it up. Red Striker and I eventually put the guide on the heatless backburner; I sent him what I had wrote, and that was pretty much it.

I’m posting what I have now to, well, get it out there, but also to gauge interest. Writing a breeding section isn’t hard, but RNGReporter has changed quite a bit from what I can tell, so to be up-to-date, I’d have to rewrite and rescreenshot major parts of the guide. And Hidden Grottos, that’s a thing now, and I have no idea how they work.

Anyway, enjoy this incomplete guide (made for BW) to what’s been covered all over the Internet, and will probably become irrelevant with XY!

 

[Chariblaze]

RNG abuse
”Cheating” for the honest man​

I wasn’t originally going to write one of these, as I thought (read: probably will) I’d be repeating what this guy does well, what these people explain comprehensively, and what this guy has that makes this almost pointless (I’ve only taken the idea of color coded screenshots from there, for the record) but hey, why not. I recommend reading this thread in order, as it builds upon concepts previously mentioned. Also, I’ll probably never cover 4th Gen abuse what with delay and all.

Contents

• A brief introduction (this post)
• Technical stuff
• Finding your parameters
• Standard abuse for stationary (legends) and wild Pokemon
• Standard abuse for eggs ~By [member]Red Striker[/member] (doesn’t exist yet)
• Standard abuse for Wondercard (Mystery Gift) Pokemon
• Dream Radar abuse (doesn’t exist yet)

RNG abuse. You’ve probably heard of it, and probably have some idea of what it is. But if not, I’ll try to explain it as simply as I can. Do note, it can get quite complicated. And note that I have no knowledge of BW2 RNG, and so some of my stuff might be inaccurate. Here we go.

In official tournament environments, it is extremely beneficial to have near flawless Pokemon (i.e. 30/31 IVs in all necessary stats). With normal methods, this is incredibly difficult to do. After a lot of time, the most you could assure with breeding is the right nature, and three optimal IVs from the parents. The other 2 or 3 would be completely random. So, what do you and many other people do? RNG abuse.

I’ll try to explain it better in the next post, but basically, with knowledge, you can control when you’ll get that Male Cubchoo with Adamant and perfect IVs.

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Before we start, let me touch on the controversy surrounding RNG abuse:

Some consider RNG abuse to be cheating. On a moral standpoint, you could go into that all day. But on a technical level, your game and system are not interfacing with any unofficial device. It is 100% legit.

It should be noted that if you’re looking for shinies, this is somewhat untrue. That used to require AR interfacing, and now can be done with dummy GTS servers that apparently leave no trace. But either way, your game and system would interface with some unofficial device. So, be careful there.

 

[Chariblaze]

A bit of technical reading
You’ll thank me later​

In Pokemon, many things seem random; the Pokemon you encounter in a cave, IVs on your baby Pokemon, shininess of a Pokemon, the chance of getting confused, even the movement of some NPCs. It all seems random.

But alas, it is not.

All of these things stem from a Random Number Generator, or RNG. Now, by itself, this’d mean someone could hit a button and a completely random item would result. But computers can’t generate completely random numbers. Computers need to be programmed. So what do the great programmers of the world do? The use a complicated series of calculations that take in many variables in order to generate numbers that seem random.

This is why all RNGs are pseudo-RNGs; great imitations of a true RNG, but not a true RNG. We could go into this all day, but the point is that nothing in gaming or computers in random.

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RNGs use an initial digit to start their randomness; this is called the seed. Seeds are generated in many ways, and in Pokemon, they take into account your DS’s date and time. This works really well in theory; every single time a person plays their game, a completely new set of random numbers will be generated.

But there is a major flaw: date and time is set by the user, and can be changed by the user. So if you know the EXACT date and time to set your DS to for an EXACT set of random numbers to be generated, you can eventually learn to do something EXACTLY a certain way to make an EXACT result occur every time.

In other words:

1. Set your clock to 7:30 P.M., May 12th, 2011
2. Start your game at the 40th second
3. Walk around a bit
4. ???
5. PROFIT!

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Now, over time and across games, the process of RNG abuse has gotten easier and easier.

Emerald started it, but it required a caught shiny. Initially, DP was the same, but ways were discovered to simplify the process with the Poke Radar, lotto numbers, starter IVs, and more. But DPPHGSS still had a decent speed bump: delay. Delay is something that changes the RNG. Delay changes very rapidly, making the process to control it difficult.

And initially, delay was a factor in BW RNG abuse. But then, something new came about: standard abuse. It takes out all aspects of delay, and thus, time sensitivity (barring breeding, but even that has been made easier). This makes things incredibly easy (in comparison, at least).

You can’t use standard abuse on everything (Entralink Pokemon), and it’s still difficult on some things (roaming Pokemon), but for catching and breeding, you’re golden.

 

[Chariblaze]

Finding your parameters
Not very exciting, but very, very necessary​

One way the RNG tries to increase randomness across different people is by factoring in the MAC address of your DS. You really don’t need to know what this is, but know that it’s like an IP address, but tied to a device, meaning that everyone who’s reading right now has one, and that they’re all different.

Using the MAC address of your DS is a relatively new approach, and is one reason why you have to find the parameters of your DS and game.

To do this, we’ll need a few things from your DS and on your game:

• 1 or 2 Chatot with recorded Chatters (it’d be nice if the sounds were clear and identical between the two, but that’s not really needed too much for this). If, for some reason, you need a Chatot, ask around here.
• A Sweet Scenter. Amoongus from Route 10 should have it.
• Your MAC address. To find this on a DS Phat/Lite/DSi/XL:
  1. • For Phat/Lite: Make sure that auto mode is off. On the main menu, select Nintendo WFC Settings.
     • For DSi/XL: Go to System Settings.
  2. Tap Options, then System Information
  3. Tap System Information.
  1. For a 3DS, go to System Settings.
  2. Tap Internet Settings, then Other Information.
  3. Tap Confirm MAC Address.
  It’s in this form: XX-XX-XX-XX-XX-XX

Note that MAC address somewhere safe. You might need it again, someday.

We’ll also need a few programs on your computer:

• ΩDonut’s de facto RNGing program, RNGReporter]9.95 Beta
• ToastPlusOne’s very helpful timer, EonTimer. It’s not necessary, but it helps a good bit.

Just unzip the archives and run the .exe file. Mac users, use PPRNG instead of RNGReporter (I can’t help you with it, but that’s your option), and ZomgTimer instead of EonTimer. Linux users should be able to run RNGReporter with Mono, and ZomgTimer with Java/OpenJDK.

With that, let’s start. Open up RNGReporter.

Daunting, no? Click on DS Parameters Search, which will open a new window.

Select your Version and DS Type from the dropdown menus (in the red rectangle). Paste in your MAC address (the dashes will disappear; pretend the one in the screenshot fills the whole field). Pick any date and time (in the black rectangle), but put 30 in seconds for simplicity.

Now that RNGReporter is prepped, have Chatot and your Sweet Scenter in your party, and go to a place where you can find high-levelled wild Pokemon with no wandering NPCs. The last cave of Victory Road (with Cheren) is recommended as it’s close to a Pokemon Center. Save your game, and hard reset (Get out of the game; DS Phat/Lite users turn their system off, DSi users press their power button, 3DS users go back to the home menu).

Now, set the date and time you picked earlier as your DS’s date and time but DO NOT confirm the time yet! That would start the seconds count, which would disrupt the process.

Next, open up EonTimer. This is a helpful tool for timing the boots of your games. You could just use the DS Phat/Lite’s analog clock, or you could sync your DS’s time to an external clock. But EonTimer will do that in a neat interface, with adjustments that might have to be made later. Coming from someone who used to use their DS Lite clock, I recommend EonTimer.

Put 30 in the Target Seconds field, or whatever you set your seconds to in RNGReporter. Make sure Standard mode is selected, though it should be already.

Now comes the trickiest part of the whole process. At the same time, click Start on EonTimer, and confirm the time on your DS (DS Phat/Lite users press A, everyone else taps something). This will start EonTimer’s countdown, and your DS’s clock at the time you set. Now, go back to your system’s menu, and get ready to start your game. As soon as the countdown finishes, boot your game.

Since we’re doing Standard abuse, this is the most timely thing you’ll have to do in the whole process, and this is only down the second. Mind you, you’ll have to do this each time you RNG, but still. This is it.

Take care not to hold any buttons while the game is booting. Once the Game Freak shooting star thing shows up, you’re good, and you can start the game like usual. But make sure you don’t start the C-Gear! The entirety of Standard abuse depends on it.

To be safe, pause your game immediately. This is not a time-sensitive thing, but rather, we don’t want you moving around. Use Sweet Scent, and capture whatever shows up. We’re not going to be saving, so use a Master Ball if you wish.

Now you want to check the IVs of that Pokemon. You could use Serebii’s or Metalkid’s IV calculator, but RNGReporter has its own that integrates well into what you need to do. So, if you’re going to use it, bring up the DS parameters window, and click Calculate IVs from Stats.

Fill out the fields, click Check IVs, and then click OK. This will close the checker, and will put those IVs or IV ranges in their relevant fields.

Now, click Search. In the lower right, you should see one result. If you see 2 or 3, repeat the process with a different date or time. If you see way more than that, you borked one of your inputs; maybe your MAC address.

Take note or screenshot or something of this result. It is your DS’s parameters, and it is very important. RNGReporter saves them for when you come back via the Save Results to Profile button, but you should still note them somewhere. Losing them would mean you’d have to repeat the process, which, honestly, isn’t that hard once you get used to it, but still.

You can safely ignore the seed this time. That’s used for diagnostics if you’re having trouble RNGing.

Look at your Actual Seconds value. Is it different from the 30 we set earlier? If so, put that into the Second Hit field in EonTimer. This will adjust your countdown for you in the future to compensate for this. You might want to repeat the process to make sure you didn’t boot into the game too early or too late.

And in general, I’d recommend repeating the process a few times even if you got it right. Number 1, this will acquaint you with the process for hitting a seed, which is basically what you just did, and which is critical to the entirety of Standard abuse. But Number 2, you might get a different Timer0 value. Take note of this new value, as Timer0 can be a little weird. You should only ever get one or the other when RNGing (in my case, mine are 123C and 123D), so it’s not that bad.

And you should also repeat the process with keypresses. To do this, hold a button as soon as you boot your game, until the shooting star Game Freak thingy comes on. Check your parameters with this, and analyze your results. If you find that one Timer0 value comes up more often with keypresses, and the other comes more often without, this can be useful.

Make sure you click Use Result in Time Finder, and I’ll meet you in the next post!

 

[Chariblaze]

Capturing Pokemon
The meat and potatoes​

Now that you have your parameters found, it’s time for some action. Open up RNGReporter’s 5th Gen Time Finder (click Time Finder in the top left part of the main window).

Orange rectangle: Make sure your Min / Max Frame values are set to 1. If you’re going for shinies or six very specific IVs, you might have to change this, but otherwise, 1 will be all you ever need. Make sure the Method is set to IVs (Standard Seed). Set the Encounter Type to what you’re going for, be that Wild Pokemon, Stationary Pokemon, or something else.

Black rectangle: Set your desired IVs. Here, I’ve set all to be 31, save Special Attack (I’m looking to get a physical attacker, so that one isn’t necessary). If you don’t want to leave one blank, I’d recommend setting some of them to >=30. If you try to get all 31s, or any other really specific number, it’s going to take a bit of work.

Red rectangle: Ignore it. It’s not going to harm anything if you don’t do anything, but it’s not going to do anything either. This is for other types of abuse.

Once this is done, click the DS Parameters Tab.

Under Keypresses, I’d recommend deselecting None, and selecting One, Two, and Three. Timer0 seems to gravitate toward One, Two, and Three or None, so picking both might muck up your results with Timer0’s that probably won’t work. Set your Timer0 min / max to the value you found to correspond to keypresses more often. In my case, I found 123C to gravitate toward None, and 123D to go towards the others, so I put that.

Go back to the Capture tab, and click Generate. This is RNGReporter’s most demanding feature power-wise, so be ready for a bit of slowdown. You can click Cancel after like 5 results show up, as that’s a decent sample size. They won’t disappear when you do this, so don’t worry.

I’m going with my next-to-last result, as it’s using only two buttons. I could use the simpler last one, but that seconds value is very small. I’d give yourself a bit of leeway with a result of at least 20 seconds, but if you have to go for a really small number, set your DS time to one minute before what you’ll actually hit, and set EonTimer to 60 seconds plus whatever’s shown. Whatever you go with, right click it, and click Copy Seed to Clipboard.

What you have just found is the seed you’re going to hit to get those IVs. If you hit this seed, you should always get a Pokemon with those IVs. But, what if you want to control Nature, or Gender, or the Pokemon you encounter, or... anything else? This is what we use the main window for.

Green rectangle: Set the dropdown menu to Gen 5 PIDRNG, the encounter type to what you want.

Black rectangle: Paste in the seed you copied from Time Finder into Seed (Hex). Starting Frame is important, but it won’t read anything yet.

Orange rectangle: Ignore.

Red rectangle: Set your desired nature and gender. Click Calculate Initial PIDRNG Frame. This will fill the Starting Frame field from Black rectangle. If you have a desired ability, click Pokedex-IV checker, above Green rectangle, use the dropdown menu to find your Pokemon, and see what Ability 0 and 1 correspond to.

You probably want to find what Pokemon you’re looking for, and not something else. This is what Encounter Slot is for. Click 5th Gen Tools at the top, and select Black or White Encounter Table. This will open a webpage. Find your location, and reference what Encounter Slots correspond to your Pokemon. In my case, I’m going after a Durant in that cave we were in with Cheren, so I found Victory Road (5F-7F), and found that Durant corresponds to Encounter Slots 0, 2, 6, 8, and 10. So, I selected those.

With that, click Generate. Pick an entry that’s right for you; the first result should suffice. Take the frame number, and subtract your Starting Frame from it. This will tell you how many frame advances you need to make. In my case, 77 - 46 = 31 frame advances.

We’re just about ready, but let me try to explain what frames are. Think of a gear. Your Starting Frame is a notch; in my case, 46. Your target frame is a notch however many notches away; 77 for me. So I turn this gear 31 notches from 46 to 77. This concept generally applies to what we’re doing, but instead of notches, we have frames, and instead of turning notch-by-notch, we advance frame-by-frame.

Anyway, now, go to the location you want to go with Chatot and your Sweet Scenter, save, bring back Time Finder, and hit your seed. Set your DS date and time to what’s shown, set EonTimer to the seconds needed, start both at the same time, and boot your game when the countdown ends. If you have keypresses, hold them down right after booting, and wait until the Game Freak logo. Start the game without starting the C-Gear, and pause.

Go to Chatot’s summary screen. If it’s the Chatter you recorded, you have just advanced your frame by 1. Do this however many times you need, and then use Sweet Scent.

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With that, you should be done. But alas, we do have issues that can arise...

If you check the IVs of what you caught and they aren’t nearly correct, repeat the process a few times. If you keep getting the same IVs, well, you’re obviously hitting the same seed. With that seed, find your parameters, and see the Timer0. If you are having problems, you’ll often see that it’s different from what you predicted. If it is, try a different seed from Time Finder. This trial and error is the main hiccup in the whole process, but it’s not that bad.

If you’re in an area with wandering NPCs, you can either wing it (NPCs increase your starting frame by about 1-5, even with immediate pausing), or you can take an approach similar to the one you’d take in breeding: Have two Chatot with near identical Chatters, clear the main RNGReporter screen of Nature, Ability, Encounter Slot, and Gender (noting the frame you want, obviously), and hit Generate. This will get you a list of all frames including and after your starting frame. So when you’ve hit your seed, view Chatot’s summary, and listen closely to the pitch. Keep doing this (taking the advances into account for later), and see if they match up to the Chatot Pitch column of your results. With a decent ear, you should be able to find where you are, and how much the NPCs advanced your frame. Carry on like normal.

If you’re in an area with weather, you can’t use Sweet Scent. But it turns out you can stop the weather in an area, oddly enough. I don’t know if it’s an actual feature, glitch, or oversight, but I found it here. Basically, save in the area you want to be in, advance your month by one, and capture a Pokemon. Boom. No more weather! Save, and hit your seed like normal.

Roamers: nope nope nope nope nope. They’re in areas with wandering NPCs, and I don’t think the weather can be stopped. Just too above my head.

You can be creative with your Sweet Scenter; a popular choice is Parasect, as you can get on Sweet Scent, False Swipe, and Spore.

If you didn’t figure it out already, capturing a stationary Pokemon is as simple as talking to it at the time you would normally Sweet Scent.

If you really have trouble finding seeds, you’re going to need to expand your horizons. Start by selecting all the months in Time Finder. It’ll take a while, but it’ll search the whole year for what you’re looking for. This is how I got my flawless Ditto. If that doesn’t work, you’ll need to increase the Max frame in Time Finder. When you hit a seed, you start at frame 1. To advance that by x, you need to walk 128 steps with x Pokemon in your party. So if you had to go to frame 6, you’d walk 128 steps with 5 Pokemon in your party. Take into account the whole capturing to stop weather thing there, too. If that doesn’t work... Change the year.

Whew. I think that’s about it. Next, here’s Red Striker with breeding.

 

[Chariblaze]

Wondercard abuse
Like capture abuse, but different.​

You’re in the home stretch. This shouldn’t take long at all. It is pretty similar to capture abuse. Here we go.

This isn’t too different from before; in Time Finder, set your method as Wondercard (unless your Wondercard event is a specific gender, in which case, select GLAN Wondercard). Input your wanted IVs. And select your nature (yes, you do select them in Time Finder this time, and not the main window). In Black rectangle, make sure min advances is 0, and max advances is 30-40.

Specific Wondercard seeds are a bit hard to find, so I tried to be a bit tame in this screenshot. I put max frame at 40, which means it’ll search for frames that require me to advance the frame via Chatot up to 40 times. Raise it according to your patience. If you’re going all out for a flawless event, you might want that number higher, in addition to selecting all months. And in the DS Parameters tab, I set my Timer0 to include both of my values, and I included all keypresses.

Anyway, copy the seed to your clipboard, and then bring up the main window.

All you’re really doing is finding your starting frame. So select Wondercard (5th Gen) as your Method (or GLAN Wondercard (5th Gen) in the other case), paste in your seed, and click Calculate Initial PIDRNG Frame. That’s about it.

Save in the Hall of Fame Pokemon Center (no wandering NPCs), hit your seed from Time Finder, and advance your necessary frames.

Boom. We’re done here.

 

[Frezgle]

I've always wanted to try RNG abuse... These posts actually boil it down to terms I can comprehend, which is a first. They also make it sound easier than I imagined if I were to simply follow the steps and not miss anything, but how easy would you actually say it is? And do you think it's a bad idea to do this on a 3DS, which is online a lot of the time? I'm always wary of changing my time/date on it...
One last question; what about Shinies? I imagine it'd be the same processes, just with the "Shiny Only" box checkmarked in the box you've outlined in red, but I want to be sure, of course.

 

[Chariblaze]

They also make it sound easier than I imagined if I were to simply follow the steps and not miss anything, but how easy would you actually say it is?

Eh... It's a bit hard to come at it from a different angle than my own; it took me a good bit of time, a few tries, and a good amount of frustration to get things working because of the little things that could throw me off, especially with keypresses. Keypresses, man, they felt so unexplained for a while, at least to me. But rounding up all the good bits and pieces of information was my goal with this guide, and so if you can understand the concept of frames and use something like EonTImer to your advantage, I'd say it's... decently easy?

One thing I should put in future revisions of this: After getting a general understanding of things, totally watch Bearsfan092's guide. He calls it a supplement to a written guide, and it definitely is with how fast it goes through stuff, but it's great for actually demonstrating the process.

And do you think it's a bad idea to do this on a 3DS, which is online a lot of the time? I'm always wary of changing my time/date on it...

Changing your time/date shouldn't do much to most functions of your 3DS, at least any more than changing time/date does on a DS. I'd only be wary of changing it because of Animal Crossing, but I'm sure there's something in there to get things back together if they get out of whack. Other than that, I would say it's hardest to do this on a 3DS, what with the waits to get out of the 3DS Settings menu and back to the main menu. Not too bad, but definitely not as easy as say a DSi, where you just press the power button to soft reset the system.

One last question; what about Shinies? I imagine it'd be the same processes, just with the "Shiny Only" box checkmarked in the box you've outlined in red, but I want to be sure, of course.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure the process is identical as long as you input your SID wherever applicable. SIDs can be hard to come by without an AR or dummy GTS server (I'd recommend PokeCheck if you go that route), or a friend willing to do use one of those for you.

If you're going for shinies, though, you should definitely expand your search to include all months of the year before you start; shiny frames can be hard to come by!

 

[RogueChomp]

Really nice article, I can actually understand XD.

However, I'm having a problem. When I try to find the parameters, I make sure to have everything synced and then catch the pokemon, check the stats, enter them, etc. When I check the IVs and search, I get no result rather than one or more. (DSi) What do you think I'm doing wrong?

 

[Chariblaze]

Is there any interest in this now that Bank is out?