BW2 Starter Manip

Overview

This Guide will teach you how to RNG manipulate for a shiny Starter Pokemon in Pokemon Black 2 and White 2. The BW2 starter is probably the single most annoying RNG manipulation in all of BW2 due to the lack of tools ingame that early on in your adventure, the 2 randomly moving NPCs that are loaded in and advancing the RNG by varying amounts and the Timer0 being much more volatile in BW2 compared to BW1. This means it'll most likely take at least a dozen, possibly a fair lot more attempts to get. To be able to RNG manipulate it, you need to have done both Profile Calibration and TID/SID RNG already. I will be using my English copy of Black 2 for this guide.

Hardware Requirements

• A BW2 game and a DS Console you have calibrated for Gen 5 RNG Manipulation and a savefile that you RNG manipulated a TID/SID pair on.

• a Windows 10/11 PC, MacOS Ventura/Sonoma/Sequoia, Ubuntu 22.04/24.04 or QT 6.8 or newer

In-Game requirements

• Be saved right in front of Bianca at the outlook in Aspertia City (Bianca has 2 dialogues up there; in the first she asks you a few questions such as whether you will help to complete the Pokedex. You need to save after that first dialogue which is just before you can take your Starter).

Tools Used

• PokéFinder latest commit (Gen 5 is not fully implemented in latest official release yet)

Direct download links: Windows - Mac - Linux

• EonTimer 3.0.0-rc.6-calibration-fix-Windows

• EonTimer 3.0.0-rc.4-Other-OS

Video Example

• N/A

The Guide

Pick your target

If you have already prepared your target during TID/SID RNG to get a 5/6IV shiny Starter, you can skip this section and go right to the "The RNG Process" section.

Otherwise you'll want to start by opening up Pokefinder, going to the Gen 5 tab and once there opening the Static option.

In the Gen 5 Static windows top left make sure the profile of the game you wish to do this in is selected and right below the profile option switch to the searcher tab in which there's 3 different sections labeled "RNG Info", "Settings" and "Filters".

In the RNG Info section, leave the Initial IV Advances, Max IV Advances and Lucky Power all at 0. The Min Advances you want to put to 4 and the Max Advances to 0. This way PokeFinder will only search for targets that are exactly 4 Advances in. This is important as there's 2 randomly moving NPCs loaded in when you're standing in front of Bianca. Those NPCs will advance the RNG by 4 most often before you can take the Starter (if you're as fast as you can be). Generally it can be any amount between like 0-6, but 4 is the most common whilst the ones further out like 0 and 6 are extremely rare.

The date range you choose will depend on whether you want the Starter to just be shiny or have a few perfect IVs too and whether you care about its met date. If you just care for a shiny, possibly with a specific Nature and Gender, searching through just 1 day (perhaps whatever your "today" is when reading this) will give you several possible targets to go for already. If you want some perfect IVs as well, you'll have to either change the advance range you search through (searching through 3-5 advances aka with an Initial Advance of 3 and Max Advances of 2 so 3+2=5 is still reasonable enough but I would highly advise against expanding the range further), increase the date range or enable more Keypresses in your profile.

I do NOT recommend trying to find a 4-6IV target seed this way, as it will require you to search through several months to maybe even years; if you want such high IVs + shiny, best to prepare for that already as explained in the TID/SID RNG guide. Since I will just go for a shiny with a specific Gender and Nature right now, I put my Max Advances to 0 and the date range to just search through the current day as of writing this guide, which is the 21st of August 2025. If you also only care to get a shiny without any specific IVs, you can disable all but "None", "1" and "2" Keypresses in your profile for comfort.

Next in the Settings section, select the Starters Category with the Starter you wish to RNG and finally in the Filters section input your desired IVs, Gender, Nature and whether you want a shiny or not.

Now you can hit the Search button and once PokeFinder has found a result you're happy with you can cancel the search if it's not done already. If you get no results or none you're satisfied with you can either search through a different date range (e.g. the full current month), increase the Max Advances or select more possible Keypresses in your profile (do not use 4, 5, 6, 7 or 8 Keypresses for this specific RNG. We will later need to use the Profile Calibrator for assistance and it can only take up to 3 different Keypresses at a time).

I will pick this marked Naive Male Oshawott seed here on the 21st of August 2025 at 21:16:20 because its target second in 20 is the most comfortable one for me to aim for here since I'm playing on a DS Phat (same would apply to the DS Lite and DSi; on 3DS going for something between like 40-55 target seconds would be most comfortable, a fairly fast target second matters a bit more for this RNG than it does for other RNGs as you'll likely have to do quite a lot of attempts before getting the shiny.

So taking a target second that would have you wait very long before even getting into the game will add up over time). There's also 2 Keypresses in the Select button and the Up direction on the D-pad that I'll have to press and hold during startup of the game.

The RNG Process

Open up EonTimer and there put the Target Second to your seeds seconds (20 in my case), go into the DS menu to change the date to the target date (here the 21st of August 2025) and get ready to change and confirm the target time (21:16 for me; should EonTimer say "Minutes Before Target: 1" and your target time is e.g. 12:30:05, you'd need to put it to 12:29 in your DS).

DS DSi 3DS

At the moment that you confirm the time change on your DS console, press the Start button in EonTimer. Now go back to the home menu, get ready to start the game as soon as the 6th and final beep of EonTimer sounds and make sure to press and hold any buttons your target seed may require (start pressing the buttons right after you started the game and you can let go once the star appears on the top screen; I will need to press and hold the Select button and the Up direction on the D-pad).

Now continue getting into the game. Once you click continue on the savefile selection screen, immediately start spamming the A button to make the season showing screen fade faster. This is important as the randomly moving NPCs that are loaded in can already start moving and thus advance the RNG whilst the game is showing you the current season. Now keep spamming the A button and take your Starter as quickly as possible (as soon as Bianca's textboxes start, the NPCs will no longer be able to move). If you're lucky, you will have the shiny Starter of your dreams now, in which case you can skip to the "Next Steps..." section.

Troubleshooting

If your Starter did not shine, which is fairly likely in BW2 due to the NPCs and inconsistent Timer0, double check all date and time settings match your target, make sure you accounted for any minutes before target if EonTimer tells you you need them and check if all the buttons you may need to press and hold are working properly. If you found an error, try again with it fixed. If you found nothing or it also didn't shine after the fix, which is still fairly likely, you'll now need to figure out whether you're just getting Timer0'd (aka the game did not "give" you your most common Timer0 yet) or whether the NPCs are interfering with you getting the shiny. To check this, you'll need to calculate the IVs of the Starters you get.

Open up the IV calculator, select the generation 5 games and select the Pokemon you're going for.

Now after a Starter RNG attempt, input its Nature, Characteristics, Level and Stats and then press the Find IVs button; the resulting IV ranges will appear in the bottom right of the IV Calculator.

IMPORTANT: For English language games, the names of 2 of the Characteristics were changed in Gen 6. Currently PokeFinder only uses the Gen 6+ names for these, even for older generations. Other languages may have a similar issue but I am not aware of any table that tracks every language's Characteristics change so if you're RNGing on a non-English game, you may have to figure this out by yourself using a Pokemon wiki site of your language for example.

You can change the language of PokeFinder to whatever language your game is in by going to Tools and then Settings in the main window and it'll display that language's names for all the Natures and Characteristics.

Now compare the IVs of the Starter you got with the IVs of the Starter you were aiming for in the searcher tab (ignore the Nature; it can change depending on how much the NPCs advanced by, whilst the IVs will ALWAYS stay the exact same as long as you hit your target seed. The Characteristics will usually be the same however if your target has 2 or more stats that both have the same equally highest IV (e.g. if your HP and Attack IV both were 31), the Characteristics can be either the one for 31 HP or the one for 31 Atk; it'll be different from advance to advance). For optimal speed, start by comparing the IV that your latest Starters Characteristics was linked to, which is always the one with a few specific options that are divided by commas in the IV Calculator's results.

In my case the latest Oshawott had a SpAtk Characteristics that, together with all the other IV ranges, gave me the information that the SpAtk must be either 14, 19, 24 or 29. Since my target seeds SpAtk IV is 6, I already know I did not hit my target seed. So now I will simply go back to the console's date and time settings and start the next RNG attempt.

But what to do if the IVs matched perfectly?

On my 5th attempt I got this Oshawott whose calculated IV ranges match the IVs of my target, so I can assume that I most likely hit my target Timer0 and with that my target seed. Since it wasn't shiny, the NPCs did not advance the RNG by 4 this time and if I were to just try again, they would advance the exact same amount again as well leading to me never getting the shiny. We can get around this by understanding how NPC movement works. Their movement is determined by 2 things: the current RNG state (the seed and its advances) and their last saved position (if they are already loaded in which they are when standing next to Bianca).

Since it would be quite annoying to have to find a new seed every time we run into this problem, we don't wanna change that part. But their last saved position is something we can easily influence. To change it, simply get into the game normally without RNG (you can do with RNG but its a waste of time for this), stand idly next to Bianca for a few seconds (doesn't matter whether you're in front, left of or right of her; 5-10 seconds is plenty the time waited doesn't matter much) and then save the game.

This will reposition the NPCs and make it so that next time they have a fairly good chance of advancing the RNG differently than last attempt. Repositioning the NPCs this way is only useful whenever you hit your target seed, which is why we wanna calculate the IVs every attempt.

Keep on checking the IVs and reposition the NPCs whenever needed until you get your shiny! Should it still not have shined after 30 attempts and you do not seem to hit your target seed much or at all, start an RNG attempt but instead of getting into the game and taking the Starter, do 1 Profile Calibration attempt as explained in the Unova Link Needle Calibration section of the Profile Calibration Guide.

If the result of the Profile Calibration attempt matches your target second (or is very closeby; it being 1 too high or low is fairly common on 3DS models specifically), but has a different Timer0, you seem to be getting Timer0'd aka the game mostly gives you your other Timer0s. In that case you can choose between continuing to try as you will get it eventually (though it may take a while if you continue being unlucky) or trying out a different target seed for your Starter, as some date/time/Keypress combinations may have your usually less common Timer0s be much more common, making this RNG take much longer than normal.

Should you however get no results at all, join im a blisy ._.'s RNG manip assistance Discord server and ask for help in the bw_b2w2 channel providing an explanation of the issue and full window screenshots of your PokéFinder Static and Calibration windows and EonTimer.

After about 17 attempts and repositioning the NPCs 4 times, I got my shiny Oshawott!

Next Steps...

And with the Starter successfully RNGd, we can now save the game. And that's it; if you'd like to learn how to RNG some shiny Legendaries and other stationaries and gifts in this game, check out the Static guide [GUIDE COMING SOON™]

Thank you for reading and have fun RNGing!