FR/LG Roaming Pokemon Manip

Overview

This guide will cover Roamer RNG manipulation in FireRed and LeafGreen. The focus will be on acquiring a Shiny Roamer, without concern for competitive Natures or IVs.

This is Intermediate-Level because the Roaming Legendary Beast is bugged to have only a 0-7 IV in Attack, and 0 IVs in Defense, Special Attack, Special Defense and Speed.

This makes identifying missed attempts difficult, which is made even more tedious by the Roamer itself being difficult to even find and capture. However, the method in this guide minimizes those frustrations by pre-calibrating timers on a Gift Pokemon first.

The game uses the same exact method for generating the Roamer as it does for Gifts. Therefore the seeds, advances, and timings needed to hit a specific PID are the same. The IV bug only takes effect after the Roaming Pokemon is set in the save file.

We will be going for Shiny Entei, because I chose Bulbasaur at the beginning of the game. Squirtle would instead release Raikou as the roamer, and Charmander would release Suicune.

You must know your Secret ID to find viable targets, which would be done during the Shiny Starter RNG process. If you are on a completed save and DO NOT know your Secret ID, there are methods to deduce it using a previously caught Shiny, using glitches to read it from a Pokemon, or view it via extracting Save Data and using a tool like PkHex.

Recommended Setup

Hardware Requirements:

• Pokemon Fire Red/Leaf Green (any language)

• GameBoy Advance, Nintendo DS or DS Lite, Nintendo 3DS w/ open_agb_firm

• Windows / Mac OS / Ubuntu PC

In-game Requirements:

• Enough Game Corner Coins to purchase a Pokemon

• Retrieved the SAPPHIRE from the Sevii Island post-game

• At least one free space in your party

• Max Repels to find the Roamer (50+ recommended)

• Master Ball (DO NOT EVEN THINK OF ATTEMPTING THIS WITHOUT IT)

• Pokeballs to capture the Roamer

• Pokémon to aid in capture (Fast Sleep/Mean Look User)

Tools Used

• EonTimer 3.0.0-rc6

• G3 Calibration

Video Examples

• N/A

The Guide

Pre-Calibration

As discussed in the Introduction, due to the Roamer IV bug it's more efficient to utilize a Gift Pokemon to pre-calibrate EonTimer for use with the Roamer.

The best Pokemon to use for this approach is a Gift from the Game Corner.

Refer to the FireRed & LeafGreen Static RNG Guide for how to do this process successfully. When completed you should have already received a Shiny, and your EonTimer will already be calibrated to re-use on the Roamer.

The timing and PID generation are identical between the Game Corner Gifts and the Roamer release, so in theory, using the same timer should produce the exact same Shiny result.

I've successfully RNG manipulated this Timid Shiny Abra from Seed AB33 and Advance 3303, with the following EonTimer calibration and will be using the same timer for Entei.

The First Attempt

Position your character next to CELIO in the One Island Pokemon Center. You must be at the point in the game where you have received the SAPPHIRE, but not turned it in to CELIO.

Open your in-game settings and double check that they match the SOUND and BUTTON MODE settings for the target Seed at the top of G3 Calibration.

Save your game, and then Power Off the system.

The startup sequence is slightly different depending on the console being used.

The general flow of each attempt is as follows:

1. Boot the game and click Start on EonTimer at the same time.

2. Wait for the ENTIRE Introduction to play, DO NOT PRESS ANY BUTTONS or SKIP. Your first timer should be long enough to make it to the Title Screen.

3. When the timer is close to completion, you will hear the 1st of 6 beeps.

4. ON THE 6TH BEEP, PRESS and HOLD the A Button.

5. Once the File Load screen appears, you can release all buttons and press A to load your save.

6. Mash B to skip past any "Previously on..." screens.

7. Talk to CELIO and get to his last text box "Thanks to you, my dream came true..."

8. When the second timer is close to completion, you will hear the 1st of 6 beeps.

9. ON THE 6TH BEEP PRESS A to Release the Roamer

Finding the Roamer

After releasing the Roamer for the first time, you must locate it in the Wild Grass of Kanto.

Every time you change maps, the Roamer will move as well. There's no way to trade over a Raikou, Entei, or Suicune early in order to get the Pokedex entry-- so you must brute force the first encounter to check.

Route 2, just south of Pewter City is the best for this.

Use a Max Repel, and run around in the grass for 10-20 seconds. Make sure the Pokemon in the lead of your Party is lower than 50, but higher than Level 5.

After 10-20 seconds of running around in the grass with no encounters, you can quickly enter and exit the gatehouse to Viridian Forest to relocate the Roamer.

This can take quite a while, so make sure to bring a lot of Max Repels. Eventually you will get an Encounter with your Roamer.

This guide will assume you have a Master Ball to use for capturing and checking the Roamer when you miss the Shiny. It's not strictly necessary to capture and calculate each time, because we pre-calibrated using the Game Corner Abra.

However, it can be useful to be able to identify your missed attempts to know when it's potentially time to recalibrate due to human error or fatigue.

Identifying Non-Shiny Roamer

Open G3 Calibration and make sure the Game/Sound/Button Mode/System settings are correct for your Target Seed.

Input your Target Seed.

Set Seed +/- to 5.

Set Advance Range to 20 advances below and above your target.

Set Encounter Method to Static 1.

Select your Roamer Species and Nature, then enter the Stats you see in-game into the IV Calculator, then click Calculate IVs.

Thanks to the Roamer IV bug, you should see the IV ranges for DEF/SPA/SPD/SPE all get set to 0 - 1, and submitting a search like this would yield no results.

However, the HP Range is still usable. Make note of this range, and then set the Nature Filter to Any. This will temporarily reset the IV calculator results back to 0 - 31 for all Stats.

Then set the Nature Filter back to the Nature of your caught Roamer (in my case Bold), and then manually set the HP Range back to what it was before clearing the results, and click Submit.

This first example Entei wound up having multiple results, and unfortunately there's no way to narrow it down further from here. I was either on-seed, 3 advances late OR 50ms late on seed, and 6 advances late.

I chose to not adjust and trust in the pre-calibrated timer from the Game Corner Abra, because it's more likely that I hit my seed and was only off by 3 frames.

Adjusting EonTimer comes down to your personal preference, but either Seed or Advances being less than 3 away from the target is most likely within human error.

At this stage, it's reasonable to Update only the Seed ms in EonTimer, if you're consistently late or early on seed. You can safely leave the Advances Hit input for Advances empty in EonTimer and click Update. It will update only the Seed ms Calibration and leave the Advances Calibration unchanged.

It's also generally a good practice, to only adjust Advances based on attempts that hit the Target Seed. Adjusting both too often makes things less consistent over multiple attempts, by creating a constantly moving target.

It's also not a bad idea to re-calibrate off the Gift Pokemon again, if results really start to drift and it becomes too difficult to identify the Roamer hit.

Eventually, you'll hit the Target Seed and Advance and see the Shiny!

And if you're not immediately throwing a Master Ball, there are a few extra things to worry about when it comes to...

Capturing the Shiny Roamer

Once the Shiny Roamer has been found, it's a good idea to let it run immediately on first encounter.

First, because it's now permanently Shiny and unlocked in your Pokedex, so you can safely Save the game and prepare to find and capture it next time.

Second, because there's another bug with the Roamer in FireRed and LeafGreen that can make your Shiny Roamer permanently disappear. Both Raikou and Entei know Roar at Level 50, and if they use it against you, it counts as the Roamer being fainted instead of fleeing normally.

If this happens you must reload the save to prevent permanently losing the Shiny Roamer.

Fleeing can be prevented by:

1. Arena Trap and Shadow Tag abilities.
2. Using the move Mean Look or Block (lasts until Switch)
3. Putting the Roamer to Sleep (temporary)

Roaring can be prevented by:

1. Soundproof and Suction Cups abilities
2. Using the move Ingrain or Imprison (lasts until Switch)
3. Using the move Encore or Taunt (temporary)
4. Putting the Roamer to Sleep (temporary)

Smeargle can use a combination of Mean Look, Ingrain, Spore, and False Swipe to serve as an all-in-one Roamer capture helper. However, it cannot be found natively in Kanto and only appears in Colosseum and Emerald's post-games.

Additionally, turning in the SAPPHIRE is what enables cross-gen trading. So you'd have to receive the Smeargle from another copy of FireRed and LeafGreen that already has trading unlocked.

There is no other perfect option, but thankfully any progress you make on its HP will remain after each encounter, as long as it doesn't use Roar and delete itself.

Here are some No-Trading Required options that can be used to varying degrees of effectiveness.

Parasect: Spore + False Swipe (Egg Move w/ Scyther)

Jynx: Lovely Kiss + Mean Look + Taunt

Tangela: Sleep Powder + Ingrain

Butterfree: Compound Eyes + Sleep Powder

Haunter: Mean Look + Hypnosis + Taunt

Snorlax: Block + Yawn

Remember, because of the Roamer IV bug, the Speed stats will entirely depend on Nature.

You must be faster than the Roamer to stop it from fleeing with Sleep, Mean Look or Block.

You can calculate your odds of success with your ball-of-choice using this catch odds calculator from dragonflycave.com

Once it's at 1 HP and Asleep, with enough patience you'll eventually beat those 1.53% odds of capturing the Roamer in a standard PokeBall... Good luck!

Next Steps...

Congratulations! That's the end of Intermediate for FireRed and LeafGreen. With everything learned up to this point, it should be possible to successfully RNG manipulate a quick Shiny for most things in the game.

The only exceptions are Unowns and Breeding, which are unique enough to warrant being considered Advanced-level. Those lessons are coming soon, along with RNG manipulation for competitive Pokemon using special held-button seeds and the Teachy TV. Hope to see you there!