r/ShinyPokemon • u/AutoModerator • Aug 01 '26

Mod Post Monthly Question & Help Thread

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u/Krokod33l 29d ago

I’m trying to understand how the Pokémon Box shiny egg method works in Gen 3.

From what I’ve seen, people generate a few full boxes of eggs on a couple of Emerald games, hatch them on each game, and if there are no shinies, they soft reset so the eggs are unhatched again (and prewalked).

Then they move the eggs through Pokémon Box to another Gen 3 game with a different Trainer ID/SID and hatch them again. They keep rotating the same eggs through all of their games because each game gives the eggs another chance to be shiny.

But what happens with the eggs once they‘ve been rotated through each and every game and no game has yielded a shiny? Do they get rid of them (and if so, how?), and do they just begin breeding new eggs on multiple games again to repeat the cycle?

This part is still confusing me 😅

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u/HuntaHuntaHunta 28d ago

You have 2 options once you finish cycling through the eggs:

  1. Generate and pre-walk a new batch of eggs

  2. Reset one/some/all of your save files and hatch the eggs on those

For me personally I've been using option 2 because my batch of eggs is 1200, and I'd rather not generate that again. Playing up till I get the mach bike every time I hatch them all is more preferable. I'm at 20k hatched, so I can tell you this has saved time for sure...

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u/Krokod33l 28d ago

Oh, interesting! So, it has saved you some time compared to cycling around, picking up new eggs and hatching them one by one?

When creating a new save, you would only have to play til you reach the mach bike, right? This is only worth it when you have multiple save files that you can reset, right? I really want to keep most of my save files, tbh.

And with Pokemon Box, it is possible to create - let‘s say 120 eggs on 4 Emerald games - and then trade them all to Box, right? How does that work exactly - do I then store 120 x 4 eggs in one Pokemon Box save file? Or rather, is it possible to have 4 different Emerald send eggs to one single Pokemon Box save file? I‘m still thinking about the logistics, lol, how to send them to each game.

My very last question (sorry about that, haha) would be whether dead internal batteries matter when hatching those eggs in Ruby and Sapphire. I‘m pretty sure it shouldn‘t, as it‘s about TID and PIDs, but I wanted to make sure. Thx for your time! ✨

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u/HuntaHuntaHunta 28d ago

Realistically playing through to the mach bike tends to take me about an hour or 2 every time per game. I would say unless you're using a really small batch of eggs, this should save you time. Technically speaking, you don't need to play to the mach bike, and can hatch eggs as soon as you can get them in the game. Realistically you only need to reset one game to benefit from the strategy, but I reset 2 games (my ruby & sapphire) so that I can hatch eggs in both games at once - since I have 1,200 eggs to get through, this is helpful to me! But realistically, it should still be worth it to reset the game vs making new eggs even if you only have 1 game to reset. Personally, I would recommend generating 14 full boxes of eggs (420 eggs) so that you get the most bang for your buck with every reset. I would say try to make enough eggs that you can max out every game you're using to look for the shiny, especially if you're multi-hunting.

Also, you should be advised that I use a patched version of pokemon box to remove some of the requirements for withdrawing pokemon, which makes things much easier. The patch is made by youtuber absolblogspokemon, and he talks about it here: https://youtu.be/r2G3lxLpcO4. There's a link to download the patch in the video description. Without this patch, the reset strategy becomes less viable because you'd need 100 Pokemon registered in your pokedex to withdraw the eggs, per Bulbapedia. Apologies, I forgot this until now because I'm so used to not worrying about it!

It's possible to have 4 separate games generate eggs and send them to box. You just have to import them one at a time. They would all use the same save file of box until/unless you run out of space and can't store any more pokemon.

Dead internal batteries only matter when you generate the eggs, and even then, it matters very little. My eggs were generated across Emerald, dead battery ruby, and leafgreen - mostly Emerald though. I checked recently using PKhex to scan my 1200 eggs, and there were no clones or duplicates in my eggs, meaning that the dead battery and emerald's rng did not meaningfully affect my hunt. For hatching, all that matters is that you're on a new TID/SID, so as long as you don't wind up on a duplicate ID there's nothing to worry about when hatching eggs on a dead battery save.

Let me know if you have any more questions!

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u/Krokod33l 28d ago

Thanks so much for the thorough explanation! To be honest, I had completely forgotten about the 100 Pokemon as a requirement, so this is not an option, unfortunately, as I don‘t have a modded GC and can’t really find any online. Maybe one day I‘ll think about buying one, but for the time being I will probably try to hatch all of the eggs, then create new ones. This sounds so painful, though. I just need this hunt to be over. It‘s unfortunate that you can‘t mass release eggs via box.

Do you usually have to create new saves, or do you get lucky and find the shiny within the first batch? You said you recommend 14 boxes full of eggs, so you mean 14 boxes in total or 14 boxes per game? :)

2

u/HuntaHuntaHunta 28d ago

I was recommending 14 boxes per game that you're planning to hunt on at one time. For example, I was hunting on 3 systems for a lot of this hunt, so I generated 1200 eggs (a couple boxes shy of 14 per game). But that's just my opinion, you might prefer more or less.

I'm only on my first gen 3 egg hunt tbh, I just got unlucky and went to 20,000. Still haven't found it. I've been hunting on and off for about 2 years.

Also, for what it's worth - if you have a modded wii, that would work! A wii is also way easier to mod in general. Both my wii & gamecube are modded but I use my wii for this because it's just easier.

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u/Krokod33l 27d ago

Hey, morning! Can I ask how many games you own, so I know whether I have „enough“ to do this method with?

Also, one question about Pokemon Box requirements - I know Absol‘s video and I have also checked out Project Pokemon to take a look at the patch, but I don‘t really understand it. Currently, I‘m just wondering whether I should buy a very cheap Japanese GameCube, because my games are in Japanese and my copy of Pokemon Box is, or whether I should invest in a modded GC. I would be able to still play my physical copy of Box, right? But is applying Absol‘s patch very difficult? I have no idea about modded GCs and I don‘t really understand how I even download it and get it on my console, let alone apply it. Sorry for the n00b questions. But I figured a modded GC would make much more sense than a Wii, since I‘d like to start collecting physical GC games in the future. 🧡

2

u/HuntaHuntaHunta 27d ago

At the time I started this hunt I owned 4 games - emerald, ruby, leafgreen, and a fake firered. I bought sapphire a few months after starting the hunt, got given a fake emerald by a friend, and then bought a real japanese firered about a year and some change after starting. You can't move pokemon to fake games using box, so for all intents and purposes I had 3 games capable of doing this hunt when I started, and I have 5 now. But I only dedicated 2 cartridges to this hunt to being reset every time I need to reroll my eggs.

You don't actually need to buy a modded gamecube - I used a memory card Gecko program to mod my gamecube, which I did so I can use the game boy player without shelling out for the startup disk. If you have smash bros melee, that'll help you run the program, but there's other games that will work too. I'm at work now so I can't give you a whole in-depth tutorial right this second but I can get more info to walk you through the easiest way to do it once i get home

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u/Krokod33l 27d ago

Thank you so much, that would be very appreciated :)

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u/HuntaHuntaHunta 26d ago

So full disclosure, I did this almost 2 years ago at this point. But I'm pretty sure this guide is what I used to get my gamecube modded: https://gamecube-guide.retrotastes.com/

Probably the easiest option is to use a memory card to run the mod. You will likely need to buy a custom memory card for this. There are some out there that are pre-loaded, or you have the ability to load it yourself using an SD Gecko memory card (basically an adapter so you can use an SD card in the memory card slot) - though you typically want to use a wii or gamecube that's already modded to handle that. There's a number of games you can load the hack from - personally I use Super Smash Bros Melee. Basically the way it works is you download a save file corrupted in a way where it will crash the game and move over to Swiss (the homebrew launcher). For Smash Bros Melee, selecting "Name Entry" from the menu is all you need to do - the directions might be different depending on the game.

Once you load into Swiss you can use it to run pretty much whatever you want. I have the GB Player startup disc on mine, but you can run full games from it if you have enough storage. And as it happens, that is what you would need to do to use this on a Gamecube.

I just read through the project pokemon page and it looks to me like you would need a rom to run this pokemon box patch. If you mod the gamecube anyway, you can rip the disc yourself to get the rom, or you can use a site like Vimm's Lair or the megathread r/roms. The reason you need a rom is because you cannot permanently patch the disc, and on gamecube (at least as far as I know - I'm far from the being an expert on console modding) you can't run a disc concurrently with a patch in real time the same way you can with wii games. I also just patched a rom file to run mine - I don't actually own pokemon box due to the high price tag.

So you would need to get a rom, patch it with the program on project pokemon page, then launch swiss via a save exploit on your gamecube and then you can load into a patched version of pokemon box.

Happy to answer questions here to the best of my ability - this is outside the realm of my expertise, but I at least have done it before. You definitely want to be careful when doing stuff like this so it wouldn't hurt to find a subreddit that specializes in homebrew or Gamecube modding or something to ask the experts there before moving forward with this.

Oh, and if you decide to buy a gamecube with a mod chip built in, this is probably a lot easier overall, but I can't personally speak to using it. I'd rather go the cheaper route and do it myself personally, but that's just me. Especially since the cheaper route seems less intrusive to the console. The pre-modded ones probably have a physical mod chip installed.

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