The Legality Question/Check Thread

[PedroKeitawa]

I think in this discussion is ok. Is mostly a curiosity on my part. If i rename Ash Greninja with a Nickname (via Pkhex since you cannot change the name of a Pokemon from another trainer) can be considere "legal"? Becouse Pkhex dosen't mark that as problematic, but i have the fear that stuff like Pokebank will considere that a not legit pokemon just for a nickname. (I ask becouse i wanna use this pokemon but there is no way to breed a battle bond Froakie)

[Kaphotics]

1 hour ago, PedroKeitawa said:

I think in this discussion is ok. Is mostly a curiosity on my part. If i rename Ash Greninja with a Nickname (via Pkhex since you cannot change the name of a Pokemon from another trainer) can be considere "legal"? Becouse Pkhex dosen't mark that as problematic, but i have the fear that stuff like Pokebank will considere that a not legit pokemon just for a nickname. (I ask becouse i wanna use this pokemon but there is no way to breed a battle bond Froakie)

PKHeX marks nicknamed events as Fishy. You can access the full report by holding control when clicking.

It's possible to nickname anything, so long as you have the same trainer details (can be done via RNG abuse).

[PedroKeitawa]

1 hour ago, Kaphotics said:

PKHeX marks nicknamed events as Fishy. You can access the full report by holding control when clicking.

It's possible to nickname anything, so long as you have the same trainer details (can be done via RNG abuse).

Thanks. I guess i will need to breed a regular Greninja with is HA.

[NotCelestial]

Hi, I have a question regarding Colosseum Pokemon. I used rngreporter to find the PID for a shiny shadow Pokemon and its corresponding IVs. I then checked those IVs with the PID in Pokegc.exe/celebitest to make sure it comes out okay there, too. However, it said the PID/IV combination is illegal. When I input the IVs as desired IVs instead, and let the program suggest nature/PID pairings FOR those IVs, it gave me the very same nature and IV I had already used previously. 

 

Why is this? Does this mean it's all legal, and the program's just having a hiccup?

Edited October 15, 2019 by NotCelestial

[theSLAYER]

4 hours ago, NotCelestial said:

Hi, I have a question regarding Colosseum Pokemon. I used rngreporter to find the PID for a shiny shadow Pokemon and its corresponding IVs. I then checked those IVs with the PID in Pokegc.exe/celebitest to make sure it comes out okay there, too. However, it said the PID/IV combination is illegal. When I input the IVs as desired IVs instead, and let the program suggest nature/PID pairings FOR those IVs, it gave me the very same nature and IV I had already used previously. 

 

Why is this? Does this mean it's all legal, and the program's just having a hiccup?

for Shiny Colo, you're supposed to use another program called Eligor.

[NotCelestial]

6 minutes ago, theSLAYER said:

for Shiny Colo, you're supposed to use another program called Eligor.

I tried this as well now. When I generate PID profiles in Eligor and enter the PID and IVs into celebitest, it once more says they're illegal. Is celebitest just broken?

[theSLAYER]

8 minutes ago, NotCelestial said:

Is celebitest just broken?

I'm sorry what? (what is celebi test?) Are you trying to generate a shiny Celebi? Ageto Celebi cannot be shiny.

[NotCelestial]

1 hour ago, theSLAYER said:

I'm sorry what? (what is celebi test?) Are you trying to generate a shiny Celebi? Ageto Celebi cannot be shiny.

It's the tool linked in this thread:

I figured cross-checking legitimacy would be helpful.

 

 

 

[theSLAYER]

2 minutes ago, NotCelestial said:

It's the tool linked in this thread:

I figured cross-checking legitimacy would be helpful.

No idea which tool it is, but I assume Celebitest only checks Ageto Celebi.

If PKHeX marks the PID/IV from Eligor (on that Pokemon) as legal, then you're fine

[NotCelestial]

Just now, theSLAYER said:

No idea which tool it is, but I assume Celebitest only checks Ageto Celebi.

If PKHeX marks the PID/IV from Eligor (on that Pokemon) as legal, then you're fine

Okay, so JUUUST to be sure: In Eligor, I pick the Pokemon, put in my TID and SID, enable ID matching, enter everything else I want. (In my case, I want a shiny adamant Absol and don't care for IVs, so I pick those thing and leave IV blank). Now I can copy these PIDs and IVs that Eligor generates and put them onto the template Absol (which is a legit Colosseum Absol) in PKHeX, and if PKHeX at this point says it's legal, then it is indistuingishable from a legitimate shiny adamanant Absol from that game? No way the game(s) in the future or if someone somehow checked its data it'd look edited?

(Sorry, I'm a little new to all of this, just wanna make sure)

[theSLAYER]

Just now, NotCelestial said:

Okay, so JUUUST to be sure: In Eligor, I pick the Pokemon, put in my TID and SID, enable ID matching, enter everything else I want. (In my case, I want a shiny adamant Absol and don't care for IVs, so I pick those thing and leave IV blank). Now I can copy these PIDs and IVs that Eligor generates and put them onto the template Absol (which is a legit Colosseum Absol) in PKHeX, and if PKHeX at this point says it's legal, then it is indistuingishable from a legitimate shiny adamanant Absol from that game? No way the game(s) in the future or if someone somehow checked its data it'd look edited?

(Sorry, I'm a little new to all of this, just wanna make sure)

GameFreak hack checks don't actually check PID/IV correlations. As long as every single stat/option is legal, and PKHeX says it's legal (and future PKHeX updates continues to say it is legal) then you are fine.

[NotCelestial]

Just now, theSLAYER said:

GameFreak hack checks don't actually check PID/IV correlations. As long as every single stat/option is legal, and PKHeX says it's legal (and future PKHeX updates continues to say it is legal) then you are fine.

I mostly want to make sure if those ever become improved in the future, as I'd like to keep bringing this with me in the future. I know some people can check Pokemon very thoroughly (not GF, but rather editors/tool makers) and I was wondering if a Pokemon as described above would be recognized as edited?

[theSLAYER]

Just now, NotCelestial said:

I mostly want to make sure if those ever become improved in the future, as I'd like to keep bringing this with me in the future. I know some people can check Pokemon very thoroughly (not GF, but rather editors/tool makers) and I was wondering if a Pokemon as described above would be recognized as edited?

It's not how you generate the mon that determines whether it's legal, but whether all the conditions on the mon is legal.
And that is what PKHeX checks. Thus I've already answered your question

[NotCelestial]

2 minutes ago, theSLAYER said:

It's not how you generate the mon that determines whether it's legal, but whether all the conditions on the mon is legal.
And that is what PKHeX checks. Thus I've already answered your question

Oh, maybe I was unclear before, I apologize. I know it'd be legal and all. However, I used to be on a Pokemon forum where they offered legality checks, and I know that some Pokemon that would check as legal in PKHeX would be, in lack of a better term, "found out". I don't have any intention of trading this away (It's gonna be my ribbon master!), but I would like it to remain looking like a legitimate Pokemon in the future just in case the game's hackchecks improve to the point of actual people looking through a specific mon? Does that make sense?

[Kaphotics]

1 minute ago, NotCelestial said:

I used to be on a Pokemon forum where they offered legality checks, and I know that some Pokemon that would check as legal in PKHeX would be, in lack of a better term, "found out".

They were just using PKHeX, along with smoke and mirrors to think you were getting anything but that.

PKHeX only omits certain checks (like Gen6+ mystery gift version checks) due to lack of serialized data that can be used by the program. I don't think they were even doing that.

 

They might be checking for plausibility, which is in between legitimacy and legality.

[NotCelestial]

4 minutes ago, Kaphotics said:

They were just using PKHeX, along with smoke and mirrors to think you were getting anything but that.

PKHeX only omits certain checks (like Gen6+ mystery gift version checks) due to lack of serialized data that can be used by the program. I don't think they were even doing that.

 

They might be checking for plausibility, which is in between legitimacy and legality.

Oh, okay. So in other words, if I use the appropriate program to find my pair of PID and the other data that belongs to that (nature, shininess, gender, IVs etc.) and PKHeX is also cool with it, a Colosseum Pokemon is, while illegitimate, not distuingishable as such?

 

Also is the initial seed in Eligor at all relevant if I'm editing it in PKHeX anyways?

Edited October 16, 2019 by NotCelestial

[Farfetchd]

Hello,

 

I signed up because I had a question that is more on the technical side of things. I recently played through Emerald again on the vba, as I had lost my original GBA team and I wanted to recreate it. Fast forward to today, and I finished the game, got everything done: All good! I was talking to a friend who's a little more into save editing and such than I am, although I'm certain he's far from suuuper knowledgable about it either, but his comment concerned me.

 

Basically, I played through the game and did everything completely legitimately. However, I added a contest ribbon set to my starter because I used to have it, and I didn't really feel like going through all that again. I also then saved all my Pokemon files that I wanted to transfer, and directly put them into my Gen 5 save, which is the only retail card I have that I can access on my PC. Now here's the thing that worries me a little bit: He said the added ribbon and the "illegal" transfer would change trashbytes, meaning that if someone was REALLY knowledgable and looked through my files, they would view the Pokemon as hacked. This worries me because a.) they're not, although I understand why the ribbon'd one would be viewed as such and b.) because I personally do not want hacked mons at all. I use save editors for convenience, but I don't want to have even legal/surface-legitimate Pokemon in my games. I'm pretty strict on that end. I understand that in practice this makes no difference, but for my own peace of mind: If someone were to hypothethically go through these mons and view their data to some excruciating degree, would they not be legitimate? I was thinking I could just reload an old save state and not attach the ribbons this time, but what about the transfer through files, rather than the Pal Park/Poke Transfer in-game? Would that also make them, on some minute level, not legitimate?

 

Thanks in advance for all help!

Edited October 22, 2019 by Farfetchd

[Guest]

4 hours ago, Farfetchd said:

but I don't want to have even legal/surface-legitimate Pokemon in my games

Adding the ribbons via save editor kinda defeats the purpose, then.

I don't believe that ribbons affect trash bytes though.

(Trash bytes do not change when transferring from 4 to 5.)

[Farfetchd]

6 hours ago, Ammako said:

Adding the ribbons via save editor kinda defeats the purpose, then.

I don't believe that ribbons affect trash bytes though.

(Trash bytes do not change when transferring from 4 to 5.)

Yeah, I suppose so. I'm kinda weird about those things. For example, I have used a save editor for Borderlands before, but only to create guns I've had looted before and that were identical to those. If some part of the coding of those edited guns would indicate that they weren't legitimate, I wouldn't have used them at all. I can't really say why exactly my brain works that way, but if I have morally justifed the save editing (i.e. adding ribbons I've already earned 100% legitimately) then I am cool with adding them through PkHex or whatever, but only if it doesn't - at all - affect the Pokemon's coding from being 100% as-if-never inside-an-editor, if that makes sense?

 

So for trashbytes, if I plug them from gen 3 to gen 4, trash bytes WOULD change though, yes? As I understood it, Pal Park affects trashbytes, so just pulling them over without the Pal Park process likely makes them not-totally-legit, yes?

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Farfetchd said:

Yeah, I suppose so. I'm kinda weird about those things. For example, I have used a save editor for Borderlands before, but only to create guns I've had looted before and that were identical to those. If some part of the coding of those edited guns would indicate that they weren't legitimate, I wouldn't have used them at all. I can't really say why exactly my brain works that way, but if I have morally justifed the save editing (i.e. adding ribbons I've already earned 100% legitimately) then I am cool with adding them through PkHex or whatever, but only if it doesn't - at all - affect the Pokemon's coding from being 100% as-if-never inside-an-editor, if that makes sense?

 

So for trashbytes, if I plug them from gen 3 to gen 4, trash bytes WOULD change though, yes? As I understood it, Pal Park affects trashbytes, so just pulling them over without the Pal Park process likely makes them not-totally-legit, yes?

Yeah, no worries, I understand completely. I'm sorta the same way, just not as strict about it.

Trash bytes are different in Gen. 3 and 4, yes. I'm not sure if Gen. 3 trash bytes are well-understood or well-documented yet (they might be), but they can also be cleared by simply trading to Colo/XD, so as far as legality goes, you could set them all to 00 and be fine, as long as you have access to Colo/XD to justify it.

PKHeX already handles Pal Park trash bytes when transferring, although it only sets English DP Pal Park trash bytes. But it sounds like you probably don't really care about Gen. 4, as you're transferring directly from 3 to 5, so this is probably good enough. You can just pretend like you specifically used English DP for the Pal Park transfer instead of any other version, or something.

It's very easy to make a Pokémon legal, as far as Gen. 1-5 goes. And it's impossible to differentiate legal from legit, because the only difference is sentimental value. Gen. 6+ is much more complicated, but that's another story entirely (it has to be said though, that the RNG for Gen. 6 and up is complicated enough, it wouldn't actually be possible for someone to tell out of all doubt whether a Pokémon is legal or not, as long as it passes the basic checks.)

Spoiler

If you want to get technical, Pal Park trash bytes are not the only legal trash bytes a Pal Parked Pokémon can have, because the Name Rater in Gen. 4 has very loose checks when it comes to OT, so it is always possible to just nickname a transferred mon to a 10-character name, and then change it back to its original name, and it overwrites the Pal Park trash bytes with 00s (I just checked.) For your purposes though, this probably would not be satisfactory.

This means that all 00s trash bytes are always legal for Gen. 3 and 4 Pokémon, because the former allows clearing trash bytes by trading to Colo/XD, and the latter allows clearing trash bytes by simply matching the ID number via rng abuse and nicknaming to a 10-character name and back. This can be done for all Pokémon, there are no exceptions.

Note that transfers to Bank get rid of trash bytes entirely. It also has to be said that as soon as they've been touched by external devices or modifications, your Pokémon can no longer be said to be legitimate, only legal. I wouldn't let that bother you too much, though. As I've said, the only difference that exists between legal and legit is sentimental value, and sentimental value is completely up to you.

Edited October 23, 2019 by Guest

[Farfetchd]

49 minutes ago, Ammako said:

Yeah, no worries, I understand completely. I'm sorta the same way, just not as strict about it.

Trash bytes are different in Gen. 3 and 4, yes. I'm not sure if Gen. 3 trash bytes are well-understood or well-documented yet (they might be), but they can also be cleared by simply trading to Colo/XD, so as far as legality goes, you could set them all to 00 and be fine, as long as you have access to Colo/XD to justify it.

PKHeX already handles Pal Park trash bytes when transferring, although it only sets English DP Pal Park trash bytes. But it sounds like you probably don't really care about Gen. 4, as you're transferring directly from 3 to 5, so this is probably good enough. You can just pretend like you specifically used English DP for the Pal Park transfer instead of any other version, or something.

It's very easy to make a Pokémon legal, as far as Gen. 1-5 goes. And it's impossible to differentiate legal from legit, because the only difference is sentimental value. Gen. 6+ is much more complicated, but that's another story entirely (it has to be said though, that the RNG for Gen. 6 and up is complicated enough, it wouldn't actually be possible for someone to tell out of all doubt whether a Pokémon is legal or not, as long as it passes the basic checks.)

  Hide contents

If you want to get technical, Pal Park trash bytes are not the only legal trash bytes a Pal Parked Pokémon can have, because the Name Rater in Gen. 4 has very loose checks when it comes to OT, so it is always possible to just nickname a transferred mon to a 10-character name, and then change it back to its original name, and it overwrites the Pal Park trash bytes with 00s (I just checked.) For your purposes though, this probably would not be satisfactory.

This means that all 00s trash bytes are always legal for Gen. 3 and 4 Pokémon, because the former allows clearing trash bytes by trading to Colo/XD, and the latter allows clearing trash bytes by simply matching the ID number via rng abuse and nicknaming to a 10-character name and back. This can be done for all Pokémon, there are no exceptions.

Note that transfers to Bank get rid of trash bytes entirely. It also has to be said that as soon as they've been touched by external devices or modifications, your Pokémon can no longer be said to be legitimate, only legal. I wouldn't let that bother you too much, though. As I've said, the only difference that exists between legal and legit is sentimental value, and sentimental value is completely up to you.

Yeah, I suppose they wouldn't be legitimate in the strictest sense of the word, but there's certainly a difference in "Hey, this PID and all matches, it's legal" and then knowing 100% without a doubt that the seed and spread is actually hittable, that it's possible for this to be achieved beyond just "The math checks out", if you get what I mean by that? Like, yes, it's legal, but is it a Pokemon that would 100% be generated by the game like that? Is there any sort of side-data that doesn't match up with what at least COULD happen to my mon in-game in a normal playthrough? Those things matter a lot to me, personally. So while I understand that if I even just drag it in an external program it's technically no longer legit, that doesn't really concern me, but what does concern me a lot are of course my personal parameters on what is okay and what isn't. But I understand what you're saying completely.

That being said, I do wanna get my old teams into my USUM game, so in that sense: If my Pokemon was normally generated by the rom and all I'm doing is maybe add a ribbon or drag them from 3rd gen to 5th gen for easier transfer, that should not change their data in a way that makes them, even on a hypothetically minute level, illegal? I don't actually have edited their trashbytes (nor do I really know what they are EXACTLY), so if I don't actually change anything about their PID, IVs, nature, ability etc. and just go with convenience (EV fill up, power leveling) or some such thing, all should be well once they reach 3DS games?

 

And thank you for your help!

[Guest]

PID and trash bytes should not change unless you explicitly edited them. The only exception to this is if your PID/IDs combo would result in a shiny when transferred over to Gen. 6 and higher, in which case the transfer process edits the PID slightly to prevent a non-shiny Pokémon from becoming shiny. This is something that Bank itself does, and PKHeX mimics that by applying that same change if needed.

Spoiler

This is not entirely true, editing nature or gender when working with a Gen. 3 or 4 save will automatically recalculate a matching PID, without regards for legality. But you aren't touching those values anyway, and even if you accidentally did it, it would throw a red flag immediately, so you'd notice.

In your case, if all you're doing is adding ribbons and transferring between saves, you should be fine. PKHeX mimics official transfer behaviors as closely as possible. Editing EVs and level should not be a problem either, as long as you keep everything within legal bounds (if you changed level or EVs to something illegal, it would let you know, so no worries.)

You can see trash bytes by ctrl+right-clicking on the nickname field in PKHeX, if you'd like to cross-reference trash bytes with the page I linked above.

And np, if you ever have any questions just ask, I'll be happy to help.

[Farfetchd]

Thank you very much. I'll definitely look at those references, although I'd expect it to not be changed, considering I don't change anything about the 'mon itself. You've been super helpful, now I can sleep in peace, knowing my team isn't micro-levels illegitimate.  Thanks again!

[Farfetchd]

@Ammako

Alright, very quick add to my above question: Is it normal for the trashbytes to list japanese as language in the menu on the right? I can see it is jpn in your screenshot as well, and I even checked on my retail game, on completely unmodified Pokemon, so I ASSUME it is normal, but it just kinda caught me off-guard, and also made me curious as to why that is? Should I concern myself with that at all?

[Guest]

This does not actually reflect any kind of data within your save file. It's complicated, but basically this is only a tool to aid in clearing trash bytes, or applying a Pokémon's name data as trash bytes to the current Pokémon.

Example, say you have a Weedle, this Pokémon's name takes up 7 characters, or 14 bytes, including the terminator bytes. If you select Charmeleon as the species, and English as the language, then press Apply Trash, it'll apply every byte of Charmeleon's name past the 14th byte as trash bytes. In layman's terms, the name would become "WEEDLE/FFFF/EON/FFFF", displayed as "WEEDLE" in-game.

This is relevant, because when a Pokémon evolves after being transferred, if the evolution has a shorter name, then name bytes from the previous evolution remain as trash bytes. This provides an easy way to do this, for someone who wants to mimic this type of behavior in PKHeX, without having to edit every byte manually.

(Also, as for why that is, it's because Japanese is the first and default language in that list.)

Edited October 23, 2019 by Guest