The HGSS Safari Zone is Broken - Here’s how to fix it.

SEE PINNED COMMENT IF YOU ARE HAVING ISSUES WITH THE TRICK.

It's not often a speedrun strat saves 4 months of real-world time. This one does. Let me explain.

Special Thanks to Crrool!

Special Thanks to Werster!

Special Thanks to the PokemonSpeedruns Discord!

Footage used:
"How QUICKLY Can You Complete Professor Oak's Challenge in Pokemon Heartgold/Soulsilver?" by ChaoticMeatball:

"[Safari Week] Live Shiny Smeargle in the Safari Zone After Only 628 REs! (Pokémon SoulSilver)" by YourFriedBread:

Historic footage provided by the Library of Congress, all of which is in the public domain.
#SafariWeek #Pokemon #SpeedrunSkip

[bumbruh]

been seeing a lot of people having issues making this method work, myself included. my current hypothesis is that since hgss reset all time related events if the calender date is changed, it causes the trick to not work for the next 24 hours. im going to test out this theory for the next couple days and will edit this comment if anything happens.

3ds model info: NTSC New 3DSXL

[dewwwd]

This didn’t seem to work for me for some reason spent 4 hours doing this over 80 days

[cskelly]

Good thing I tried on breloom and vibrava first (20 days each).

Made sure all objects were in correct places, carefully counted each reset, joined at 23:59, waited until 00:01, saved, then reset. Also went 3 extra days over 20.

I’m doing this on my DSI XL with my own copy of hgss (US) bought in 2010. I also attempted it on my DS just to make sure.

Result: Default day 0 Pokémon

Clearly this method doesn’t work for anyone who actually goes and does it. Video is literally farming likes solely from people not doing it and “trying later”. The audacity, I can’t believe old gen pkmn vids are still just as deceptive and fake as they were 13 years ago. Just like the mew hiding under the truck. BS. Everything is word of mouth, not concrete evidence.

Btw why tf do you beat around the bush for 7 and half minutes? And that ending… This is a children’s game, not a philosophers stone buddy.

[ScottobozoGD]

Didn't work on my DSi. This is why the dislike button used to exist.

[anakaisnight]

I should probably play Pokemon at some point instead of just watching videos about the most obscure parts of the old games

[Crrool]

Thanks for the shoutout! Only found the video now, 4 months later, but glad to see I was able to help out 😊

[mude_]

This isnt working for me and its driving me insane. I've tried on every different DS, tried waiting over 24 real world hours to make sure I'm not in that "penalty period, " nothing.

The funny thing is that there not really any concrete information about this, at least not that's easily accessible. How does the internal clock work, and how and why does it know when time is being manually changed? What exactly does the penalty for changing the clock do? Does it last 24 hours? More? Less? Why does the safari zone work differently to other daily events? Why? Why would waiting an extra minute change anything?

Heck, people can't even agree on whether its the objects that "level up" over time, or the areas themselves. Most authoritative sources claim you must place objects and wait for them to level up, and that those levels are lost if you remove them. Tons of people disagree, saying just having the area active is enough and that level ups are permanent.

If i ever solve this and get it to work, I'm going to make a definitive guide so no one else has to suffer like me.

Edit: after researching the internal clock and how it works, I'm convinced this trick DOES NOT work and is impossible, outside of a crazy method involving removing the ds's battery. I've seen the linked video where you test this method and I think I can explain it. As mentioned earlier, some people believe that it's the areas that level up, and not the objects. When you placed the objects, they were already getting the level up bonuses from actual time passing in the internal clock. Changing the clock had nothing to do with it. I would love to be proven wrong, but all my research and experiments lead me to believe this simply does not work. I'm going to see if any speedrunners actually pull this off on video, and reference it against the hardware they're using. Emulators and hacked DSs have manipulatable internal clocks and therefore don't count as evidence that this works.

[psyxypher]

God the amount of abuse Gamefreak has put players through post Gen II is unreal.

[eduardogabino]

Did it on soulsilver and nothing 😢 hours down the drain

[epsreborn]

I think some new research/video updates are needed for this, as I’m seeing a lot of nay-sayers in the comments. What’s more, the amount of time objects last in the area don’t seem to have the kind of impact as described in Serebii. I attempted a similar time skip trick aiming for Bagon. I did not get Bagon, but upon placing a bunch of rocks in the desert area I instantly got Trapinch, which is supposed to be a 30-day wait. If I failed to get a 110-day-wait but managed to get the 30-day wait instantly using a trick proven to not work, then what else did I do there?

[LuckySparkles]

A perfect example of how some of the most basic things can go undiscovered for many years. This is great to know. Thanks for making this video! :)

[Kronos]

did anyone actually successfully do this on original, non hacked hardware? Ive tried everything and even talked with the guy who came up with this method Crrool and we couldnt get it to work for me. At this point i dont even know for sure if it can work on original non hacked hardware even though Crrool himself did it before. I can only assume that him having a capture card installed somehow made it work for him? Idk at this point nothing makes sense to me

[minifigamer]

Hey, thanks for the tip, currently in the process of doing it to get solrock, though it's not the blocks that upgrade but the area itself which by extension means that if it's "in storage" the upgrades don't go away, just felt i should point that out.

Update: I have tested it on both my ds lite and 3ds xl, I decided to use manectric in the wasteland as a control group. Why? Because one, it requires three plains blocks to encounter it so I only have to place two to verify if it's doubling, and two, plains is the first one to double at only 10 days. I tested it on the lite first and no matter how long I did it, it refused to work no matter what. I then tested it on the 3ds xl with two "days" of wiggle room.

I should add that to make sure I wasn't just getting bad luck with the encounters I decided to do the repel trick with a level 41 pokemon to make sure I was only encountering pokemon I could get by the blocks every single time and the super repel, not because it's the most effective but because it's the best value per step. Every time I had two plains blocks active I did not get a single encounter within the entire super repel, every single time I put a third plains block, I, without fail, had three to five manectric encounters per super repel, in total I have done this method so much that on both the ds lite and 3ds xl at least a month or two has passed.

Not once has it worked, not once has any progress in my very numerous attempts to skip the wait of the safari zone have any success whatsoever.

[AzureLight]

Is any more information available on this in 2023?
A few questions: does the timer reset if you mess up?
Does the swarm Pokemon changing indicate that you've correctly advanced a day?
Does Baoba call you if you do it right?
Thanks if anyone knows!

[Assassin-ysvw]

This method does not work for 3ds only ds or ds lite 3ds will reset your days to 0 if you change your time or date so all i can tell people is tough the days out trade or say screw it and if you choose to wait then get on your knees and pray you dont gotta move to a differnt time zone or daylight savings never happens but luckly the blocks are still leveling up as days go by my advice is check the game every few days its gonna be more rare to find but not impossible you are not required to wait the entire time limit it will be harder but doable gamefreak clearly did not account for the fact we are human beings with lives and may have moments when changing the clock is needed such a stupid design



Ps. Sorry for any mispelling google keyboard is acting up on my end i know there is gonna be some spelling police who like to point that out its not intended my phones old and acts up sometimes sorry if this offends you die hard spell checkers 😂

[josephbin]

Why doesn't someone just make a hack for the game at this point? The game devs don't respect your time, so why respect their design?

[ezekielyau]

Awesome, i woke it out for 100 days, more than 2 hours and nothing happens, great

[solayed]

This is a really good vid! Helped alot! Also when I saw your editing skills, *WRITTEN* subtitles, thumbnails and your *WRITTEN* description, I was very surprised that you only had 311 subscribers. Some youtubers that I watch that have over 1 million subscribers don't have *WRITTEN* subtitles! I subbed and liked!

(btw i found you through home recomendations)

[noahbear]

I get that the audience is small but I feel like this video is criminally underrated. I'm so glad you did all of this. My safari week is saved

[boomdacow]

This is just... mindblowing

Also, can I just say the editing on this was amazing? Just something that stuck out to me.