I love how this series progressed from 'escaping situations you might get into if you were especially careless' to 'psychotic weeks-long ordeals to escape a situation you could only put yourself in if you were a masochist'
@@MrBrendanRizzo Yes, the Magikarp traps wouldn't likely be an accident unless some kid were gullible enough to trade away his starter and anything he caught on the way to Mt. Moon for more Magikarp, but being too broke to enter the Safari Zone in Red and Blue could happen by accident. Simply battle everyone you can, blow all your money on items, and use said items without catching a Meowth-or catch a Meowth and make it forget Pay Day after you run out of balls to catch another.
This one feels more like "I'm being forced to give away my cartridge and I'm going to let them know how unhappy I am about it" or is that just a me thing cuz that's definitely what I would do.
ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-eatIzqwB2dA.html Christ died for your sins and rose on the third day, showing that anyone who trusts in him for salvation, will have everlasting life. (John 11:25-26) "Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?" (John 3:16) For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
These videos always take forever to come out cause Pikasprey actually picks himself out of every lock. He has 3 two year long locks running in the background.
@@TheWanderingTaco I mean, if you literally *bought* several legit copies of the original game, you aren’t pirating anything by playing an emulator. It’d be like buying a steak from a restaurant and then eating some out of a Tupperware container that you brought from home. You aren’t ‘robbing’ the restaurant.
In Gen 3, you have a 50% chance of gaining 1 point of friendship for every 128 steps taken, so you could get the Return TM without ever casting your rod. Still an extremely tedious escape, but at least you never have to burn PP for struggle.
Imagine if there's a site where you can download save files containing these softlocks, where you have to solve this kind of "escape". It could easily become a speedrun category too
I'm reminded of the old trapper's rule: If you stake your trap into the ground, a wolf or a bear will just gnaw their leg off. If you attach it to a log, they will exhaust themselves dragging it.
ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-eatIzqwB2dA.html Christ died for your sins and rose on the third day, showing that anyone who trusts in him for salvation, will have everlasting life. (John 11:25-26) "Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?" (John 3:16) For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
@@unchiez1722 He did not mention it in this video, but if I recall correctly, he did the same thing in another video because you have to wait for the extra animation that play when you throw out a shiny. It make the escape even longer to do because of that extra time that will happen thousands of times
@@unchiez1722 I can imagine how that trade would go: "Ooooh, a shiny Bagon. For that I think I can trade you... my level 3 Pidgey. No? Oh, I guess you don't want to escape that bad, then..." 😈
I thought the Bagon was only shiny because the shiny animation would take even more time, but it's also to make the easier escape painful. Damn…Pikasprey, you really are impressively sadistic. XD
If you wanted to make this even more evil, you could skip Winona. She's the only gym leader you can skip AND her badge let you use fly outside of battle; now imagine doing all that just to realize you can't actually escape with fly and that you HAVE to trade the shiny.
You actually can't trade away the shiny at that point since it'd no longer be the Bagon that the NPC in Pacifidlog wants and since Gen III requires you to have at least two Pokémon to trade with another player. Escape would then be completely impossible.
@@evilcow666 yes, it does. The issue however is if you don't fight Winona, you can't physically use the move, even if you have a Pokémon that knows it.
it's a twist on the shiny poliwhirl lock. In that one the only way out was to give the shiny away. This one merely adds the option of giving the shiny away for an out instead of raising a bagon to salamence.
Salamence is my favorite, so yeah I’d definitely subject myself to this torture. Another thing to mention is that once you get damaging moves for Bagon, at that point you’ll probably want to pivot towards targeting Tentacool for extra experience, but Tentacool is not a very common spawn from the Old Rod. It’s poetic, really. When you need to avoid them, they’ll ruin you. When you want to find them, they’ll make it difficult for you. There is no winning with the damn jellyfish.
@@renakunisaki In RSE it doesn’t. That’s what Pikasprey was talking about in the video regarding Tentacool and why you [initially] need to avoid them. Some games do have it set so that Magikarp is the only encounter from Old Rod, but not all of them. It’s a case by case basis.
@@weakestlink20 actually more often then not its mostly a route by route case, many routes are only magikarp but many others also introduce a very low chance for some of the otherwise very common pokemon on the very same route for the old rod.
Honestly I think fainting to Tentacool a few times and getting Frustration would probably be less time-consuming than having to grind away all of Bagon's PP every time you want it to attack, even if you have to wait a real-life week to get it.
Walking enough steps = +1 to happiness, so you can just spend an afternoon running back and forth while watching a tv show and then wait a week irl and you're done
For the return TM, you could also just have a cartridge where the battery has run dry so the only copy of the TM you could get is the one you are collected and tossed. That makes that loophole impossible
This is worse than torture. I'm pretty sure this is a war crime. Edit: there is a technicality you skipped over. Since the sixth medal that allows you to use fly is optional, you could skip it. Imagine someone getting up to Salamence and then realizing it cannot use Fly out of battle...
A lot of people in the comments are pointing out that you could either intentionally lose or walk around to either lower or raise Bagon's friendship to get Frustration or Return. While this would certainly speed up the level grind, keep in mind that you just added seven real world days onto the timer until the save becomes playable again, and you'd still have to grind against Magikarp and Tentacool after that. No matter how you slice it, this is a cruel soft lock and I am once again impressed by Pikasprey's creativity in setting it up.
@@JarlQboyq You wouldn't need to leave the game on, time-based events keep happening as long as the internal battery is working. Though speaking of which, if you had a copy of Emerald where the battery had run dry, that would remove the option of getting Return or Frustration altogether. Keep in mind, I did say that going for either would be adding seven days to the total time it'd take to escape, assuming you're not willing to try Struggling against Magikarp in the meantime, so it's still a long time until the save is playable again.
@@AlastorNahIdWinRadioDemon You can... but the point of this is to get the game in a playable state as soon as possible without resetting, right? Regardless of if you spend that seven days babysitting the game or doing something else, that's still seven days where you can't actually play that copy of Emerald.
I was once asked by an employer what I wanted from life and I answered with a straight face, 'I just want to be a minor inconvenience to as many people as possible'. The lengths you will go to in order to drive frustration are a true inspiration sir.
Since you'll likely soon run out of different softlocks for gen 3, I'd like to see you use the pomeg berry glitch to manipulate game data to create a softlock beyond vanilla R/S/E's tools
From what I've seen with the comments, this probably seems like the most tame softlock so far. In the hypothetical that a person was handed the cartridge, one may be stubborn enough to try it (as opposed to something like the Poliwhirl trap)
The Poliwhirl trap is beatable. It's not addressed in the video but Pikasprey forgot about how Hail (and Weather moves) work. On the final turn that a Weather move goes away, in the case of Hail, it doesn't do damage, but you can still use PP, and as a result the "1 HP Poliwhirl" is completely avoidable so long as you're willing to try your luck at 5 turns of the opponent not doing anything, and you can level up consistently this way to Hydro Pump and then just sweep the game.
@@Jesin00 not sure what pokemon are accessable, but as long as you have access to something that gives HP EVs you could intentionally EV train while doing this to avoid this scenario.
Now let’s imagine you do the same thing with Larvitar: 1) you can’t trade it for Horsea, maybe the temptation to rid yourself of the shiny is worse but in terms of set up it’s simpler. 2) Tyrantiar learns surf by HM, and it evolves from Pupitar at level 55, 5 levels higher than Shelgon evolves into Salamence. 3) on a similar topic Larvitar’s base experience yield is slightly lower than Bagon’s, meaning less experience for the same magikarps defeated before fainting. 4) you can teach larvitar focus energy (48pp), Screech (64pp), Leer (48pp) and mimic (16pp), (for a much higher hp total) now while it misses out on roar it can only use mimic once per battle, now you might be thinking, well it can use that against tentacool to win, well it can’t because much the same as a transformed move, in gen 3 the mimicked move will have 5pp not nearly enough to faint a tentacool at any level before… 5) the first proper attacking move it learns is rock slide at 22. It does learn sandstorm before then which could pick up some very slow KOs on magikarp before resorting again to struggles (honestly I don’t know what would be faster) Overall I think this is far more brutal of a soft lock. Please do let me know if I have any oversights.
The Sandstorm would be much faster than having to pound through a bunch of pp for non-damage moves (16 rounds and 4 uses of sandstorm per fight, totalling 2 faints per PKMN Center visit), but that can be avoided by levelling the Larvitar to 8, when it learns sandstorm, and then choosing not to learn it/overwriting it with a non-attacking move. This still adds 2 levels (8 ->22 v 5 -> 17) over the bagon, and they're harder levels to achieve, being higher and therefor more EXP intensive.
The only problem with this is it kind of goes against the spirit of the challenge by requiring you to trade the Larvitar from another game entirely when Pikasprey is using only Pokemon that can be obtained during a normal playthrough of the game for said challenge.
@@DKforever24 _"Pikasprey is using only Pokemon that can be obtained during a normal playthrough"_ No he isn't. He had to trade over Pokémon from another game to use HM moves.
Love how for a lot of these he decides to make the Pokemon involved a shiny, even though there's literally no reason to other than to make it hurt even more
Thing is in this particular instance (and the poliwhirl one), if the Bagon wasn't shiny you could just trade it away within a minute, escape the trap and just go catch another one. Making it shiny makes it much more valuable and therefore harder to give up.
What I like about these soft locks is that the glimmer of hope actually makes them even darker. Like if you had no choice but to restart, you would just do that. Having a chance of escape, no matter how scant, can make a dedicated player just try to do it. Especially where shinies are involved. The in-game trade for a Pokémon that can save you, but requires you to give up your shiny, is a nice touch that I always appreciate seeing in your traps.
I love these convoluted save file traps. It almost feels like a SAW movie. Imagine this guy figuring out interrogation methods. I shudder to think what a mind this sick could do. Please make more of these.
I love how you always make it extra cruel by making it possible to escape in a super annoying and time consuming way. And also a shiny Pokémon to make it hurt a bit extra to lose the save file
I feel like this Bagon would be the MC of an anime where all it does is fight a seemingly endless army of Karp. Once he evolves the MC Trainer becomes that cliche' OP steamroller who shows up near the end with Salamence. Final Boss: Gyrados
Alright, so I did the math cause I was bored. I calculated how long it would take (based on the Scenario) to get it to level 17 to have it learn headbutt. I looked on Bulbapedia and found the “Slow experience” category which Bagon falls in. From level 5 to 17 Bagon needs 21,124 points to get there. The Magikarp in this area give an average of 24 xp each kill. Taking that into account and by measuring the xp bar at time 8:17 it shows that it took Pika 53 minutes to get that amount of xp (Obviously that is an approximate time since it might take longer/ shorter based on how long it takes to encounter Magikarp and not Tentacruel, but that is what variable we are gonna use.) The xp bar was 62.5% filled meaning it needed another 37.5% to reach the next level. Math shows in all, if Pika DID keep going it would take him 84.8 minutes to get to level 6. Taking THAT as the average to get this fucking Bagon to the glory level of 17, it would take… 74,286 minutes or 1238.1 hours or 51.6 DAYS
One thing you've not factored in: at some point your level would become high enough, presumably before level 17, where you could reliably run away from the Tentacool. This would save time instead of having to save after every battle and generally make your life just a little bit easier.
Also consider that each additional level will increase the xp gains: Bagon will deal more damages with struggles and will take down more mons before fainting itself
I can just imagine in an alternate universe, the Saw movies start with something like "Hello, Handcuff Users. On the table before you is a GameBoy Advanced with a copy of Pokemon Sapphire..."
"On that file there is a Level 100 Mewtwo with Metronome. You must escape Mossdeep City before the clock runs out. If you fail to escape before the time runs out, you will die. Good luck."
This is the most creative trap he's come up with so far. It offers a possible, though exceedingly time consuming, way of escaping with/without sacrificing a shiny, and it plays into the lore of Bagon's dearest dream of being able to fly.
One of the most impressive lock picking videos you've made. It's got a nice philosphical twist. Leaving the trade option is genius. Here's why: Sure, you can trade the Bagon for a horsea, but then you lose your shiny. It's like the hunter putting nuts in the trap jar. The monkey can't pull Its hand through. If it would just let go, it could get its hand out. Are you willing to let go of your greed and lose the shiny to make your escape, or stay trapped and pay the price for it? The Bagon dreams to fly one day. Like us, possessed by dreams of riches and glory, we'd rather stay trapped in our own fantasies than face reality so we can make our escape. Super awesome video, keep it up!
@@mjc0961 Better to just reset the entire game. It's a long surf from Pacifidlog Town, and a level 5 Horsea will not have a good time if you encounter even just one Surf Pokemon
There's a tiny extra layer of pain when you trade, since Bagon can either evolve and learn Fly, and take to the skies; or you can trade it to the guy named SKYlar...
you mentioned the return TM guy, it's honestly really easy to max bagon's friendship by simply running around, after a week you can get return and farm exp much faster, of course that is if the finshing rod is still available
@@depotheose7890 you can replace the battery. Edit: as pointed out in this comment chain, replacing the battery is not a perfect solution, and, in some cases, not a solution at all.
One small issue with that is that you can't run in Pacifidlog Town. You can't run on the logs making up the paths in the town, and you can't run indoors in Gen III. Of course, that just makes walking around to gain friendship slower and it can still be done.
@@8Gion the gen3 games have the clock be a sequence, if the battery was working during set up but died during the attempt then replacing it means the game will consider the event as triggered until you wait up to the number of days that passed when the battery died
the funniest part about the second method is that you would still have to make it to either slateport or mossdeep with a level 5 horsea, avoiding all trainers and wild pokemon
@@cadencenavigator958 - Is the "cheese" to just save often on the way and reset if you get an encounter? It's not like you'd have to save every single step...
@@cadencenavigator958 - "Safest"? It's equally safe to reset the game if you get an encounter, so you can only save every, like, ten steps instead. =')
It’s always nice to see the Saw esque horror traps you create in these videos, and the outright masochistic things you make hypothetical players do in order to escape. Kinda makes me wonder about maybe taking a look at “viewer submitted soft lock picking” or something; people submit soft locks to you and you try and find a theoretical way out with the tools you have.
Your usual softlock attempts do involve torturing the player and pokemon in some way, but this feels like a step up from the other ones (for the pokemon in particular), especially with the pokedex line you throw at the end. Well played lol
Bagon will be at 70 happiness by default. You can have Bagon gain 1 happiness by walking 256 steps while it's in your party, and the fan club guy will give you a Return TM if you have a Pokemon with over 150 happiness in your lead slot. So you can walk 20480 steps, then wait until the fan club guy gets a new stock of TMs and teach Bagon Return to start grinding levels against Magikarp. You could also have Bagon faint 20 times against Tentacools to drop its happiness low enough to pick up a Frustration TM, but I figure this is probably more annoying, and Frustration will get progressively weaker as you train since Bagon will gain happiness on each level up, while Return will only get stronger over time.
It requires approximately 156,000 exp points to get from Bagon to Salamence. Using a rough calculation based on what was shown - a 58-minute turnaround per 34 exp points gained - it would take approximately 4,589 played hours to evolve Bagon to Salamence in this method. Playing for 2 hours per day every single day, this would take roughly 6 years and 4 months to complete. Leveling Bagon to level 17 to train Headbutt and using the same method of calculation, it would take roughly 181 played hours to accomplish. Played for 2 hours daily, this would take about 91 days.
I’ve been binging your crystal playthrough with just smeargles and it’s been great to listen to in the background. Jabadamazo and Nani are my favorites. 🙂
There is also a secret method. If you have beaten the Pokémon League 100 times and sent 100 rockets into space at Mossdeep Space Center, Mirage Island will appear. If you don’t have surf you can walk to it. There you can fight Mewthree (a hybrid of Mew and Deoxys) and even if you lose it will join your party. Then just teach it Fly (it can learn every TM/HM) and escape
Much like Bagon, the victim of this softlock has the choice to either give up on flying high or repeatedly (metaphorically, in the player's case) bang their head against a wall.
I thought for sure that this was going to involve being stuck in Mossdeep, and using the E-Reader card that spawns a trainer in Mossdeep that has a shiny Salamence.
I really like these new recent setups where unlike the last ones that have no solution, these setups *have* a solution but it is either emotionally taxing or brutally time consuming
I love these videos Asprey, they're so interesting, anyone can set up a Pacifidlog softlock but it takes real genius to craft escapable traps like these.
You can tell Pikasprey is a REAL Pokemon fan not just by the extreme lengths he takes to craft these complex setups within the games, but also because he remembered to call the Rock Smash HM-giving NPC by their preferred name.
If someone handed me a softlocked game cartridge to "fix", I'd start a new game, button mash through the intro and names sequence, overwrite their softlocked save, and hand them back their cart.
I get the feeling that you could set up a good soft lock in Cianwood City in Gen II. With the only shop in the city not selling Poké Balls and there being no way to leave the city on foot, it seems like an easy place to get stuck in if you make a few particularly bad decisions.
Pacifidlog does not have a normal population. It is populated entirely by trainers who have been softlocked. One of them is still trying to get lucky with chansey, one of them is trying to struggle train a bagon, etc
i hope this ain’t just me but pikasprey videos have insane watchability, he may not upload often but the amount of time and effort he puts into his videos are astounding and entertaining no matter how many times you watch it, an underrated content creator to say the least
Imo this is the easiest soft-lock to escape from: the fact that you have access to Return means that all you have to do is walk around the island for about an hour, max your Bagon's friendship and after 7 days of waiting get the return TM. Then all you have to do is beat Magikarps/Tentacool and while that will probably take more than 24 hours to do, it's still very possible as long as you have the time
Wow, I’m always impressed with how well thought out these videos are. They’re very interesting and I always look forward to them. The concept of this one is especially unique
Compared to the time gating on the Leppa Berry one, just running back and forth for half an hour, then coming back in a week to pick up Return, doesn't seem like that big a hassle. Once you've got an attacking move grinding up to Salamence isn't *too* bad.
@@velvetbutterfly funfact their is actually a place where you can run one the place betwenn the house and the log their you can run it is convaluted but it works
@@Lissy_YT481 Life came at me hard over the last few months, so I just now got to pick it back up. My Bagon (Mr. Tiddles) is currently at level thirty, about halfway to thirty one
"Hello Brendan. Before you is a Pokeball. Inside that ball, is a shiny Bagon with no attacking moves. You can choose to evolve the Bagon into Salamence using only struggle, or you can trade it for a Horsea to surf away, giving up the shiny forever. Make your choice."
Pretty sure softlocks are impossible from Gen IV onwards since you can always trade at a center, even if you only have one Pokemon (correct me if I'm wrong).
@@GuranPurin … no? they said something along the lines of “if you you’ve gotten stuck to the point of needing additional hardware to get out, then you’ve proven a flaw in the game’s design”
Do you save your .sav files by any chance? I'm occasionally backing up gba cartridges for friends and would LOVE to overwrite their cartridge with some of your soft locks. Of course I'll keep their saves secured. If you're not willing/able to share the files, that's ok, I mean, you're basically making tutorials for these. Love your work
Imagine you trade the bagon with this guy and in the future re-re-makes of gen 3 this guy doesn't trade and just has a shiny salamence. Also this is such a sadistic trap, it really comes across like a SAW film. "You don't appreciate your shiny pokemon because they're easy to grind in the newer games. I will teach you to appreciate every moment with this one" Would be even more fitting in later gens where you could use the affection mechanic to significantly increase your speed, meaning you'd literally have to care for your pokemon if you want to get out in any "reasonable" amount of time.
I think there might be a way of trapping yourself on Akala island in pokemon sun and moon in those games if you set things up correctly you might be able to trap yourself before the water trial, that way you won’t have access to obtaining fly or the ability to swim, plus you won’t be able to travel back to a previous island because of how you got there in the original games
“You could always do the trade beforehand.” If you ignored all the fishermen in order to not obtain a Rod and used another Bagon to lock the trade during the setup, it’d be a TRUE softlock!
