Have questions about what was featured in this video? They're likely answered here: ua-cam.com/video/iVuxmBI8BC4/v-deo.html I figured this would be more convenient than having to scroll through comments to try and find the answer, and I apologize for not making everything clear. And also, thank you for the 150,000+ views! It's truly mind boggling to see how well this video has done, as I had around 115 subs when uploading it, and that number has grown 10x in about 10 days!
Probably because most players fall into one of two camps. Those who don't care about Unown or the cave and so don't bother, or those who are collectors and actually want to have box full of them. There probably just aren't that many people who would go to the effort of seeing all the Unown forms without also wanting to catch them.
That's a fair point, but you figure, there'd have to be at least a few people who messed up and forgot to catch one (say, they ran out of balls, for example), or maybe even just tried for the hell of it. F, R, I, E, N, and D are 100% encounters in the areas of Solaceon Ruins they appear in, so it would be easy to do. In addition, someone else commented that apparently this is not entirely unknown... but only in the German Pokémon community.
@@yukihoshikawa: Yes, I read that comment too, which is why I only speculated on "most" not "all" players. Likewise, I would imagine, from personal experience, that most players who want to catch all the Unown are unlikely too miss any because they are probably putting them all in the same box alphabetically just to be sure.
I never even paid attention to the dialogue that told me to catch unowns. Eventually the path was cleared so i thought it was just something that happens on its own. I would assume I'm not the only one who had this happen to them and thought nothing of it
I unironically love Unown. I don't know if it's my hoarding habits, or if it reminds me of Bill Cipher from Gravity Falls. I wouldn't say it needs an evolution, but perhaps something like the Carbink/Diancie case? Like an Unown overlord?
@@bluebaron6811: You and me both. I fell in love them ever since I first played Gold/Silver on ROM before it was ever translated. I couldn't read Japanese, but it didn't matter. I was enthralled with these strange enigmatic Pokémon, their multiple shapes, and their weird "signature" attack which never seemed to work the same way twice. It also helped that in that original debuted they were color in a really neat shade of green. I miss that look and wish it would make a comeback one of these days.
As a kid I caught several Unown, but then got bored and didn't bother with the rest. I guess I must have encountered them all, because the tunnel opened all the way for me, and I assumed it was just a time-sensitive event rather than being linked to Unown. It's bonkers to think I'd encountered a long undocumented secret and didn't even realize because I was just a dumb kid.
as a kid, i traded all of my soulsilver unown to platinum to finish the Ruin maniacs tunnel, which also caused the maniac to stop progressing even though they were all normal, non shiny unown, so i guess the OT has to match your trainer card too
maybe you traded the ! or ? unown, and those don't count because you shouldn't be able to catch them yet or if you had all 28, you traded ! and ? before finishing the alphabet and that could've skipped the flag for the "first" 26
@@BaconNuke Could be that there's a different counter for Unown and shiny Unown or something? Looks like you'd only need to find 10 of them to prove it though.
@@BaconNuke I mean it also could mean, on the shiny side, you only found one, so either you need to complete one side (whether shiny or non shiny) is also possibility.
Yep, that's what I cam to this video to ask myself. Would be much faster to check with a special "Uncle Jimtendo" modification for 100% shiny rates. Either shinies don't count at all, or shiny Unown count as a "separate alphabet". I have now also had the sudden revelation that Unown come in either black or blue ink, where black ink is the standard ink color most people use though blue ink is seen as preferred as it stands out from the rest of the printed black ink on documents while still being an easy dark color to read.
I actually knew about this already. I wouldn't call it common knowledge or anything, but this has been documented in the german Pokémon fanbase. I remember consulting a platinum item guide years back where it mentioned that one rare candy, alongside specifically stating that you only need to see, not catch the Unown.
This is so interesting, I love stuff like this where there's different shared knowledge between the same community in different languages - you normally see it between English and Japanese but interesting to know it exists between English and German too when there are more bilingual speakers/community overlap
@@yukihoshikawa Yeah, I had this happen to myself a few years back but I assumed it was already common knowledge or a glitch. I didn't talk about it because of that.
Welp, mind blown! As you say, it's definitely something worth thinking about for something like a Nuzlocke. Especially given that Hippowdon seems quite well respected in that challenge. It's also surprising that this wasn't fixed in post-DP releases of the Sinnoh games. Well, Platinum to be precise...
Yeah, it makes me wonder if Game Freak knew about this, and the dialogue of the dude in Ruin Maniac Cave is what they assumed they had programmed in the game, or if the dialogue is what's wrong, or what. I realized after I did the shiny hunt that I wanted to grab footage of me getting the Rare Candy in Platinum, so I kind of rolled my eyes and encountered all of the Unown again, but it was nice to do that, as confirmation (to me, at least) that this also worked in Platinum.
@@chaoticbravealisdair2925 That or they actually did what was asked, and after all, shinies were hard to find without grinding for them. Also combined with the odds of shinies back then was worse than todays modern ones.
@@Firesnake905 Yea, this is an extremely obscure bug when it's locked behind a 1 in 8000 chance in the original games before the buffed shiny odds. And for the fact the cave only takes seen vs capture, well if you were testing for capture as the dialogue states and didn't think to test if it was only seen, then you'd see it succeed when you did capture all 26, because to capture it you had to first see it. And as for BDSP still having the bug, well it's very well documented how they basically just did a bad slopjob port with a fresh coat of paint and little else. All of the original bugs are still there, only with added extra bugs layered on top from the new systems that were put on top of it.
This same thing happened to me! I caught a shiny Unkown 'U' which happened to be the last one I needed. A part of me thought that it was programmed into the game where the last unknown you needed would be shiny cause I thought that was too coincidental 😅 However, the cave wasn’t completed until I went back and got a regular one. I wonder if there are any other cases in the game where something like this could happen.
Yeah, I think it's a really fun question; are there any other things in the series that we all assume we know how to do, but it turns out that method isn't 100% correct, like was the case with only having to see the Unown?
I remember my childhood friend and I racing ourselves to "catch" the Unown and see who could finish the cave first, and I vaguely remember him saying something about only having to see them and not catch them because he showed me his boxes and pokedex. This video brought back obscure memories that give me emotions i don't know how to feel about tbh... good video btw.
This is really interesting! One small error, I'm pretty sure you can catch Hippopotas on the route that Pal Park is at iirc. Though you're still correct about that cave being a better place to catch it.
I wouldn't be surprised if the shiny Unown thing is just some BDSP jankiness. I could probably try and test that in the originals and see if it's there too.
This makes (some) sense. The way the games work regarding multiple forms is that it doesn’t track which forms have been caught, only which have been seen. For getting the seals, you had to show the person the Unown forms in your party (or PC in the remakes), which bypasses that limitation, but for the cave, it could only check your Pokédex, which only stores: 1. Which Pokémon species have been seen but not caught; 2. Which Pokémon species have been caught; 3. Of the Pokémon species which fall under 1 or 2, which forms of each species have been seen (starting in Gen IV, though the original Gen II games did also have Unown forms); 4. Of the Pokémon species which fall under 2, which languages have been registered for each (starting in Gen III); and 5. Which Dex modes (namely the Unown Mode in Gen II, the National Dex in Gens III-VI and the Gen IV remakes, the individual subregions of Kalos (for X and Y) or Alola (for Gen VII), or the DLC-only Dexes for the Isle of Armor and the Crown Tundra (for Sword and Shield)) have been unlocked as well as (in every game) whether or not the Pokédex itself has been unlocked. (Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum also track whether or not the form registration has been unlocked, though this is unlocked from the start in HeartGold, SoulSilver, and every game in Gen V onwards (including the Gen IV remakes) and so doesn’t have a separate trigger in subsequent games. There are also other things tracked in certain games (like max/min size/weight caught or total number of a given species seen or caught), but those don’t apply here.) As such, no game has ever distinguished between _seeing_ a form and _catching_ a form in the Pokédex (with a few small exceptions involving Gigantamax Pokémon that are also inapplicable here), and that’s the only permanent record of what has been seen/caught in a Pokémon game (except the Unown Report in the Gen II remakes) that persists even if you release, evolve, or trade away some Pokémon, which you need for the cave (since they can’t have the tunnel shrink if you release or trade away certain forms of Unown as that would be ridiculous). As such, there is simply no way for the game to check to see which forms have been caught and not merely seen for this purpose. That they don’t _also_ check to see if Unown has been caught _at all_ is a little weird, but the rest seems sensible to me.
Always blows my mind when interesting bits of information like this get discovered more than a decade after the game's inception. Great video - short and thorough!
I caught all the Unown in soulsilver a long time ago. I still have them in Pokemon Home. It hurt my soul a little to see you release that shiny unown after spending so long looking for it.
It might not be a bug, actually, but more so an oversight/deliberate choice. BD/SP keep track of shiny forms and regular forms separately. This means that, technically speaking, there are a maximum of 52 Unown forms the player can encounter without the extra room of the Solaceon Ruins at the end of Maniac Tunnel. This means that the game can't simply check to see if you've seen 26 forms of Unown. Of course, the check that was implemented is also faulty, but maybe a check to see if you've seen a regular OR shiny version of all 26 letter forms wouldn't have worked for some reason? Or maybe Game Freak and/or ILCA just thought this would be good enough, since you'd have to do what I did and close the game without saving if you find a non-shiny version of a letter, meaning you would *likely* have to go out of your way to discover something like this. The key word being "likely", considering the Reddit thread I mentioned in the video. Of course, I can't claim to have any programming knowledge of these games/knowledge of what the developers were thinking, so this is just speculation on my part.
Now I just wonder if the shinies would only count if all of the other encountered Unown were ALSO shiny, since the problem is most likely caused by the way shinies are coded in the game. That'd take a long time to test out though lol
I caught my first shiny in that cave. Was a shiny Geodude. Evolved it to a Graveler and then had a friend help me evolve it. He immediately released it. First shiny I saw was a Paras in Ilex Forest in Pokemon Gold. Accidentally killed it.
That's a dedicated shiny hunt right there. I imagine the redditor must have traded over his Unknown, hence how he managed to get two shinies without ever seeing the normal forms
Feels like something to do with the PID. Shininess and Unknown forms are tied to this (or at least they use to be, so I assume they were in the remakes) so I assume the tracker for these forms doesn't handle the shiny cases correctly
Someone I knew had the same issue happen where they got a shiny one, and the cave wasn't finished until they found a regular version of it, and that was about... 10-ish years ago. I don't know if she ever told anyone online about it, but the friend group we had were puzzled by it.
This video was so well done! Made sure to subscribe and hit the bell because it is cool secrets in Pokemon like this that add so much more depth to the series in my eyes. Also massive props on doing an entire shiny hunt just to test a theory.
Oh damn, I've seen your video about shiny Unown in FR/LG and the odds being all weird. Guess we have a little something in common, LMAO. Anyway, thank you! It was quite the hunt, and I'm glad it's paying off.
@@yukihoshikawa I love Unown!! If you feel like it there’s a video up on the channel specifically about the solace in ruins & how many encounters it takes to finish the alphabet. As a fellow Unown enjoyer it could be of interest to you!
Wow that amount of effort for such an obscure factoid, 45 hours of shiny hunting, that's dedication lol Also at the end you didn't just release the shiny... Right?
I'm never going through that much effort again, lol. Apparently the Shiny Charm wouldn't have even made a difference; a friend of mine mentioned it only works on eggs in BD/SP? I didn't look that up myself to confirm, but it's like... what a mess up, lol.
Glad you found your niche, saw the comment section of your one vid fact checking another UA-camr noting you’d probably have a better focus bringing up cool obscure facts, great to see the idea came to fruition here XD
With that said, if there were a cool topic for Pokémon to go over I think HGSS safari mechanics don’t get much coverage since the block placement system’s info is so murky online, that and there being a single video I’ve found on time skipping the block system is the most I’ve found…well either way, neat thing to know considering I’ve got my diamond game complete and I haven’t bothered seeing all the unown so guess I know what cool thing to test lmao
Using PkHex to gen in a shiny Unown (sorry, not doing that hunt legitimately at the moment, lol), it would seem shiny Unown DO count for progression of the Ruin Maniac Cave in Gen IV. Wonder if it has something to do with shiny forms not showing up in the Pokedex in Gen IV?
I realized as you said it. the games never track forms you *catch* they only go by the pokédex data of the forms you've *seen*. The only way it tracks what forms you collect is through that boy in Solaceon handing you seals, so if it's not based on what seals you have, it could *only* track the Pokédex data. it all falls into place.
also in diamond pearl and platinum you only have entries for non shiny pokemon, so the dex will show the normal form hence you'll be able to procede on the ruin maniac even if you catch all shinies, the shiny hunt lock is only possible on bd/sp
So in US/UM, if you talk to that well while you have a Protein in your bag, the Protein will fall into the well and hit the old guy. If you say the Protein isn't yours, that happens, lol.
Is it possible to win the race? I guess that would mean catching each Unown the first time you see it, or maybe getting them through trades, and after that the cave would still be incomplete.
If you fulfill the requirements for the cave to be finished before ever setting foot in Ruin Maniac Cave/Maniac Tunnel, it'll already be completed, so the race will always be a tie.
I mean, technically, if you catch a shiny unknown as your first time seeing that letter variation, you DO win the race technically. Because you caught all letter unknown, the requirement for 'winning the race' before he could finish the tunnel.
I'm curious... Does the kid who gives ball capsules/letter seals consider shiny Unown as a new form different than the non-shiny ones? And does the Rune cave expand at all if you *only* see Shiny Unown? Does the game count only non-shiny Unown or does it count both as a separate set?
I can only answer the first question at the moment, sadly, but the answer to that is yes. It's conveniently cut out in the video, but in the bit of footage where I'm getting a Ball Capsule, I showed the kid the shiny Unown D.
@@yukihoshikawa Thanks for replying! That actually somewhat answers all of my questions, but more in a theory way since it obviously needs to be tested... If the kid counts shiny unown as different to regular unown... It's possible the game in fact does keep track of both sets.... If that also counts for the Ruin Maniac... That would mean that instead of counting the 26th form of regular Unown... It counted the 1st form of Shiny Unown... Although it could also just be that the kid is programmed to count any unown form, thus the shiny forms count as well.
@@Flipface4 it might be different for the kid since you need to specifically select the Unown from your PC/party (at least in BD/SP; I admittedly never interacted with him in the DS games). With the Ruin Maniac Cave, you don't have to show the guy anything; the game just presumably checks your Pokédex.
@@yukihoshikawa I guess the easiest way to check is to use Home to transfer the shiny Unown into a new file, then make it to the cave and seeing if it's changed at all? (Actually it doesn't change for only 1 unown does it?)
@@Flipface4 That's covered in the video; shiny Unown don't influence the expansion of the cave, at least in BD/SP (I didn't do the hunt in the DS games, and there's no way I'm doing that now, lol).
@@yukihoshikawa who knows? Maybe the two "libraries" of Unown data are fully separate from each other and you must fully complete one of them because they don't overlap/cross, reference each other. Very possible to could be done with a complete shiny Unown dex, but it would definitely require hacking 100% shiny odds just for sanity/efficiency.
So the Tentacool thing is that, if you talk to the shown NPC in HG/SS, when you only have one Pokemon in your party and no Pokemon in your PC, that NPC will give you a Tentacool, likely as a form of softlock prevention.
Very cool! I've another Unown mystery I'm working through. Gen 2 Stadium 2 is reported to give an Unown Doll (and 2 other exclusive items) but nowhere online shows it happening. I'm mystery gifting on and off for months with no luck, wondering is there some hidden flag or something. Even worked out some Gen 2 RNG to get shiny I and V Unown plus the full non-shiny set. No luck yet! Is it even possible? Who knows
Thank you! Me, and my friend who shared the discovery in the first part of the video with me, have been overwhelmed at how much this video has blown up.
If you're insistent on doing a random encounter hunt for Hippopotas in Diamond/Pearl/Platinum, yes, you'd wanna fully expand the cave first (I specify D/P/Pt because Hippopotas can be found in the Grand Underground in BD/SP, but I don't know how commonly they appear). But if you're just interested in a shiny Hippopotas and don't care how you hunt for it, you're best off using the Masuda Method for it in a game where you have the Shiny Charm.
My SP play thru, I traded my complete unown group over from LA before I went to the cave. It completed the task instantly. I was still able to get the nugget and the TM
I never shiny hunted in BDSP, but from what I read online shiny forms are registered separately in the pokedex, something that was not in the original games. They probably forgot to expand the checks for the cave, so the check is unable to see the Unown because you technically caught a separate form.
So seeing a certain number of Unown triggers the cave being bigger, but seeing shiny Unown won't finish it... But, do shiny Unown simply not trigger it at all? Or will seeing *only* shiny Unown cause the cave to expand, and it's essentially two different lists where the longer one is being used to check progress? I'd be curious to see if shiny Unown without any regular Unown cause cave expansions. Could this be answered just by trading shiny Unown to a new save file, or do they have to be encountered in the wild..?
Shiny Unown make zero progress towards the cave, but ONLY in BD/SP, as it would turn out. Shiny Unown *do* count in the DS games. See here for more information/answers to more questions about this video: ua-cam.com/video/iVuxmBI8BC4/v-deo.html
That's really interesting! I've definitely seen the end of the cave a few times with all my playthroughs. But I've never caught all the unown on any of my save files. Well I did in Crystal... but that was the last time I ever cared to. I can't say I ever knew what the trigger was for expanding that cave. I just remember it being unfinished, and then it suddenly was later on when I checked in post-game.
Very cool find, good job especially with the shiny Unown part. It's interesting they'd keep the mechanic 15+ years later of having to see non-shiny Unown.
I would imagine that everything about this unknown case happened because for some reason, it was easier for the programmers to check for seen variants rather than caught variants. At my workplace, we use a self-made software with an absurd amount of bugs, so we only report the bugs to the programmers, if they are extremely significant. I would imagine, that these “bugs” in this unknown case are just so insignificant, that they either didn’t even notice, or just decided to save the time and not fix them.
I did ping Joe's personal account on Twitter about this, but he seemingly didn't notice. I'm in the middle of making a follow-up video to this; after I upload that, I was gonna send an email via the contact button on the Serebii website.
So if you have a Protein in your bag (specifically a Protein) and you interact with that well in Royal Avenue, your character will drop the Protein in the well and hit the old guy that's in there. The guy will ask you if the Protein is yours, and depending on your answer, a different scene plays out.
Have questions about what was featured in this video? They're likely answered here: ua-cam.com/video/iVuxmBI8BC4/v-deo.html
I figured this would be more convenient than having to scroll through comments to try and find the answer, and I apologize for not making everything clear.
And also, thank you for the 150,000+ views! It's truly mind boggling to see how well this video has done, as I had around 115 subs when uploading it, and that number has grown 10x in about 10 days!
@yuki hoshikawa why is gengars name blurred
Probably because most players fall into one of two camps. Those who don't care about Unown or the cave and so don't bother, or those who are collectors and actually want to have box full of them. There probably just aren't that many people who would go to the effort of seeing all the Unown forms without also wanting to catch them.
That's a fair point, but you figure, there'd have to be at least a few people who messed up and forgot to catch one (say, they ran out of balls, for example), or maybe even just tried for the hell of it. F, R, I, E, N, and D are 100% encounters in the areas of Solaceon Ruins they appear in, so it would be easy to do.
In addition, someone else commented that apparently this is not entirely unknown... but only in the German Pokémon community.
@@yukihoshikawa: Yes, I read that comment too, which is why I only speculated on "most" not "all" players. Likewise, I would imagine, from personal experience, that most players who want to catch all the Unown are unlikely too miss any because they are probably putting them all in the same box alphabetically just to be sure.
I never even paid attention to the dialogue that told me to catch unowns. Eventually the path was cleared so i thought it was just something that happens on its own. I would assume I'm not the only one who had this happen to them and thought nothing of it
I unironically love Unown. I don't know if it's my hoarding habits, or if it reminds me of Bill Cipher from Gravity Falls. I wouldn't say it needs an evolution, but perhaps something like the Carbink/Diancie case? Like an Unown overlord?
@@bluebaron6811: You and me both. I fell in love them ever since I first played Gold/Silver on ROM before it was ever translated. I couldn't read Japanese, but it didn't matter. I was enthralled with these strange enigmatic Pokémon, their multiple shapes, and their weird "signature" attack which never seemed to work the same way twice.
It also helped that in that original debuted they were color in a really neat shade of green. I miss that look and wish it would make a comeback one of these days.
As a kid I caught several Unown, but then got bored and didn't bother with the rest. I guess I must have encountered them all, because the tunnel opened all the way for me, and I assumed it was just a time-sensitive event rather than being linked to Unown. It's bonkers to think I'd encountered a long undocumented secret and didn't even realize because I was just a dumb kid.
Wow. You'd have to shiny hunt unown to get this to happen, no wonder nobody ran into this before.
Bruh
I wanna know if you can get the cave completed with only shiny Unown, or if it only counts regular ones
@@SuperiorPosterior gotta use that click bait title though as if it is something relevant
You forget, you’d have to shiny hunt and reset your game everytime you didn’t get one to have it happen
as a kid, i traded all of my soulsilver unown to platinum to finish the Ruin maniacs tunnel, which also caused the maniac to stop progressing even though they were all normal, non shiny unown, so i guess the OT has to match your trainer card too
No, but the seen flag in the Pokédex for the regular (non-shiny) form is required.
@@pi_xi Can confirm, I only finished the tunnel because my friend traded me the L Unown bc I couldn't find it!
@@ecyloppa8064 huh, strange that my game would say no when it shouldnt then
maybe you traded the ! or ? unown, and those don't count because you shouldn't be able to catch them yet
or if you had all 28, you traded ! and ? before finishing the alphabet and that could've skipped the flag for the "first" 26
I wonder if the cave would be completed if you only saw every unown as a shiny
Maybe we'll find out soon... 👀
Well seeing as one shiny made it incomplete.. only shiny more than likely would equate to 0 seen and the cave not expanding at all
@@BaconNuke Could be that there's a different counter for Unown and shiny Unown or something? Looks like you'd only need to find 10 of them to prove it though.
@@BaconNuke I mean it also could mean, on the shiny side, you only found one, so either you need to complete one side (whether shiny or non shiny) is also possibility.
Yep, that's what I cam to this video to ask myself. Would be much faster to check with a special "Uncle Jimtendo" modification for 100% shiny rates.
Either shinies don't count at all, or shiny Unown count as a "separate alphabet".
I have now also had the sudden revelation that Unown come in either black or blue ink, where black ink is the standard ink color most people use though blue ink is seen as preferred as it stands out from the rest of the printed black ink on documents while still being an easy dark color to read.
I actually knew about this already. I wouldn't call it common knowledge or anything, but this has been documented in the german Pokémon fanbase. I remember consulting a platinum item guide years back where it mentioned that one rare candy, alongside specifically stating that you only need to see, not catch the Unown.
How random, lol. I know virtually nobody in English, at least, has talked about this; wonder why.
@@yukihoshikawa also now that I'm thinking this through, missed opportunity for an Unown pun in the video title but maybe that's just me lmao
Lol, that's very fair; I opted to spell it correctly just to... make things look correct.
This is so interesting, I love stuff like this where there's different shared knowledge between the same community in different languages - you normally see it between English and Japanese but interesting to know it exists between English and German too when there are more bilingual speakers/community overlap
@@yukihoshikawa Yeah, I had this happen to myself a few years back but I assumed it was already common knowledge or a glitch. I didn't talk about it because of that.
Welp, mind blown! As you say, it's definitely something worth thinking about for something like a Nuzlocke. Especially given that Hippowdon seems quite well respected in that challenge.
It's also surprising that this wasn't fixed in post-DP releases of the Sinnoh games. Well, Platinum to be precise...
Yeah, it makes me wonder if Game Freak knew about this, and the dialogue of the dude in Ruin Maniac Cave is what they assumed they had programmed in the game, or if the dialogue is what's wrong, or what.
I realized after I did the shiny hunt that I wanted to grab footage of me getting the Rare Candy in Platinum, so I kind of rolled my eyes and encountered all of the Unown again, but it was nice to do that, as confirmation (to me, at least) that this also worked in Platinum.
I think that they didn't know this was in the game and that's why it's still there
My best guess is that the playtesters found the hunt to rigorous to thoroughly playtest.
@@chaoticbravealisdair2925 That or they actually did what was asked, and after all, shinies were hard to find without grinding for them. Also combined with the odds of shinies back then was worse than todays modern ones.
@@Firesnake905 Yea, this is an extremely obscure bug when it's locked behind a 1 in 8000 chance in the original games before the buffed shiny odds. And for the fact the cave only takes seen vs capture, well if you were testing for capture as the dialogue states and didn't think to test if it was only seen, then you'd see it succeed when you did capture all 26, because to capture it you had to first see it.
And as for BDSP still having the bug, well it's very well documented how they basically just did a bad slopjob port with a fresh coat of paint and little else. All of the original bugs are still there, only with added extra bugs layered on top from the new systems that were put on top of it.
Great work on the video, Yuki! Glad to see your suffering for a Shiny Unown D was worth it.
Thank you! I'm glad this video's finally able to come out, lol; that hunt was driving me crazy.
@@yukihoshikawa why did you release him tho?
Rex pfp?
Get the 🌟D 🌟
Rooting for ya
@@WardofSquid Thank you; it means a lot. :)
This same thing happened to me! I caught a shiny Unkown 'U' which happened to be the last one I needed. A part of me thought that it was programmed into the game where the last unknown you needed would be shiny cause I thought that was too coincidental 😅
However, the cave wasn’t completed until I went back and got a regular one. I wonder if there are any other cases in the game where something like this could happen.
Yeah, I think it's a really fun question; are there any other things in the series that we all assume we know how to do, but it turns out that method isn't 100% correct, like was the case with only having to see the Unown?
@@yukihoshikawa Agreed! Who knows, maybe we will find something similar to this in the next 15 years 🤣
I remember my childhood friend and I racing ourselves to "catch" the Unown and see who could finish the cave first, and I vaguely remember him saying something about only having to see them and not catch them because he showed me his boxes and pokedex. This video brought back obscure memories that give me emotions i don't know how to feel about tbh... good video btw.
This is really interesting!
One small error, I'm pretty sure you can catch Hippopotas on the route that Pal Park is at iirc. Though you're still correct about that cave being a better place to catch it.
You can't find it in the wild there; you may be thinking of the trainer on that route that uses three of them!
I wouldn't be surprised if the shiny Unown thing is just some BDSP jankiness. I could probably try and test that in the originals and see if it's there too.
yeah it wouldnt surprise anyone.
This is a pretty fascinating bit of info. You’ve earned a subscriber
Thank you very much!
This makes (some) sense. The way the games work regarding multiple forms is that it doesn’t track which forms have been caught, only which have been seen. For getting the seals, you had to show the person the Unown forms in your party (or PC in the remakes), which bypasses that limitation, but for the cave, it could only check your Pokédex, which only stores:
1. Which Pokémon species have been seen but not caught;
2. Which Pokémon species have been caught;
3. Of the Pokémon species which fall under 1 or 2, which forms of each species have been seen (starting in Gen IV, though the original Gen II games did also have Unown forms);
4. Of the Pokémon species which fall under 2, which languages have been registered for each (starting in Gen III); and
5. Which Dex modes (namely the Unown Mode in Gen II, the National Dex in Gens III-VI and the Gen IV remakes, the individual subregions of Kalos (for X and Y) or Alola (for Gen VII), or the DLC-only Dexes for the Isle of Armor and the Crown Tundra (for Sword and Shield)) have been unlocked as well as (in every game) whether or not the Pokédex itself has been unlocked.
(Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum also track whether or not the form registration has been unlocked, though this is unlocked from the start in HeartGold, SoulSilver, and every game in Gen V onwards (including the Gen IV remakes) and so doesn’t have a separate trigger in subsequent games. There are also other things tracked in certain games (like max/min size/weight caught or total number of a given species seen or caught), but those don’t apply here.)
As such, no game has ever distinguished between _seeing_ a form and _catching_ a form in the Pokédex (with a few small exceptions involving Gigantamax Pokémon that are also inapplicable here), and that’s the only permanent record of what has been seen/caught in a Pokémon game (except the Unown Report in the Gen II remakes) that persists even if you release, evolve, or trade away some Pokémon, which you need for the cave (since they can’t have the tunnel shrink if you release or trade away certain forms of Unown as that would be ridiculous). As such, there is simply no way for the game to check to see which forms have been caught and not merely seen for this purpose. That they don’t _also_ check to see if Unown has been caught _at all_ is a little weird, but the rest seems sensible to me.
Legends Arceus only keeps track of caught forms. Another inapplicable exception.
Wow, cool details. Appreciate the work you did for that shiny!
Thank you very much! I appreciate the kind words. :)
@@yukihoshikawa No problem! Good luck in future videos if you attempt them!
Always blows my mind when interesting bits of information like this get discovered more than a decade after the game's inception. Great video - short and thorough!
Thank you so much; I'm glad you enjoyed it!
I caught all the Unown in soulsilver a long time ago. I still have them in Pokemon Home. It hurt my soul a little to see you release that shiny unown after spending so long looking for it.
i wonder if the shiny Unown bug thing is only in BDSP but not in the original DPPt. it really seems like an oversight ILCA would make.
It might not be a bug, actually, but more so an oversight/deliberate choice. BD/SP keep track of shiny forms and regular forms separately. This means that, technically speaking, there are a maximum of 52 Unown forms the player can encounter without the extra room of the Solaceon Ruins at the end of Maniac Tunnel.
This means that the game can't simply check to see if you've seen 26 forms of Unown. Of course, the check that was implemented is also faulty, but maybe a check to see if you've seen a regular OR shiny version of all 26 letter forms wouldn't have worked for some reason? Or maybe Game Freak and/or ILCA just thought this would be good enough, since you'd have to do what I did and close the game without saving if you find a non-shiny version of a letter, meaning you would *likely* have to go out of your way to discover something like this.
The key word being "likely", considering the Reddit thread I mentioned in the video.
Of course, I can't claim to have any programming knowledge of these games/knowledge of what the developers were thinking, so this is just speculation on my part.
Now I just wonder if the shinies would only count if all of the other encountered Unown were ALSO shiny, since the problem is most likely caused by the way shinies are coded in the game. That'd take a long time to test out though lol
No, it just checks the seen flags in the Pokédex. Unknown has 56 forms (28 regular and 28 shiny ones).
I caught my first shiny in that cave. Was a shiny Geodude. Evolved it to a Graveler and then had a friend help me evolve it. He immediately released it. First shiny I saw was a Paras in Ilex Forest in Pokemon Gold. Accidentally killed it.
Oh no! That's such a rude thing for your friend to do.
He's no friend
@@TearsofaMermaid Trust me I know lol. We weren't friends after that.
That's a dedicated shiny hunt right there. I imagine the redditor must have traded over his Unknown, hence how he managed to get two shinies without ever seeing the normal forms
Feels like something to do with the PID.
Shininess and Unknown forms are tied to this (or at least they use to be, so I assume they were in the remakes) so I assume the tracker for these forms doesn't handle the shiny cases correctly
Someone I knew had the same issue happen where they got a shiny one, and the cave wasn't finished until they found a regular version of it, and that was about... 10-ish years ago.
I don't know if she ever told anyone online about it, but the friend group we had were puzzled by it.
Had to rewind to listen to the bit about the tentacool, because I was so distracted by whatever TF was happening on screen 😂
This video was so well done! Made sure to subscribe and hit the bell because it is cool secrets in Pokemon like this that add so much more depth to the series in my eyes. Also massive props on doing an entire shiny hunt just to test a theory.
Thank you so much! I'm glad you liked the video. :)
5:15 w- why is that gengar's name blurred
Respect the fact that you went through the process of testing this yourself!
Oh damn, I've seen your video about shiny Unown in FR/LG and the odds being all weird. Guess we have a little something in common, LMAO.
Anyway, thank you! It was quite the hunt, and I'm glad it's paying off.
@@yukihoshikawa I love Unown!! If you feel like it there’s a video up on the channel specifically about the solace in ruins & how many encounters it takes to finish the alphabet. As a fellow Unown enjoyer it could be of interest to you!
@@ProfessorRex Thanks for the heads up; I'll have to check that out in a bit!
Wow that amount of effort for such an obscure factoid, 45 hours of shiny hunting, that's dedication lol
Also at the end you didn't just release the shiny... Right?
I'm never going through that much effort again, lol.
Apparently the Shiny Charm wouldn't have even made a difference; a friend of mine mentioned it only works on eggs in BD/SP? I didn't look that up myself to confirm, but it's like... what a mess up, lol.
nah, gotta take the important D forward in the games. it's a big deal now
@@yukihoshikawa did the research, and yeah, it only works for breeding. Good thing I only planned on radar hunting in the first place...
@@yukihoshikawa Eww, really? Damn, I have the shiny charm. :(
I loved learning about this unown fact!
Thank you! They're both fascinating, aren't they?
Glad you found your niche, saw the comment section of your one vid fact checking another UA-camr noting you’d probably have a better focus bringing up cool obscure facts, great to see the idea came to fruition here XD
With that said, if there were a cool topic for Pokémon to go over I think HGSS safari mechanics don’t get much coverage since the block placement system’s info is so murky online, that and there being a single video I’ve found on time skipping the block system is the most I’ve found…well either way, neat thing to know considering I’ve got my diamond game complete and I haven’t bothered seeing all the unown so guess I know what cool thing to test lmao
45 hours later and I finally get unown D.
Releases it 2 minutes later.
I was in shock like is this guy too good for a shiny D
Is the Shiny Unown fact for BDSP only or Generation IV too?
Using PkHex to gen in a shiny Unown (sorry, not doing that hunt legitimately at the moment, lol), it would seem shiny Unown DO count for progression of the Ruin Maniac Cave in Gen IV.
Wonder if it has something to do with shiny forms not showing up in the Pokedex in Gen IV?
@@yukihoshikawa Thanks ^^
Such a high quality video for someone with only 400 subs, you earned my sub and like my guy, hope the algorithm treats you well
Thank you so much; the algorithm has been treating me exceptionally well. Would you believe I started October with 92 subs, and now I'm nearing 600?
@@yukihoshikawa Oh wow, hopefully you reach 1000 soon
@@azurezephyr4526 Thank you!
@@yukihoshikawa ayo you doubled in subs in just 10 hours my god
4:50 I wonder if its all non-shiny forms? Or if its all of 1 kind of form? Maybe if you ONLY saw shinies, it might still work?
No, the game only checks the seen flag of the regular forms.
I realized as you said it. the games never track forms you *catch* they only go by the pokédex data of the forms you've *seen*.
The only way it tracks what forms you collect is through that boy in Solaceon handing you seals, so if it's not based on what seals you have, it could *only* track the Pokédex data. it all falls into place.
Legends Arceus and SwSh's Gigantamax forms are exceptions to that rule, but yeah, they otherwise only track seen for forms. Makes a lot of sense.
Now test out 25 shiny unown and 1 regular unown
Just found out about this channel, happy to see a actually decent Pokémon yt channel.
Thank you for the kind words!
also in diamond pearl and platinum you only have entries for non shiny pokemon, so the dex will show the normal form hence you'll be able to procede on the ruin maniac even if you catch all shinies, the shiny hunt lock is only possible on bd/sp
I wonder if the shiny exception only applies to the remakes
Yeah, regrettably, I forgot to test that. I might have to look into that at some point, for confirmation's sake.
5:15 This man just casually releasing the shiny unown he hunted specifically for this video.
>:)
Not too surprising since all of the forms are already registered to your Pokédex when you see them.
Wait. Can we go back to the part where the guy was spinning in the fountain? What's up with that?
I'm really interested about that too lol never seen that before
So in US/UM, if you talk to that well while you have a Protein in your bag, the Protein will fall into the well and hit the old guy. If you say the Protein isn't yours, that happens, lol.
What’s gengar’s nickname ? 🤨🤨 5:15
i wonder if it would work if you've seen every shine unknown
I've gotten this question, among others, from several people, so I might be looking into it... 👀
Neat analysis video! Thanks for uploading!
If you see the unshiny Unown afterwards, the cave is still finished, right?
Yep, that's correct!
But what if..... you encouter/catch 26 shiny unknown before you encounter all of their non-shiny versions?
Is it possible to win the race? I guess that would mean catching each Unown the first time you see it, or maybe getting them through trades, and after that the cave would still be incomplete.
If you fulfill the requirements for the cave to be finished before ever setting foot in Ruin Maniac Cave/Maniac Tunnel, it'll already be completed, so the race will always be a tie.
I mean, technically, if you catch a shiny unknown as your first time seeing that letter variation, you DO win the race technically. Because you caught all letter unknown, the requirement for 'winning the race' before he could finish the tunnel.
First time I see a video about "unknown pokemon facts" where the facts were actually unknown
I'm curious... Does the kid who gives ball capsules/letter seals consider shiny Unown as a new form different than the non-shiny ones?
And does the Rune cave expand at all if you *only* see Shiny Unown?
Does the game count only non-shiny Unown or does it count both as a separate set?
I can only answer the first question at the moment, sadly, but the answer to that is yes. It's conveniently cut out in the video, but in the bit of footage where I'm getting a Ball Capsule, I showed the kid the shiny Unown D.
@@yukihoshikawa Thanks for replying! That actually somewhat answers all of my questions, but more in a theory way since it obviously needs to be tested...
If the kid counts shiny unown as different to regular unown... It's possible the game in fact does keep track of both sets.... If that also counts for the Ruin Maniac... That would mean that instead of counting the 26th form of regular Unown... It counted the 1st form of Shiny Unown...
Although it could also just be that the kid is programmed to count any unown form, thus the shiny forms count as well.
@@Flipface4 it might be different for the kid since you need to specifically select the Unown from your PC/party (at least in BD/SP; I admittedly never interacted with him in the DS games). With the Ruin Maniac Cave, you don't have to show the guy anything; the game just presumably checks your Pokédex.
@@yukihoshikawa I guess the easiest way to check is to use Home to transfer the shiny Unown into a new file, then make it to the cave and seeing if it's changed at all?
(Actually it doesn't change for only 1 unown does it?)
@@Flipface4 That's covered in the video; shiny Unown don't influence the expansion of the cave, at least in BD/SP (I didn't do the hunt in the DS games, and there's no way I'm doing that now, lol).
wouldnt it be funny if the cave gets finished if you see all the shiny unown without necessarily seeing all the normal ones
thatd be histerical
NGL, that thought actually did cross my mind.
Not testing it, LMAO. Not legitimately, at least (and I also kinda doubt it'd work).
@@yukihoshikawa who knows? Maybe the two "libraries" of Unown data are fully separate from each other and you must fully complete one of them because they don't overlap/cross, reference each other. Very possible to could be done with a complete shiny Unown dex, but it would definitely require hacking 100% shiny odds just for sanity/efficiency.
Ah this is why you were torturing yourself shiny hunting, It all makes sense now
"Torturing" is a very appropriate word, LMAO.
I was starting to really hate things around the 30-35 hour mark.
@@yukihoshikawa Well it looks like it was worth it
@@lanceuppercut2204 For sure, LMAO
Wait does anybody have a link to that Tentacruel thing he's talking about?
So the Tentacool thing is that, if you talk to the shown NPC in HG/SS, when you only have one Pokemon in your party and no Pokemon in your PC, that NPC will give you a Tentacool, likely as a form of softlock prevention.
I was looking for this comment. Saved me from having to ask myself. Lol.
So now what happens when you encounter a shiny of every unknown?
What a madman. Shiny hunting one particular letter of Unknown.
This just really shows how ctrl c and ctrl v was used to make BDSP
this is an insane find! omg. Props to you for your efforts
Somebody tell AbsolBlogsPokemon to shiny hunt all the Unown without legally encountering one.
>Encounters Shiny Unown D
>Goes to home menu
"NO!!"
>Releases Shiny Unown D from PC
"NOOOOOOOO"
Very cool! I've another Unown mystery I'm working through. Gen 2 Stadium 2 is reported to give an Unown Doll (and 2 other exclusive items) but nowhere online shows it happening. I'm mystery gifting on and off for months with no luck, wondering is there some hidden flag or something. Even worked out some Gen 2 RNG to get shiny I and V Unown plus the full non-shiny set. No luck yet! Is it even possible? Who knows
Good luck! Here's hoping it's real!
How many players are going to see a shiny of one letter but see every other letter. It doesn't surprise me this has gone unnoticed for so long
This is absolutely fascinating!
Oh, that's amazing. It would be great to farm a good hippo early.
Cool to see the commitment to figuring out this weird oversight/coding! Loved the vid
This vid deserves more likes, like the dude literally shiny hunted UNOWN for HOURS just to test this theory
Thank you so much! The video's been blowing up since you left that comment, so the amount of likes might be more adequate now. ;)
One of the most interesting things I've been recommended in a while, really an odd find, but super cool!
Thank you! Me, and my friend who shared the discovery in the first part of the video with me, have been overwhelmed at how much this video has blown up.
5:19 I wonder what is your Gengar's nickname x)
This is an exceptionally informative video!!!! Do you think any special area will be unlocked if all SHINY Unown are caught?
Thank you so much! I really doubt there's any kind of area like that, cuz we can look into all the maps in the games, so we'd likely know that by now.
This is super interesting! Cool video
Thank you; I'm glad to hear!
Wait so would this be an easier why to shiny hunt hippopatas? The only other place I can think of is in the safari zone.
If you're insistent on doing a random encounter hunt for Hippopotas in Diamond/Pearl/Platinum, yes, you'd wanna fully expand the cave first (I specify D/P/Pt because Hippopotas can be found in the Grand Underground in BD/SP, but I don't know how commonly they appear). But if you're just interested in a shiny Hippopotas and don't care how you hunt for it, you're best off using the Masuda Method for it in a game where you have the Shiny Charm.
i always wondered why i had an upgraded cave despite not having caught many unknowns
1:48 So you only saw the Pokemon(registered as seen in the Pokedex.).
Now we need someone to encounter only the shiny forms of the unown and see if the cave opens
I knew you only had to encounter them since a long while, but this shiney-part is new.
I wonder if 26 shiny forms would count, or if it only checks the normal letters
My SP play thru, I traded my complete unown group over from LA before I went to the cave. It completed the task instantly. I was still able to get the nugget and the TM
I never shiny hunted in BDSP, but from what I read online shiny forms are registered separately in the pokedex, something that was not in the original games.
They probably forgot to expand the checks for the cave, so the check is unable to see the Unown because you technically caught a separate form.
I'm pretty sure I remember reading about the Cianwood Tentacool on Serebii's forums pretty shortly after HGSS released.
So seeing a certain number of Unown triggers the cave being bigger, but seeing shiny Unown won't finish it... But, do shiny Unown simply not trigger it at all? Or will seeing *only* shiny Unown cause the cave to expand, and it's essentially two different lists where the longer one is being used to check progress? I'd be curious to see if shiny Unown without any regular Unown cause cave expansions. Could this be answered just by trading shiny Unown to a new save file, or do they have to be encountered in the wild..?
Shiny Unown make zero progress towards the cave, but ONLY in BD/SP, as it would turn out. Shiny Unown *do* count in the DS games.
See here for more information/answers to more questions about this video: ua-cam.com/video/iVuxmBI8BC4/v-deo.html
What if you only find shiny unknown would that work too? Guess we gotta find out
Now for the psychotic version of this: encounter all 26 shiny.
I bet if you find only the 26 shiny unown but none of the normal one, it might be open too
What if you’ve seen all 26 shiny unknown but not 26 normal?
what would happen if all you saw were shiny unown?
What if the reverse about the shiny is true, if you find only shiny unknowns, the cave is complete....?
maybe trying to see all 26 shiny unknowns (as the first) will be worth a shot
5:09 the name of this gengar will keep my awake at night
Well now we clearly need to see what happens if you exclusively only see the shiny version of all 26 unknown.
That's really interesting! I've definitely seen the end of the cave a few times with all my playthroughs. But I've never caught all the unown on any of my save files. Well I did in Crystal... but that was the last time I ever cared to. I can't say I ever knew what the trigger was for expanding that cave. I just remember it being unfinished, and then it suddenly was later on when I checked in post-game.
what would happen if you see all shiny unknown before regular unknown?
Very cool find, good job especially with the shiny Unown part. It's interesting they'd keep the mechanic 15+ years later of having to see non-shiny Unown.
I would imagine that everything about this unknown case happened because for some reason, it was easier for the programmers to check for seen variants rather than caught variants. At my workplace, we use a self-made software with an absurd amount of bugs, so we only report the bugs to the programmers, if they are extremely significant. I would imagine, that these “bugs” in this unknown case are just so insignificant, that they either didn’t even notice, or just decided to save the time and not fix them.
Casually releasing a shiny, that's painful unless you got a box full of ultra space shinies that are all the same.
i wonder what would happen if you have all 26 unown in shiny but not normal
Did anyone notify the Serebii founder about this?
I did ping Joe's personal account on Twitter about this, but he seemingly didn't notice. I'm in the middle of making a follow-up video to this; after I upload that, I was gonna send an email via the contact button on the Serebii website.
Thank you for your research and shiny hunting time so that the 99.4% of us get to learn this.
You're welcome; I live for figuring out this type of stuff!
damn, all that work to get the wrong D
LMAOOOOOO, TRUE
I don't blame the Ruin Maniac, He's a maniac after all.
And he doesn't like shiny pokemon apparently
what was that Usum event at the beginning of the game? I've never seen that
So if you have a Protein in your bag (specifically a Protein) and you interact with that well in Royal Avenue, your character will drop the Protein in the well and hit the old guy that's in there. The guy will ask you if the Protein is yours, and depending on your answer, a different scene plays out.