User:CytricAcid/Beginner's Guide To ACE/US Red and Blue Guide

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WARNING

Certain steps in this guide will lead you to a game state where a mistake could crash the game, or worse, delete your save file. Make sure to double and triple check your setup and follow instructions properly before using any glitch items!

2. Get 8F through Dry Underflow and Celadon Looping trick

In this section, we will be manipulating our item pack a lot in order to obtain 8F. To this end it is recommended to reduce the clutter in your inventory beforehand:

• Have a small number of items in your item pack (but no less than 6).
  • More precisely, by "items" we mean "item stacks" here, which means e.g. Potion ×99 counts as a single item.
  • You can deposit any extras (including Key items) into your PC, and in case you don't have enough you can buy some cheap items from any shop.
• Have at least one empty slot in your PC item storage to accommodate 8F, and preferably more, since when performing dry underflow we will be clearing out our item pack, but we will be able to store anything that might be useful later into the PC.

Once we get the ×255 item stack or the expanded item pack, manipulating items become less intuitive and can even be dangerous if you don't know what you are doing, so it is recommended to reduce the clutter before that happens in order to avoid trouble.

Get a ×255 item stack

The goal of this step is to get a stack of any item ×255 in the bag. Since the normal limit for an item stack is ×99, this goal will require a glitch. Namely, we will duplicate the 6th item in the bag by encountering either MissingNo. or 'M (00) through the old man glitch.

1. Have any tossable item (i.e. anything that is not a Key item) as the 6th item in the bag.
   • Ideally, it should be a ×1 item stack (you can toss or use any extras), which will make later steps easier (in terms of having less math to worry about), .
   • A good candidate is a PP Up, which is a rare item that you will need to use on the Tentacool for the party setup.
2. Go to Viridian City, and talk to the old man who shows you how to catch Pokémon. Watch his catch demonstration (by saying "No" when he asks if you are in a hurry).
   
3. Immediately Fly to Fuchsia City (without otherwise leaving Viridian City).
   • Side note: The more well-known location to perform the old man glitch is the eastern coast of Cinnabar Island, but it actually works with any "eastern shore tiles" that can be reached from a Fly destination without going through an area with grass encounters. This guide will use the shore tiles on the east side of the Seaform Islands because they are closer to a location that can help us get 8F easily later.
4. From Fuchsia City, Surf down and then left to reach this location:
   (TODO: Add screenshot)
   • For safety, save the game now, since there is a possibility we may need to reset later.
5. Surf along the shore for wild encounters. We are looking for the glitch Pokémon MissingNo. or 'M (00), which looks like one of these:
   
   • If you encounter a normal Pokémon instead, just keep looking. If you encounter a Trainer or another glitch Pokémon (although the latter should be impossible on English games), immediately reset for safety.
   • Side note: As mentioned on the old man glitch page, the possible encounters depend on the player's name, but at least one of the glitch Pokémon we are looking for should always be available.
   • To ensure that the glitch has worked, check the quantity of the 6th item in the bag. It should have increased by 128, i.e. if it was a ×1 item stack in the beginning, it should now be ×129. However, since the game is not designed to display three-digit numbers as the quantity of an item, it will look glitchy like this:
     (TODO: Add screenshot)
6. You can now escape from the battle, then toss or use two of your 6th item so that you have ×127 (if you started with an item stack that was not ×1, you still need to get rid of enough so that you have ×127).
   • Side note: If your 6th item was one that could be used in battle (e.g. a Potion), you can use two of them in battle instead, and then catch the MissingNo. or 'M, which will immediately duplicate your 6th item again, without needing a second encounter. However overall the added complexity is probably not worth it.
   • Now is a good time to make another safety save.
7. Repeat step 5, i.e. Surf along the shore for another wild encounter with a MissingNo. or 'M.
   • If you have done everything correctly, the encounter should increase the quantity of the 6th item to 255, which is the goal for this section. You can now escape from the battle and start the next section.

Perform dry underflow

Now that you have a ×255 item stack, you can save the game and experiment with it if you want to.

• Side note: The most notable property of the ×255 item stack is its tendency to duplicate itself. For example, with PP Up ×255 as the 6th item in your bag, toss (or deposit into your PC) the entire stack of your 5th item. Your 5th item is now PP Up ×255 (as expected), but your 6th item is still PP Up ×255, meaning that you have two of those stacks now. However, if you only had 6 items to begin with, now you actually only have 5 items even though you can see PP Up ×255 as your 6th item. That 6th item will "act like the Cancel button", meaning that you won't be able to scroll past it, and if you press the A button on it, instead of bringing up the use/toss menu, you will exit the item menu. This may be confusing at first, but just keep in mind that the game keeps track of your item count (which is supposed to be the number of item stacks you have) and your item list separately. Try not to decrease your item count too much prematurely (although you should be fine if you don't toss, use or deposit from your ×255 item stack unless instructed to).

In order to obtain 8F, we want to perform dry underflow, which does involve decreasing the item count a lot — namely, decreasing it to -1. For this purpose, we need to make use of a somewhat obscure functionality of the item menu: Pressing the Select button on two items allows you to swap items. Furthermore, if they are the same type of items, those item stacks are combined into one stack instead as long as the total number of items is not more than 99. This decreases the number of item stacks (i.e. decreases the item count) and we will ultimately use this to bring the item count to -1.

The below steps may cause you to lose some items from your inventory. In the grand scheme of things that is not that important since eventually you will be able to get any item in any quantity back with ACE, but you do need a few items later (or a bit of money to buy them) to get things going smoothly.

1. Make sure to have at least two item stacks above your topmost ×255 item stack. Also make sure that you have access to your topmost ×255 item stack, and it is not "acting like the Cancel button" (i.e. make sure that pressing the A button on it brings up the use/toss menu, and does not exit the item menu).
2. Get rid of all other items above your topmost ×255 item stack: Deposit all Key items and other things you want to keep into the PC, and toss all unimportant items.
   • Your ×255 item stack should duplicate itself and fill your inventory like this:
     (TODO: Add screenshot (or would a text list work better here?))
3. If necessary, start tossing the second ×255 item stack until your item count is 1. You will know that your item count is 1 when you are no longer able to toss your second ×255 item stack because it is acting like the Cancel button, and you are no longer able to scroll to your third item stack.
4. Toss 253 from your first ×255 item stack, so that you have 2 left.
   • Your inventory should now look like this:
     (TODO: Add screenshot)
5. Swap your first item stack (the ×2 stack) and second item stack (by pressing the Select button on the first item stack and then on the second item stack).
   • They will combine into a ×1 item stack like this:
     (TODO: Add screenshot)
   • At this point, don't accidentally exit your item menu by pressing A or B. Otherwise you will be unable to proceed, and the best course of action is to reset the game to load your last save file and try again.
6. Swap your first item stack (the ×1 stack) and second item stack again.
   • They will combine into a ×0 item stack like this:
     (TODO: Add screenshot)
   • If you've done everything correctly, you should be able to scroll down again, even past the Cancel button and past the 20th item (normally the maximum number of items of your bag). What happened is that you have decreased your item count to -1, but since the game is not designed to handle a negative item count, it becomes 255 instead, giving you access to 255 items. You can now start the next section.

Obtain 8F

Once you have access to the expanded item pack, obtaining 8F, or indeed any item in the game, is quite easy. The reason is that the contents of the expanded item pack actually correspond to unrelated game data — such as your coordinate on the map — so they can be easily manipulated. On the other hand, that also means that messing with the contents of the expanded item pack may affect the game state, and can even be dangerous. Follow the below steps in order to obtain 8F safely.

1. From Fuchsia City, Surf down and left again to reach this location:
   (TODO: Add screenshot)
2. Scroll down to the 35th item in your expanded item pack. It should be 8F.
   (TODO: Add screenshot)
   • Side note: The 35th item corresponds to your X coordinate on the current map (i.e. it decreases as you go left, and increases as you go right, as long as you don't leave the current map). This location is on the Route 20 map, which is the single widest map in the game, allowing you to obtain many useful items this way.
3. Swap this item with a useless item in your main inventory. (The ×0 stack at the top of your inventory you've just created in the previous section should work fine: You should have at least two ×255 stacks of the same item below, which can duplicate themselves if you somehow need more.)
4. Immediately Fly away.
   • Side note: By swapping the 35th item, you have corrupted your X coordinate, so trying to move around on the map may have unexpected and confusing effects. Depending on which item you swapped it may be possible to leave the map by Surfing and/or walking, but the safest option is to just Fly away. There is a technique named the Celadon looping map trick which makes use of such a X coordinate corruption to obtain items with too large an internal ID to be obtained on Route 20, but you won't really have a need for that since once you set up ACE you can obtain any item more easily.
5. Deposit 8F into your PC. For simplicity and safety, we will only be using it after fixing our item pack.
   • If you did the previous steps correctly, you will notice that you still have 8F in your item pack. This is normal: The 8F you swapped into your main inventory is actually a stack of 8F ×0 (even though you cannot see the quantity because 8F is a Key item), which is equivalent to ×256, meaning that you can deposit 1 and still have ×255. Just treat the 8F remaining in your item pack as a useless item.
     • If this doesn't happen, that is fine too. That means that you obtained 8F ×1 instead of 8F ×0, probably because your Y coordinate was different from the screenshot. You would need to buy one more item to fix your item pack later.
6. Optionally, repeat the previous steps, but with these other locations, to obtain some other potentially hard-to-obtain items. You will get a ×0 stack of each (equivalent to ×256). Ideally, don't use/sell/deposit the whole stack to avoid decreasing the item count.
   (TODO: Add screenshot) (PP Up; Rare Candy to level up Tentacool?; Something to sell for money?)
7. Buy any two cheap items (that you don't already have in your main inventory) to fix the item pack. The first item you buy will be lost, and the second should become the first and only item in your main inventory, with a proper Cancel button below it.
   • Withdrawing useless items from the PC will also work if that's more convenient.
   • If the second item bought doesn't appear as the first item in your inventory, keep buying cheap items until the item pack is fixed.
     • Side note: If you have been following everything perfectly, your item count would remain 255 (in other words, -1) after you got the expanded item pack, so you would need two items to increase your item count back to 1. If you have unnecessarily decreased your item count by using/selling/depositing a whole stack of items, your item count would be lower, so you would need to buy more items in this step.
     • Side note: The first item you buy will occupy item slot 256, which are near the end of the list wWarpEntries (in the middle of list entry 28). This should be safe as no shop in the game has that many warps. Even if you have accidentally decreased your item count a few times, the items you buy should still be close to the bottom of wWarpEntries and remain safe.
     • Side note: Don't worry about the cheap item existing in your expanded inventory, as the game will not look past the Cancel button when trying to find an existing stack of that item.