Cloning glitches are glitches in the Pokémon games that enable a player to make an exact copy or "clone" of a Pokémon. While cloning glitches have been found in multiple generations, the methods to achieve cloning vary from game to game. Most of these methods involve exploiting the relatively long save times of the Pokémon games to interrupt the saving process when only a portion of data has been saved successfully. Like most glitches, there are negative side effects, such as the potential loss of the Pokémon to be cloned or even corruption of the saved data.
 | This glitch is in need of research. Reason: Is the lost box in gen 2 VC fixable? Also, what happens if Box 1 is empty upon transporting? You can discuss this on the talk page. |
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Generations I and II
There are two different methods for cloning Pokémon in the games from Generations I and II, one involving a Pokémon trade, and the other the use of the Storage System. Even though both are possible in all of the handheld games of these two generations, the trading method is mostly associated with Generation I, and the storage system method with Generation II.
Trading method
The cloning glitch most popular in Generation I involves the interruption of the trading process. As Game Link Cables for the Game Boy are unable to send and receive data simultaneously, one game cartridge first sends its traded Pokémon's data while the other receives it, and then vice versa for the second traded Pokémon. Interrupting the trade after one Pokémon was sent and the other wasn't causes the first Pokémon to be present on both games and the second one not present on either, essentially making two of the same Pokémon while making the other disappear. The interruption can be either accidental—because of dirty connectors or damaged Game Link Cables—or on purpose—by disconnecting the Game Link Cable or turning the Game Boy off.
In the Generation I games, this glitch is potentially very hazardous to the save file, because in the period of time between sending and receiving a Pokémon (or vice versa) the game saves the player's party. If the glitch is performed wrong and the game has not finished saving, the saved data will be corrupted. In Generation II this process was changed, and thus this method is not hazardous for the save file.
Box change method
Another cloning method present in the early Pokémon games involved the exploit of the Pokémon Storage System and the fact that the game needed to save every time a Box was changed. During the saving that takes place when switching the Box, first the Pokémon data on all the PC Boxes is saved, and then the Pokémon data on the player's party. In Pokémon Gold and Silver if some Pokémon are deposited in the PC before switching the Box, interrupting the saving process (turning the power off or resetting using the Virtual Console menu) at the right moment (ideally, after the "Yes/No" box disappears and before the "A" in "Saving" appears in the dialog Box, but after the Box has appeared) causes said Pokémon to be present both in the Box and the player's party. This method, unlike the trade method, allows the player to clone up to five Pokémon at the same time, as well as in Generation II, clone items by making the cloned Pokémon hold items before cloning it. In Pokémon Crystal instead the player must interrupt the saving shortly after the period in "Power" appears out in the dialog box, but before the saving sound effect plays.
If the glitch is used with a game attached to Pokémon Stadium 2, there is a chance of getting strange glitch Pokémon. If the player withdraws a Pokémon and continues the cloning glitch, if the game is turned off at the right time, the cloned Pokémon will vanish and be replaced by a Pokémon with the same name, attack, and level as the Pokémon removed. Its sprite will be identical to the cloned Pokémon, but if sent into battle, it will appear as the withdrawn Pokémon. Its species name will be the same as the cloned Pokémon's and it will be able to learn all the TMs/HMs as the cloned Pokémon. However, it will evolve as the withdrawn Pokémon does.
This glitch may be used at the beginning of a game to obtain all three first partner Pokémon.
It is possible to get a bad clone if the Box used for cloning is not filled at any time, as this will prevent bad clones from being created. Getting a bad clone is a case of luck and sometimes occurs during the act of cloning. The chance of getting a bad clone is at maximum if the Box has 15 to 18 Pokémon. Another way to increase the player's chances is by turning the game off after they select YES, before any of the “SAVING... DON'T TURN OFF THE POWER.” text appears. A bad clone has a name that is blank or made of only question marks, such as ?????. Its level will be 0 (The glitch will not work if the clone is at any other level, including a more common level 255 clone). Using an Egg for a bad clone results in another egg that hatches into ?????.
Poké Transporter method
If this glitch is done on the Virtual Console, and then the player uses Poké Transporter, the game will transfer Pokémon from the box the player swapped to, but the Pokémon will remain in the Virtual Console, essentially cloning them again. However, this glitch will remove Pokémon from Box 1 equal to the amount that was transferred. If more Pokémon are transferred than exist in Box 1, then Poké Transporter will improperly format Box 1 and make it unusable for normal Pokémon storage. Using the deposit option to place Pokémon inside Box 1 will cause them to disappear, effectively removing them. Regardless, Poké Transporter will detect the box as empty after this point and normal transferring of Pokémon will become difficult; the only way to transfer Pokémon from this point onward is to either use the method again to clone the Pokémon and bypass Box 1, use a method such as Arbitrary code execution to attempt to repair Box 1, or use the method discussed in the next paragraph to move Pokémon. Additionally, the corruption in Box 1 can be used in an unintended manner as attempting to play the Lucky Number Show will cause the game to still read data of some sort and can produce a prize despite no Pokémon existing in the box.
Pokémon can be successfully moved to Box 1 using the "MOVE PKMN W/O MAIL" option, though any Pokémon left in the Box will disappear should the Player close out of the Pokémon Storage System. Initially moving a Pokémon into Box 1 will change its nickname and delete the OT. The new nickname will be based either on the prior OT or based on the player's name on the save file. Regardless, the name will be an exact copy of the source, but without the first character in the name. Each additional Pokémon moved will cause the nickname of that Pokémon to be replaced with an additional character missing. For example, in the case of the OT ETHAN, the first Pokémon deposited into the box will receive the name THAN. The second Pokémon will be named HAN, the third AN, and so on. If a Pokémon that has been modified in this manner is move out of Box 1 and back into it, then it will be treated as before and its nickname will be rewritten with the appropriate number of characters missing. If no letters would remain, then the Pokémon will be given an improperly terminated nickname that will appear to have a blank name in most situations and that may show up as a long string of question marks in other situations. A Pokémon with an improperly terminated name can be used to set up other glitches. In addition, the music is likely to become corrupted by this point and the player will need to change maps to fix the issue or soft reset the game.
It is not fully known how hazardous using a corrupt Box 1 is to the save file of the game, if at all.
Storage system move method
The player can also exploit the move function within a box to clone a Pokémon. The box must not be full or it will cause the Pokémon to disappear. The player should select the Pokémon they wish to clone, select "move" and move it to somewhere else within the box. During the time that it is saving, the player should count three to five seconds then disconnect the power. This will result in a clone.
Generation III
Battle Tower
Due to improvements of the games and hardware such as the capability of the Game Boy Advance Game Link Cable to send and receive data at the same time, the auto-canceling of trades if something goes wrong, the lack of need to save while changing PC Boxes and new data corruption protection, both methods exploited in the first two generations to clone Pokémon were essentially removed for the third. While Pokémon cloning was completely absent on most games of this generation, the glitch returned in a different form in Pokémon Emerald, where the Link-Battle mode of the Battle Tower saved only the party, the Bag of the player and miscellaneous data, even if they chose "no" when the game asks to; this was due to the game's need to save a massive amount of data and check connections. By resetting the game without saving at this point, the game will resume in front of the NPC with the party as it was when the NPC saved the game and the PC as it was when the player manually saved the game. While up to six Pokémon can be cloned at one time, it requires the player to lose the Pokémon that was moved from the party to the PC. If the player is unwilling to lose a Pokémon, then the maximum number of Pokémon that can be cloned at once is five. It is also possible to clone numerous items at once by removing items held by Pokémon in the PC before talking to the NPC.
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Generation IV
GTS
In Generation IV, a cloning method reminiscent of the methods from the first two generations appeared, involving the use of the GTS. If the Pokémon is deposited in the GTS and the connection were to be interrupted at the right time, the Pokémon in question would be both in the player's party or PC Box and in the GTS, requiring the player only to withdraw the Pokémon from the GTS to obtain the clone. In Pokémon Platinum Version, however, the glitch of cloning via GTS was removed; if attempted, the game simply reported a communication error and returned the player back to the main desk.
Due to the Wi-Fi shutdown, this method is no longer possible without using unofficial servers.
Trading
In Generation IV, if a player is trading Pokémon and one of the Nintendo DS systems is turned off at a certain time, the Pokémon that was traded to the game that was not turned off will appear in both players' parties. However, this glitch is very difficult to perform and quite commonly corrupts save data. There are reports that this method is effective in the Generation V games, but such reports are unconfirmed.
Corrupted save file
Sometimes, when a game's save file gets corrupted, the Pokémon in that save file are kept. When this happens, the game can still be saved, but the save file will be unable to be loaded. With the assistance of another Nintendo DS and Generation IV game, the Pokémon can be traded from the corrupted game. After the trade is completed, if the game is reset, the Pokémon traded from the corrupted game will be in both games, but the other traded Pokémon will be lost.
DNS abuse
In Generations IV and V, by manually specifying the DNS address so as to connect to a server other than the GTS, it is possible to transfer Pokémon to and from that server, which may provide cloning functionality.
On some 3DS firmware versions, this method may be possible in Generations VI and VII as well due to an oversight in the SSL certificate verification process. This hasn't been done in practice however, as by the time this oversight was found, many better ways already existed.
Generation VI
The cloning glitch in Generation VI works much the same as the method in Generation I, by breaking off a trade between two nearby Nintendo 3DS systems connected via infrared connection. Depending on the timing, the first Pokémon may be cloned, the trade may complete, or the Pokémon will be erased. However, the chance of a Pokémon being erased is small and this method is not known to pose any harm to the player's save data. Most Pokémon will clone at about three seconds, although it has been observed that some held items impact the time taken to clone.
Generation VIII
 | This section is incomplete. Please feel free to edit this section to add missing information and complete it. Reason: BDSP |
Curry cloning glitch
If the player encounters a wild Pokémon in Pokémon Camp after making a curry, there is a chance that the Pokémon near the player staring at the wild Pokémon will act like a wild Pokémon, and will be eligible to "re-join" the player. The Pokémon must have a long hitbox (like a tail, or a long body in general) and have a floating idle animation to be eligible for the glitch. Upon re-joining the team, it will be cloned, with some alterations. The Pokémon's game of origin, OT, ID number, Poké Ball, date caught, level caught, and location caught will all be altered to match the player's current status, and it will receive the Curry Connoisseur mark, even if it already has another mark or is not otherwise eligible to receive it. The Pokémon's held item (if any) will also be cloned, as long as the player does not remove it before receiving the Pokémon.
If the player does re-accept the Pokémon into the party, the wild Pokémon will start roaming the player's Pokémon Camp, still with the ellipsis balloon over its head. However, it will disappear once the player leaves Pokémon Camp or makes another curry.
Some of the confirmed Pokémon to be eligible for this glitch are Weezing, Moltres, Steelix, Flygon, Salamence, Giratina, Noivern, and Corviknight.
Generation IX
Smeargle cloning glitch
| This glitch is in need of research. Reason: Info about which Pokémon are eligible to be cloned is still unclear. Also, can a cloned legendary/mythical Pokémon without initially having a HOME tracker value still be used with HOME, or is there a special restriction like there is with BDSP? You can discuss this on the talk page. |
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If the player lures a Smeargle very close to a tree in the Terarium in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, has the wild Smeargle use Sketch to sketch the move Transform, then has the wild Smeargle use Transform, if the player then runs away from the battle, the Smeargle will become a clone of the Pokémon it transformed into, and the player can then re-encounter the clone in a battle to capture it. The clone will disappear from the overworld if the game is saved and restarted if it is not caught.
Much like the curry cloning glitch, most aspects of the original Pokémon will stay the same (including its held item and any ribbons or marks), but info about where and how it was caught, and the info about who caught it will be overwritten. Furthermore, by having the wild Smeargle transform into certain battle-only forms, such as Terastal Form Terapagos or Hero Form Palafin, the clone will be able to sustain these forms outside of battle where they otherwise wouldn't be until the clone is placed in the PC or until the game is restarted.[1]
Stellar Form Terapagos and Ogerpon in its Terastallized State cannot be cloned, as Transform fails against those targets. However, the player can still Terastallize clones of Ogerpon and Terapagos to use said forms.
Using this glitch, it's possible to clone Pokémon obtained through the NPC trades in the BB League Club Room, and since OT and ID data is overwritten upon capturing a clone, but ribbons and marks are copied, the Partner Ribbon is able to be obtained on a Pokémon the game considers to be the players, allowing any OT to be a Pokémon's title.
The Pokémon HOME tracker value will also be copied if the original Pokémon had one, so clones made from this glitch cannot be used there in those cases.
Miraidon/Koraidon cloning glitch
If the player has the ride Miraidon/Koraidon as its Ultimate Mode in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet and catches a Pokémon, then replaces Miraidon/Koraidon with that Pokémon by pressing A+B nearly simultaneously, Miraidon/Koraidon is duplicated by riding Miraidon/Koraidon again.
This can also clone items by having Miraidon hold one before catching the Pokémon and putting the item in the bag, then placing the cloned Miraidon/Koraidon in the party and giving the Miraidon/Koraidon the item, then returning the clone into ride form. When the player goes to the boxes and to Battle Teams, to get into the Miraidon/Koraidon box. The player can remove the item, then returning the Miraidon/Koraidon to ride form to clone the item again.
The player can remove the cloned Miraidon/Koraidon by trying to ride Miraidon/Koraidon twice while the clone is in the party.
References
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