Pokemon Trading Forum Rules

Guides to Trading and Scam-Avoiding

The Quick and Easy Guide on How to Trade Pokémon

This guide is intended for the use of new users to the forum generally (for Wi-Fi anyway) as chances are if you’ve already been around here for a bit, you’ll have done enough trading to know what you’re doing already. That being said, it’s worth reading just for the information on file trading, which is a very important way for trading employed mostly by event collectors.

For those of you that don’t like to read, here’s a summary of the guide. Bear in mind, you won’t get all the information from this that you need, and if you want to file trade you should read the guide properly.

I. Wifi Trading

• Register each others friend codes (found in your pal pad obtained from the lady in the Pokémon Center’s basement) in your pal pads.
  
• Make sure that the Pokémon you want to trade over are in your party, and you have access to wifi with your DS.
  
• Interact with the middle person in the basement of the Pokémon Center and save the game.
  
• Find the person you’re trading with in the WiFi room, or just start searching for participants with the command console.
  
• You will now be in the trading screen, select the Pokémon you’re trading and confirm you’d like to trade them when prompted.
  
• Wahey you’re trading! Now quit and leave the WiFi room when it’s finished. You’re done!

III. File Trading
PokeSav
Step 1 - If you haven’t got your Pokémon on file, and they’re on your game (which will need to be on a flash cart, sorry ). Otherwise someone may put convert your Pokémon if you trade them to them over wifi and they do this, make sure you trust them!

• Using Pokesav, access your save file on the memory stick you play on and open it.
• Locate the Pokémon you’d like to put into file and save where you’d like to on your computer.

Step 2 – No flash cart required now.

• After agreeing what the trade is, send the files you’re trading via email to whom you’re trading with.
• Check your inbox to see if you’ve been sent the files yourself (you may decide it’s necessary to choose who sends the files first beforehand).
• That’s it! File trading is EASY.

PokeCheck
How to Upload Pokemon

Step 1) First, boot up your DS/3DS

Step 2) Go to the Internet settings and when it says "Auto Obtain DNS" hit no and go to the Advanced options. Enter the DNS code you see at Pokecheck.org

Step 3) Go to the GTS in-game. Hit Deposit and you should get error code 13266. If you don't you did it wrong.

Step 4) On Pokecheck, hit "See unclaimed Pokémon from my IP". You will see your Pokemon. Your Pokemon will be on Pokecheck and on your game. Once on your file, hit "Manage my Pokemon"

Step 5) Click on the Pokemon you want the file of. Scroll down and hit "Save as .pkm file"

Step 6) You will now have that file saved on your computer for trade.


How to receive the Pokémon
Step 1) After arranging the trade exchange emails via PM

Step 2) Decide who is sending their file(s) first and if you are going first then send it.

Step 3) The person going last will check their email and if the file is there they will reply with the file they promised.

Step 4) You can download your file now.

We do not condone downloading Pokémon from PokeCheck to your game since this adds a Gift Ribbon on your Pokémon, making it illegitimate

IR-GTS
For a full guide, click here
The GTS is not a good place to trade, from my experience almost everything on there is hacked. Trade at your own risk.

A Trader’s Guide on How To Avoid Getting Scammed or Receiving Hacked Pokémon

This guide is aimed at generally newer traders to our forums here, and will go into the basics of knowing what sort of traders to avoid and what sort of Pokémon to avoid just to make sure you are making the most out of the Pokémon you trade.

One of the first things I think worth mentioning is that the majority of traders here, and I think every single shop, do clone their Pokémon, so if you want to offer your prized starter Pokémon to someone you’ve been training since the start of the game in order to get a shiny Pokémon for example, I would advise that you seek someone out who can clone your Pokémon first before you trade as they will have done the same themselves. The good news is, however, that if you’re offering your Pokémon in a shop, more often than not they will be able to clone for you, so you can just get them cloned there!



Avoiding Scammers

This brings me neatly onto the most common form of scamming on these forums, and that is stealing clones. There is a general guideline here, if the person offering to clone a Pokémon for you have less than 100 posts, then it’s probably worth not letting them clone for you and seeking out someone else instead, no matter how trustworthy they seem. The amount of times I have seen people with 20 or so posts stealing other people’s clones is far too high, and hopefully if you abide by this guideline it will not happen to you.

Another big problem I found myself having originally was with traders claiming ‘All my Pokémon are 100% legit’. My advice is that generally these traders don’t mean to do any harm and to the best of their knowledge their Pokémon might be 100% legit. However it’s worth just asking how they know they’re Pokémon are legit, because quite often they’re just quoting what they’ve been told. Every once in a while though they may be passing off known hacks as legit, and if you find out that anything you’ve been guaranteed legit is hacked it is worth PMing the trader to find out why the error is made, and possibly posting a report in the scam reporting sticky. It is important this is done in order to stop the spreading of hacked Pokémon for everyone.

Another suggestion, if the trade seems too good to be true (like a shiny Deoxys for your Roselia), then it quite possibly is and you should make a decision on it to the best of your ability. Also, if the trader is rushing you to make a deal and seems rather rude, chances are they’re a scammer just trying to do another scam as quickly as possible; and if they’re rude at all they don’t deserve to be traded with as it is. If you are in any way unsure about the trader (low post count, offensive messages, unbelievable deals are some things to be warned of) then reconsider trading or ask for a second opinion from someone you trust. Basically, make sure you think before you do the trade otherwise you could end up disappointed.

One way you can help yourself here, which is mainly trading for rarer Pokémon (shiny’s, events and so on) is to request you get them legit checked first. Due to the sheer amount of trades that go on this should only really be requested when trading rare Pokémon, but there are some people that can check Pokémon for you. For checking events, however, you should seek help from people here because checking events requires a fair bit of knowledge, and a lot of ‘legit checkers’ don’t have any idea what they’re doing. If you need a normal or shiny Pokémon checked however, I’m quite happy to do that for you, but you must check the list of hacked Pokémon first to see if the OT/ID combination of your Pokémon is on there.

Here’s a list of hacked Pokémon that I found getting passed around the forum quite a bit, not so much any more though!



So a general rule about trading, if you’re told a Pokémon is legit, ask the person you’re getting it from how they know that to be true, and make sure you’re satisfied with the answer. If you want your Pokémon cloned, then make sure you get it done by someone trustworthy – so that generally excludes traders who still don’t have 100 posts (sorry to the reasonable ones of you there are out there ). Above all, make sure the Pokémon you receive doesn’t have anything odd about it, because if it does, it’ll probably be a hack and everyone prefers legit Pokémon to hacks in the end. Here’s some useful on what to avoid in a Pokémon.



Avoiding Hacks

This is the most important part, and there are a few telltale things you can just look out for on a Pokémon to make sure it isn’t hacked. Some hacked Pokémon you can only tell are hacked with computer programs and depending on what type of Pokémon you’d like checking there are people that can check Pokémon’s legality for you if you so wish. There is a list of known hackers and hacked Pokémon to avoid in the scam reporting sticky, and you can go one better yourself and make sure the Pokémon you’re receiving doesn’t have the same OT and ID of any Pokémon on this list – because a very large amount of hacks currently circulating around the forums can be found on the list.
Often you’ll be able to tell if a Pokémon is hacked from what you can see in the Pokémon’s summary, here’s a list of some telltale signs of what to look out for when getting your Pokémon.

#1 Place of encounter
This is extremely important for legendary and unique Pokémon, as they mainly can only be obtained in one place only (with the exception of roaming Pokémon). The reason this will be useful for determining hacks will be because a substantial portion of hacked shinies (the most common form of hacked Pokémon) will have been obtained using AR codes to encounter the Pokémon in the wild.

If you’re in doubt of where such Pokémon should have come from Serebii can be a very useful resource on such information for every Pokémon ever available. However, to make this simple, here’s a short list of specific Pokémon to look out for as they could never be encountered more than once in a game by any means:



However, a lot of these Pokémon were obtainable in the third generation games (Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, Fire Red and Leaf Green), so in your fourth generation these will say they ‘arrived at lv. …’ from either Hoenn or Kanto, so in this case it’s impossible to tell if the Pokémon has been hacked just from its location.

#2 Starter Pokémon
This follows easily from number 1. With starter Pokémon, they can either be hatched from breeding or obtained normally at the start of the game from one of the Pokémon professors. The first thing to check here is the pokeball it’s in, due to the way that the Pokémon has to be obtained, it should almost always be in a pokeball – I have seen many a starter Pokémon caught in a master ball, so it can be very easy to tell hacks this way. The only way a starter can be in anything but a pokeball is if it’s either a Birthday Charmander or Birthday Chimchar event Pokémon, which will be in cherish balls.

#3 Level Encountered
This can be useful for determining if quite a lot of the most commonly hacked Pokémon are hacks. For example, almost all legendary Pokémon can only be encountered at specific levels (the exceptions are common event Pokémon like Mew and Jirachi which have so many different events they could be encountered at so many different levels). Of course pal parking Pokémon can make this hard to tell again because the level you see is the level at which the Pokémon was pal parked and this can be pretty varied, but there’s some very easy things to look out for with fourth generation Pokémon. Mainly, check that the Pokémon’s encounter level makes sense. Basically there’s not many Pokémon that can be encountered at level 2 for example, so if you have a ponyta encountered at level 2 it’s hacked, or a golduck encountered at level 90 it’s also hacked. It’s worth noting that Magikarp technically can be encountered at level 100, that’s one which I’ve seen confuse people before, so don’t rule it out yourself. Again, Serebii is a very useful resource for the possible encounter levels of each and every Pokémon in each and every game.

#4 Move-set
This is just as you’d expect it to be. Make sure you check the moveset that your Pokémon has is actually possible for what it is, because if it’s not, it’s hacked. www.serebii.net can be useful for checking this, and 99.9% will give you the information you’re after. But some Pokémon are worth bearing in mind that they have been released as events with specific moves they would otherwise not be able to learn (such as Wish Bagon or Teeter Dance Pichu). However, these events are quite rare, and the chances of you receiving one without even knowing about it are pretty much nil, but it’s worth stressing that it can be a possibility. However, if in doubt, DON’T TRADE! That way, you can’t go wrong.

#5 Ability
Certainly one of the less common things to be out of order with hacked Pokémon, but it is possible. Make sure that the Pokémon has an ability it can actually have; for example the only Pokémon that can have wonder guard is Shedinja, I’ve seen a few hacked Pokémon that know wonder guard which really shouldn’t so just be careful. Obviously wonder guard is not the only case, a grass Pokémon with flame body would be another common example. In some cases a Pokémon will have no ability at all, this is ALWAYS a hack. This sort of thing actually occurs because of one of the programs which is commonly used to make hacks, and that’s all I’m going to say on that.

#6 Contest Stats
Quite often hacked Pokémon have maximum values in all their contest stats, I’m not sure why this is done but it makes it pretty obvious that the Pokémon is hacked. Anyone who’s ever tried to evolve a Feebas into a Milotic will know what I’m talking about, getting a near-max beauty rating before maxing sheen is hard enough, so if you see a Pokémon with max stats in all different categories you can be sure that it’s a hack.

#7 Ribbons
Not many legit Pokémon have more than a full page of ribbons, and quite often hacked Pokémon have got a whole lot more ribbons than that, and they will likely have ribbons that actually aren’t obtainable in-game - such as the classic ribbon which is only available on event Pokémon or the world ribbon.

#8 EV Values
This is a fairly important one, and it’s worth giving a short introduction. Effort Values, or EVs, are used to train Pokémon in specific stats. For every 4 effort points put into a single stat, your Pokémon will gain 1 extra point in that stat. A total of 510 points can be spread out across the stats; the standard way to do it is 252/252/6. EV spreads are not limited to this 252/252/6 EV spread of course as there’s a whole variety of different combinations possible. It’s quite hard to check the effort values of a Pokémon without outside software. However, you can tell quite easily if all the stats have got 255 in each stat (the maximum possible per stat). Use Serebii’s information about each Pokémon’s stats to help you with this, and regard the effect that nature and IVs can have on it – but 252 EV points will be obvious no matter what.

#9 Individual Values – ‘IVs’
For the beginning trainer, it’s possible you won’t have even heard of these. IVs are numbers from 0 to 31 which aid to determining a Pokémon’s stats. In-game, it’s pretty much randomly determined what the IVs will be, unless it is specifically aimed for either by breeding two Pokémon (where certain values will be inherited) or with RNG abuse (something which I will not go into here as it is a little more advanced. Visit Smogon if you’re interested in finding out). Where I’m going with this is about Pokémon with an IV spread of 31/31/31/31/31/31 – I mean that pretty much doesn’t happen. It IS possible to have a Pokémon with flawless IVs, and this is via RNG abuse only (the chances of getting one otherwise are negligible). Another commonly seen IV spread on hacked Pokémon is 0/0/0/0/0/0, or other identical IVs like 12/12/12/12/12/12 etc. so avoid these whenever possible. If you find your Pokémon has flawless (or the former noted IVs), be sure to check everything else properly for any other tell-tale signs of a hack. If you have an AR there is a code you can enter to check the IVs. One way of checking IVs without an AR is via an IV battle. This is simply a process of entering Wi-Fi, requesting a lvl 100 battle in which Pokémon are auto-leveled. From here, you can check the stats of the Pokémon and type them into an IV calculator, the outcome listing the Pokémon’s IVs. A good example of an IV calculator includes Metalkid’s Gaming Resources. This process only works if the Pokémon is UT (or otherwise know it’s exact EV spread).

#10 OT and ID
This is the final thing immediately visible on a Pokémon’s summary which you can use for checking if it’s been hacked or not – and they themselves do not give anything away. The only thing you can do with these is take a look at a list of known hacker IDs and OTs as well as the known hacked Pokémon list which should both be readily available in the scam reporting sticky. Otherwise, there’s not much you can do with that information I’m afraid, except make sure that the ID number seems realistic. An ID number of 00001 or 55555 is probably gonna be hacked, so be careful, but don’t forget that there is a possibility it’s not been changed.

#11 SID
If you are able to check the Pokémon’s SID (and you will have to already have the Pokémon yourself to do this or at least have the owner tell you, when they may lie) then keep an eye out for the signs mentioned above. A lot of event Pokémon have SIDs of 00000 so don’t immediately dismiss this. SIDs like 00001 and 12345 should still be avoided as usual however.

#12 Pal Parked Pokémon
A lot of Pokémon you will see will have been pal parked, there is nothing wrong with that at all and does not affect the Pokémon. One thing you can specifically look at with a pal parked Pokémon is the encounter level. The lowest level of encounter available for a Pal Parked Pokémon is level 5 – eggs hatched at level 5 in Gen III so any levels below this be sceptical about. Encounter levels of 2, 3 and 4 were still possible, but only on the Pokémon encountered right at the start of the game. Pokémon that were met at the pal park at level 1 however, are all hacks and should be avoided.



Hacked Event Pokémon

This is simple enough, and if you’re trading for event Pokémon you’ll probably know all the stuff I’ve said already. Try to use reliable sources such as Bulbapedia, Serebii and Pokémon Secure to check everything about the Pokémon you’re getting is right – if it has a fateful encounter when it shouldn’t, or the right OT but wrong ID, you can tell right away that it’s hacked. Bear in mind no source is perfect, and even these sites are known to make mistakes from time to time, so if you’re unsure it’s worth asking someone who knows their stuff if you’ve got a question (perhaps even ask in this thread, I wouldn’t mind).
Also, you should check this list for a list of Pokémon that were hosted as files on pkmdb (Pokemon Database) and due to the fact they were hosted on this site they now have literally no trading value among serious traders, so these should be avoided at all costs as a lot of people actually consider them hacked.

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That ends the guide for now. I hope you have found it useful Any information you think can be added please let me know via pm, rather than posting below, and I will add it if necessary. Most importantly, let me know of any mistakes immediately as we do not need new traders being taught how to trade badly!


Thanks for reading the guides, hope you found them useful. If you have any questions about the guides, or about the forum in general, you are allowed to post them below now and we'll answer as soon as we can.

Dan

Well this isn't reaaly a question about avoiding hacks but,if I breed one of my hacks with another hack,or legit pokemon,would the egg contain a legit pokemon?

quote DannyB01

quote banana7778

Well this isn't reaaly a question about avoiding hacks but,if I breed one of my hacks with another hack,or legit pokemon,would the egg contain a legit pokemon?

Thanks for the question! It's kind of a blurred line when saying what's a hack when it comes to this. I personally am not bothered, but I know that some people are. Of course, all tests you can do on the pokemon etc. will show that the pokemon is legit, but a lot of people don't like it as it isn't really 100% legit (I'd say it's legal, which is slightly different).

Basically, you should let people know how you got the pokemon if a hack was involved in the process at all.

ok,thanks

quote Pikachu22310

If i shiny egg abuse my pokemon, does that make it a hack?

RNG abusing, no. If you use Action Replay, then yes.

slashtrey

Why are PP/PD Pokemon frowned upon? Are they considered non-legit, or are they unfair?

thx 4 the help but im still kinda confused, only on how i get to the wifi room