there are people out there that will scam you out of your hard earned Pokemon or annihilate your game with a corrupted Pokemon. The point of the matter is, you have to start covering your butt in situations where you could be scammed, and this helpful little faq will try and cover some easy tips and tricks to raise your awareness level when it comes to the GTS trading. Please note that friend code sharing IS NOT allowed on Nsider, and any talk about it is basically asking for a nice, long trip to ban vile.
Seven Tips to Protect you From Getting Ripped
With that being said, there are a couple of things that you obviously should be aware of if you're looking for certain Pokemon. For one, except in Japan, Darkrai and Shaymin are either going to be hacked or obtained from that stupid glitch that was left in early Japanese copies of the game. And yes, you may really want one, because they can be some excellent Pokemon, but please trade at your own risk. Nine times out of ten they'll either be hacked or cloned, which in either case is a pretty bad offense. In the rare occurrence that you manage to snag one from a Japanse trainer that had an early copy, then, well, good for you.
Two, right from the Gamefaqs Pokemon Trainer Faq "All BADLY hacked Pokemon have a Blue Pokeball in the normal spot". Simple and clean, stay away from Pokemon that have a blue Pokeball. This is easy to spot, easy to avoid, and will save you a ton of heartache in the long run. Following this little trick, you should be able to spot any and all hacked Pokemon on the GTS. Finding out cloned Pokemon is a bit different, because they are unfortunately missing this little marker.
I hade to personally do a bit of rewording here, but just to clear things up, the Blue Pokeball appears if the hacker has made a mistake in the process. The game automatically sets it to appear as a part of the actual development. Good hackers can get around this.
Three, please, please, please avoid topics here on Nsider saying that they'll trade a specific Pokemon with a move that it doesn't have the ability to obtain. How do you find that out if you're being duped? Simply go to this link, which will take you directly to the Serebii DP Pokedex.
https://www.serebii.net/index2.shtml
It's pretty straightforward, simply go to the Pokemon located in the dex that you want, and bring up its move list. This can be found AT THE BOTTOM of the page in the Pokedex entry, and will give you a comprehensive list of every stupid move that the Pokemon can learn by TM, HM, breeding, or leveling. And no, it won't give hacked, simply because they can put on anything that they want. For example, a Spiritomb can't have Wonder Guard as its ability. That would make it invincible, and the game developers wouldn't do that even if they were paid to. Or would they…
Four, you do know you can see the stats of a Pokemon before you trade them after you recieved them, correct? Make use of it, please. If someone is relatively new to hacking, or they're just really trying to screw up your game, they're going to give you a Pokemon with stats severely out of the norm on that given Pokemon. For example, a Pokemon will never have a 999 Hp stat. Ever. Spotting things like that is easy, so if you miss something like that, the only person to blame is yourself. If you go to that link that I put above, you can check the max stats a Pokemon can have if they have a beneficial nature with perfect IVs. Stats will never go above that, and to be quite honest, most of the time they shouldn't even reach that unless the person had some sort of a miracle.
Five, be a where of the old shiny duping trick. Unless stated specifically by a reputable Nsider (common sense says if you see a Goomba or Cappy fly out of the blue with zero posts, stay away. This isn't meant to say that they're bad, but you know, they definitely have bad rap), NEVER trade for a shiny. It will almost always be a guaranteed hack, and to make matters worse, most shiny hack codes can and will screw your game. Bad. If you really want a shiny of a Pokemon that bad, just sit and breed eggs. Then you'll find out how much you really want it.
Six, certain rarer Pokemon that require trading (such as Dusknoir) will be something that I like to call bait. Hackers that get a kick out of screwing up people's games will primarily use these Pokemon because you have no other way to obtain them outside of trading. How to avoid that? Simply either do the trade in real life, or try your best to go with a good Nsider. I can't really say much more than that, always check the Pokeball, and always check the stats. If it's shiny, that should be a dead give away.
Seven. This is the doozy on the list, because to be quite honest, it's incredibly easy to fall for unless you check the Pokeball. If you do that, then you can easily avoid the consequences that come with this. Just what is it, though? Simply put, hackers hacking Pokemon that are perfectly legit in all forms except the hacking. These Pokemon will have regular stats, imperfect natures, and nothing else that makes them special. The problem is, they still are hacked, and if they are hacked, you can wind up having your game screwed up if the code's bad. Inexperienced hackers often run into synthing problems, which basically means that they screw up in the creation process of the Pokemon. The game then notices that it's bad, and proceeds to have its data corrupted. There's really nothing you can do once you receive it except release the Pokemon and pray that you don't wind up with data corruption or what's worse, the bad egg.
So You've Gotten a Hack From the GTS, What's There to Do to Protect Yourself?
For what it's worth, the points that I've brought up so far will teach you how to avoid getting scammed with a Pokemon that could potentially screw your game. Now comes the tough part. What do you do if you've been given a corrupted Pokemon? For one, get rid of it immediately. I can't stress this enough. The longer that the Pokemon is in your game, the more your game will be corrupted. For some hacks, they'll kill your game immediately. For others, it really depends. Some hackers are vicious and program the Pokemon to basically implode as soon as they pop up in your game. This can have a wide variety of affects, because since you are dealing with the game's programming, the possibilities are endless. For others, they'll corrupt when put in your party. The most vicious Pokemon hack known as of now is one that will render your game unusable. It kind of works like a ball of yarn. When you open the Pokemon's stats screen, the game will turn white. It's all down hill from there. There are other consequences, but for now, let's just go over getting rid of it.
Some people purposely keep the Pokemon in a box to segregate it, which in some hacks is the best way to go. For others, releasing it will blot it out from your game, which is the best way to go unless it's a really bad hack. After some time has passed, you may end up with a bad egg. You really have no choice but to just keep it in a box, not hatching it at all. Hatching it results in several things, but the new kick of choice is your game imploding.
Clones on the GTS -- Rip Off City
Now that that's out of the way, let's go over the dreaded cloning. Cloning is often times incredibly hard to detect, because in a way, you're basically receiving an exact copy of the original Pokemon. That's precisely where the problem comes in, though. There's now two of that Pokemon. Some people view it as unethical, others think of it as a good way to make good Pokemon spread around the market. To put your bleeding hearts to rest, cloned Pokemon are illegal on Nsider. Period. Just how do you detect a cloned Pokemon, though? The real problem is you can't. If the Nsider you're trading with is reputable, then you should be able to easily enough get a fair Pokemon. If they aren't, then you're kind of taking a big risk. Some people like to clone TMs, Pokeballs, and other things as well (CBs, CPs, FBs, etc.). As you could guess, this is strictly against the rules as well.
To tell you the truth, there are a couple of common sense things that you can do though to spot a clone. For one, if you see a valuable Pokemon trading for literally nothing, it's either going to be a hack or a clone. Here's where the fun starts. If the Pokemon looks legit, and doesn't have anything overly special about it (for instance, 31 IVs in every stat basically mean horrendously good luck or most likely, a hack.), then it will more often than not be a clone. Having clones has not proven to be harmful to the games themselves, but they're strongly looked down upon in the gaming community. Two, if you have good reason to believe the person you're trading with is trading you a clone, don't do it. Nine times out of ten you'll be the one who gets the bad deal.
