Legendary Bird Hunting (CFW)

A guide for using SysBot.NET - Moarencounterbots by Lusamine to hunt overworld legendary birds in LGPE.
Introduction

Moarencounterbots is a branch of SysBot.NET that provides extra bot functionality in Switch Pokémon games. In Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee, we can use this program to automate the process of hunting overworld legendary birds (Articuno, Zapdos & Moltres) as we can predict when a bird will spawn by reading the RNG seed after leaving the Mt. Moon Pokémon Center.

Important - From here it is assumed that you are using a Custom Firmware (CFW) Switch console running Atmosphere. This program is not intended to be used on emulator and cannot be used on retail hardware. You must also progress the game story enough to have access to overworld legendary birds.
Getting Started
You will need:
Installation Instructions
  • Download .NET 9.0 SDK and run the setup wizard until complete. This is a required program dependency.
  • Download SysBot.NET - Moarencounterbots and extract the contents of the download to a clean, empty folder inside a known location on your computer.
  • Download the latest sys-botbase release and extract the atmosphere folder to the root of your Switch SD card.
  • Put the SD card back into the console, then reboot the console into your chosen CFW environment (SysCFW recommended).

A pre-compiled version of Moarencounterbots is provided in the download links above, and is considered fine for 99% of people. To use the latest commits of the program you will need to compile and configure it yourself using the guide directly below. Do not proceed until you have a functional build of Moarencounterbots, either through using the download link or compiling the application yourself.

Moarencounterbots build guide!

Configurations & Setup

Setup instructions for Moarencounterbots can be found here.

In this guide will be using a bot routine called EncBotBirdWatchLGPE. This section will cover the information you will need to know to run this bot.

EncBotBirdWatchLGPE Overview
What is EncBotBirdWatchLGPE?

This is a routine that leaves and re-enters the Pokémon Center outside Mt. Moon, while constantly monitoring the RNG state to determine if and when a legendary bird will spawn. We can use this method to effectively hunt for shiny and/or low level legendary birds.

We can only determine when a bird will spawn, nothing else can is predictable. This means we can not set search filters for specific IVs, Shininess or Level. These values are not generated in a way that can be controlled with RNG manipulation.


Initial Bot Setup

By default SysBot.NET is pre-configured to be used with Scarlet/Violet. Follow these instructions to configre the bot into LGPE mode.

  1. After compiling the application, open SysBot.exe, then close it to generate a file named config.json.
  2. Open config.json with a text editor (e.g Notepad), then change the Mode value to 100.
  3. Save the changes and open SysBot.exe again, you should now see in the header that the program has been configured for LGPE.
  4. Type the local IP address of your Switch console into the empty field. You are now ready to configure EncBotBirdWatchLGPE.

Read through the sys-botbase for general usage & setup instructions. If you are already familiar with using SysBot.NET this should be enough to get started, otherwise continue reading.


Figure 1 - SysBot.NET overview

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SysBot.NET has 3 tabs labeled Bots, Hub & Logs, and they all come with their respective uses, described below with images.

Figure 2 - Hub tab overview

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The Hub tab is where you will conigure the settings of the bot and set your desired bot routine, for EncBotBirdWatchLGPE, do the following:

  1. Scroll to the EncounterLGPE dropdown menu and set your conditions, such as the amount of frames to search through. Clicking the fields will provide a short description about what they do.
  2. Scroll to the StopConditions dropdown menu, here you will decide the conditions which will stop the bot if it finds a result. You can filter for Species, IVs, and/or Shininess if you wish.
  3. If you only wish to filter for shiny birds, set StopOnAllBirdsLGPE to FALSE. You can also filter for specific IVs and/or species, but this may take a long time to find a result.

Figure 3 - Logs tab overview

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The Logs tab is where we monitor what is going on in-game, it shows us what the bot is doing in real-time and will contain all the information you need to know, such as when a legendary bird has spawned in the overworld, or if it's a shiny variant.

Figure 4 - Bots tab overview

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The Bots tab is where we add bots, select the EncBotBirdWatch option in the dropdown menu, type your switch IP into the field and click Add to add a new instance of EncBotBirdWatch.

With all the basic setup instructions & bot overview out of the way, it's time hunt some legendary birds!

Getting To Work

An example of starting the bot and finding an overworld legendary bird.

The goal is to spawn the legendary bird of choice in the overworld. we will use the bot to predict when a bird will spawn and to advance towards our target. It will then output the result and pause the game using the Home button so that you can resume the game and capture it.

The bot assumes that you are standing directly outside the PokeCenter at Mt. Moon, have defeated the static spawns of the legendary bird trio, and have defeated the Elite 4 to access sky spawns.

Shiny Hunting Strategy

To get optimal chances of finding a shiny legendary bird you should capture every bird that spawns of your chosen species. Upon capturing a Pokemon your shiny odds will increase for the next Pokemon that spawns of the same species.

For this reason it's recommended to have StopOnAllBirdsLGPE set to TRUE, you can then chain capture your chosen species for boosted shiny odds.

In this example we will be looking for any legendary bird at Mt. Moon Pokécenter, you can be more specific with the filters if you wish, such as filtering for a specific or shiny bird.


Figure 5 - Game Setup

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Once you are stood outside Mt. Moon and have your bot configured properly, click Start All and head over to the Logs tab.

Figure 6 - Bot Started

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The bot should now begin hunting for birds by exiting the PokeCenter then checking your RNG states. If you are having trouble exiting/entering the PokeCenter consider adjusting your timing settings.

Figure 7 - Target Found!

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The bot will now begin waiting for your bird to spawn in the overworld. Once it detects the encounter, it will pause the game if it meets your stop conditions. Otherwise it will continue looking for results.

Figure 8/9 - Result Found!

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We found a Zapdos in the overworld! Time to catch it to boost the shiny odds of the next Zapdos we find.

Figure 10 - Result captured!

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You can now repeat this process and farm as many birds as you desire!

Disclaimer - This method does not guarantee shiny results, only the species. You may need to run the bot for a long time if you are specifically seeking a shiny target or a specific bird.