What Are Rain Ticks?

Rain Ticks refer to the RNG advances that occur when Rain or Thunderstorm are the active weather condition. The advances are used to randomly place raindrops on screen. Despite the sheer speed of RNG advances caused by wet weather, the number of advances remains predictable through proper calibration. We will perform this calibration using the Advanced Settings section in the main window.

For accuracy and stability, calibrate your Rain Ticks using encounters that spawn in a single step. Each step taken in grass causes a specific number of Rain Ticks, which varies based on location. The number of steps required to trigger a Hidden encounter is listed in the Step column of the search result table.

Rain Tick Calibration

1. Position yourself optimally (see Figure 2 for a visual demonstration), then change the weather to anything that is NOT Rain/Thunderstorm. Check the current weather on your map, then save and reboot the game.
2. Immediately open the X Menu to pause the game once you enter the overworld. Identify your seed and calibrate your NPC count as usual. Stay within either the main X Menu or the Pokémon party list once you are done calibrating. Close the MenuCloseTimeline subwindow and verify that your NPC count has been entered into the main window.
3. Verify that both Consider Menu Close? and Holding Direction? are checked.
4. Place a Pokémon with No Guard, Illuminate, or Arena Trap into the lead slot of your party.
5. Change the system clock so the weather is back to Rain or Thunderstorm in the area. Verify this by opening the map. Save and reboot the game, and as before, pause the game by opening the menu immediately after entering the overworld.
6. You should now have correct positioning, weather condition, calibrated NPC count, and a lead Pokémon with an ability that boosts the likelihood of spawning a hidden encounter.
7. On owoow, set your weather condition back to Rain/Thunderstorm.
8. In the Advanced Settings section, check the Raining/Thunderstorming? checkboxes. For the calibration, set the Rain Ticks value to 0.
9. Open the Pokémon party list and identify your current seed. This will set your current advances to 0 which is important for calibration purposes.
10. Back out of the Pokémon party list to enter the main X Menu. Hold a direction on your joystick toward a clear path through the grass.
11. Unpause the game by pressing B while holding a direction to hopefully trigger a hidden encounter.
12. If an encounter was triggered, quickly initiate the encounter before it despawns. If your encounter does not spawn in a single step, did not spawn at all, or you were not able to run to it in time, reboot the game and try again.
13. Capture the Pokémon and inspect the IVs using a calculator (e.g. Serebii or Showdown Teambuilder). Enter the IVs into the search filters of owoow. Change the species inside the Encounter Settings to match the Pokémon you caught if necessary.
14. Under Advanced Settings, click the Calculate Rain Ticks button. If you did this correctly, you should see a result pop up. Enter the calibrated value into the Rain Ticks field. You should expect to see a Rain Tick value of 20 or less in most cases.

The calibration fields (Consider Menu Close? / Holding Direction? / Rain Ticks) account for the advances consumed when leaving the party list and closing the X Menu. Make sure you have the correct boxes checked; the search result table uses these checkboxes to calculate the exact frame on which to close the party list and spawn your target Pokémon.

The recommended method for advancing the RNG state is to perform all advances in the X Menu. This can be done using wet weather menuing and attack animations. These methods advance the RNG state slowly but offer the highest consistency between attempts.

• The more time you spend on the overworld, the more inaccurate your previous calibration will be. This is because the spawned Pokémon wander, which means they can despawn, run into you, or walk into a position that causes extra advances when you finally attempt the RNG manipulation. Spending even a few seconds in the overworld is enough to ruin your previous calibration efforts.
• If you freshly boot into the game while positioned in the grass and immediately open the X Menu, the spawned overworld Pokémon will not start moving for a while. You should always immediately pause the game if you reboot while searching for seeds.
• Unfortunately, options for advancing with the menu open are limited and slow. It may be worth investing in a controller with turbo capabilities.

In this example, a Shiny, Weather Mark Elekid appears in 2,856 advances. The calibrated NPC count is 4 and the current Rain Tick value is 20. Holding a direction when closing the X Menu is mandatory for Rain/Thunderstorm targets as this helps to keep the Rain Tick value as consistent as possible between attempts.

Step-by-Step

1. Ensure the Consider Menu Close? and Holding Direction? checkboxes are checked, and verify that your NPC count is calibrated correctly.
2. Advance towards your target using wet weather menuing or attack animations until you are roughly 100-300 advances away. Open the Pokémon party list.
3. Reidentify your seed and search for your target again. You should be on the Pokémon party list, not a Pokémon summary page! Use attack animations to reach the exact target frame. Each L3 button input on the party list advances the RNG state by +1 (100 inputs = 100 advances).
• When you are under 100 advances, you can consider unticking the Filters Enabled? checkbox and clicking Search!. This will generate the next 100 frames and allow you to see the predicted attack animations corresponding to each frame until you reach your target.
4. You are now ready to perform the hidden RNG manipulation. Back out to the main X Menu and hold a direction on the joystick toward your clear path in the grass.
5. Unpause the game by pressing B. This will cause the player to take steps in the grass, triggering the hidden encounter. This should appear as a speech bubble with a red !.
6. If you planned to swap out your lead Pokémon for a Synchronize lead, you can do so now if you open the X Menu right away.
7. Quickly initiate the encounter before it despawns and verify the result matches expectations. Spawned hidden encounters disappear within a few seconds.