When it comes to one hit KO moves in the Pokemon series, the setup has remained the same since generation 2. They don’t work against any Pokemon of a higher level than your own, and the accuracy is very low, with the move only hitting about the third of the time its used at best.
This makes them a high risk, high reward strategy. You can knock out an opponent instantly if you’re lucky, but you can also lose the whole match just as easily too.
Or at least, that was the intention here. Why? Because as speedrunners and strategists have found out, Pokemon Scarlet and Violet’s RNG is broken to hell and back, just like the rest of the game. As a result, it’s possible to always guarantee these moves will hit, since the RNG check is 100% deterministic. Here’s a clip from Twitter user Anubis showing the insane results:
As you can see, the player in the video is just steamrolling everything. They don’t need to worry about strategy or accuracy. They just pick the right moves in sequence, and BAM! The opponent gets one shot before they can really do anything.
Uh oh.
Pokémon Scarlet/Violet Battle Stadium currently is using the same RNG seed for every battle.
This allows us to choose moves to ensure that OHKO moves such as Sheer Cold always hit! pic.twitter.com/lSlBJr1AF6
— Anubis (@Sibuna_Switch) November 27, 2022
It’s scary really, especially given that the Pokemon in question (Chien-Pao) is already absurdly fast and overpowered to begin with, and that the move in question (Sheer Cold) cannot be resisted by many other Pokemon. So you’ve got a move that almost always cannot be resisted, a Pokemon that can outspeed most of the metagame, and a setup that allows it to use the former with 100% accuracy.
Talk about ridiculously busted!
So watch out folks! There are guaranteed setups to get 1-hit KO moves to always hit now, and it’s possible that some unsavoury types might be using online in the foreseeable future. Be careful around teams using Chien-Pao at all costs.
And let’s hope Game Freak patches the issue too. Cause otherwise, competitive Pokemon play on real hardware could be in a very interesting place come the next World Championships…
Source:
Pokemon Scarlet and Violet is Using the Same RNG Seed For Every Battle (Twitter)