The duplication glitch that allowed players to clone Pokemon in Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl has been fixed in the 1.1.2 update.
Update: It has been discovered that the duplication glitch is still usable in version 1.1.2. Here’s how.
Pokemon BDSP required an uncharacteristically large day-one patch in order to run properly, but the game was still rife with various issues. Among those troubles were a number of different ways to duplicate Pokemon and items. This could be done individually in Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, or even through cloning entire boxes of Pokemon.
Before players could really normalize cloning rare Pokemon, the Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl version 1.1.2 hotfix was rolled out alongside several other changes. Here’s what was in the update and what we know about duplication bugs in the game at this point.
Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl update 1.1.2 fixed a handful of softlocks and shut down some of the different methods for cloning Pokemon.
Nintendo published official patch notes for Pokemon BDSP version 1.1.2, which were quite vague in regards to what was actually changed. The patch notes only listed two fixes:
The “some issues that would prevent the game from progressing” pointed to some softlocks that prevented players from advancing in the story or becoming trapped. The most notorious example of this came in the Snowpoint City gym where players could become trapped between snowballs and unable to leave. There were also several actual bugs that left players stuck in certain cutscenes.
The “issues” that were fixed to create “more pleasant gameplay” is code for removing the various glitches that allowed players to duplicate Pokemon and items in Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl version 1.1.1. Players were also able to effectively sacrifice a shiny Pokemon in order to transfer its shiny status to another Pokemon.
Another notable glitch that was fixed was the ability to use the Surf HM on land. This allowed players to access areas of the map that they shouldn’t be able to, which in one spot allows players to access Shaymin. At the moment, Shaymin is meant to be in an area that can only be accessed for an event but players were able to access this area and catch it, making the mythical Pokemon available to all.
After the 1.1.2 update, it is no longer possible to duplicate Pokemon in Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl.
Though players have looked for different ways to downgrade their version of Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl to 1.1.1, once players open the game and have a save on version 1.1.2, they are no longer able to play their save on an earlier version of the game. No workaround has been discovered to this point.
The only hypothetical way that a player could downgrade is by owning a physical copy of the game, uninstalling the game before opening it in version 1.1.2, finding another person who owned the game but still had the 1.1.1 version installed, and using the “Match Version with Local Users” feature in the Nintendo Switch’s home menu. It’s almost impossible to have all these variables align, however.
At the moment, there aren’t any known duplication or cloning bugs in Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl version 1.1.2. It’s possible some may be discovered, but none are known as of this writing.
Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl players on version 1.1.1 were able to duplicate Pokemon using a bug in the game’s menus.
Pokemon BDSP had a bug that allowed players to open menus twice, which would follow through on the player’s action in both. Doing this, players were able to move Pokemon from one box to another in one menu instance while leaving them in place on the other. After then closing all the menus, the Pokemon would be copied into the new box while being left in their original spots as well.
New SUPER FAST Box Cloning Exploit in Pokemon Brilliant Diamond Shining Pearl
The issue seemingly stemmed from using the ZR and ZL trigger buttons as the “confirm” button. While that duplication glitch allowed people to freely clone and farm rare items in Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, it is no longer possible to do so with the 1.1.2 update.
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