Pokémon is no stranger to item duplication glitches, and players have already discovered some big ones in Scarlet and Violet. While an earlier version of the exploit required precise button press timing and a lot of hassle, a new and improved version lets players endlessly multiply their rarest items super fast.
The newest form of Pokémon Scarlet and Violet’s duplication glitch was seemingly first shared by German YouTuber DrWater yesterday. British Pokémon Youtuber BLAINES has since gone through and explained how the trick works in detail. Like a previous version of the exploit, it revolves around giving a held item to your Koraidon or Miraidon legendaries and then swapping them with a freshly caught Pokémon from the wild. When done right, the Pokémon and its held item—whether a Tera Shard, Ability Patch, or other rare curio—will be duplicated.
But instead of having to continually swap out the legendaries with new wild Pokémon, a faster version of the glitch lets you simply keep moving around Koraidon or Miraidonn in your boxes to endlessly multiply the item they’re holding. Here’s exactly how it works:
Make sure Box 1 has an empty space
Turn Koriadon/Miraidon into battle form and add to your party
Give it the item you want to duplicate
Press the plus button to ride and then again to dismount
Put Koriadon/Miraidon into battle mode again
Catch a wild Pokémon
Select add it to your party
Choose the Koriadon/Miraidon slot
Press the A and B buttons almost simultaneously but with the A button press coming just slightly before
Choose place the item in your bag
Press the plus button to ride and then again to dismount
Open Box 1 and replace the caught Pokémon with the cloned Koriadon/Miraidon
Open your bag and give the cloned Koriadon/Miraidon an item to duplicate
Select the cloned Koriadon/Miraidon from your battle party and choose “return it to ride form”
Open up Box 1 again
Press the X button twice to go to Team 1
Press L once to open the box with the Koriadon/Miraidon holding the duplicated item
Select it and choose “Put item away”
Repeat steps 12 through 16 to keep duplicating the held item
In addition to being much quicker, this version of the glitch also cuts down on the need to deal with cloned Pokémon, constantly catch new ones, or try to repeatedly nail the timing on the A and B button presses. And once you get it working, you can start maxing out an item in mere minutes, at least until Game Freak patches it out.
how gameFreak intended for us to grind 50 tera shards per each pokemon's tera type you want to have changed #PokemonScarletViolet #NintendoSwitch pic.twitter.com/UZs7gBQisF
— WeedleTwineedle (@WeedleTwineedle) November 29, 2022
The trick is also a major deal for Scarlet and Violet’s Tera Raid economy. It takes 50 Tera Shards to change the Tera Form of your Pokémon, but Raid battles only give out a few, even at higher difficulties. Once you’ve got a few of the type you want, the duplication glitch will effectively let you bypass that entire grind, which has its own share of problems between lackluster NPC allies and occasional disconnects in online multiplayer
How long this particular duplication glitch hangs around remains to be seen. But Game Freak has plenty of performance-related bugs and nightmare fuel glitches to tackle in the meantime.
Update 12/2/22 9:58 a.m. ET: Nintendo patched out the above cloning glitch in the latest patch, however the exploit apparently still works if you already completed it at least once and therefore already have a cloned Koraidon or Miraidon.
⚠️ Clarification: The method of obtaining your cloned Koraidon / Miraidon through the A + B trick has been patched *BUT* if you still have your cloned one from v1.0.1 you can keep doing the item glitch from this video even on v1.1!https://t.co/87d8IWukr9
— Aero (@ActualAero) December 2, 2022