Another Workaround for the Bug Causing Pokemon Holding Items to Despawn

Suggestions and Contributions
1

The bug causing wild pokemon to despawn while holding items, if there is no one currently logged on in the area, will most likely continue to plague the game for a long time. Of course, this bug affects players that shiny hunt the most; as players who find a shiny must log out to hold onto the shiny for a friend/potential buyer.

There are 4 ways (that I can think of off the top of my head) that shiny hunters combat this problem, each with their own small issues: Thief/Covet/Knock Off/Magician, Trawl Orbs, Pickpocket and Cupid’s Bow + Magician.

  • The Thief/Covet/Knock Off/Magician strategy requires you to have a very low level pokemon in your team utilizing one of these moves or using this ability, so you don’t KO the pokemon holding the item. Dedicating an entire team slot for this is limiting and you run the risk of them fainting to just about anything.

  • The Trawl Orb strategy requires you to grind out a one-time use item, which also needs to be used before the wild pokemon has picked up an item. This only works if a shiny spawns when you initially enter a new floor and don’t move. If you accidentally move when entering a floor or a shiny spawns after you’ve moved, a trawl orb won’t guarantee that they don’t have an item.

  • The Pickpocket strategy requires you to have a pokemon with this ability on your team get hit by a damaging move that makes contact. Assuming the pokemon holding an item has a damaging contact move, this strategy is fairly easy to use, although it also requires you to dedicate an entire team slot for it.

  • The Cupid’s Bow + Magician strategy, in my opinion, is currently the best way to deal with this issue, but this strategy requires you to have a pokemon with the ability, which there are not many of, and a Cupid’s Bow, which is a seasonal item that is only obtainable once a year. You also get to see a pokemon’s gender, which is pretty convenient.

It is annoying enough that this bug even exists. I certainly understand that if fixing the bug was easy, it would have been done a very long time ago. However, I believe the current workarounds are not good enough.

Now for the main point of my post; we need an item similar to the Cupid’s Bow; an item that won’t KO enemies (leaves them at 1 hp or maybe just doesn’t even deal damage) and steals away any items they might be holding. Dedicating a single bag slot isn’t too limiting either. I believe this would be the best workaround for the bug. Of course, this would make the other strategies kind of pointless, including the Cupid’s Bow + Magician strategy, as you could just run attract on a party member that you don’t plan on normally using, for infatuation. This would also heavily de-value the Cupid’s Bow, but I don’t believe that an item that is only available one time a year should be “meta”. I also believe that an item like this should be easily obtainable, as newer players basically don’t have a way to work around the bug.

My idea assumes that an item like this could even exist. I don’t see why it couldn’t, but I’m not going to pretend like I know anything about the game’s limitations either. Also, this whole idea would only really benefit shiny hunters, but I can’t think of this bug being too big of an issue when shinies aren’t involved.

I’m certainly not the best or smartest player, so my post is probably missing information and has plenty of inaccuracies. I’d appreciate it if anyone would correct me if I’m wrong in any way.

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Wasn’t there an item in the other PMD games where you would throw it at a Pokemon and it would make them drop an item?

If that doesn’t exist that could be a possible solution in my opinion.

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I haven’t played the other PMD games enough to know, but that would probably work if it was infinite use and wouldn’t KO/damage any pokemon.

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my question is why can wild pokemons even pick up items to begin with?
like i get the “it was a thing in the originals”, but like. is that actually a good reason to have these problems?
is copying a vauge niche feature in the orginal games that people wouldn’t even notice if it wasn’t there really worth all this work and issues?

like, i seen a similar issue in another game, in that game 90% of the game gliches and bugs are casued by the jump button, when normally jumping is only used twice in the game, why is the jump feature even there? they gone patches after paches adding invisible walls, rolling out bug fixes to avoid you deloading the game while jumping during a cutscene, fixing hitboxes to prevent you to wall climb…
when they could have fixed the whole mess in a few minutes by just removing the jump feature and adding a ladders or ramps in the 2 places where you need to jump.

this seems to be pretty much the same thing.
i don’t get it. just get rid of the feature of wilds picking up stuff off the ground while idling,
it’s not like that would prevent bosses from holding items and prevent boss drops since it wouldn’t stop pokemons to spawn holding something, just not pick up off the ground.
this seem like a pretty convoluted mess to fix something that dosen’t need to exist :eeveesad:

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I think it’s safe to assume that for all the problems it causes, the feature won’t be going anywhere. I do agree that it is odd to have such a buggy mechanic persist for so long, especially since it really doesn’t have too much of a purpose, gameplay wise.

I think the best we can reasonably hope for is an easy and effective workaround.

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