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How to reset the RTC in GBA Pokémon games after replacing the battery

Note: I put this in NDS - Tutorials since a DS is required to do this, even though it is for GBA games. There are methods to do this without a DS, but that's not what I'm covering here since this is probably the easiest way to do this if you do have a DS and a Slot-1 flashcard.



When you replace the battery in GBA Pokémon games to fix the RTC clock that unfortunately isn't enough to fully get the clock working again. The RTC will begin again from 0 with the new battery while your save will remember that it was many days further than that when the save was created. In this tutorial I'll explain one method of resetting the save's RTC start time back to 0 so that your clock events will start working again.

For this method you will need:
  • A GBA Pokémon game
  • A Nintendo DS or DS Lite
  • A Slot-1 DS flashcard
  • pkmn-chest
Now, lets begin:
  1. If you haven't already done so, download pkmn-chest from the link above and copy it to your flashcard
  2. Turn on your DS, open pkmn-chest, and insert your GBA Pokémon game
  3. From pkmn-chest's top menu choose "Slot-2: [whichever game you're using]"
    1.png
  4. Press "X", then click on your trainer's name
    2.png
  5. Scroll down to "RTC initial time:", click A, then type "0" and press enter four times to set the day, hour, minute, and second all to "0"
    3.png
    • Note: If you care about the time being accurate you can adjust so that the time matches in game, you'll want the day to be "0", and by moving the hour back by one hour/minute/second it will move the in game time forward by one hour/minute/second or vise versa
  6. Scroll down to "RTC elapsed time:" and set this to all "0" too
    4.png
  7. Back out of the trainer menu and click "Exit"
    5.png
  8. You can say "Discard" to changes to the chest, but say "Save" to changes to the cartridge
    6.png
  9. You're done, time based events will work again!
 
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Click to expand...
Nice. I guess we could call this a programming oversight in the 3rd gen Pokémon games. If the initial time is reset to zero (and the "battery has run dry" message is triggered) the games should set a flag in the save – and do such a reset automatically once a new battery is detected.

That said, I hope my batteries will last for the next years… and I hope to remember pkmn-chest when they give up.

Fixed a flaw in the games. Thanks for this.
 
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Another option (arguably the most technically correct one) is to use a cheat device or save editor* to enable the clock reset flag and variable, then boot the game and press L+B+Select on the title screen to use the official clock setting tool

* Full disclosure - I contributed this feature to PkHeX a year ago or so :)
 
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OMG THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS. It has been such a saga of trying to figure this out (from trying to fix the berry glitch by connecting it to XD which actually doesn’t work, then FR/LG/E but still didn’t work b/c of this RTC issue aaaaaa). I wanted to cry seeing my berry trees growing!!! But ok, now there’s a different issue, which I haven’t found much people talking about and I wanted to ask you if you had found a fix for this also, or anything. So the berries grow, but now the other daily events don’t work (Lilycove Lottery, berry gifts) and I saw on a Reddit thread that someone kind of mentions this issue:

r/pokemon/comments/lo4i7n/internal_battery_replacement_pokémon_emerald/

“What I have found is that, in order to get time events WORKING AGAIN, you will have to wait for 999 DAYS: In Pacifidlog Town there's this guy that will give you a TM based on the frendship of your Pokémon every 7 days. Until you replace the battery, if you speak to him, he will tell you to wait for 999 days, however after replacing the battery the countdown will begin on 999 instead of 7!”

It seems like if I restarted my game, time-based events should work again but I don’t want to lose my save data, which is why I found your tutorial and pkmn chest EXTREMELY helpful. But then I also ran into this issue (as I mentioned, the berries grow but other daily events don’t work), and although my elderly gentleman doesn’t tell me I have to wait 999 days, he tells me I need to wait 140 days (in my copy of Sapphire) and 127 days (in my Ruby), which is not forever, but I wonder if waiting will actually even work. I did mess around with the RTC some more and got the days down to 8 in Ruby but I don’t particularly know what I’m doing so it feels like I just lucked out lol. (I inputted the RTC initial time as like 410 days and the RTC elapsed time at smth like 380 days. I wasn’t sure if I had to set it all forward past 366 days to not encounter the original berry glitch. But yeah I’m super confused about how to properly manipulate either of the RTC values LOL. I’m not even sure if changing the RTC value will bring back the daily events??)

H e l p xD and THANK YOU <3
 
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amanpanman said:
OMG THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS. It has been such a saga of trying to figure this out (from trying to fix the berry glitch by connecting it to XD which actually doesn’t work, then FR/LG/E but still didn’t work b/c of this RTC issue aaaaaa). I wanted to cry seeing my berry trees growing!!! But ok, now there’s a different issue, which I haven’t found much people talking about and I wanted to ask you if you had found a fix for this also, or anything. So the berries grow, but now the other daily events don’t work (Lilycove Lottery, berry gifts) and I saw on a Reddit thread that someone kind of mentions this issue:

r/pokemon/comments/lo4i7n/internal_battery_replacement_pokémon_emerald/

“What I have found is that, in order to get time events WORKING AGAIN, you will have to wait for 999 DAYS: In Pacifidlog Town there's this guy that will give you a TM based on the frendship of your Pokémon every 7 days. Until you replace the battery, if you speak to him, he will tell you to wait for 999 days, however after replacing the battery the countdown will begin on 999 instead of 7!”

It seems like if I restarted my game, time-based events should work again but I don’t want to lose my save data, which is why I found your tutorial and pkmn chest EXTREMELY helpful. But then I also ran into this issue (as I mentioned, the berries grow but other daily events don’t work), and although my elderly gentleman doesn’t tell me I have to wait 999 days, he tells me I need to wait 140 days (in my copy of Sapphire) and 127 days (in my Ruby), which is not forever, but I wonder if waiting will actually even work. I did mess around with the RTC some more and got the days down to 8 in Ruby but I don’t particularly know what I’m doing so it feels like I just lucked out lol. (I inputted the RTC initial time as like 410 days and the RTC elapsed time at smth like 380 days. I wasn’t sure if I had to set it all forward past 366 days to not encounter the original berry glitch. But yeah I’m super confused about how to properly manipulate either of the RTC values LOL. I’m not even sure if changing the RTC value will bring back the daily events??)

H e l p xD and THANK YOU <3
Click to expand...
Hmm, it's been a while since I worked on pkmn-chest but if I remember correctly "RTC Initial Time" is what the RTC was at when you started your save file and "RTC Elapsed Time" is what the RTC was at when you last saved.

I did a bit of testing and it looks like lowering the "RTC Initial Time" (wrap around to 65535 to go below zero, and you just need to change the first number, you can press enter to skip the next three) reduces the amount of days the gentleman wants you to wait as you're making the game think you started your save a longer time ago, I'm not sure the affect this has on other RTC things though. When I first moved it to 0 that got the gentleman to give me the TM but seemed to be triggering the berry glitch so I went to 65535 and then just tried going down a hundred or so a few times and after a couple tries it appears that berries are growing and the gentleman is giving TMs. Not sure if this is the best way to go about it, but with a quick bit of testing it seems like it works(?)

Alternatively maybe you could try what Ryccardo said above, I didn't realize that was a thing when making this and haven't tried it myself, but it may work better.
 
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Pk11 said:
Hmm, it's been a while since I worked on pkmn-chest but if I remember correctly "RTC Initial Time" is what the RTC was at when you started your save file and "RTC Elapsed Time" is what the RTC was at when you last saved.

I did a bit of testing and it looks like lowering the "RTC Initial Time" (wrap around to 65535 to go below zero, and you just need to change the first number, you can press enter to skip the next three) reduces the amount of days the gentleman wants you to wait as you're making the game think you started your save a longer time ago, I'm not sure the affect this has on other RTC things though. When I first moved it to 0 that got the gentleman to give me the TM but seemed to be triggering the berry glitch so I went to 65535 and then just tried going down a hundred or so a few times and after a couple tries it appears that berries are growing and the gentleman is giving TMs. Not sure if this is the best way to go about it, but with a quick bit of testing it seems like it works(?)

Alternatively maybe you could try what Ryccardo said above, I didn't realize that was a thing when making this and haven't tried it myself, but it may work better.
Click to expand...

Sorry for my late reply; and thanks for testing this out!! I tried that and you're right, the TM gentleman in my Ruby now gives me TMs on the correct countdown time (every 7 days) but other RTC events haven't been fixed unfortunately :( like the daily lottery or berry gifts. I'll look into what Ryccardo mentioned, but in the meantime I guess I can also let the 140 days count down in my Sapphire just for funzies and see if what that other guy was saying in the Reddit thread will work (actually waiting the amount of days and RTC events resumed...) ; since I also dug up my old Pokemon Platinum and have now been preoccupied with that xD

Thanks again for your help!! <333
 
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Ryccardo said:
Another option (arguably the most technically correct one) is to use a cheat device or save editor* to enable the clock reset flag and variable, then boot the game and press L+B+Select on the title screen to use the official clock setting tool

* Full disclosure - I contributed this feature to PkHeX a year ago or so :)
Click to expand...
I want to move my save file between my OG Emerald cartridge and gba emulator, so when I took my save file and boot it up in my mobile and take it back to my cartridge, all the berries disapear.

In many post I saw this metod but, in non of them explain which day should be selected (you can select from 1 to 9999) and thats the main reason for not working in my mobile (the game has an early 2000´s date and my mobile is in 2022, so I can´t use the same save file because the game thinks that I altered the time forward and, if I save in the emulator and take it back to the game, the game thinks is a problem because is "the future" and shows the time in the clock setting as ?####). Would you explain me how to fix this problem?
 
Ryccardo said:
Another option (arguably the most technically correct one) is to use a cheat device or save editor* to enable the clock reset flag and variable, then boot the game and press L+B+Select on the title screen to use the official clock setting tool

* Full disclosure - I contributed this feature to PkHeX a year ago or so :)
Click to expand...
I want to move my save file between my OG Emerald cartridge and gba emulator, so when I took my save file and boot it up in my mobile and take it back to my cartridge, all the berries disapear.

In many post I saw this metod but, in non of them explain which day should be selected (you can select from 1 to 9999) and thats the main reason for not working in my mobile (the game has an early 2000´s date and my mobile is in 2022, so I can´t use the same save file because the game thinks that I altered the time forward and, if I save in the emulator and take it back to the game, the game thinks is a problem because is "the future" and shows the time in the clock setting as ?####). Would you explain me how to fix this problem?
 
So I've followed these exact steps but nothing happens. I have tried this without any firmware (blank screen) and with Ace3DS on my DS Lite. The Ace3DS menu opens but there is nothing there to do anything with. These steps say nothing about what firmware to use and I'm very confused.
 
Moving the elapsed time back and forth did not fix the time of day for some reason. Worked when I changed the initial time though.
 
Ryccardo said:
Another option (arguably the most technically correct one) is to use a cheat device or save editor* to enable the clock reset flag and variable, then boot the game and press L+B+Select on the title screen to use the official clock setting tool

* Full disclosure - I contributed this feature to PkHeX a year ago or so :)
Click to expand...
I just did that. After doing so, the "elapsed time" still is what it was before (about 18 minutes sooner actually), but the "initial time" is now 64437 days and change (was 0 days and change before your process above). Am I supposed to change the initial or elapsed times after following your steps above or leave them alone?
 
Last edited by Pumpernickel,
Ryccardo said:
Another option (arguably the most technically correct one) is to use a cheat device or save editor* to enable the clock reset flag and variable, then boot the game and press L+B+Select on the title screen to use the official clock setting tool

* Full disclosure - I contributed this feature to PkHeX a year ago or so :)
Click to expand...
When I click L+B+SELECT it brings me to the berry program update, not a clock resetting tool..
 
I have been working on this New Battery Glitch for days now I seem to find a perfect solution for this.

In addition to pkmn-chest, you would need the rtcread tool, which is actually more important than pkmn-chest. If you don't have pkmn-chest, you just need a way to extract your pokemon save and a tool to edit it, and then write it back to the cartridge.

Here are the steps:
1. Use pkmn-chest or other save editor to edit the RTC initial time all to zero. This is the offset value when you set the clock in game. An offset to the RTC realtime value.
2. Use the rtcread tool to set the RTC to actual time. This ensure your game time is same as real world time, and catch up the days needed for the TM guy, berry master, and all the other time stamp you had on your save files for the daily events to work.

The following generation of pokemon never had this problem is because the console ensures RTC time is always same as real time, this is the key here. That's why I encourage setting the rtc time of cartridge to the same actual real world time.

Here is the link to the rtcread tool
https://github.com/megaboyexe/GBA_RTCRead

Hope this helps!
 
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shallen320 said:
I have been working on this New Battery Glitch for days now I seem to find a perfect solution for this.

In addition to pkmn-chest, you would need the rtcread tool, which is actually more important than pkmn-chest. If you don't have pkmn-chest, you just need a way to extract your pokemon save and a tool to edit it, and then write it back to the cartridge.

Here are the steps:
1. Use pkmn-chest or other save editor to edit the RTC initial time all to zero. This is the offset value when you set the clock in game. An offset to the RTC realtime value.
2. Use the rtcread tool to set the RTC to actual time. This ensure your game time is same as real world time, and catch up the days needed for the TM guy, berry master, and all the other time stamp you had on your save files for the daily events to work.

The following generation of pokemon never had this problem is because the console ensures RTC time is always same as real time, this is the key here. That's why I encourage setting the rtc time of cartridge to the same actual real world time.

Here is the link to the rtcread tool
https://github.com/megaboyexe/GBA_RTCRead

Hope this helps!
Click to expand...
I'll one up this

I've used rtcread many times to set the clock time right after testing some teams on my emulator and restoring the save to the cartridge to resolve problems with berry growing, special berry gifting NPCs and other ingame events, never failed me once.
I didnt knew about the TM Guy (just discovered that , thanks!), but its working for me.
 

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