Pokémon Unbound missables and mistakes to avoid before you start

Almost nothing is missable, so this list is about choices

You can’t undo these:

• Mission #070. Release or trade its Zygarde and the mission is dead.
• Dropping from Expert or Insane before Champion. You can’t go back up.
• Sandbox Mode. You lose the post-game and New Game+.
• A used Mystery Gift code. It’s one use per save.

That’s the whole list of things that stick. No legendary vanishes if you faint it, no TM gets locked behind a door, no item is gone for good. Every Pokémon and every other mission is still there on 2.1.1.1. Coming from older games, I played the first ten hours scared of missing things that turned out to be fine.

The rest of this page is setup mistakes that break saves or clocks, plus the Pokédex triggers that look missable until you know what sets them off.

Choices you cannot undo

Difficulty. You pick Vanilla, Difficult, Expert or Insane when you make your character. On your first save, Insane isn’t offered. After that, switching only goes one way:

Started on	Can lower?	Can raise again before Champion?
Vanilla	n/a	Only to Difficult
Difficult	Yes, to Vanilla	Yes, back to Difficult
Expert	Yes	No (except Vanilla and Difficult between themselves)
Insane	Yes	No (except Vanilla and Difficult between themselves)

The classic mistake goes like this. You start on Expert, hit a wall, drop to Difficult for one fight, and now it’s a Difficult run until the credits. If you want to stay on Expert, lose the fight again and rethink your team. I hovered over that settings menu after a bad gym and I’m glad I closed it. Overleveling won’t help either, because from Difficult up every boss scales to your best Pokémon. New Game+ is the only place you can change difficulty freely. The review covers what each mode changes.

Capped Exp. Share. The game asks at new game, and it’s on by default on Expert and Insane. You can toggle it later, but if you turn it on while someone’s over the cap, it shuts off until they catch up. The True Insane Hall of Fame achievement needs it on from start to finish with no settings changed. Decide once. Don’t be me: I picked my character before reading the difficulty rules.

Sandbox Mode. Only offered on Expert or Insane, and it’s a team-building playground. You start with the fully upgraded Stat Scanner, free Egg and Tutor moves, every key item, a finished National Dex and a 100% catch rate. It costs you the whole post-game. Once you’re Champion you’re stuck in the Battle Frontier, missions with post-game rewards are gone, and you can never start New Game+. Only pick it if the Frontier is the only reason you’re playing.

Character gender. Latias and Latios are locked to the opposite sex of your character. Your gender decides which Mega Stone the Ranger gives you at 45 missions and which one roams. You catch the other one outside the Pokémon League after mission #042, with the roamer in your party. You get both on every save, so gender only changes the order.

Starter. Larvitar, Beldum or Gible decides which Mega Stone is in Shadow Base 1F. The other two come from post-game mission #050 Portal Purge, so you don’t lose anything. You just won’t Mega a second pseudo-legendary during the story. On Insane with Beldum, the Shadow Base stone is a Focus Sash, and Ace gives you Metagrossite after the Crystal Peak Multi Battle against Marlon. The starter guide has the matchups.

Randomizer. Three toggles at new game: species, movesets, abilities. Boss species stay the same on Expert and Insane. A randomized save can’t trade with a normal save on Unbound Cloud.

Mystery Gift codes. Each one works once per save, and only after the League. The code-only Pokémon are in the Pokédex section below. Spend one on a throwaway save and you’ll have to trade that Pokémon in later. I kept my codes in a text file and crossed each one off.

Setup mistakes that break saves

Patch Unbound onto FireRed 1.0, the “Squirrels” revision. Don’t trust any other revision. Check your base ROM before you put a hundred hours in. Five minutes of checking beats the sinking feeling of a broken save. The general steps are in how to play a ROM hack.

Use mGBA. So much of Unbound runs on the clock that a bad emulator ruins it. Skip No$GBA, Eclipse, JohnGBA, and old versions of VBA and Delta. If your in-game day is stuck on Sunday, switch emulators. I played the whole thing on mGBA and never had a clock problem.

Turn on the real-time clock before you start. Day runs 5:00 AM to 7:59 PM. Outdoor encounters, legendary portals, the Battleground roster and the Magnolia Café trainers all follow it. A save on a frozen clock hasn’t lost anything for good, but it skipped every time-based encounter and event while the clock was stuck.

Fast-forward lag won’t break your save. It’s the music. Lower the audio quality or turn off the BGM if you play sped up.

Things people think are missable but are not

A legendary you couldn’t catch the first time. A few are scripted that way:

• Darkrai’s first fight, the Lv.75 Dynamax nightmare in #066, can’t be caught. The real one is at Tarmigan Inn with the Member Card.
• Tornadus and Thundurus can’t be caught in the Magnolia Fields double battle. They roam afterward.
• Raikou and Entei start roaming after you touch the Ruins of Void B1F portal.

If you faint a roamer, it comes back with new IVs and nature after your next Hall of Fame entry. It costs you a League run, not the Pokémon. I knocked out Entei by accident and groaned, but it really was just a detour.

Rayquaza in the story Hoopa battle. On Vanilla it stays down once you knock it out in the Crystal Peak double battle. That’s fine. You catch the Lv.70 Rayquaza at the summit after the story, with the Jade Orb from #014.

Evolution stones. Some pickups are one-time, like the Leaf Stone behind a Cut tree on Route 7. Don’t worry about it. Every stone is mineable in the KBT Expressway at about 9%, and Cube Corp. makes them for four Everstones.

The starters you didn’t pick. Gible shows up after the story in the Shadow Base Warehouse or your rival’s house. Larvitar and Beldum show up the same way, in the Shadow Base Warehouse or your rival’s house, so check both spots.

Cosmog on Difficult and up. The bag on the Route 12 beach only gives you Cosmog before the post-game on Vanilla. On every other mode it waits until you’re Champion.

Mystery Gift before the League. The deliveryman doesn’t show up until you’re Champion. The codes didn’t expire.

HM slaves. Any party Pokémon that can learn an HM uses it in the overworld without knowing the move, and the ADM removes the need entirely. You don’t need a Bibarel. Running six real ‘mon all game felt like a small luxury.

Time-gated NPCs. These all run on a schedule, and a missed slot comes back the next week:

• The Battleground leaders
• The Café trainers
• The Shady Scammer, midnight to 4:49 AM
• The Galladite crates at Antisis Port, around noon
• The S.S. Marine gauntlets
• The Fallshore sailor

The Zygarde mission and how not to lock yourself out

Mission #070 The Powerhouse of the Cell starts in Dresco Town. You build a Zygarde from Zygarde Cells, and it has Power Construct. The mission is tied to that exact Pokémon. Release or trade it and you can never finish #070, which also kills the all-missions star on the Black Trainer Card.

1. Collect the cells and build Zygarde.
2. Keep it in your party or PC. Don’t release it, don’t trade it, and don’t send it through Unbound Cloud.
3. Wait until the Mission Log shows #070 complete.
4. Now it’s yours to do whatever you want with.

Rename it if you want. Just stay away from Release. Mine sat untouched in Box 1 until the log said done.

Pokédex completion blockers

The National Dex goal is 809 species, and #069 gives you an Original Color Magearna at Lv.10 for finishing it. None of these are missable, but each one has a trigger that’s easy to walk past. Filling the last few dex slots was the most satisfying grind of my run.

Code-only mythicals. These five only come from Mystery Gift, after the League, once per save:

Pokémon	Code	Held item
Mewtwo	6ZT5ZX7RN4KK	Mewtwonite X
Genesect	7HY9JN6EE5YY	DNA Splicers
Marshadow	5GQ3CU5UZ7WS	(used for N-Solarizer)
Poipole	4QP1SH1BN8JF	Mewtwonite Y
Meltan	8VE4VF5PA4NH	(used for N-Lunarizer)

The Galarian birds (2XH4TC5JY4MG, 9TA2WT6TW5AP, 4NV7CX6YX1SD) and Dada Zarude (3YT4BV7PH4UT) are codes too. Enter Zarude, because registering it turns on the Gen 8 Special Encounters.

Gen 8 is its own thing. The 96 Galar and Hisui entries aren’t part of the 809. They only show up as DexNav Special Encounters after you register a Galar Pokémon, from the Zarude code or a trade. Seven aren’t in the game at all. Zacian, Zamazenta, Eternatus, Kubfu, Glastrier, Spectrier and Calyrex only come by Unbound Cloud trade from other CFRU hacks. Regieleki and Regidrago (Icy Hole, after Regigigas) and Enamorus (Magnolia Fields, with Landorus in your party) are DexNav-only and need Gen 8 turned on.

Party requirements. Bring the right team or they won’t show:

• Regigigas: Regirock, Regice and Registeel in your first three slots
• Suicune: Raikou and Entei
• Landorus: Tornadus and Thundurus
• Deoxys: Jirachi
• Necrozma: Solgaleo and Lunala. The Route 12 beach portal gives you whichever one you’re missing.
• Arceus: show all 17 Plates to the Dream Research Lab scientist
• Dialga’s Adamant Orb and Keldeo: both need missions that require 20 missions done plus Type: Null

Mission-window encounters. Alolan Sandshrew only spawns outside Icicle Cave while The Food Thief is active. Crabominable only shows up in Frozen Forest during Nine Tails of Snow. For Celebi, the Redwood Village old man wants a Spiky-eared Pichu. Get it by showing the Breeder’s School a Pichu from the Vivill Woods swarm.

Phione only comes from breeding Manaphy. Its egg is behind a Braille tablet in the underwater Ruins of Void, so you need the ADM.

Things that don’t count. Battle Frontier battles never register a dex entry. The DexNav upgrade from #032 Hunter of the Swamp in Cootes Bog isn’t required for the dex, but get it before you grind encounters. It shows held items and makes search levels easier to use: Hidden Abilities at level 10, and 1% shiny chains at 50 and 100.

Every legendary’s location and trigger is in the legendary locations guide. Keep an eye on your mission count from day one: Type: Null at 20, Latias or Latios at 45, and the Shiny Charm at 65. 20 is the gate for two legendary groups.