Pokémon Cloning Trick Discovered In Brilliant Diamond And Shining Pearl

Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl have only been out for a few days and players have already stumbled into a massive glitch that lets you endlessly clone any Pokémon in the game, including whatever rare items they’re holding. That means it doubles as a duplication trick, and effectively breaks the game.

It appears the trick was first discovered by Twitter user Kevinfor5 who posted about it last night. It’s quickly beginning to circulate around now, in part because it’s so easy to do. This morning, YouTube user and speedrunner Orcastraw posted a straightforward video guide to the cloning trick that’s under a minute long.

Here’s how it works:

1. Put a Pokémon in the bottom right corner of one Box 1.
2. Put a Pokémon in the bottom right corner of one of Box 2.
3. Register the Pokémon in Box 1 the Battle Box
4. Speak to the woman at the daycare in Solaceon and select the Pokémon in Box 2
5. Switch Boxes 1 and 2 and then finish giving the Pokémon to the daycare
6. Now choose a “trash” Pokémon to register to the Battle Box and it will be deleted
7. Add a second Pokémon and then check its status and it will be cloned

Here is: How to Clone in Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, discovered by @kevinfor5 https://t.co/BZmxttLfvP pic.twitter.com/eUH4nblz8v

— Kaitlyn Molinas (@orcastraw) November 23, 2021

I tried it myself and can confirm that it works, at least for now. The trick can be used to duplicate Legendary Pokémon like Dialga and unique items like the Master Ball. The only requirement is that you’ve progressed far enough in the game to have reached Solaceon (which happens shortly after you complete the second Gym).

This is far from the first time cloning glitches have been discovered in the series, including in Diamond and Pearl, but it’s surprising to see one crop up so soon after release in a modern Pokémon game. Who needs to mess around with hacked Pokémon when the game itself will let you generate your own? Kevinfor5 already claims to have found another even more efficient dupping method earlier this morning.

Pokémon BDSP were getting patched right up to release day, and I’m sure more fixes are on the way. This new cloning glitch will probably be at the top of the list going forward.