Acid rain
Acid rain is a glitch in Pokémon Platinum that involves using the move Pursuit in certain weather conditions. This glitch has not been removed to all, if not most, releases of the game.
Causes
While Hail or Sandstorm is in effect, a player's Pokémon uses the move Pursuit on a Pokémon switching out and makes it faint. This causes the glitch to happen, making several weather effects to occur at once. Using Trick Room, Gravity and/or Uproar before this occurs may cause the same moves to all activate at the same time.
Other moves like Water Sport, Mud Sport, Tailwind and Perish Song do not make this glitch occur.
This glitch only occurs if the Trainer of the Pokémon that used Pursuit is a player of Platinum. This may occur even when battling Diamond and Pearl as long as this is the case.
Effects
This glitch causes Pokémon to be damaged by their own abilities. These weather effects occur when normal weather should every turn. However, due to a glitch in Platinum, Rain Dance, Sunny Day, Hail and Sandstorm all happen at the same time, even if no one used the moves or activated them via an ability. Fog may also appear sometimes, adding additional damage.
The damage for one of the four weather effects occurs like this:
- "The sunlight is strong." (animation of weather)
- "Pikachu is hurt by its Static!" (Pikachu takes damage, similar to when Hail or Sandstorm is activated.)
- "Buizel is hurt by its Swift Swim!" (Buizel takes damage)
- "The sunlight is strong." (animation of weather)
All four of the different weather effects damage all Pokémon on the field, unless they are immune to it. This occurs every turn.
Due to all of the weather effects occuring, moves and abilities are also affected. For example, Pokémon with the ability Dry Skin get healed by the rain and damaged by the strong sunlight, all in one turn. Thunder and Blizzard have 100% accuracy due to the rain and hail respectively and SolarBeam doesn't need to charge due to the strong sunlight. Upon activation of the glitch, Cherrim and Castform will keep transforming until the game is turned off.
