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In Pokemon Diamond, I had hunted for a shiny Drifloon. It was Friday, so I saved in front of the Drifloon and started my hunt. I didn't get the shiny Drifloon. However, my DS clock was behind by one day, and I had used my brother's 3DS. That was perfect because it gave me more time to hunt. On Sunday, Saturday on my DS, the Drifloon was still there. I had went around and noticed that when I left the route or entered a building, the Drifloon would go away. Early in the morning, I was still able to hunt. I got my shiny and I never approached a Drifloon since then, but what happened? Was this intended? I know Drifloon is a time based event, so was this a bug or something?

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It's been years, but I vaguely remember saving the game at Valley Windworks and then picking it back up months later to find that the Drifloon was there, despite it not being Friday, and it being gone when I reentered the area. Whether or not this is intentional, I'm not sure, but I'd assume it's just an oversight or something with how the game manages saving and time-based events? This is just speculation, but maybe when you save the game and then load it, it loads the same exactly how you left it and doesn't change anything, and when you leave the area it updates the save to how it's supposed to be. I'd bet that if you saved the game at Valley Windworks on any day other than a Friday, and then loaded it back up on a Friday, you'd have to reenter the area before the Drifloon shows up. Kind of like a website or something. If a particular page is changed while you are viewing it, the page won't be updated until you reload it. Maybe the game doesn't treat loading a save the same way a website would treat reloading the page, and instead only reloads it when you leave and reenter the area?

On second thought, this could also be intentional. If the player were to save the game on the tile Drifloon appears on Fridays, and loads the game on a Friday, errors may potentially be caused? Forcing you to leave the area and enter it again before Drifloon shows up would completely prevent that, but it doesn't really explain why Drifloon also stays when you load the game when it was saved on a Friday on a different day.
When I played that Saturday, my DS clock was off by a day.
Either way, the game thought it was Friday the day before, which I'm assuming is the last time you saved, correct?
It only thought it was Friday on my brother's 3DS, which had the right date.
Because i am inevitable
It's because the programmers programmed the game to do that.

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The game was simply programmed to update the Drifloon when you re-enter Valley Windworks but not when you reset the game. Only the programmers really know whether this was intended or a bug.

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Thanks sumwun. That makes sense.