>>58080662
I really like the process. It's esoteric, and no other franchise in the world has the same level of interconnectivity as Pokemon does, or availability to do RNG manipulation, with the same level of payoff.

One time a decade ago I found Pokeblock recipes for perfect Contest stats in gen 3, but they required both the e-Reader berries and liechi berries. I got an e-Reader and the battle-e card packs that have the berry cards, but the only place you could get liechi berries in gen 3 is Mirage Island, which appears even more rarely than full-odds shinies. I spent three months, 2 hours a day, checking all 420 Pokemon I filled my boxes with to try and find one that had a matching PID to spawn Mirage Island, to no luck. I gave up.
Fast forward to about two years ago when I was finishing my living national dex in Emerald I bought a second copy of Emerald from a vending machine at a nearby mall; a clear and obvious fake, but a $10 GBA game I could use an R4 to write anything to was incredibly useful, so I overwrote the Toys-R-Us shiny Zigzagoon distribution to it, sending it to my actual copy of Emerald via Mystery Gift. That distribution was meant to fix the berry glitch in Ruby and Sapphire, and the Zigzagoon holds a liechi berry to sweeten the deal. Technology is incredible.

There's even a prize at the end of this very very very long journey, awaiting at Home, the Pokeball-colored Magearna. Though I don't think there's any way to get the mystery gifts of gen 6 and 7 yet. I have Diancie and Hoopa, but no Volcanion, Marshadow, Magearna, or Zeraora. Maybe someday.