Airdramon's Pendulum Cycle Research! 2020 Update!

[Airdramon]

I'm back at it in 2020 to help out the Digimon Research Project with finally cracking this weird little vpet.
I've been logging my daily findings in Evernote (same as five years ago), but I'm also logging overall findings such as evolution requirements and shake count results in this spreadsheet.

While I won't be posting every single finding in this thread like I did back when I originally was investigating the Cycle, any main theories or breakthroughs will be posted here.

I will try to use English dub names as those are the names that Bandai Asia has used.


Current theories:

• Weight effects growth to child; light weight=virus, average weight=data, heavy weight=vaccine
• STRONG THEORY: Care mistakes or lack there of MAY impact evolution
• The rules for evolution, at least to child, may differ slightly on the version 7 (basis: outlined in this post)
• A child who is heavy (90lbs+) will not evolve to adult
• Evolution after adult is also effected by weight.
• Evolution to Ultimate and Mega is dependent on hitting perfect shakes (evidence: No evolution from Veedramon until I hit perfect shakes twice, fed to full hearts and 50lbs, left it alone for a few minutes then evolved to Lilimon, No evolution from Cherrymon until training with perfect shakes and feeding to full hearts and to 53lbs then evolved to Puppetmon, and, No evolution from WaruMonzaemon until training with perfect shakes and feeding to full hearts and to 50lbs then evolved to Machinedramon.)
• Digimon in the same 'slots' as each other have the same perfect number of shakes (eg ToyAgumon and Piyomon are both in the 'vaccine child slot' and both have 19 and 20 as their perfect numbers)
• WEAK THEORY: Some Ultimate level Digimon have no evolution to Mega (so far Andromon and SkullMeramon both have been seen to not evolve further)
• Some Digimon, such as Delumon and Knightmon, are in the same evolutionary line slot - that is, they have the exact same training shakes results and possible evolution requirements (52lbs to Rosemon, 50lbs to MetalGarurumon)

Currently testing:

• Impact of care mistakes
• Can Crabmon even evolve??

Current facts:

• Some perfect shake counts may work for training, but may not work for DNA Digivolving
• Failure to DNA Digivolve can result in injury
• Eating bread will cause a weight gain of 1lbs per bread
• Eating meat will cause a weight gain of 2lbs per meat
• Training with either a successful or unsuccessful number of shakes will cause a weight loss of 2lbs
• Hitting the perfect number of shakes in training will cause weight loss of 4lbs
• Winning a random encounter will cause weight loss of 4lbs
• Please consult this spreadsheet for my observations

Connections:

• Can battle with Neo v1 and v2 with Neo rules and stages...but..this happens...
• Can battle with Digimon Analzyer. Analyzer shows an error
• Can battle with JPN D-Terminal. D-Terminal shows at error.
• Can battle with the original vpet using original vpet rules.
• Can be scanned by the ENG D-Terminal. The Digimon shows up on the D-Terminal. Cycle goes back to 'idle screen'
• Can be scanned by the D-Gather. The Digimon shows up on the D-Terminal. Cycle goes back to 'idle screen'
• Can be scanned by the D-Spirit. The Digimon shows up on the D-Terminal. Cycle goes back to 'idle screen'
• Can connect to Digimon 0NL1NE

Original first post

I've been digging around to see what people know about the Cycles (as in, what Digimon are on them and how to get certain Digimon) and found out that nobody really knows. A few people say evolution is based on successful training, others say it's how much bread vs how much meat, some say it's random, I have my own theory; My theory is that it's based on weight in the opposite way you'd expect.

So a bit of my history with the Cycles and my confusion:
When I got my first Cycle (version 8) I just went by my understanding of the Pendulums: good care = vaccine, medium care = data, bad care = virus. So I took perfect care of it and got a virus. I reset it a few times and still got the virus. Once I got the data one by training it a bit less but I thought nothing of it. I then got a version 7 and got fed up of getting virus Digimon with perfect care so I forgot about it for a while because my Internet research led me to believe it was random and I just had bad luck.

I then got a version 9 a few months ago. My favourite Digimon field! I took perfect care (didn't let it out of my sight - I thought that maybe care mistakes were easier to get on the Cycle) and got a Mushmon (virus). Then I tried something. Feed it a lot and don't train it. I got Piyomon, the 'good' care child. This was confusing bad care = good care? Then I had an idea; what if it was based on weight?
So I tried that. Trained it a bit and fed it as required. I let the weight hover around 30lbs. I got Palmon. The medium care child.
I think she evolved to Togemon that day and then Kiwimon the next but I didn't really take notes on what I did to trigger evolution.

Alright so back to yesterday when my Version 10 arrived.
The Cycle has some weird things in it that I had noticed in my first few attempts such as an in training will NEVER evolve if a day passes, so it's a bad idea to start a Cycle late at night. I set my clock to afternoon until I got the child.

Kokuwamon (Data)
35lbs 4 hearts hunger 2 training 0 strength
trained ~10 times as Kapurimon


TLDR Current theory mid-range weight = data? heavy = vaccine, light = virus
I'm going to be running through my cycles and seeing what information I can find. I would be running through two at a time but I'm currently trying to find out what I can about the Version 6.

 

[Airdramon]

I am absolutely confused.
Here are my results for Day 2, 3 and 4


Day 2
Kokuwamon woke up at 9:00am
Training ~50
1 connection battles 0 win 1 loss
8 NPC battles 5 win 3 loss
1 random battles (knightmon) 0 win 1 loss
No evolution


Day 3
Set alarm for 8:20am so Kokuwamon woke up then
Training ~60
1 NPC battle (lost)
No evolution


Day 4
Set alarm for 8am
Training around 4 or 5 times before 9am.
Left alone for a bit. Checked again at 8:30am and it had evolved to Revolmon?

Maybe it counts training in sections and training too much makes it not evolve? Previously I had trained many times in the morning and had no evolution.

EDIT: Trained another 4-5 times and after an hour Revolmon evolved to Knightmon.
I'm perplexed. Training less=evolution?

 

[Da_Duke2000]

Correct me if I'm wrong. But everything I've ever known about the Cycles indicated a very buggy system, prone to crashes, glitches, and even de-evolution. Has this ever happened?

 

[Airdramon]

De-evolution is the mechanic of the cycles, hence the name. So evolving back to child every night is normal and not a bug.

As for any glitches or crashes I haven't noticed anything.

 

[Da_Duke2000]

Is it really? Well that shows you how much I've ignored these little buggers. That being said, how quickly does evolution occur? And does/can natural death happen? Last question, does it support Jogress?

 

[Vande]

They do support Jogress if i recall right.

Evolution I found to be annoyingly random.

They can naturally die. (Know that happened with mine after about 15 days)

And yep they defo devolve each day. That's what I didn't like about the Cycle.

 

[Airdramon]

Evolution can occur hourly.
My current theory is training a certain amount of times in a row and then leaving it alone for an hour will trigger evolution which is supported by the evolution to Revolmon and then Knightmon. I'm not 100% sure yet.

And yeah it supports jogress. However, I have never jogressed anything so I'm not sure what is made. I have heard that you can get Ancient Digimon by jogressing ultimates together but I haven't seen proof. I'll be looking into that as well.

 

[Da_Duke2000]

Quite the daunting commitment you've made. I wouldn't even know where to begin! It may be worthwhile to have a chat with BladeSabre. I know Blade has done a ton of trial and error with electronics and may be able to recommend a matrix or chart to track different combinations.

 

[Airdramon]

I sent him a message, thanks for the advice Duke.
As for today's progress I have a theory about evolving past child-it's not about how much I train (the day I trained 60 times and stayed at the Child stage is evidence of that) but it's about how many times I hit the 'perfect' score in a time frame.

Today I trained Kokuwamon many times. Hit perfect number twice (24)
He evolved to Clockmon. Hit perfect number once (31) at around 3:30pm. At 4:00pm he had evolved to Andromon.

Probably a stretch to say this but I think evolution requirements are 'checked' every 30 minutes (so 30 past the hour and on the hour). My reason to believe this is that I trained Clockmon after 3:30pm and picked up my Cycle at 4pm to see Andromon on the screen after an animation I think (screen was lit up and it looked like he was calling from the centre of the screen).
I'm going to see if I can find Andromon's perfect number now.

EDIT 1: Found Andromon's number (though there may be multiple numbers, that is still yet to be proven) at 8:24pm (19) last night. I was going to test my 'every half an hour evolution check' theory but Andromon de-evolved at 8:30pm and went to sleep. Today I will follow the same pattern as yesterday to see if I get the same Digimon. I refuse to believe the evolutions are random beyond child. If I don't get the same results as yesterday it may be for one of two reasons; 1. Depends on the age of the Digimon - giving age more of a meaning besides a count up till the Digimon dies or 2. Meeting requirements for evolution (ie the evolution trigger of meeting the right number of shakes in training) is not random but the resulting Digimon is random.

So far I'm pretty happy with what I've discovered.

EDIT 2: Hit the perfect number twice at 10:04-10:05am for Kokuwamon. Hopefully if my theory is correct at 10:30am I should have a Clockmon.

EDIT 3: 11:30am and no evolution, though my Digimon is heavier than yesterday so maybe it's also weight dependent? I'll train it down during my lunch break.

EDIT 4: Woo boy. Kokuwamon was around 90lbs and I fed him up to 99lbs (he got sick so I cured his sickness). I trained him down to 43lbs and hit perfect (31 shakes) once. I left him idle for a minute or so to train my Pen5.5 and he evolved to Clockmon at 12:56pm. So it's safe to say, at least for now, that a heavy Digimon will not evolve (at least at child level) and that evolution is not random. Maybe Revolmon is when you hit the perfect number once as a child and then Clockmon is when you hit it 2-3 times?
Then at 1:03pm at I trained him down to 29lbs. Hit perfect shakes once then found another perfect number of shakes (29). Trained him down to 26lbs at 1:34pm
At Around 1:40pm he did four poops in a row, lost 2lbs and one square of training.
Then at 2:27pm I fed him some meat and bread, trained him down to 24lbs and then hit 29 shakes twice.

EDIT 5: 3:46pm trained Clockmon down to 24lbs. Hit 29 shakes twice and 31 shakes once. At 3:43pm I found another number of shakes for a perfect training round (22). I hit 22 three times since it's a much easier number to count than 29 and 33.
At 4:50pm I got into random battle with a Knightmon and Clockmon beat him (it's easy to win if you have a number of shakes that's easy to count out).
Still no perfect as of 5pm. I wonder if there's a requirement for perfect that I didn't realise I had.
Tomorrow I'll hit Kokuwamon's perfect number more and see if I get a different adult.

 

[BladeSabre]

I played with the Cycle briefly and didn't really have any ideas. As for general experience in figuring out evolution:

First is determining what things are counted. The Cycle is very different from the others, so really you just need to start with wild guesses and test them out until something sticks.

Then there's refining the rules about how each thing is counted, like what I wrote in the footer of http://lcd.wtw-x.net/VpetEvo1

Then there's finding a combination that works for getting each Digimon. At that point, with the Adult levels on the original V-Pet, my notes got a lot shorter (just keeping the 4 counters for each run).

And finally, finding the thresholds between each pair of Digimon with other requirements in common, e.g. testing 31 training and getting Devimon, testing 32 training and getting Greymon. Evolution guides are normally written backwards (IIRC you're a programmer, so do you know what I mean by that?)

I refuse to believe the evolutions are random beyond child. If I don't get the same results as yesterday it may be for one of two reasons; 1. Depends on the age of the Digimon - giving age more of a meaning besides a count up till the Digimon dies or 2. Meeting requirements for evolution (ie the evolution trigger of meeting the right number of shakes in training) is not random but the resulting Digimon is random.

Things like this will probably happen over and over again; 3. The way it counts training is still not what you think; 4. There's a different requirement you haven't yet thought of (and therefore you do it sometimes and not other times without realising).

Sounds like you're on the right track, and mostly aware of these things already. Good luck!

I'm a girl BTW

 

[Airdramon]

Thanks for the advice, Blade. I really appreciate it.
Today I'm going to test a bunch of things since I may be doing the wrong thing with training and maybe it has to do with how times I train in one go.

I'm a girl BTW

Oops, sorry. D=

EDIT: Kokuwamon died. 6yrs seems kinda early but at least I could try my 'weight' theory. So I decided to go for the virus child (Hagurumon) which means low weight. I trained a lot and found Kapurimon's perfect number of shakes (19 and 20). My theory remains possible as I was able to get Hagurumon.
Then I trained a few times (5-10) and didn't find the perfect number. I was pretty busy at work today so I didn't do much else. I just checked my Cycle at around 6:20pm and I found Gaudromon. So there goes the 'perfect shakes' theory. Oh well at least the weight theory stands strong.

 

[Nachtier]

Not sure if it's useful or not but on my Cycle v10 I got Hagurumon, didn't track what I did specifically to get him, just made sure all his hunger, training and strength boxes were full more or less at all times. Hagurumon gets perfect training at 28 shakes. I can post what he digivolves into for me when he finally gets around to it if it's useful.

 

[Airdramon]

Not sure if it's useful or not but on my Cycle v10 I got Hagurumon, didn't track what I did specifically to get him, just made sure all his hunger, training and strength boxes were full more or less at all times. Hagurumon gets perfect training at 28 shakes. I can post what he digivolves into for me when he finally gets around to it if it's useful.

That's consistent with my theory then.
I know about 28 shakes being the perfect number for Hagurumon, I found it during my lunch break. I'm trying to find a lower number for him though because 28 is harder to get to.

Let me know if you find anything regarding evolution to adult. I'm still not sure about evolution to adult. There must be a trigger.

 

[Nachtier]

Unfortunately 28 is the lowest.

 

[Airdramon]

Hmm Haguramon evolved to Gaurdromon last night a few hours before bed.
I still haven't met the number of perfect shakes for Gaurdromon but I also didn't try because I had other stuff to do last night.

As for evolution to adult, seeing as I met Haguramon's perfect number several times and it only evolved after I hadn't really touched it for about two hours I think it may have something to do with the training bar going down.
I don't know much about the training bar except for that eating meat fills it up.
Maybe it has to be filled and empty several times for evolution?
Though that might be inconsistent with my first few days with Kokuwamon where I trained him a lot.

I think it might also be too much training stops evolution and missed calls/missed battles might also count.
I did win one random battle yesterday. So it might have something to do with that?

EDIT 1: I'm going to try playing with the weight and see what I get. It'd be weird for weight just to count for evolution to child and then never again.

EDIT 2: Evolved to Gaurdrmon - his perfect number is 24.
As for how he became Gaurdromon I'm not sure. I trained him in bursts of around 5 - usually meeting the perfect number once.

 

[Airdramon]

Haguramon died (I was busy and forgot about him) so I tried for ToyAgumon and got him.
ToyAgumon's perfect number of shakes is 20.

 

[sino]

Im also raising 2 Pen Cycle, the key to evolution based on the manual is to hit the requirtement on a specific time after evolution or de-volution

it wrote that around 2 hours for each evolution.
tested and it work, Battled it with D3 US ver.1 seems to work, it evolved to rosemon after 40 battles and a few hours

p/s: also noticed that it works like a bootleg version, it will win any battle with the D3 rookie as long as the cycle is the one who pressed the button to connect. same as a ver.5 vpet bootleg

 

[Airdramon]

Thanks Sino.
What requirements are there?
I have had evolution with no battles though.

Anyway I started up my Pen9 just then so hopefully I get more information soon.
So far the perfect numbers seem to match up at least for the baby forms (19 and 20) so I wonder if the perfect numbers are the same for Digimon which are in the same 'slots' in different versions.

EDIT 1: Going to see if feeding meat impacts evolution.

EDIT 2: Was feeding ToyAgumon meat and bread and Piyomon just bread. Trained them both equal times and tried not to miss any calls on either hitting the perfect number of shakes each time. ToyAgumon evolved to MechaNorimon (Weight 52lbs), Piyomon is still Piyomon.
It's worth noting that Piyomon and ToyAgumon have the same perfect numbers of shakes since they are both the 'Vaccine' child so I guess my theory earlier about the same slots having the same shakes may be correct. Maybe the same slots have the same evolution requirements beyond child as well.
I will test this tomorrow by taking identical care of both children. I'll make sure their time is the same and I'll make sure they wake up at the same time.

EDIT 3: Mechanorimon's number is 28.

 

[Airdramon]

I think I may have discovered something solid (or maybe not if it's random).
ToyAgumon and Piyomon woke up the same time and immediately I took good care of both of them. I fed and trained (10 times perfectly) both equal times but ToyAgumon was much heavier.
ToyAgumon evolved to Mechanorimon probably around 10:00-10:40am at 72lbs.
Piyomon was looked after the same way but at a minimum weight. No evolution from Piyomon as of 11am.

I also have a theory that good care must be taken in order to evolve. It's not just how many times you train but also how well you care for them in the evolution hour.

I'm not sure if age matters but Agu is 3 and Piyo is 2.

EDIT 1: At 11:57am, After feeding Piyomon some meat, she evolved into Kiwimon. 41lbs. Maybe weight is important?

EDIT 2: At around 1:30pm. Kiwimon was around 33lbs and evolved to Lilymon! Mechanorimon is still Mechanorimon as of 2pm. Kiwimon's numbers are 25 and 29.

EDIT 3: I looked at my version 9 at around 4:30pm and saw Rosemon looking back at me. Lilymon was 34lbs when she evolved. Rosemon's perfect number is 22 (my age!)
Still no idea what Lilymon's 'number' is though..
Which means hitting the perfect number means nothing for evolution?

So weight is a factor for beyond child evolution.
It seems that too heavy (80-90lbs) = no evolution but also min weight = no evolution as well.

 

[Da_Duke2000]

Hey sino! Welcome to the board. Duke here . Nice to see you. I know you're a rock solid collector, so I hope you're able to contribute a lot!