Altering Cave in Emerald Legacy: Every Rotation Group and What's Inside

What Altering Cave actually spawns in Emerald Legacy -- each of its nine single-species groups, with levels and rates -- and where the Smeargle and Dunsparce come from.
Compiled from Emerald Legacy's extracted ROM data
Last updated: September 27, 2026

Altering Cave, up on Route 103, is the strangest encounter table in Emerald Legacy: instead of one mixed spawn list, it runs nine separate single-species groups. Each group is one Pokemon with a ladder of levels, and which group you get is what changes the cave's contents entirely -- Zubat, Pineco, Houndour, Teddiursa, Aipom, Shuckle, Stantler, Smeargle, plus Mareep once you're in the post-game.

That's the answer to the question everyone asks about this cave: yes, Smeargle is here, one group down. So is Shuckle and Stantler, and none of them are available anywhere else in Hoenn.

Every group

GroupPokemonLevelsTop rate
Base
Zubat
6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16
20%
Group 3
Pineco
19, 21, 22, 23, 25, 27, 29
20%
Group 4
Houndour
12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22
20%
Group 5
Teddiursa
6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16
20%
Group 6
Aipom
18, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28
20%
Group 7
Shuckle
18, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28
20%
Group 8
Stantler
18, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28
20%
Group 9
Smeargle
18, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28
20%
Postgame
Mareep
3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13
20%

Every entry in that table caps at a 20% encounter rate, which is unusually high for a rare species -- so once a group is active, finding its Pokemon is quick. It's getting the group you want that's the work.

Why these species matter

  • Smeargle (Group 9) -- Sketch is the whole gimmick, and it's also in Artisan Cave near the Battle Frontier. Altering Cave is the one that doesn't need you to be at the post-game.
  • Shuckle (Group 7) -- the defensive oddity and the highest Defense stat in the game. It also turns up in the Safari Zone's north-east area as a mixed spawn, so the group is the easier of the two.
  • Stantler (Group 8) and Mareep (Postgame) share the Safari Zone's south-east area as an alternative.
  • Aipom (Group 6) appears in both Safari areas, Teddiursa (Group 5) and Pineco (Group 3) in the north-east, and Houndour (Group 4) in the north-east and on Victory Road B1F.
  • Mareep is the one to plan around: it's in the post-game group here, so if you want an Ampharos for the Elite Four, the Safari Zone south-east spawn is the only way to get one earlier.

What the data doesn't say

What switches the group. The extraction shows nine groups and their contents, not the flag that picks between them. In vanilla Emerald this cave rotates on a weekly basis; in Emerald Legacy the run guides treat it as progress-gated, with Smeargle available around the Battle Frontier stage. Both are reasonable readings -- neither is something the ROM data here confirms, so treat the level ranges as your guide to which group you're on.

Where these numbers come from: the Altering Cave entry in Emerald Legacy's extracted location data -- nine encounter groups, all 12-13 entries each, with the ROM's own level ranges and rates.

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