Modern Emerald Legendary Battles: Chase Events and Hard Mode Changes

Modern Emerald's legendaries are not all standing-in-a-cave fights. Several are chase events with moving levels, Hard mode rewrites their stats, and one of them lives in a rebuilt Cerulean Cave.

The chase events

• Entei — Magma Hideout. You chase it and it gets stronger each time: level 40 → 50 → 60, and only then can you capture it.
• Raikou — New Mauville. A maze where you find it three times at level 70. High Speed and decent HP, so bring something that can take a hit before you throw.
• Suicune — Shoal Cave. The inverse of Entei: each encounter makes it weaker, level 90 → 80 → 70, before it can be caught.
• All three only appear after you defeat Ho-Oh, and Celebi needs all three in your party at the Petalburg Woods shrine.

Mewtwo and the birds

• Mewtwo is fought in a recreation of Cerulean Cave, inside Altering Cave, and only appears after you defeat Mew on Faraway Island.
• Articuno (Meteor Falls), Zapdos (Scorched Slab) and Moltres (Victory Road) all appear after you defeat Lugia, all at level 70. Moltres is the notable one in Hard mode: 450 HP and 350 Special Attack.

Navel Rock is a proper dungeon

Navel Rock is no longer a single room — it has been rebuilt as a dungeon, and the Unown Chamber is now part of it. Ho-Oh and Lugia are on the top and bottom floors, level 70, and require the Mystic Ticket from the Battle Frontier shop.

Hard mode changes legendaries

In Hard mode the legendaries become bosses:

• Stat boosts: Regigigas 600 HP / 464 Attack; Regidrago 999 HP; Regieleki 500 HP / 999 Speed; Regirock 500 HP / 999 Defence; Regice 500 HP / 999 Special Defence; Registeel 350 / 350 defences.
• Rayquaza drops to level 50 in Hard mode, where it is level 70 on Easy and Normal.
• Catch rates are lowered for the strongest ones — Mewtwo, Mew, Ho-Oh, Lugia, Celebi, Kyogre, Groudon, Rayquaza, Deoxys and Regigigas go from 3/255 to 2/255.
• Frontier bans become available, locking legendaries out of your Battle Frontier teams.

The six Regis

There are now six: Regirock, Regice and Registeel in their usual locations at level 40, plus Regidrago on Route 132 North and Regieleki on Route 110 East, both level 40, and Regigigas in Granite Cave at level 70, which requires all of the others in your party.

Static encounters beyond the legendaries

Encounter conditions, levels and Hard mode stat changes from the hack's official documentation; the static encounter table from the extracted static_pokemon_manifest.json. The docs and the features list disagree on whether Hard mode Rayquaza is level 50 or level 70 — the encounter sheet says 50, and that is what is stated here.