back in 2023, i learnt about a fun challenge that shiny hunters love taking on: the badge quest.

for those of you who don't know what a badge quest entails, it's essentially a challenge during which you catch one shiny pokemon before each gym leader that you face. this means that most badge quests consist of 8 shiny pokemon - one for each of the pokemon gym leaders. additional ways of taking on this challenge can also be put into effect. some people enjoy doing full odds hunts for their badge quests - meaning that they do absolutely nothing to increase their odds of encountering a shiny pokemon. for games prior to generation vi of pokemon (i.e. prior to x and y), this means that they have a 1/8192 chance of running into a shiny pokemon. for games from generation vi onwards, they'd have a 1/4096 of running into them. other players taking on this challenge may instead enjoy implementing different methods of shiny hunting, improving their odds of running into shiny pokemon in accordance to whatever is available to them depending on the game that they're playing. furthermore, some people add to the difficulty of the challenge by adding on to the base 8 shinies. a popular approach to this involves catching shinies corresponding to the elite four and champion, thus bringing the total amount of shiny pokemon required to 13. other twists can be added - such as aiming for target shinies. it's a very flexible challenge that is pretty much a staple within the shiny hunting community!

anyway, i specifically learnt about this challenge during my first full odds shiny hunt for a starter totodile in crystal. as i soft resetted for my totodile and braved professor elm's ramblings, i watched lots of pokemon videos - and many of them were about badge quests. i thought that shiny hunters were absolutely WILD back then and could scarcely imagine a single shiny starter, yet alone a full team of shinies! but after i successfully met anchor the shiny totodile, i realized that i was Hooked On A Feeling... and that a badge quest was most definitely in my future.

for my first foray into this challenge, i decided that i'd take it relatively easy. i opted for one of the 1/4096 games and also decided that i would be open to method hunting. i didn't want to put aside full odds hunts at all - hell, my starter hunt alone was guarenteed to be a full odds hunt, as, without a cheating device, you never have the option of increasing shiny odds at the very start of a pokemon game - but it DID mean that the full 1/4096 odds would only apply to a few of my hunts during the challenge. browsing over the options available to me, i soon settled on alpha sapphire as being my Game of Choice. not only did alpha sapphire meet my 1/4096 requirement (it's part of gen vi!) - it also features a very cool method of shiny hunting called chaining.

chaining generally entails repeatedly running into and knocking out one species of pokemon over and over again. your odds of running into a shiny increase with each knockout. you can break the chain by running into a pokemon of a different species, thus resetting your odds of running into a shiny. there are two primary ways of chaining in alpha sapphire (and in omega ruby, for that matter!). the first is via chain fishing, in which you repeatedly fish for pokemon and improve your odds as you go (this method of chaining actually doesn't rely on running into the same species over and over again; your odds simply increase with each subsequent fishing encounter. you can ALSO run away from fishing encounters without breaking your chain - which can't be said for other methods of chaining). the second is via an in-game item called the dexnav. once you activate the dexnav in the overworld, you can chain for pokemon in tall grass, in the ocean, in caves, etc. there is a WHOLE lot of misinformation out there about chaining odds in gen vi - to the point that i considered writing up a gen vi shiny hunting guide for this site, myself (tbh i might still do it for fun, haha!) - but that's definitely for another post. if you're interested, you can check out absolblogpokemon's video about dexnav and fishing chain shiny odds. you can also utilize the gen vi shiny calculator to get an idea of the odds that you're facing while you chain.

since i was open to method hunting via chaining, i decided to extend the challenge to include catching shinies for each of the hoenn elite four, as well as for champion steven, himself. this post is going to serve as a little archive of my experience! my counts may also not be exact, as, for many of the chained shinies, i relied on what was recorded in my pokedex rather than counting encounters like i was supposed to, haha... but the counts should be accurate in a general sense! i also wanted to have a theme present in all of the nicknames of the shiny pokemon. the theme that i ended up going with 'drinks from the dnd campaign that i'm in'! LMAO. (shoutout to my dm, who was essentially forced into coming up with names of beverages as i expanded the realm of my shiny pokemon search!) i'll be sure to explain each nickname as i go!

so, with all of this being said, i hope you guys enjoy reading about my very first shiny badge quest!!

it was very easy to choose a target for this badge, as it'd be my shiny starter! i decided to go for my favourite generation 3 starter - the one and only mudkip. this would be a full odds hunt, during which i saved right outside of the starter select screen, then soft-resetted through hundreds upon hundreds of mudkips.

after having fleeting encounters with many blue mudkips, my 1864th reset brought this delightful purple lad into my life!

rip currant was the first shiny of my badge quest! given the 1/4096 odds that i was working with, he came home really quickly!!

rip currant's name is also really special. rip currant is a type of undersea wine from reides' undersea home city. it's a pun on 'rip current' and 'currant' (as in the fruit)!

upon getting the dexnav in rustboro city, i decided that my second badge quest shiny would be skitty. given skitty's 5% encounter rate, i figured that this cute lil kitty pokemon would be the perfect opportunity for me to try out dexnav chain hunting. fun fact: prior to this hunt, i had never tried the dexnav out for shiny hunting purposes! i headed to route 116 and got started. it brought back a lot of memories, as i spent SUCH a long time trying to find a NORMAL skitty here when i was a kid playing sapphire version... (i ended up not finding any for myself and, instead, did the trade in fortree city for one. i still have skitit the skitty with me; she's in pokemon home!)

admittedly, at first, i had a bit of a rough time with chaining. with my one lone badge, i was still in the early game of pokemon with very limited repel access (so random encounters kept GETTING IN MY WAY!!!) and i was also VERY prone to accidentally SPRINTING up to the wild pokemon and thereby scaring them off... but despite my multitude of broken chains, i eventually ran into a shiny on my 540th dexnav skitty encounter!

firewhiskey was the second shiny of my badge quest - and my first-ever dexnav shiny!

ngl, i didn't care if i got a boy skitty or a girl skitty, but it was pretty cool to end up with a shiny lad, as they only have a 25% encounter rate. as for his namesake... firewhiskey is a really popular type of whiskey in our dnd campaign. it's particularly enjoyed by sailors, as it tends to warm them up on cold nights at sea. it's also reides' favourite drink on the surface! (rip currant remains his fav in the seas, haha!)

i got started on my third shiny hunt pretty quickly. again, this was a dexnav hunt. this time around, i got all set up on the southern portion of route 104... with my target being wingull! wingull is my favorite regional bird, so i KNEW i'd have to nab a shiny one for this badge quest!

i ended up running into a shiny on my 333rd dexnav wingull encounter.

wingull's shiny design is a bit subtle, but i feel like it's extremely cute nonetheless! stormdraught was the third shiny of my badge quest! i had a way easier time with this hunt than the one for firewhiskey, so my spirits were pretty high when i caught him. i also caught stormdraught right outside of mr. briney’s house, since his wingull (PEEKO!!!!!!!) is absolutely iconic and i figured being close by to her would bring me luck.

in our dnd campaign, stormdraught is a popular ale over in one of the major port cities. it has quite the kick to it - like being gently jolted by the electric energy of a lightning bolt. being the storm prince, reides is obviously a big fan.

my target for the heat badge was the adorable electrike! i really love this shiny design, as it has a blue-and-yellow colouration that is way more reminiscent of its evolution, manectric. i seriously love when shiny designs have little nods to other pokemon like that. (plus, manectric's shiny is one of the coolest there is!) i opted to hunt for one on route 110, right outside of slateport city.

this was yet another dexnav hunt, and my shiny electrike was my 638th electrike encounter!

goldvein was the fourth shiny of my badge quest! she was named after a type of dwarven vodka.

hilariously enough, i decided to search for the most unbalanced pokemon for the balance badge. how could i possibly resist a shiny spinda hunt?! each spinda’s spot pattern is super unique to them. iirc, there are 4 BILLION possible combinations for those spots alone!!! it makes getting a shiny spinda all the more special, since the chances of anyone else having this exact spinda are incredibly slim! plus spinda is an incredibly cute pokemon, so i knew i had to try to get a shiny one for this team!

i tried out horde encounters for the first portion of this hunt. by using sweet scent, i'd see FIVE spindas per encounter! so these encounters flew by SO incredibly quickly... after seeing roughly 1000 spindas, i ended up swapping back to dexnav chaining, though, as i got kind of scared of accidentally knocking a shiny out if one decided to show up with a group of friends. i chained 57 spindas and then ran into a shiny one, bringing my total spindas seen to around 1057!

tumblerum was the fifth shiny of my badge quest! i was absolutely AMAZED by the cuteness of his spot pattern!!! the circles overlapping by his ear reminded me of hello kitty's iconic bow. here's an even clearer picture of him for you:

tumblerum is a type of rum in our dnd campaign. made by giants, kegs of this rum get tumbled down mountains during its production. it was the perfect name for a very tumble-oriented pokemon like spinda!

the feather badge's shiny would be my 6th one - namely, the final member of my alpha sapphire team - so i figured that i'd celebrate achieving my very first full-shiny team with a full-odds hunt. i opted for a fossil hunt, as i had never done one of those before. i LOVE both of hoenn's fossil pokemon but decided to aim for anorith for this badge quest!

i got very, VERY lucky with this hunt, and my 1365th anorith revived ended up being shiny. i was on the treadmill doing soft resets when this lil shrimp decided to shine and i literally almost fell right off. no joke!

stonebrew was the sixth shiny of my badge quest! upon finding him, i officially achieved a full team of shiny pokemon. this was a feat that i used to think of as completely impossible, so... you know. stonebrew's arrival was a BIG cause for celebration!!!

stonebrew itself is a type of ale in our dnd campaign. it has a rocky theme to it (stone... rocks... deep stuff, i know), so i thought it'd suit a rock bug like anorith (and its evolution, armaldo!) very well.

at this point, i was amazed that i hadn't done any chain fishing for any shinies. once i picked up my super rod in mossdeep, i deemed it as Time To Fish. looking over encounters, i realized that, with a super rod, route 118 had a 100% chance of running into a member of the carvanha line (with a 95% chance of carvanha and a 5% chance of sharpedo). i knew what had to be done.

this shiny hunt was the quickest of my badge quest, with a shiny carvanha popping up on my 43rd encounter! i only broke this chain once, too. (btw, for anyone else interested in chain fishing for shinies... if you have a pokemon in the first slot of your party with the sticky hold ability, you'll have an increased chance of fishing up pokemon without breaking your chain. the ability also has an effect on gameplay even if that pokemon is fainted. so... shoutout to my resident sticky hold user: STICKY the gulpin.)

aquoberry was the seventh shiny of my badge quest! originally, he was meant to be named thalassoberry… and then thalasoberry… but it turns out that gamefreak thinks 'sob' is a Reprehensibly Bad Word in gen6… so, he's aquoberry!

either way, thalassoberries are a type of berry in reides' home seas. they're the main ingredient of a really popular juice that has a very sweet flavour to it. aquoberries are likely in the same boat (haha, water-aligned pun), though their flavour might be different.

wallace is one of my favourite gym leaders of all time, so i knew that i'd need to catch a really special pokemon for his portion of my badge quest. obviously, it'd have to be a water type, too! i settled on relicanth pretty quickly, as it's an absolutely amazing pokemon. relicanths are based on coelacanths, an awesome type of fish which has existed since prehistoric times. coelacanths are typically a beautiful bright blue when they're underwater - but whenever they get fished up, they lose this colour. for that reason, i really like how shiny relicanth is a bright blue rather than its typical grey-brown.

i was super excited for this hunt because relicanth is just that iconic. i was also pretty excited to get back into a dexnav hunt, as i hadn't really used my dexnav since encountering tumblerum the spinda. morale was high as i dove beneath the waves , but...

i got weirdly unlucky with this one! relicanth didn't shine for a whopping 2100 dexnav encounters (and those were JUST the relicanth ones...), making it a hunt that was longer than both of my full odds ones up to this point. (to be fair, i got VERY lucky for both mudkip and anorith - but the added element of effort re: sneaking up to pokemon and trying not to break my relicanth chain ended up adding SUCH a tedium to this hunt. i'd never heard of a dexnav hunt lasting this long, either!) hilariously enough, since i had to knock out each encounter in order to maintain my chain, my entire team hit level 100 while i was doing this hunt.

anyway, on my 2101th encounter, i finally ran into a shiny relicanth.

deepcoral was the eighth shiny of my badge quest! if i was operating with the base rules of this challenge, catching him would've marked the end of my quest... but i still had some steam left in me! it was time to focus on my 'hall of fame' shiny hunts.

but before i get into that... it's time for a bit of dnd cuisine lore. deepcoral is a type of wine that can be found in reides' home seas. it has a rather dry, bitter taste!

i decided to go back to a fishing hunt for this 'badge', as i really enjoyed my quick experience with carvanha and wanted a bit of a breather for this portion of my badge quest. the wailmer line is absolutely adorable, so wailmer was my next target.

my shiny wailmer didn't show up for 246 encounters - which wasn't bad by any means, though it was certainly not as quick as aquoberry's 42! still, i had no complaints when i fished up this purple cutie.

popmossjuice was the ninth shiny of my badge quest! she was named after popmoss juice, which is a juice made out of a type of moss that's kind of like tapioca pearls.

still feeling that urge to be on the fishing grind, i shifted my target to luvdisc for the next portion of my badge quest. not to gush about every single water type as 'cute' and all... but luvdisc is truly one of the cutest pokemon there is. like, LOOK AT IT. IT'S A HEART!!! it was pretty much a necessary catch for my badge quest.

luvdisc put up more of a fight than i expected, however! i broke my chain SO many times, it was crazy. i ended up doing a pretty awful job at counting encounters for that reason. it took around 400 encounters for luvdisc to shine. during the hunt, i also unintentionally ran into ANOTHER shiny wailmer! i decided against counting phases towards my badge quest, but it was still lovely to see yet another purple whale, haha!

islehopper was the tenth shiny of my badge quest! islehopper is an alcoholic drink from a town which my dnd party + i have yet to visit... so the lore on it is a mystery thus far. but it's said that it's strong enough that drinking a lot of it gets people feeling like they hop the isles of a nearby archipelago! (maybe some of them actually DO drunkenly hop those isles. hmm.)

at this point, i had my fill of fishing hunts, so i decided to swap back to doing some dexnav ones. going through the list of hoenn pokemon, i kept going back and forth on which evolution of clamperl that i wanted. both gorebyss and huntail have fantastic designs AND lore, so i was truly torn. i then realized that i could simply get BOTH. so that's what i did!

i ran into the first shiny clamperl after 315 dexnav encounters.

i was quick to evolve the clamperl into a gorebyss, as i had a TON of deep sea scales from my relicanth hunt! i absolutely adore this pokemon's pokedex entry in alpha sapphire: "although gorebyss is the very picture of elegance and beauty while swimming, it is also cruel. when it spots prey, this pokémon inserts its thin mouth into the prey's body and drains the prey of its body fluids." like, holy shit. i also really like how it isn't gender locked despite being a very sterotypically feminine pokemon.

anyway, delian sour was the eleventh shiny of my badge quest!

next up was delilan sour's sibling. i stayed where i was and kept on dexnav hunting for another clamperl... and got extremely lucky, as a shiny one turned up in 48 encounters following the previous one!

i evolved clamperl into huntail as soon as i could - making one quick trip to the carvanha route in order to yoink a deep sea tooth off one. i really love how huntail's tail is shaped like a small fish. the fact that said 'small fish' is reminiscent of gorebyss makes it even better!

green oasis was the twelfth shiny of my badge quest! green oasis is a cactus drink from a desert in our dnd campaign. it is a very rare export, so no one in the party's had the chance to try it out just yet!

after catching green oasis, i was finally approaching the very end of my badge quest. naturally, this meant that i needed to take on a full odds hunt for a legendary pokemon. at first, i was thinking of kyogre - only to learn that kyogre is shiny locked (BOO! GAMEFREAK STOP SHINY LOCKING STUFF!!!!) in alpha sapphire. i shifted my attentions to the other legendaries in the game and thought about just how utterly iconic the regi quests were back when i was a kid. the braille puzzles are incredibly cool and i really cherish the childhood experience that i had when i captured the regi pokemon for the first time. since the regi pokemon didn't fall victim to any shiny locks, i decided to hunt my favourite of the trio: regirock.

(by the way, in order to unlock the regis, you need to complete a short sidequest which also involves having a relicanth and wailord in your party. naturally, i used deepcoral and an evolved popmossjuice for this!)

at any rate... as fate would have it, lady luck decided that i was too lucky with rip currant and stonebrew. i'd have to WORK for regirock. after seeing 4069 regirocks, i went over-odds for alpha sapphire and, admittedly, got extremely demotivated. i strayed from the challenge and took on a variety of other hunts and challenges - including an ENTIRE ribbon master quest, haha.

but, during all of that... my unfinished badge quest nagged me. i knew that regirock was waiting for me down in the desert tomb... and i knew that i'd have to return to it. eventually, i got fed up of putting it off. i WOULD get my shiny regirock. it was only a matter of time and weathering all the encounters necessary. possessed with newfound determination, i launched up vods of jerma985's elden ring playthrough (absolute masterpiece of a game btw) and got to work on soft resetting.

my determination paid off. on my 6917th reset, shiny regirock graced me with its prescence.

failing this shiny was not an option for me, so i IMMEDIATELY threw my master ball right at it. LMFAO. i was beyond relieved; regirock's shiny is absolutely beautiful. the colours are so pleasing... it reminds me of a big chunk of delicious chocolate. mmm.

anyway, pog coffee was the thirteenth - and FINAL! - shiny of my badge quest!

its namesake is also very special to me, too. in our dnd campaign, we have a running bit that 'pog' is dwarvish for 'amazing.' while the party was in a dwarven city, reides mixed a type of whiskey with coffee... and the resulting drink was amazing. the barkeep asked him to name the final product... so he named it after the one dwarvish word he knows. pog. pog coffee. get it? kfdgdlfjh. it's such a funny little thing to me that i knew it was the perfect name for regirock.

so, there you have it! my very first badge quest ended up being a successful one. i started it in april 2023 and ended it in february 2024. it was quite the challenge, but it really added to my appreciation of the hoenn region and ALSO gave me an excuse to play through the amazing game that is alpha sapphire. :) i love all of the shinies that i worked so very hard to catch, and i can definitely see why this challenge is such a popular one within the shiny hunting community!

admittedly, with the completion of this quest, i feel very inspired to try my hand at yet another one. this time, i want to take it a step further and do a full odds badge quest in my copy of leaf green! these odds are a lot more brutal than the ones i faced in alpha sapphire, as each shiny will be a 1/8192-er, but i feel like i've grown a whole lot as a shiny hunter... so i'm willing to take the task on! i've actually already started the soft resets for a shiny squirtle (i'm at 4000 atm!). no idea when i'll be done with that quest - if ever!! - but i'll be sure to make a post about it someday. wish me luck, and i hope you enjoyed reading about my alpha sapphire adventure!

mood: proud
music: breed - nirvana