weirdly enough, the unova games of the pokemon series kind of... escaped from me.

it wasn't because i wasn't interested in them. on the contrary, i was EXTREMELY hype for them. i remember devouring information from the japanese release with my friends (since, back then, new generations weren't released simultaneously around the globe). to this day, a small corner of my brain still calls the starters by their japanese names rather than their english ones: good ol' mijumaru, pokabu and tsutarja make for a WONDERFUL trio. even prior to the games' release in japan, i participated in the hype cycle for the new generation as much as i could. and, truly, it was such a LEGENDARY hype cycle. from oshawott's teased silhouette getting imagined by fanartists into a tiny, green, duck-like creature being gently squashed by an acorn (iykyk) to snivy gaining the popular (and lasting!) nickname of 'smugleaf', it was a wonderful time to be part of the pokemon fandom. the vibes were, as they say, immaculate.

i got my hands on pokemon: white version the very DAY that i could, with pokemon: black soon following. i did a full playthrough of white, bonding with my team and enjoying the plot a whole lot. it was a wonderful adventure, but that was the extent of it. even though i picked up cartridges of black 2 and white 2 the following year, i didn't play the sequel. when i look back on it, for a pokemaniac like me, it was weird.

in hindsight, i think it was because unova was smack-dab in the middle of a whole lot of major life changes for me. during the first half of 2011, i was getting ready to head off to college - which involved moving off on my own for the first time to a whole other country. obviously, a lot of crazy stuff accompanied that move - compounded by the fact that i was pretty damn young for a college student, haha. to say i drifted from pokemon would definitely be an overstatement, though, as i was still thoroughly invested in it. (and hilda - aka touko - cemented herself as my de facto favourite pokemon protagonist!!!) i guess i just didn't really sink my teeth into the generation's gameplay as much as i REALLY wanted to.

for this reason, the unovan pokemon games have been lingering in my gaming backlog for a very, very long time. after finding the main party of my silver team quest, i wanted a break from gen4. i immediately began plotting my next pokemon challenge... and my unplayed copy of black came to mind.

my silver team quest involved hunting down shinies of the members of rival silver's pokemon team. it was a variation of the dream team quest/dtq, wherein shiny hunters look for their ideal 6 shiny pokemon for a team. while i toyed with the idea of doing a badge quest (like my alpha sapphire badge quest and my leafgreen badge quest), i figured that it was time to focus on putting together a team without the constraint of finding a shiny before each badge and without a pre-determined template of targets. i wanted to experience unova again in a way that was fully mine. there'd be no spins or themes to this challenge: it'd be a dream team quest in its purest sense.

the unova games are part of generation 5 of the pokemon games; as such, the unboosted odds of finding a shiny are 1/8192. while daunting, i'm completely accustomed to dealing with these odds in shiny hunts, and i decided i would lock in and find all six of these shinies at full odds. i wanted to really sit with unova and spend a whole bunch of time there...

...and that's definitely what i did! i hope you enjoy reading about my trip back to this region!

every pokemon game starts off with a very important choice... namely, that of your starter pokemon!

in my playthrough of pokemon: white, i picked a snivy whom i named 'Soren' (after my favourite fire emblem character). for this challenge, i didn't want to steal soren's thunder; i wanted to make memories with a new starter. like i said in my little preamble, i love all three of these starter pokemon, so, really... between tepig and oshawott, it was a win/win situation. ultimately, i decided to go with oshawott, since i got an oshawott plush from my mother as a random gift and i feel a very sentimental bond with it.

here's the plush in question, who accompanied me out on numerous little trips, haha! i asked my mom to name him for me, and she gave him the name 'ozzie.' i therefore went into this hunt knowing that i would nickname my shiny oshawott 'ozzie.'

i started hunting for ozzie in november 2025. i used one ds system with my copy of pokemon black for this hunt, and... well... let's just say it was a very tedious experience. the cutscene surrounding picking your starter in pokemon: black & white is a pretty long one. you can only check if your pokemon is shiny once you get through a bunch of dialogue. it's only when you're thrown into a battle with your childhood friend, bianca, that you can finally see the exact pokemon that you chose. each of these resets for a shiny oshawott took a little bit over 1 minute. this, combined with my stubbornness over hunting for ozzie on one system, meant that i was in for a slog.

on january 28th 2026, i was multitasking while i shiny hunted for ozzie. i was almost completely lost in the sauce as i modded fallout 3 in preparation for a future playthrough, but i glanced down at my ds before reseting my game - as you should, since it's all too easy to enter a 'flow state' and reset over a shiny when you're doing tons of encounters in one sitting. lo and behold... i saw a distinctly powder-yellow head gleaming over at me, paired with a pastel blue fur coat.

my 3661st oshawott seen was none other than ozzie himself. in my sheer excitement to finally meet him (and i cannot begin to stress how much i was NOT expecting to find him that night, lol), i... may have lost the battle against bianca.

oops.

never underestimate the power of tepig!!! thankfully, this didn't endanger my shiny hunt at all. ozzie got healed right up, then we took on cheren together. since i actually expected to see a shiny oshawott get sent out for this battle, i was able to get a picture of his sparkles, too!

despite the type matchup, ozzie seized victory in this battle. it was pretty funny, since bw loves to present bianca as the 'weaker' of the two rivals.

i decided that i'd keep ozzie as an oshawott for the whole journey. as cool as dewott and samurott are, i fully believed in little ozzie's power!!!

given the sheer amount of time that each of these resets took, i spent over 60 hours hunting for ozzie alone... and he was so far underodds! a lot of time had passed, but my pokemon black dtq was only just beginning.

accompanied by the iconic ozzie, my next shiny hunt destination was wellspring cave. you can find lots of adorable roggenrolas and woobats in this cave, and i really, really wanted a woobat of my own. both woobat and swoobat just have such adorable shiny designs - i couldn't possibly pass up including one on my dream team.

the odds that i was working with in wellspring cave were essentially a coinflip: i had a 50% chance of running into woobat for each encounter. i didn't feel too bad about phasing on a roggenrola, either, since i think that line of pokemon got really cool shiny designs, too. (by the way, in shiny hunter lingo, 'phasing' refers to finding a shiny pokemon that isn't your target! the encounters that lead up to each shiny pokemon that you find are basically grouped into individual phases.) of course, since woobat was my de facto dream team target, it'd mean remaining in wellspring until i found one... but i was also fine with that!

thankfully, these encounters weren't going to take as long as those for oshawott. i had some tricks up my sleeve to streamline the hunt as much as possible.

firstly, i caught an adorable little patrat - whom i named Sweetie - as soon as i could. this patrat had the run away ability, which was perfect: when it evolved into watchog, that ability would change to illuminate. to quote bulbapedia: "if a pokémon with illuminate is in the first place in the party (even if fainted), the wild pokémon encounter rate increases by 100%." this meant that i'd see double the amount of pokemon within wellspring cave, saving a lot of time!

in addition to training up sweetie, i decided i'd try something new for my shiny hunting process. namely, i'd bust out another ds and multi-hunt.

this was my very first time using physical hardware to hunt on multiple systems at a time. this is a very common practice for many shiny hunters, as it allows for more encounters. anyway, after seeing so many people in the hobby do it, i decided that i'd give it a try, too. (besides, i wasn't a complete stranger to multihunting, as i used software to do so for safari week.) i also figured that using my white file in my dream team quest would add another layer of sentimentality to it. after all, it was the very first foray into unova that i ever had!

i set up another watchog with illuminate in my copy of white, naming that one 'Darling.' with my preparations handled, i settled in for my time in wellspring cave.

i also brought in some more plush forme support. ozzie has his fair share of pals too, you know?

i ended up going overodds on this hunt, passing the 8192 encounter mark without any shinies to speak of... though i did manage to get an everstone for ozzie off a random roggenrola! it would take 9300 encounters for something to actually sparkle... and, thankfully, it was actually my target!!!

a beautiful green woobat swooped down and greeted me in my pokemon: white file from my childhood. her design honestly took my breath away!

i named this darling woobat 'gretel' and traded her over to my pokemon: black cartridge so that she could meet everyone there. my second official team member had finally arrived!

now that ozzie had a shiny pal along with him, i kept on playing the game as normal - making my way through unova and enjoying the game's awesome art style. like, come on. look at this. this OWNS.

naturally, i also spent time training my party up! gretel got enough experience to evolve into a swoobat!

our journey continued, with us grabbing badges from gym leaders and thwarting team plasma's plots along the way. i was eager to get my third shiny team member, as they would be the official halfway point for my dream team quest.

something really cool about the unova games is that they introduced changing seasons! each season offers cosmetic changes on routes, altered encounter tables, and even changes to the appearance of some particularly cute pokemon...!!! these pokemon are none other than deerling and its evolution, sawsbuck. for this reason, when i was putting together my dream unovan team, sawsbuck pretty much had a spot locked in. i know that its shiny design is on the more subtle side, but i just love that brilliant shade of gold that its coat takes on in gen5!

the most ideal spot for my shiny hunt was route 6, where i'd be able to find sawsbuck's pre-evolved form, deerling. i decided to hurry on over there...

...but first, i dressed ozzie up for a little musical.

i also went on a ferris wheel ride with a cool dude named n, learning some wild Lore(TM) in the process.

but this isn't a recount of bw's (phenomenal) plot - i promise. after getting a badge from driftveil city's gym leader, clay, i began the setup process for my shiny hunt on route 6.

for this hunt, i actually swapped my lead pokemon out. as useful as illuminate is for increasing encounters (and as much as i love both sweetie and darling!), i really, really wanted to try for a shiny female deerling... because i really, REALLY wanted to name my shiny after a particular character from deltarune. it's no secret that i absolutely adore noelle holiday, and the link between the deerling line and her design is pretty obvious. i thought it'd be so cool to have a sawsbuck inspired by her as part of my dream team.

in order to increase my odds of running into a female shiny deerling, i'd therefore have to lead my party with another ability-haver. this ability would be cute charm; again, as per bulbapedia: "if a pokémon with cute charm is in the first place in the party (even if fainted), there is a 66.7% chance that the game will force an encountered pokémon to be the opposite gender to the pokémon with cute charm if it can be that gender." i plucked two male minccinos with cute charm out of the grass on the nearby route 5 - one in black and the other in white - and gave them each the name 'Casanova.' this duo of casanovas would lead the charge in the search for a shiny female deerling.

neither casanova guaranteed a shiny female deerling, though. route 6 features a pretty diverse array of pokemon, and my chances of phasing were quite high.

as you can see in the above table, my odds of running into a female deerling were a decent 29%. i wasn't working with a coin flip here like i was for gretel. i could only hope that rng would have mercy on me. i brought in some moral support in the form of my deerling plushie.

thankfully, these deerling also spawned in dark tall grass. this meant that i had a roughly 40% chance of running into two pokemon at once, as battles in double grass can be double battles! by multihunting on two systems, this meant that i could potentially encounter four pokemon at once. the sheer speed of these encounters definitely made the 29% a little less daunting.

i was really, truly hoping to find noelle without any phases, as unlikely as it was. much like my woobat hunt, i passed by the 8192 mark and remained firmly overodds for many, many encounters. as i got to my 14000th encounter with no shiny to speak of, i wondered if i was destined to go 2x overodds... or if i'd break my record of 'longest phase without a shiny pokemon.' while watching fallout with my friend cody, something finally sparkled.

something that was definitely not a deerling.

my 14356th encounter on route 6 was a male shiny swadloon! i had a ~1.66% chance of finding this little bug. leave it to me to phase on the rarest encounter on the route. smdh. HAHA. but jokes aside, i adore swadloon, and it was such a joy to finally find a shiny - even if it wasn't my target!

since i was watching fallout when he showed up, i decided to name him 'howard' after cooper howard. (we had to pause the show while i tried to catch the swadloon, and it just happened to be on a frame of cooper talking.) writing this post also made me realise that ozzie also showed up while i was doing something fallout-related. are my pokemon fans of it? hm. much to think about.

regardless, my time on route 6 wasn't over yet. i buckled down for phase 2 for my shiny deerling hunt.

noelle's plush forme continued to accompany me while i was out and about. i figured that letting her see the sights would motivate her shiny forme to come home faster for me!

i think this strategy worked, personally - because my 6027th encounter for this phase was a super adorable shiny deerling! and, yes, she was ALSO a girl!

...as you can see, i was really, really excited to see her. LMAO. here's a clearer picture of noelle, sporting a cute pink flower (that she grew HERSELF!) on her head.

it was a relief to finally run into a shiny under the 1/8192 odds - and for said shiny to be my actual target, too!

here noelle is in all her glory. i caught her during unova's summer, so she has a green coat!

something pretty funny also happened during this hunt in that my entire pokemon team got pokerus at some point while i was looking for her. it made sense, as the odds of that happening are 1 in 21845, and noelle took 20383 encounters overall... but it was still quite a shock getting the dialogue from nurse joy, as i had no idea when it ACTUALLY happened.

even though i spent a fair amount of time on route 6, it was a pretty painless hunt thanks to the speed of the encounters that i had on it. my morale was super high, especially since pokemon day (february 27!!!) was fast approaching. since 2026 also marked pokemon's 30th anniversary, i rung it in with a pokemon movie marathon - during which i evolved noelle!

sawsbuck was an absolutely awesome addition to my team. like, just look at her. she's so darn cool. i taught her return and horn leech and gifted her a big root, and she became an unstoppable force.

with half of my dream team now assembled, we marched on to the next shiny hunt destination!

i began setting up for this shiny hunt on a very important day: pokemon's 30th anniversary!!!

i also worked on another shiny hunt alongside this one, though it wasn't a full odds one. rather, it was a pokeradar hunt for a shiny pikachu, whom i named 'Treinta' as a reference to the 30th anniversary. (i actually managed to catch that pikachu in the early hours of the morning, which left the rest of the day for other pokemon-related activities.)

as you can see, it was a really fun time.

this was all the backdrop for my preparations for my shiny tynamo hunt, so you know i was going into it in a very good state.

tynamo is a pretty rare pokemon in bw. in chargestone cave, 2% of the pokemon you encounter can be tynamos. furthermore, tynamo is a very tiny pokemon with a very subtle shiny design. i knew that this shiny hunt was likely going to be the most difficult one of the dream team quest, but i truly couldn't resist how awesome shiny eelektross looked. for me to turn my back on it would mean turning my back on the most basic premise of the dream team quest. i started researching ways of making this hunt easier on me while still keeping it at full odds.

the first - and most obvious - manner of business was getting a pokemon with static as its ability. as per bulbapedia once more, "if a pokémon with static is in the first place in the party (even if fainted), then there is a 50% chance the game will force an encounter with an electric-type pokémon, if one is possible." this required me poking around in my post-game pokemon: white file, searching for suitable pokemon to up my odds of running into tynamo.

i settled on two lovely pokemon from childhood playthroughs. the first was sparkzy the pikachu.

the second was PICHU the pichu.

both of these electric rodents have static as their ability, so they boosted my chance of running into tynamo while in chargestone cave. i gave them each a smoke ball item so that they'd be able to escape from encounters no matter what, too. but i still hadn't fully optimized my chances of getting tynamo encounters.

as it turns out, tynamos only appear at level 27 in chargestone cave. many of the other pokemon in it appear in the level 24-26 range. for me to keep static while limiting the amount of other spawns that showed up, i set up a repel trick.

a repel trick is a really simple little process. you see, when you pop a repel item in the pokemon games, you don't run into wild pokemon who have a level that is lower than your lead pokemon's level. due to this mechanic, you can manipulate spawns by levelling your pokemon to a certain point and then using repels to limit the pool of pokemon who interact with you. while running a repel trick the only pokemon that would approach you would be pokemon at or above your lead pokemon's level.

by raising sparkzy and PICHU to level 27, i could therefore use a repel and only encounter pokemon who were level 27+ in chargestone cave - so long as that repel was active.

i also decided to take my shiny hunt to one level lower in chargestone cave so that i could boost my tynamo encounter rate by a whooping 1% (hey, every % counts!). this also let ferroseed into the spawn pool, but i didn't mind potentially phasing on such a cool pokemon.

with all of this setup in place, i was finally working with optimal odds that were way more friendly than the original 2%.

to go from 2% to 59% was truly huge. 'so you had this hunt in the bag now, jamie, right?' you may be wondering.

i absolutely did not have this hunt in the bag.

okay, i'm just being dramatic. but for all my setup, i overlooked a pretty crucial aspect of this hunt. you see, repels are a finite resource. once you use one, you can take a certain number of steps before that repel runs out and you need to use another one in order to keep the repel trick going. for some reason, i totally forgot that the quality of life popup that asks if you'd like to refresh a spent repel - 'added in generation 5' - was actually added to the games from... b2w2 onwards. yeah. that's right. black 2 and white 2.

not black and white.

this meant that i would need to manually go into my bag with each spent repel in order to restart the repel trick. i could streamline this process slightly by registering the 'items' portion of my bag as a key item, but since i'd often run into dust cloud encounters while going back and forth in the hall of chargestone cave (which had a high % chance of automatically putting various stones and gems into the items portion of my bag), my stack of max repel's position would shift down with each attempt.

it might sound trivial, but, for me, a large part of shiny hunting is getting yourself into a steady rhythm so you can grind out lots of encounters at once. needing to manually reset the repel rather than just quickly mashing 'a' in order to restart it a la the popup prompt added a definite disjointedness to my original plan. on top of that, i wanted to keep on multihunting with two systems at once, which meant trying to sync up repels to the best of my ability.

it was a hassle, but not a dealbreaker by any means. by this point, i was emboldened with love for pokemon and determined to find my shiny baby eel. as per usual, i sought out help from a plush forme of my target.

it took a pretty long time for me to get used to managing these repel tricks with two systems, truth be told. for a large part of this hunt, i actually swapped to just using one. but... the thing is... i did get used to my two system setup again eventually. i guess it was bound to happen, as i was grinding out so many encounters.

unfortunately for me, i zoomed past 8192 encounters yet again. i've said it in the past, but it bears repeating: my leafgreen badge quest - which featured tons of underodds hunts - really warped my perception of the speed of 1/8192 hunts. BAHAHA. i passed the 10k mark and the 12k mark. just as i was beginning to doubt that shiny pokemon existed, a pokemon sparkled.

my 12532rd encounter wasn't my target, but it was a shiny klink! it made me laugh, as i had a 1.43% chance of running into these cute little gears. as you can see, my tendency to phase on the rarest route encounter was still going strong. someday, i'd like to evolve this little one fully...!

with another extra shiny added to my collection, i pressed on... and something amazing happened.

my 840th encounter was yet another shiny pokemon that wasn't my target!!! but how could i possibly even be remotely mad? safari week aside, it was the very first time that i ever into two 1/8192 shiny pokemon in one day!!! moreover, i found a shiny ferroseed, which has an awesome shiny design. and the phase itself was so short!

having such a short phase reminded me that shiny hunting didn't necessarily mean weathering a long slog of encounters (as oddly fun as those long slogs can be, haha). i kept on exploring chargestone cave, popping repels and dodging dust clouds to the best of my ability. days passed, and, while checking out widow's bay for the first time, i glanced down at my ds screen. i was face-to-face with...

...a baby eel that, i swear to you, is shiny.

HAHA. like i said earlier, this shiny is a very difficult one to spot - but i had seen so many non-shiny tynamos by this point that the slight differences REALLY jumped out to me. (later on, i also used the pokedex feature to see if i encountered any extra shiny tynamos & accidentally ran away from them. as it turns out, i didn't!!! thank goodness.)

it was a huge relief to finally have this tynamo, as this was the most 'challenging' hunt for me when i came up with the dream team quest's plan. he took 7083 encounters to show up, too - so he was underodds! when he evolved, his shininess became all the more evident.

i named him 'hansel.' he matches my swoobat, gretel!

here hansel is in his fully-evolved glory! he is the greenest pokemon ever.

leaving chargestone cave admittedly felt so, so good. i felt like i was breaking free, finally stepping into the Video Game Sunlight once more... and the sense of accomplishment of tracking down such a rare target was indescribable. it's super satisfying when you can approach a full odds shiny hunt and optimise it in certain ways. once you find your target, it's like you just witnessed all the pieces falling neatly into place.

regardless, it can also DEFINITELY be a hassle. luckily for me, the next shiny lined up on my dream team quest was one that didn't need nearly as much setup!

chandelure is a very notorious unovan shiny, and i think it's obvious as to why. like, just look at it. it's BEAUTIFUL. this is another shiny that pretty much had a spot locked in during the planning phase of my dtq. i was really happy to see how easy it'd be to track it down, too!

on the second floor of the celestial tower, you have a 100% chance of running into litwicks. A ONE HUNDRED PERCENT CHANCE. finally, i wouldn't phase on a shiny pokemon that i wasn't targetting...!

i got cozy on the 2nd floor of the tower, bringing sweetie and darling along in their respective files so that their illuminate ability could boost my encounter rate. i gave them the smoke balls that sparkzy and PICHU held for the tynamo hunt, too.

now, while i was taking on this dream team quest, i actually was also dealing with a bit of a... situation. basically, for a VERY long time, i really wanted to add a pink ds lite to my collection. i was amazed by so many shiny hunters' retro console collections, and i kind of wanted to try my hand at increasing my own just a smidge. you see, i only had consoles that i bought when they were #Hip and #Happening and #New. i was nervous about trying, though, as i live in the caribbean, and the shipping process can take a long time and cost a lot of money. (additionally, we don't really have any local retro game stores that i can just swing into and spend money within, lmao.)

after psyching myself out for months and months, i eventually decided to be bold and put aside some money for a treat. i tried ordering a ds lite on ebay from... a certain store that i shall not name. but that store ended up being absolutely atrocious to deal with...! now i know that i was just unlucky, but, jeez. the sellers were really odd. from shipping a defective system out to me, having really weird communication in confirming if they would fix it (they Allegedly Could, provided i paid the shipping to send it back), and generally being really unprofessional people, it was a terrible experience. after taking weeks to ship the supposedly fixed console back out to me (and only after i opened a claim with ebay), usps then lost the console!!! i tried to sort it out for the sellers even though the onus of that should've fallen on them... but, eventually, i was fed up with dealing with their blunder, so i just asked for a refund. as you can probably surmise by now, the sellers couldn't possibly be normal about this, and instead freaked out and claimed that the console was never broken, intentionally ignoring the video evidence i provided of it not turning on when it arrived here. they then went on to say that my caribbean-based courier service (which is OBVIOUSLY different from usps!!! and usps LITERALLY told me - in writing that i showed the sellers - that THEY lost it) was to blame.

i don't want to rant too much about this, but it was just... terrible. strangely enough, i noticed that they got another review during all of this from someone else which claimed that they bought a console from them, received it defective, sent it back for repairs, got told by the seller that it wasn't defective, and received it defective AGAIN without getting their money back. it was pretty much exactly what i was going through, save for them actually getting their (defective) console back at the end.

as stressful as it was during that time period, which spanned across months... i did end up getting my money back!!!! it only happened when i got paypal involved, though, since i closed the claim i opened with ebay prematurely when i saw that the seller finally shipped the console off. (protip: Do Not Do That. never close a claim until you have your product with you and functioning as it should!!! in my defense, i only closed it because my buyer protection technically ran out due to how long it took for the sellers to communicate with me... but i really shouldn't have done it regardless, as one of ebay's customer service representatives would've probably been able to step in and help.)

anyway, it was my first time dealing with sellers like that, and it really upset me. but i have to admit that i learnt many important lessons from it, and literally everyone surrounding me helped so much with dealing with it. from a random, VERY kind car mechanic who helped me insert another ds lite battery into the defective one (to see if i could fix it on my end) to the extremely understanding people who worked for usps and paypal, they were pretty much the saving grace of everything. (and shoutout to my friends who supported me while venting my frustrations, too!) i swore off trying to expand my console collection out of fear of being scammed yet again, but my mom encouraged me to use the money i got back to try one more time, since good sellers were definitely out there.

i ended up finding one such good seller. honestly, he was more than 'good' - he was absolutely incredible. clearly passionate about retro consoles and REALLY good at his job, he put together my dream ds lite (a light pink one with blue buttons!!!) and shipped it out promptly, communicating professionally with me all the while. it arrived safely, functioned perfectly, and was just a 10/10 experience.

here's my brand new ds lite in all its glory, along with a bunch of chiikawa goodies that i got from another lovely ebay seller (everything arrived together on the same day!). i decorated the ds lite with stickers and finally had an addition to my console collection! all's well that ends well!!!

now, back to the actual purpose of this post... shiny hunting. LOL.

as you can probably imagine, getting this console and being able to shiny hunt with it felt like a huge victory in itself. i sat down for a shiny hunting session in the celestial tower that very night, dual-wielding dses.

a few hours after i started, you wouldn't believe what happened.

on my dream ds lite that i pretty much felt like i fought several battles for, a shiny litwick appeared - and it was during my very first shiny hunting session on it. he was super underodds; i didn't expect to see him in the SLIGHTEST.

caldera took 3201 encounters to show up! this whole shiny hunt ended up being such a feel-good experience, and the circumstances around finding him were such a triumph. (...now you see why i went on that big rant about those sellers, right? HAHA.) i couldn't help but feel like it was a good omen for my new little system, which was already so important to me.

i went on to evolve caldera into a lampent.

once that was done, i went on a quest to find a dusk stone in order to finally evolve him into a chandelure. i found one deep within mistralton cave, which was a lot of fun to find and explore! i've seen people criticize unova for being 'too linear,' but i personally think some of its routes are so massive that the exploration they offer totally makes up for it.

bring back elaborate caves in pokemon games, please, gamefreak!!! i love modern pokemon games sooo much, but the early gens really perfected the caves. they genuinely feel more aligned with classic rpg 'dungeons' in the best way. at any rate... caldera got his stone, and he evolved into his final form.

with caldera the chandelure on my team, i had amassed 5 of my 6 shiny pokemon! i only had one more target before my dream team quest was complete. fittingly, this target has what is probably my favourite unovan shiny design of all time.

the setting of my final shiny hunt for this quest was none other than driftveil city. in the shadow of the city's lighthouse, ozzie the oshawott helped me surf the waves in search of the final member of the team: a shiny female frillish.

i had a 100% chance of running into frillish - regardless of gender - in these waters. but since i wanted a female frillish specifically, i brought out the casanovas once more. cute charm would boost my chance of encountering female frillish, which, in turn, would make it more likely for me to run into a shiny female one.

as you can see, i had a roughly 84% chance of finding my target lass and a 16% chance of phasing on a lad. i love both designs for frillish, so i didn't really mind phasing... but, you know... i was also on the final stretch of the quest, and i really, REALLY wanted to meet my final team member.

i kept up with the theme of bringing along some plushies for shiny luck.

it was a very fun, chill hunt, made all the more better thanks to the atmosphere of where i was hunting. but it turned out that i wasn't destined for another underodds shiny.

my 11598th encounter was... a shiny male frillish.

it's honestly so funny how i phased on targets that were technically rare encounters MULTIPLE times during this quest, despite all my efforts to minimise that from happening. it's also worth noting that he showed up while impacted by casanova's cute charm during pride month. love wins. good for him!

i hoped that my next phase would be a short one. alas, it... was not. HAHA. i wondered if i was going to end up beating the record that the previous phase set once i hit 11k encounters. it wasn't a big deal, though, as i really did love the location that i was shiny hunting in.

like, this place within driftveil is just so beautiful!!! if you have pokemon: black and/or white, i definitely recommend paying it a visit. it makes for a great example of a lovely, tucked away area of a pokemon game - easy to pass right by, but so wonderful to take the time to appreciate. since my phases during this shiny hunt were so long, i definitely had a whole lot of time to enjoy it!

thankfully, my next shiny didn't take too long past the 11k point to show up; in fact, it didn't go over the number of encounters for the previous phase. my 11456th encounter was my target - the final member of my pokemon black dream team quest.

SHINY FEMALE FRILLISH!!! she's just so cute! i named her antoinette, after the one and only marie antoinette.

i made sure to take a picture of antoinette with my shiny frillish plush keychain, too!

once i found her, it felt so surreal. i couldn't believe that i was done with my dream team quest. after months and months of chipping away at it, the gang was finally all here.

legends, the lot of them.

i had to train up antoinette and her shiny friends as we continued to take on the plot of the game. eventually, she had enough experience to evolve.

do you see why shiny female jellicent's design is one of my favourites of all time?! the purple is so soft and beautiful!!! it's a very fitting design for such a regal pokemon.

after getting everyone to level 60, we rolled up to the pokemon league and challenged the elite four. after winning some really fun battles, we then dealt with team plasma once and, seemingly, for all.

the plot of pokemon: black & white is very popular within the fandom - and for very good reason. n's storyline moved me deeply, and i loved the resolution to it all. i also really, really enjoyed the character development that our childhood friends cheren and bianca went through as they figured out their respective places in the pokemon world. furthermore, the themes concerning the synergy between pokemon and humanity touched me deeply, since i spent such a long time putting my team together and felt such a close bond with all of them. it made me really nostalgic for my first journey though pokemon: white, too. pocket monsters truly are something special...!

here is the very first game clear picture that i got with my wonderful dream team.

and now for the total amount of encounters that this whole quest took. i went by target rather than listing out the phases, too - but those shinies are also beloved!!! (as are all the normal, non-shiny pokemon who helped me in my hunts, hehe.)

ozzie the oshawott - 3661
gretel the swoobat - 9300
noelle the deerling - 20383
hansel the eelektross - 20455
caldera the chandelure - 3201
antoinette the jellicent - 23054

total number of encounters: 79874
so. many. pokemon!!!

obviously, each and every one of these encounters was completely worth it. i was so happy to revisit unova and experience it at such a deep level. this was my very first pure dream team quest... and it was phenomenal.

i have a huge post-game plotline left to enjoy with ozzie, gretel, noelle, hansel, caldera and antoinette, and so our adventure is far from over. as for black 2... whenever i get around to playing it, i may very well take on yet another dream team quest for my first experience of it. i suppose time will tell! for now, i hope that you enjoyed reading about how i assembled my shiny dream team in pokemon: black version!