me and my team of shiny pokemon in kitakami!

since the release of pokemon: scarlet & violet, a lot of my friends have been interested in taking up shiny hunting, so i decided i'd write a guide to help everyone out! it goes a bit in-depth, but i tried to keep it easy to understand for people who are entirely new to the process of shiny hunting. this guide also places a lot of focus on method shiny hunting (i.e. using in-game features to make your odds of running into a shiny as high as possible) but please note that full odds shiny hunting (not using any in-game features to up your odds / putting faith in the base game odds - for scarlet and violet, those are 1/4096) is very much a thing, and it's really enjoyable, too!

anyway, with that being said... let's get into it!  

shiny hunting is super fun in scarlet and violet! there have been a lot of gentle tweaks to the way shinies work in paldea. it seems like shiny hunting is being encouraged way more in this gen than ever before. so it’s definitely a great time to get into it if you’re curious about it!

in addition to shiny mechanics getting some fun changes, gen9 has made it really easy to tweak existing pokemon to make them ~competitively viable~. this might not necessarily matter to you, but it means that even if you get a shiny pokemon with stats that seem to work against it, you can use in-game items to get it into its strongest form possible. 

as you move through the plot of your game, you can eventually buy an assortment of really useful items at delibird presents. some items that you can find over there include: 

• bottlecaps → can be given to an npc in montenevera to fix up your pokemon’s ivs!
• mints → can change your pokemon’s nature! 
• ability capsules → can change your pokemon’s ability!
• power items → can be used in ev training! 

pharmacies around paldea also carry vitamins. while more expensive than ev training with power items, these can be used to ev train quickly. and if you accidentally gave a shiny pokemon evs in a stat that you don’t want it to have evs in, you can easily forage for ev reducing berries in the overworld OR get your hands on them via the in-game raids. and speaking of raids, really high-leveled raids have the chance of dropping ability patches, which can unlock your pokemon's hidden ability! 

so while this isn’t a ‘HOW TO MAKE THE STRONGEST MOST COMPETITIVELY VIABLE PKMN EVER’ guide, i think this is great to know, so you don’t have to stress out too much over getting your ‘perfect’ shiny. 

ANYWAY. 

there are two main methods of shiny hunting in scarvi: breeding for a shiny and encountering a shiny in the wild. 

breeding for a shiny involves using two parent pokemon to acquire a ton of eggs. you hatch those eggs and, hopefully, one of them will end up being a shiny. the process is pretty simple, though it can get a little bit technical if you want specific natures or ivs. it’s ideal if you want to zone out and do something else while you hunt. 

1. catch a pokemon with flame body

before you get started, i highly recommend you go grab a pokemon with the flame body ability. this ability reduces the amount of time it takes for eggs to hatch. 

your options in scarvi are:

• charcadet
• carkol
• coalossal
• larvesta
• volcarona
• fletchinder
• talonflame

you only need one of these pokemon! keep your warm pal stored in a box for now. 

now it’s time for the actual breeding process. 

2. select the parent pokemon 

you have a few options, here. in a general sense, you want to: 

1. get a female pokemon who is the same species as the shiny you want. the mother pokemon determines what the egg hatches into. so, if i want to hatch a sprigatito, that sprigatito’s mother must be a sprigatito OR one of the pokemon in sprigatito’s evolutionary line. 
2. get a male pokemon who belongs to the same egg group as the mother. in my sprigatito scenario, i don’t necessarily need a male sprigatito as the ‘father’ (though that would work!), just a male pokemon who is in the same egg group as the mother sprigatito. i usually check bulbapedia for egg groups. sprigatito is part of the field and grass egg groups, so any pokemon in either of those groups can breed with sprigatito. 

dittos make this a lot easier! genderfluid icons that they are, a ditto can take the place of the mother or the father in this arrangement. a ‘mother’ ditto’s egg will not hatch into another ditto - it will have the species of the father pokemon. therefore, i can breed any sprigatito with a ditto and get a sprigatito egg. (also, no, you can’t breed a ditto with a ditto to get more dittos </3) 

if you care about this sort of thing, you can add some little specifications to this process, too. 

• giving one of the pokemon’s parents an everstone (can be bought at delibird presents) will guarantee that this pokemon’s nature passes down to its offspring. 
• giving one of the pokemon’s parents a destiny knot (can also be bought at delibird presents) guarantees that five of the parents' combined twelve ivs will be passed down to their offspring. but as i mentioned in my little preamble, you can always just give the baby a mint and/or hyper train them. 
• egg moves are also a lot more easy in this generation, to the point that i believe you don’t even need to worry about breeding for them. you just need to give a pokemon that wants the egg move a mirror herb, make it have an empty slot in its moveset (select ‘forget a move’ if it already knows 4), and have it hang out on a picnic with a pokemon with the desired egg move.

anyway, if you decided to pair up two pokemon that you caught in your game, you’ll likely have a 1 in 4096 chance of hatching a shiny. these aren’t impossible odds by any means! you can absolutely still try for a shiny with these parent pokemon. in fact, if you want to go for a full-odds hunt, these odds are ideal, as they are the base game odds. but you can actually improve those odds if you so desire. 

3. improving your odds 

ideally, you want to get your hands on the shiny charm. you can get this by completing your national pokedex and showing it to jacq over at the academy. the shiny charm alone makes your odds become 1/2048. it always works in the background so you don’t have to do any setting up when it comes to utilizing it. 

something else that i HIGHLY recommend you do to improve your odds is something called the masuda method. jacq talks about this in biology class! it’s when you breed two pokemon who are from different regions with each other. the masuda method brings your initial base odds of 1/4096 to 1/683!!!! 

it can seem a bit daunting to get a foreign pokemon, but you don’t necessarily need to know someone in order to get one. thanks to surprise trade, you can get your hands on a LOT of different pokemon from around the world. those pokemon will have a little mark in their summary close to their names saying where they’re from. 

using these pokemon in breeding can help a TON with shiny breeding. people tend to forget that egg groups are A Thing, thanks to ditto, but please remember that they exist! even a seemingly common pokemon could end up being your key to getting a shiny. 

so, going back to my sprigatito example, if i did surprise trade and got a male japanese growlithe, i’d be like, wow, growlithe is in the field egg group! sprigatito is, too! my sprigatito is classified as being from north america, and she’s female, so if i breed her with this japanese male growlithe, i can effectively masuda method breed for a shiny sprigatito. 

FURTHERMORE… if you get a ditto from a foreign country, you can just ignore egg groups entirely! your ditto will copy the species of your pokemon but retain its own region. so i can effectively masuda method breed for a shiny sprigatito by pairing up my north american sprigatito with a japanese ditto, too!

the masuda method stacks with the shiny charm, so, in a perfect world, you’ll be able to select your future shiny pokemon’s parents and set up odds that are at 1/512. 

these are the best odds you can possibly get for shiny breeding. don’t sweat it if you can’t get to them… but try your best! 

4. set up egg power

after you have your two parent pokemon in your party (just those two! no extra pokemon!), you want to get an egg power buff going. egg power increases your chances of finding eggs while on a picnic! because, in scarvi, that’s how we get eggs! people also say that it also decreases the amount of time needed to hatch these eggs, so… it’s very, very useful. it lasts for 30 minutes. 

to get egg power, you can either start a picnic to make a sandwich OR just buy some food from an in-game vendor. 

if you opt to make a sandwich, your best early-game option is the jam sandwich (jam, strawberry). this gives egg power 1. 

once you have at least four badges, you can talk to the dude next to the counter in the sandwich shop to get two more really useful egg power recipes: 

• great peanut butter sandwich (banana, peanut butter, butter) → egg power 2
• great marmalade sandwich (cheese, marmalade, butter) → egg power 2

“but what about egg power 3, jamie” tbh i don’t think it’s worth it. it requires herba mystica - which are only available in 5*+ raids in the post-game - and those are eternally better off in overworld shiny hunts. egg power 1 spawns eggs like no tomorrow and egg power 2 is even better, so don’t sweat egg power 3. 

if you decide to go buy food from a vendor instead, just talk to one and look at their selection until you find something with ‘egg power’ listed next to it. you can check which active sandwich buffs you have by pressing right on the d-pad. 

5. collect eggs

now that you have your parent pokemon selected and your egg buff going, go into a picnic (if you’re not in one already from sandwich-making) and just… chill. scarvi changed breeding so that gathering eggs is a lot more passive. it doesn’t rely on steps like in previous games; it relies on time. as time passes, the parent pokemon will place their eggs in a little basket next to your picnic table. 

i recommend setting a timer for 30 minutes so that you can use up the entirety of your egg power buff. your basket will be full when it has 10 eggs in it, so be sure to clear it out periodically - like once every 5 minutes or so. eggs will automatically go to your boxes should you accept them into your life. if you want to gather a ton of eggs, you can always make another sandwich with egg power once the initial buff wears off (or go run off and grab some more food). 

once you have a satisfactory amount of eggs stockpiled in your boxes, it’s time to hatch them.

6. hatch eggs 

since egg power apparently helps with hatching, you can eat some more egg power food to help speed up the hatching process. 

at this point, you can put the two parent pokemon back in your boxes. make sure they’re somewhere accessible so that you can grab them again should you need to get more eggs.

swap them out for that pokemon with flame body and put it in your party. fill the rest of your party with eggs, hop on your friendly legendary mount friend, and just… run around! egg-hatching relies on steps taken, so you’ll want to either find a route that you can zoom along without interruption or go run around in a circle somewhere, like on top of one of the lighthouse towers.

7. rinse and repeat

at this point, you’re just going to be repeating the egg gathering and egg hatching process over and over again (i.e. steps 4-6 of this portion of the guide) until your beloved shiny hatches. it’ll emerge from its egg with its special shiny coloration and will have a cute little sparkle effect. 

it might take hours upon hours upon hours… but perseverance is key. take breaks when you need to and be sure to clear out your boxes, since they can fill up really fast when shiny hunting. even if you’ve set up your parent pokemon for the best odds possible, going ‘over-odds’ (e.g. hatching over 512 eggs and not receiving a shiny) is entirely possible, so don’t panic if that happens. once you finally hatch your shiny… congratulations!! you’ve done it!! 👏

in scarlet and violet, wild shinies no longer play a chime or sparkle when they spawn in the overworld! however, they do appear with their proper shiny coloration. a shiny qwilfish will be pink, but if it spawns on the map, you won’t have any other alert that it has done so. 

your base shiny rate for running into a shiny pokemon in the wild is 1/4096. if you happen to see a random shiny spawn and you don’t have a shiny charm… you had a 1 in 4096 chance of seeing it! pretty amazing! congrats on the full-odds shiny!

but you can also choose to increase the likelihood of running into a shiny pokemon. and here’s how we can do that!

improving your odds

as i mentioned in the previous sections of this guide, the shiny charm is really helpful. once you complete your national pokedex and show it to jacq, he’ll make it so your odds of running into a shiny pokemon in the wild are 1/1365. that’s a huge help as-is!

from this point on, we can improve our odds in two different ways: making a sparkling power sandwich AND/OR utilizing daily mass outbreaks. combining these two ways of shiny hunting makes for a really speedy shiny hunt experience, so i definitely recommend reading up on both methods so that you can smoosh them together. 

please note that sparkling power sandwiches DO NOT impact breeding for a shiny. they only impact encountering shinies in the overworld. 

sparkling power sandwiches

sparkling power sandwiches increase the rate at which shiny pokemon spawn in the overworld! they grant the buff ‘sparkling power 3’, which improves your chance of running into a shiny from the base of 1/4096 to 1/1024. with the shiny charm, it goes from 1/1365 to 1/683. 

you can only make sparkling power sandwiches once you’ve finished the main plot of the game! this means seeing the credits and all that jazz. upon entering the post-game, you’ll unlock higher level raids. i’ll refer to these raids as 5*+ raids, as in, ‘5 star and higher.’ 

5*+ raids have the chance of dropping herba mystica (shoutout to arven, we love arven), a necessary component of making sparkling power sandwiches. you can do these raids online with fellow players or on your own with a party of ai. please keep in mind that 5*+ raids are endgame content. people recommend using a pokemon who is at least level 75. your legendary lizard friend is an extremely good contender for these raids, but the choice is yours in terms of typing and training. knowing type matchups also helps immensely. this isn’t a raid guide, but i do want to offer some advice: when you go into a raid, don’t ignore the opponent pokemon’s base typing! regardless of its tera type, it will be using moves of its base typing against your pokemon. so, for example, the raid might be focused on a steel tera type gardevoir, so they’ll be weak to fire, fighting, and ground-type moves… but will be fully capable of using psychic and fairy moves! 

once you manage to get your hands on two herba mystica, you can buy the rest of the ingredients to craft your sandwich. the ideal recipes are best summarized in this graphic by SilentDestroySR on twitter! i’ve attached a copy of the recipe graphic here, too.

SAVE BEFORE YOU MAKE YOUR SANDWICH, just in case something… happens. ingredients love to spill, and, sometimes, if too many ingredients spill, you can end up with a sandwich with buffs you don’t need. additionally, you don’t want to save immediately after you make the sandwich, either. i’ll explain why in a moment - for now, let’s just take a look at the recipe… 

in addition to buffing your shiny encounter rate, these ingredients will impact your chances of running into a pokemon with a title, as well as increase your chances of running into pokemon of a certain type, too. 

this sandwich can admittedly be a bit difficult to make. what matters is getting the buffs, so, again, don’t stress out too much and reload if necessary. also, you don't actually need to bother with placing the top bun correctly on the sandwich! you can just toss it on your picnic table and you'll still enjoy the sandwich's buffs. 

here’s an example of my first shiny hunt sandwich!

this picture is showcasing an older recipe which was a lot more difficult to make, haha!

it might look… ‘deconstructed’...  but it gave me the buffs that i wanted, so we take those! 

once you make the sandwich, congrats! you now have powers! again: don’t save! when you reload, your buffs are always wiped clean… so, if you save right after you make your sandwich, when you reload, your sparkling power, title power and encounter power will be all gone - and your herba mystica will be wasted. you’re not going to want to save again until you’re literally in front of your desired shiny whenever it spawns. 

once you’ve crafted your sandwich, press right on your d-pad to make sure that the buffs are running, then go to the location that you know your desired shiny’s species spawns in and take a look around. you have 30 minutes before your sandwich buffs are all gone. remember that there is no shiny chime anymore; you need to keep a look out for the shiny. i recommend looking up the shiny pokemon’s coloration in advance for this reason. 

as of version 1.0.1 of scarlet and violet, you can reload the pokemon that spawned in an area by entering a picnic and then exiting it OR by running away from the area.

for shinies that swim around in water, if you try to start a picnic in water, you’ll get automatically warped to the nearest suitable bit of land. this is EXTREMELY helpful, as it reduces the amount of time needed to travel between the body of water and the picnic space. 

if 30 minutes pass and you don’t run into your shiny, reset your game. your sandwich buffs will be all over, and so you’ll need to make the sandwich again and repeat this process. 

if you do run into your shiny, save as soon as you see it spawn. then run up to it and engage it in battle. catch it like you would any other pokemon, and!!! congrats on the new shiny!! 

mass outbreaks

as the name implies, mass outbreaks signify a huge gathering of one type of pokemon. by clearing out a specific number of pokemon, you actually increase your odds of running into a shiny. mass outbreaks are daily occurrences! so, each day, you’ll see icons of specific pokemon appear on your map, with a little icon of two skulls(?) glowing red behind them. (if you’ve never seen the pokemon, it will be represented by a question mark.) 

if you’re into messing with your switch’s internal clock, you can actually manipulate the types of pokemon that are outbreaking - albeit in a limited way. the outbreaks reset at midnight, so you just have to toggle through the days, one by one. however, if you're looking for a way to manipulate the outbreaks and you don't want to mess with your switch's internal clock, there is another approach you can take. if it is the first time that you've launched your game for the day, you can just launch and relaunch your game until the spawns look interesting to you. this method won't work if you save your game before launches - only save once you have the outbreaks you desire. not all pokemon will outbreak, though! starters, legendaries, and paradox pokemon will not outbreak, so don’t even try looking out for those.

if you want to shiny hunt an outbreaking pokemon, go to the area of the map where its icon is hovering over. get one of your high-leveled pokemon, set it as your party’s leader, and save your game - it’s time to clear some of this outbreak out.

it’s most efficient to utilize the ‘let’s go!’ feature when clearing out the outbreak. you do this by pressing ZR and sending out the leader of your pokemon party. they will beat up the pokemon you send it towards and hopefully knock it out quickly. an important thing to note is that your pokemon will NEVER knock out a shiny pokemon while in ‘let’s go’ mode. they will flat out refuse to do so, evading it and coming back towards you. so don’t worry about potentially knocking out a shiny via let’s go. 

the outbreak has three phases. you’ll get a little text prompt with each phase you bypass. these phases are linked to the amount of pokemon that you knock out. you do not want to knock out too many pokemon - i.e., get the ‘the outbreak dispersed!’ prompt. if you do, you’ll need to reload. this shouldn’t be a problem, however, as the text prompts give a great indication as to how the outbreak is looking. 

to maximize your odds, you want to knock out at least 60 of the outbreaking pokemon. you can do this by utilizing a counter app (e.g. https://simplecounter.app/ ). however, you can also just ‘wing it’ by keeping track of the phases of the outbreak. once you get a prompt that reads something like ‘barely any of the original outbreaking pokemon are still here’, you can safely assume that you have knocked out at least 60 pokemon. (this won’t impact the amount of pokemon spawning in the outbreak - the only message that impacts spawns is the final ‘the outbreak has dispersed’ message, which we will be avoiding at all costs and able to bypass by reloading if something happens. of course, if you reload, you’ll have to start your count over again.)

also, while this is technically a form of ‘chaining’ for a shiny, knocking out other species of pokemon will not actually break your chain, so don’t worry about that. (e.g. if i’m knocking out outbreaking slowpokes and a stray magnemite wanders in and gets knocked out by my pokemon, it doesn’t impact my shiny hunt at all. magnemite simply doesn’t count towards the 60 required outbreaking slowpoke knockouts.) 

once you’ve knocked out at least 60 of the outbreaking pokemon, save your game. your odds are now maximized for the outbreak! with no shiny charm or sandwich powers, you now have a 1/1365 chance of running into a shiny. that’s far better than the base of 1/4096. with the shiny charm, your rate is now 1/819!  

you can improve on this rate by eating a sparkling power sandwich. this makes your odds 1/683 without the shiny charm, or 1/512 with it. however, if you are making a sparkling power sandwich, do not make it until AFTER you have knocked out 60 of the target pokemon and saved! as i wrote in the previous section, your sandwich buffs are wiped clean with each reset and you don’t want to waste your herba mystica if a shiny does not spawn within 30 minutes. again, you should not save after making a sparkling power sandwich until you are literally facing your shiny target. 

anyway, now that you’ve knocked out at least 60 pokemon, you have a few options with how you’ll handle this outbreak. 

the knockout method

• you can keep on knocking out pokemon with let’s go, as your pokemon partner will not ever knock out a shiny, until a shiny spawns.
• this method is particularly helpful with shinies that are on the more subtle side; it can be a pain to observe each pokemon when the difference is a very slight change. 
• keep in mind that the outbreak will disperse after a certain amount of knock outs are reached. if this happens before you get your shiny, you will need to reset your game. if you listened to your darling friend jamie and saved after knocking out 60 pokemon, you’ll just return to where you were when you maxed out your odds. 
• if you are using a sandwich buff for this, you’ll also need to remake it right after reloading. this is why we didn’t save at all after we got the buff running. 
• you can then repeat the knock out process and, eventually, you’ll run into your shiny. remember to save when they spawn, and… congratulations! you gottem! 

the respawn method

• you can reload the spawn area repeatedly. you’ll need to keep your pokemon within its pokeball and walk amongst the outbreak, looking out for a shiny on your own. 
• remember - there is no more chime! no more sparkle! so be very careful!
• if it’s not amidst the current batch of outbreaking pokemon surrounding you, reload the spawns of the area, either by opening and closing a picnic OR by wandering some distance away from the outbreak and coming back to the fresh spawns. 
• if you were using the sandwich buffs in conjunction with the outbreak rates, you’ll also need to keep an eye on the time and reset your game when the sandwich buffs end. again, you can check on your current buffs by pressing the right button on your d-pad. 
• at any rate, you repeat this process until your beloved shiny spawns. once they do, save your game and go get them! congratulations! 

as powerful as they are, mass outbreaks do have a slight limit to them, as they automatically disperse when the switch’s clock rolls over to the following day (i.e. when it’s midnight on your switch’s clock). if necessary, you can manipulate this by adjusting the clock so that the new day never rolls over until you get your shiny. 

overworld shiny hunting tends to have a bit less ‘control’ involved than egg shiny hunting, and it also requires a bit more attention as you can’t zone out as you hatch eggs - but it’s really, really fun. i’ve enjoyed it a lot, and it’s great to see it being implemented in such a great way. 

i hope you enjoy the hands-on approach to shiny hunting, too!

this chart was compiled by twitter user sibuna_switch! it’s very handy for listing rates of shiny pokemon - it summarizes what i’ve explained in this guide in a really effective manner!

i hope this little guide was of use to you! shiny hunting is a whole lot of fun. sometimes, hunts can last for hours… but they can also go by really quickly, too! it all really comes down to luck, but being able to manipulate the odds so that they’re in your favor can be a great help. 

happy hunting!!!