Pokemon Legends: Arceus Makes Shiny Hunting a Whole Lot Easier

Pokemon Legends: Arceus makes searching for and capturing Shiny Pokemon a whole lot easier. In the opening minutes of my playthrough of Pokemon Legends: Arceus, the first wild Pokemon I encountered was a Shiny Bidoof. At the time, I didn't realize it was a Shiny Bidoof (the Pokemon has a "golden" coat of fur that's only a few shades lighter than a normal Bidoof) and it ran away from me when I tried to capture it because I thought I needed to engage it with my partner Pokemon instead of just....throwing pocket sand in its eyes and then bonking it with a Poke Ball. For hours, I agonized over the loss of the Shiny Bidoof, thinking that it was a rare opportunity to find a rare Shiny Pokemon (which has an appearance rate of less than 1 in 4000 under normal circumstances) in the wild. Much to my surprise, I quickly learned that Shiny Pokemon seem to be much more common in Pokemon Legends: Arceus, at least in certain circumstances. 

Pokemon Legends: Arceus is a Shiny Hunter's dream game for several reasons. While Shiny Pokemon are still randomly generated and are extremely rare, the game comes with several built-in benefits. Similar to the Pokemon: Let's Go games and Pokemon Sword and Shield before it, Shiny Pokemon can be seen roaming through the wild and don't require any sort of interaction like in older Pokemon games. With the use of Ride Pokemon, players can glide above the entire map looking for Shiny Pokemon without the need to battle. 

Once a player encounters a Shiny Pokemon, they have a much lower risk of actually losing it due to an ill-timed critical hit or the Pokemon successfully running away. Wild Shiny Pokemon will remain Shiny on screen after a player saves their game instead of triggering a re-roll. This means that, if you encounter a Shiny Pokemon and lose it somehow, you can simply reset your game to the previous save point. Although this makes soft resets a bit trickier (players who want to use the soft reset technique need to save their game at a point before the wild Pokemon they're Shiny Hunting spawns), it all but guarantees that a Shiny Pokemon won't get away from them. Shiny Hunting now has a much lower cost of failure than before. 

There are also several way of increasing the chance of encountering Shiny Pokemon in the wild. Completing a Pokedex entry doubles the odds of encountering a Pokemon (so a 1 in just over 2000 chance), while fully completing a Pokemon's research increases the odds to 1 in just over 1000. Most importantly, Mass Outbreaks have a much higher chance of producing Shiny Pokemon. According to one dataminer, a Mass Outbreak has a 1 in 158 chance of generating a Shiny Pokemon without any other Shiny Boosts added. When tossing in a completed Pokedex entry and perfect research, a Mass Outbreak has a 1 in 141 chance of producing a Shiny Pokemon. 

Pokemon Legends: Arceus also brings back the Shiny Charm to help increase your odds of finding a Shiny Pokemon in the wild. To earn it, players have to successfully complete the Pokedex by raising every single entry's Research Level to 10. When tossing in the Shiny Charm into the mix, players can have up to a 1 in 585 chance of encountering a Shiny Pokemon in the wild or a 1 in 128 chance of encountering a Shiny Pokemon in a Mass Outbreak. Those are among the highest odds to encounter a Shiny Pokemon ever in a main series Pokemon game. 

Pokemon Legends: Arceus is available for the Nintendo Switch.