Pokemon Legends: Z-A Discovery Completely Changes Shiny Hunting

A new Pokemon Legends: Z-A discovery completely changes shiny hunting in the Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2 game. Just like in Pokemon Legends: Arceus, Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, one of the key things that keeps hardcore fans playing for Z-A hours and hours, even after beating the game, is the quest to catch shinies. This new discovery does not make this quest easier, but it makes it easier to accumulate shinies.

More specifically, a new glitch has been discovered that Game Freak and Nintendo have yet to fix, and considering how slow Game Freak and Nintendo are to patch the game, let alone react, it may be a while before this exploit is fixed. Until it is, Pokemon Legends: Z-A can clone their shinies at will.

How It Works

The glitch was discovered, or at least spread by, Austin John Plays. To begin the process, you will want to make the Shiny Pokemon you want to go aggro, and then lead it far away until it stops being aggro. When this happens, the Pokemon will automatically start to return to its spawn location. Once this happens, save the game because what this does is save the Pokemon to its current location, overriding its programming to return to its spawn location. From here, you will need to restart the game by turning it off and then on. When you load back up the game, the Pokemon will be right where you left them. If so, it worked, and you will want to go beyond its spawn radius. Now, save the game again, exit to menu, and then start it back up. Once booted back in, the Pokemon will still be right there, but now it should also be at its original location.

Read Next

Pokemon Legends: Z-A Has One Feature That Reminds Me So Much of Red & Blue

Nintendo and Game Freak will almost certainly fix this, but it’s probably going to take a little bit before this happens. Meanwhile, there is no way for it to take back any of the duplicate shinies you get in the meantime. So those who don’t mind fudging the system can double their shiny catch rate.

This is a pretty complicated glitch, but the good news is Pokemon Legends: Z-A isn’t actually very buggy. That said, it does have some issues that need to be fixed. In particular, in addition to fixing this glitch, Game Freak needs to un-ruin a fan-favorite Pokemon it has made useless in the game.

All of that said, and as always, feel free to leave a comment letting us know what you think, or join the conversation over on the ComicBook Forum.