So you want to start shiny hunting in Pokémon Sword and Shield? So use this guide to help you out. The basic premise of shiny hunting is that a lot of Trainers want those alternate appearances. Some of them are quite cute, and some Trainers just want an all-shiny roster for the cred. Whatever your reason, there’s a few things you have to learn.
The base odds of encountering a Pokémon Sword and Shield shiny Pokémon is 1 in 4,096. Those odds can be ameliorated with a few in-game tricks. The concept of Shiny Chaining is key here. You need to get those odds down. Keep reading to learn the odds, and how to reduce them in your favor.
The first thing is to battle as many of the desired monsters as you can. The first trick is to battle as many of your chosen Pokémon as possible. For example, if you want to find a shiny Charmander, the best thing to do is battle and defeat as many as you can. This isn’t always possible as not all wild spawns are easy to chain, but putting in the effort is worth it. By chaining these spawns together, you can speed this process up. Nintendo broke down shiny hunting in an article on the Pokémon website, which confirmed this.
“As you catch or defeat more and more Pokémon of the same species, you’ll gradually become more likely to find Brilliant Pokémon and Shiny Pokémon of that species in the future,” Nintendo said. “You don’t need to find these Pokémon consecutively, and you can see how many times you’ve encountered a species by checking your Pokédex.”
Pokémon Sword and Shield Shiny Pokémon Odds
Data courtesy of Serebii.net.
| Battle Count | Chance of Shiny (%) | Without Shiny Charm | With Shiny Charm |
|---|---|---|---|
| 50 | 1.5% | 1/2048 | 1/1024 |
| 100 | 2% | 1/1365.333 | 1/819.2 |
| 200 | 2.5% | 1/1024 | 1/682.6667 |
| 300 | 3% | 1/819.2 | 1/585.1429 |
| 500 | 3% | 1/682.6667 | 1/512 |
Once you have started the process of farming encounters, there are a few other things you can do. The next step is completing the main Galar Pokédex. This will unlock one of the more important items in Shiny Chaining, the Shiny Charm. You’re probably wondering what on earth a Shiny Charm is after seeing the odds, it’s an incredibly useful late-game item that all Trainers should have in their arsenal.
That’s not all either. In fact, it’s best to use some of the other tips that competitive players use to get the best team. Maximizing IVs for the sake of PvP teams is a big part of breeding, and shiny hunters can benefit from this as well. Getting the right breeding items, like the Destiny Knot, are essential for breeding a strong team. Along with this, you want to really get that Shiny Charm. Once you have the items, it’s time to put them into practice, enter the Masuda Method.
What’s the Masuda Method?
The masuda method is a mathematical formula introduced in previous games that made breeding via eggs the best way to get shiny spawns, provided you do a bit of setup. The core of the method is that a Ditto from one region will increase the odds of a shiny when breeding with a Pokémon of another region. The best way to do this is to get a Ditto from another region by trading with Trainers from other areas. Note that you can’t use two Pokemon of the same language, even if that language is different from the one you’re playing on.
Any egg produced by two Pokemon originating from different languages in-game will have a higher chance of being shiny; 1/683 without the Shiny Charm, and 1/512 with it. Throw in the Masuda method to your shiny encounter farming, and you’ve got the perfect storm in your favor. Each time an egg spawns, the odds of it rolling as a shiny, and determining IVs, are rolled. The Masuda method adds additional rolls to this procedure, increasing the odds of getting shiny spawns.
You could also get the Oval Charm to speed this process up. The Oval Charm speeds up the breeding process by making eggs appear faster at the Nursery. After beating the game, go to the second floor of the hotel in Circhester and talk to the policeman named Morimoto. Win the battle that follows to get the Oval Charm.
The other good thing about trying to get perfect IVs is that trying to get a shiny with six IVs gives you a ton of Surprise Trade fodder. The Surprise Trade is a pretty quick way to get more Trainer IDs into your boxes. Using the Lotto-ID each day to check for a winning Trainer ID is something a lot of people forget about, but you shouldn’t. The upside of doing this is that you can often get some wonderful items like Master Balls.
Other Breeding Tips
There’s a bit more to breeding than just hatching eggs. The process should really be done together with normal encounter farming to be most efficient. This means that at the same time you’re trying to get that 500 encounters, you should have a party full of eggs that you’re trying to hatch. It’s best to do this when you have a few boxes full of eggs you need to hatch, that way you don’t have to fly back to the nursery each time you need new eggs. Since you’re going to be combining shiny methods together, why not follow these tips and help yourself out. Follow the tips below to learn a bit more.
- Pokémon above your highest-level team member cannot be shiny – To get all possible shiny spawns in wild areas, you must beat the mains story first. Any shiny spawns are not possible until you do this, if they are higher-level than you. Because of this, it’s best to get a Pokémon that’s both high-level and has Flame Body ability. This is a great way to both speed up egg breeding and guarantee shiny spawns where possible.
- Flame body is a must – Since you’re probably carrying eggs around while looking for Shiny encounters, having Flame Body on a team member will further cut down the time it takes to hatch eggs.
- You cannot see if a Pokemon is shiny on the overworld – Pokémon Let’s Go Pikachu & Eevee introduced the ability to see Shiny spawns in their overworld, this is not the case in other games, so you have to check each encounter manually.
- Legendaries and Starters are shiny-locked – The legendary spawns and Starter Pokémon cannot be shiny via normal means. The only way to get a shiny starter (Sobble, Grookey, Scorbunny) is via breeding.
You might also want to consider getting a Pokémon Home subscription if you’re going this route. You will have tons of Eggs to deal with.
