Something Unexpected Happened

I know that title sounds ominous but hear me out. So you may be familiar with the fact that I play Pokémon. I tend to talk about it a fair bit. However, I haven’t talked about Pokémon Go in a while and something crazy happened to me recently so I thought I would bring it up. You might see where I am going with this, but bear with me to the end. Now Pokémon Go has recently done a bunch of events with a focus on Pokémon from the Galar region and recently that included adding some shiny legendary Pokémon to the game. The legendary Pokémon that can now be shiny in the game are Zacian, Zamazenta, and the Galarian bird trio. Zacian and Zamazenta were available in five-star raids for a couple weeks and the Galarian birds now have a chance to be shiny in the wild if you encounter them on the Daily Incense. For those of you who don’t know, as part of a special Research the Daily Incense allowed you to find certain unique Pokémon for fifteen minutes each day as you walk. If you are lucky you may encounter a Galarian Zapdos, Moltres, or Articuno. Currently, this is the only way to find the Galarian bird trio in the game.

Now, you may have guessed it, but the hardest of the new shiny legendaries to get your hands on is the Galarian bird trio. The reason is that unlike with five-star raids, you can’t guarantee encounters with the birds on the Daily Incense. You just have to hope you get lucky. There are some ways to increase your chances such as using Primal Dialga’s adventure effect Roar of Time to give you more time to use the incense or using it during certain weather conditions, but they are not guarantees. The shiny rate is the same as all legendary spawns at about one in twenty so even if you get lucky enough to see a bird there is about a 5% chance of it being shiny. Needless to say, this hunt is one of the biggest hunts in the game right now.

Now I have only ever caught two of the twenty or so Galarian birds I have found off of the Daily Incense. Both of them were Galarian Zapdos. So I never caught Galarian Moltres or Galarian Articuno. However, shiny legendary Pokémon encountered in the wild cannot run from you so this was a great time to try and go crazy with the Daily Incense. Of course, the odds of me finding any of them were low, but I figured I should give it a shot right? So each day I spent time popping it to see if I could at least find a bird, but no luck. Then two days ago, I decided to use it on my way to work. I had just gotten to my stop when I saw something spawning in. It was a Galarian bird! It was the first one I had seen in about a month and the first one I found since the shiny forms were added. I happily clicked on it and to my shock it was actually shiny. I nearly had a heart attack and after about thirty attempts I caught my prize. I managed to get myself a shiny Galarian Articuno! I did not expect to get this so soon after the shiny came out. I’m not complaining though. I know I said I was going to talk more about Zelda, but this was too good to not talk about.

Anyway, that is probably one of my luckiest moments in the game to date. I can indeed confirm by the way that they won’t run from you if you can still catch it. Good luck to those of you hunting for these guys and wish me luck on the others. Have a good night.