I don’t usually do things like this, but I figured that I should probably take the time and address specific things now. You may have noticed that many posts lately have been me bouncing around and talking about whatever I did most recently. Well, since I have spent so much time shiny hunting recently, I haven’t really branched out into playing some other games for some time. Things also slowed down because of the limited box space in Pokémon Violet. Thankfully this week Pokémon Home finally added support for Generation IX so I could transfer all of my extra shiny Pokémon over. Will that help me find new shiny Pokémon? I don’t know, but it is better than nothing. Besides that freed up three boxes worth of space, so I’m happy. The problem is that unfortunately, new Pokémon are going to continue to be more challenging to find since I already have so many. So new updates to the shiny dex will be a bit more sporadic going forward. Just a heads-up!
In Pokémon Legends: Arceus, I have been having some fun exploring and hunting as well. I finally got to a quarter of the way there so that is nice. That isn’t even counting the shiny Pokémon that I haven’t evolved for the dex. I am steadily making progress. I can also say I have done every hunt in that game now since I finally tricked myself into doing the permutation method. For those who are unaware, you might be better off not knowing. Basically, it is a way to increase your odds of finding a shiny in massive mass outbreaks if the outbreak has a second wave. If you are curious about the method, I suggest looking it up because I know my limits. There is a low possibility of me explaining it well so I just won’t bother. Just know that I decided to test it and found that it works. I’m still new to it though so I won’t do it unless it is something I really want. Like a shiny alpha for example.
Hollow Knight news is as follows: none. Yeah, I’m still getting my butt kicked. I will let you know if that ever changes. So, I ended up playing another game for a little bit on Steam. I bought the game recently because it was on sale and that’s it. Okay, it also looked interesting so I figured I would give it a shot. I finished it today and I don’t want to talk about it. Not in a bad way, mind you. It was enjoyable, but a lot happened towards the end and I really need to wrap my head around it before talking about it. the game itself isn’t long, but there are heavy topics brought up in it so I will probably save it for next week. So consider this a teaser. The game is called INMOST and that is all I will say for now.
I figured that it would be nice to talk about this kind of stuff every once in a while instead of just rushing into talking about something. I feel like I should try and slow things down and give some ideas time to breathe you know. Well, in between the shiny hunting of course. After all, I would like to complete those tasks eventually. Not that I have a deadline for them. Even if I did, I probably would forget about them anyway. Well, I would say that is enough rambling for tonight. See you next week!
Oh right. One more thing. Since things are getting more sporadic, I figured that this might be something you might want to check out. If you click here, you can see the Pokémon I am currently hunting so feel free to check it out if you want. Alright, bye for real this time.
Goodness, this one took a bit. Unfortunately, we have reached a point where I find more repeats than unique shiny Pokémon. Because I was also running out of box space, I decided to slow down my hunts before things got out of hand. Not sure if that really helped. Also, I felt slightly burnt out so I took a short break from hunting. However, that is all in the past. I have ten new shiny Pokémon for the latest part of these shiny compilations. Let’s get started.
Number 211
One annoying thing about these games is that while most types can be encounter-boosted using sandwich recipes you can unlock, there are a few you just have to figure out on your own. These types are fire, water, electric and psychic. Out of these four, the only one I have yet to hunt with is the psychic one. I never looked it up until now, but I finally decided to use one. After looking up a recipe for it, I used it to find a new shiny Pokémon. Now I thought that shiny Spoink would be harder to spot. All I remembered was it had a black pearl on its head. However, turns out its body isn’t grey and is more of a cream color. This shiny Pokémon is even better than I thought.
Number 212
Do you know the best way to minimize the risk of running into repeat shiny Pokémon? The answer is outbreaks. After a spot of bad luck for a couple of days, I decided to do a few resets after each outbreak change. Every day I would just see if by closing the game and reopening it, the outbreaks might change into something useful to me. Sometimes, it worked out, and sometimes not. Half of the shiny Pokémon I found were from outbreaks. One of them was a Hariyama sporting some nice purple hands. Man, this is a nice shiny Pokémon too. Hope we can keep this going (that’s foreshadowing by the way).
Number 213
Time for everyone’s favorite part of each list. A pink shiny! Just kidding, this isn’t the only one. This is one I was debating doing for a while because while I have seen its outbreaks before, I ignored them because I figured I would hunt it in the final area. Then I realized that since is there no shot I will find the three-segment Dundunsparce before running into a random two-segment one down there, I was worried for nothing. So I found a pink Dunsparce in an outbreak. Funnily enough, it had the rare mark! Glad I went for it. And before you ask, it doesn’t evolve into the three-segment form.
Number 214
There are three shiny Pokémon on this list I was really happy to find. The main reason is that I already had repeats of their previous forms. It is always disheartening to look for the middle shiny in a group and end up with one of the little brothers or sisters. However, that makes it all the more rewarding when you do find one. One of the three I mentioned was an outbreak shiny to be fair, but this one was purely after testing my luck with a flying boost sandwich. Sure I got a repeat, but I was too happy to find a brown Corvisquire to care. God, it looks so nice. A rare find for sure, but a welcome one indeed.
Number 215
Now for the second Pokémon that I’m glad I managed to get out of the way. This one was picked after I fell into a rut and decided to use a random number generator to decide what type I would go for and I ended up trying for a dragon-type Pokémon. After some more deliberation and a couple more dances with RNG, I went in the hopes of catching a Gabite. The first sandwich did not go well as I got two repeats and neither of them were even dragon-types. The second sandwich though, was the one. It got me my target and even the other form of Toxtricity I was missing. It is a shame that Toxtricity was so annoying to capture I nearly threw my switch. Well, anyway I got the Gabite. Similar to Gible, the main way to tell this shiny apart is it is a much deeper and saturated blue color with a more orange belly. It looks really cool. Lord knows why they decided to give the next evolution’s shiny form the Gengar treatment.
Number 216
Time for another pink shiny in an outbreak! Well, truth be told, the main parts that are pink are its eyes and tongue. This was also found by doing a couple of outbreak resets since my luck was so bad. I was taking anything I could get, but I wasn’t going to resort to date-skipping or anything. I wasn’t that desperate. This was a pretty straightforward Shroodle outbreak and I’ll be honest and admit I almost drove right it. Thankfully, I caught it staring at me in time. It is amazing it took me so long to find this thing. I’ve tried multiple times in the past to no avail, but now it is finally mine!
Number 217
Let’s move on to another pink shiny from Generation IX. This time my target was Squawkabilly. This bird has pink hair and a pink beak when shiny, but it also has four shiny types. Squawkabilly comes in four colors: yellow, green, blue, and white. So there is a shiny version for each color. It’s kind of like Oricorio but less impressive. Anyway, after randomly deciding to hunt for a flying type, I decided to hunt for it. While doing so, I learned a valuable lesson. When looking for Squawkabilly by Levincia, use a normal boost sandwich instead. There are only two normal types that show up there with Squawkabilly being one of them. Funnily enough in one sandwich I managed to get two of the four forms. The first was the white one and the second was the blue one. I’ll probably go for the other two eventually, but for right now it is time to move on.
Number 218
Do you remember how I said there was another normal-type Pokémon that spawned there? Well, it was the Pokémon Tandemaus. This Pokémon has arguably the worst shiny colors in the game since all that changes is its light blue shirt and pants change to a light brown color. The same is true of its evolution. They are very hard to find, but since I was in a good mood I decided to attempt the hunt. The best place to hunt for them is by the Pokémon League since the only other normal type is Igglypuff and so a lot of them spawn. Coincidentally Igglybuff also has terrible shiny colors since the only change is that its body is a slightly more saturated pink. That’s it. In fact, I didn’t think I would be able to notice it, so I looked it up to confirm the shade of pink. I looked and thought that there is no way I would spot it. Literally, right after closing the tab, I went forward and noticed one of the Igglybuff that spawned seemed to be a deeper shade of pink than the others. Turns out I can spot it after all.
Number 219
For these last two, we are jumping back into outbreaks to finish things off. This one was another difficult shiny Pokémon to spot. Pincurchin is normally dark purple with a yellow mouth, but it changes to black with an orange mouth when it is shiny colored. That is a hard one to tell, especially at night, so you are basically only looking for the orange mouth to try and spot it. Now, this was the outbreak of the batch that had me questioning whether I would ever find it. there’s always one that I don’t think I will get. Especially during a busy day when I can only hunt sporadically. Thankfully, I am too stubborn to give up early on a time-sensitive hunt. I finally found it twenty minutes to midnight. I always have to cut one of these close. At least it wasn’t hard to catch.
Number 220
The next day was a lucky one as I found a new outbreak. This was a Pokémon that I really wanted their shiny form, so I jumped right at it. I had caught multiple shiny Gulpin by the lake, but never a shiny Swalot. It is the same shade of blue as shiny Gulpin and it looks so good on it, but my luck never allowed me to find it. So there was no way I was going to miss out on an easy Swalot outbreak. It took less than an hour before I saw that beautiful blue. What a nice shiny Pokémon to end things off on for now. Maybe next time I will get lucky enough to find the other poison-type by the lake. I won’t hold my breath though since I haven’t seen one after all this time.
Well, there we go. Another batch finished. I should be starting to hunt more aggressively again since Pokémon Home will be accessible fairly soon and I will actually be able to free up some box space again. Until next time!
Well, I figured I’d see where I was at by attempting the last Pantheon a few times. I would like to say that things went well, but that would make me a liar. Yeah, I don’t have some amazing story about how I managed to use all of my skills to beat it first try. That is not something that happens to me. So, I will instead just talk about what I learned from getting my butt kicked.
First off, I totally forgot that none of the fights in this Pantheon are standard. You may remember how in the last post I showed a picture of all of the boss fights and how well I had done on them. I also mentioned briefly the difference between each level. Well, I may have left out an important detail. Once you go to the silver ranking, most of the areas change as well. So from the start, I am working with a harder layout for each boss fight. Thankfully not every fight is like this and the extra damage doesn’t apply. That doesn’t mean it didn’t throw me off at the beginning of it all. Would this come back to bite me? A little bit. The first run came to an end because of one of those altered stages. It was against one of my least favorite bosses Uumuu, a stupid jellyfish monster. The reason it is so annoying is unlike other bosses you have to wait for it to use certain attacks to damage it. It is such a pace killer and is just kind of annoying to fight. Well, hopefully, I will exercise better prowess and patience next time.
I did not exercise better prowess or patience. Yeah, the second attempt was a bit of an unfortunate series of plays by me. I rushed in and it cost me dearly. I ended up falling to one of the more difficult bosses in the early part of the Pantheon. There are a couple of unique bosses that you can only fight in this Pantheon. One of which is the Sisters of Battle which is the advanced version of the Mantis Lords battle. This one is difficult because all three of them come at you at once. Good luck trying to find time to heal when they are coming at you like that. Overall that run was worse than the first and thanks to that I was off my game and died tragically. So I’ll keep working on that patience thing.
All right, it was time for one more attempt. Will it be a decent attempt? Yeah… but man was the ending anti-climatic. I did get past the bosses that gave me trouble on the previous two attempts. Unfortunately, because of this I let my guard down and that led to me taking a beating for Sly and his giant nail. What was worse is that the heal area doesn’t come right after that fight like it does with the other nail master fights. So after I got my butt kicked by him and barely scraped by, I was thrown into the second Hornet fight, panicked, and died. Well, that is what I get for being cocky. At least I got about halfway through that time. It seems I still need a lot more practice though if I want to achieve my goals.
Well, see you next time. Hopefully next time I will actually have more progress to report.
I just want to say that Hollow Knight is one of my favorite games. Even though it isn’t the game I have spent the most time in, I feel like I have enjoyed the time spent more, if that makes sense. One of the things I love about it is that there are still new things to explore and discover. Whenever I have picked up this game for a new playthrough, I always find something new. Now despite my love for the game, there are certain things I haven’t finished yet. Just because I have found something, doesn’t mean I have completed it. The most notable instance of this is the final Pantheon in Godhome. To explain briefly, each Pantheon in this area houses a boss rush of a bunch of bosses that you have fought previously, with a couple extra bosses sprinkled in. Now the final Pantheon is special because it is the first four Pantheons combined into one long boss rush. You would think that since you beat the other Pantheons, it wouldn’t be so difficult to beat this one. Well, that would be wrong. This last Pantheon has a few extra surprises in store for you. However, the worst of them all is saved for the very end. The final obstacle, at least to my knowledge, that must be beaten to survive the Pantheon is Absolute Radiance.
For those who haven’t played the game, The Radiance is the true final boss of Hollow Knight that you can only face once you meet certain conditions. Absolute Radiance is a more difficult version of the original fight. Yeah, they made the final boss even more difficult. So, the first time I faced her in battle, I died a miserable death. Now that was unfortunate, but that also meant I unlocked the ability to practice fighting her in the Hall of Gods. The Hall of Gods is a place below the Pantheon where you can practice fighting against foes you have already encountered in Godhome. This practice area is how I was able to get as far as I did in the fifth Pantheon in the first place. So now it was time to practice this new foe. And so I did. Again and again and again. Of my many attempts to beat it, I have only managed to do so one time. Eventually, I had to put it down. I was getting worn down. Unfortunately, I couldn’t go back for a while as my laptop was having issues. Recently, thanks to my friends, I now have a Steam Deck. So now I can get back into training and fighting bosses again.
Above is a list of every boss I can fight in the Hall of Gods. Currently, I am facing them again trying to reclaim my fighting ability. My main focus right now is on the endgame bosses and any boss listed up there with a bronze medal. Bronze means I have beaten them, silver means I have beaten them on a harder difficulty in which they deal double damage, and gold means I did it without getting hit. My main goal is to be able to consistently beat all of these bosses before I challenge the final Pantheon again. Well, with the exception of Absolute Radiance. I don’t know if I will ever be comfortable enough to defeat it consistently. However, my hope is to try and beat this final Pantheon once and for all so I just have to keep at it. Who knows? If I finish up early, maybe I will finally start playing The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom or something. Yes, I don’t have the game yet. I will get it eventually though, since I like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and the sequel is just that plus so much more. This is still my priority though since this is unfinished business. Absolute Radiance will taste my wrath, mark my words. So, now I will go back to practicing. Wish me luck! I’m probably going to need it.
It’s time for the next installment of the shiny living dex series where I slowly realize how difficult it is going to be to find all of these Pokémon. At least I haven’t hit a wall yet.
Number 201
Let’s start off with an easy hunt. In the bamboo area in the Northern Province, I used a steel boost sandwich to try and hunt for something from the Kingambit line. That meant finding either Pawniard or Bisharp. Now as I was going around searching I noticed something interesting. Since this game is perfect without any flaws whatsoever, there would be instances where a lone Bisharp would spawn in a rock. I just noticed its head peeking out and thought how annoying it would be if I missed a shiny spawning in a rock. Fast forward about twenty minutes and I passed by the rock for the nth time during the hunt. Only this time the head poking out wasn’t red. It was blue. Well played, Pokémon Violet, well played.
Number 202
I wasn’t done with isolated encounters yet. this time I was after a version exclusive. I was hunting for Passimian in the Tagtree Thicket since it was the only fighting type in the area. I did take a couple of sandwiches before I finally found the blue monkey. As usual, I found it around the beginning of the sandwich so I had plenty of time before it expired. Let’s hope I get something else from it.
Number 203
Turns out I did. I decided to go hunting for Gallade since I figured it would be nice to get that hunt out of the way. The thing is that now that I was out of the woods, there were some more common fighting types that spawned in from time to time. Eventually, I ended up getting a repeat, which I would have normally been upset about, but instead, I got a second Pawmo. This one can be used to get a Pawmot since it is unavailable in the wild. So I walked my pink buddy for a bit and boosted him a couple levels until he regained his former pink. I find it interesting how Pawmi and Pawmot have the same shade of pink, but Pawmo’s pink is much lighter. Oh well, at least I have finally completed another line.
Number 204
I decided after that last sandwich to keep hunting in Tagtree Thicket since I was still missing a bunch of shiny Pokémon from that area. There were a couple of fairy types I needed so I decided to hunt for those using a fairy boost sandwich. And of course, I was completely unsuccessful in my quest. It still boggles my mind how I can start a hunt for a specific type of Pokémon and yet it is as if I never had the sandwich in the first place. How else would I have found a random shiny Grafaiai? Seriously though, I wasn’t expecting this to just show up. It really pops too with the brown ears and purple eyes. Not a bad shiny Pokémon at all, so I can’t complain.
Number 205
A miracle happened. An outbreak spawned in that actually had a Pokémon I didn’t have yet. I guess the game realized I had been hunting a lot in the same area so it decided to put a couple outbreaks there for me. One of them was a Pineco outbreak, something I was ecstatic to see since that meant I didn’t have to hunt for it in trees. After the Bounsweet hunt, I was really hoping that I might get lucky with one of the tree-spawn Pokémon spawning in an outbreak. Looks like I got my wish. So I spent the morning hunting until I found an orange pinecone sitting on a rock. This is a nice shiny color, I wish more Pokémon had this shiny color honestly.
Number 206
Now a couple of days before my hunt in Tagtree Thicket, I was planning on some other encounter hunts for fire-type Pokémon. I found a spot on the map where only Fletchinder spawned that had some potential. So, after getting bored of Tagtree Thicket, I headed off to that spot in the hopes I could get lucky. After a couple minutes, I found something. Now I thought that while the Talonflame line had their stomachs colored brown instead of grey, I thought that the change from orange to red feathers happened with Talonflame, the final evolution. Turns out I was wrong. The first thing I noticed about Fletchinder’s shiny was actually its red head. This shiny was better than I thought.
Number 207
Now I found the last shiny Pokémon about two minutes into the sandwich. I feel like either I find the shiny Pokémon immediately, or at the last minute. There is no in-between. So, with twenty-eight minutes left on the sandwich, I headed to find Salandit in the caves under Alfornada. I decided not to go for Flareon because I didn’t want to do it. I figured that chances were high enough that I could find it in that time. I think you can probably guess that I did not find the shiny Salandit. Instead, I found a random pink Toxtricity. Again, not what I expected. That works for me though.
Number 208
I tried again for the shiny Salandit. I was already there after all, so I figured that one more sandwich wouldn’t hurt. It didn’t. About twenty minutes into the sandwich I found a white Salandit. Just like with Combee, it happened to be the male variant that can’t evolve so that’s unfortunate. Thankfully, this challenge has spared me from this, although I wouldn’t consider it a win either.
Number 209
This game has a startling amount of pink shiny Pokémon. I don’t know if every game has this problem, but I know this game does. However, that wouldn’t stop me from hunting them. This next pink shiny Pokémon is one I needed to claim after failing to go after it in a cave outbreak. Yes, it is Yungoos. I headed to Dalizapa Passage and used a normal boost sandwich to find it, no matter how long it took. Then once I found it, I spent the other twenty-eight minutes of the sandwich seeing if I could get lucky with something else. I didn’t, but I got an easy pink shiny Pokémon at last.
Number 210
For our final one of this batch, I figured I would go for another easy one. I used a dark boost sandwich in the same area and spawned in a bunch of Sableye. I was also secretly hunting for Umbreon as well. However, I decided to change locations to the cave under Alfornada to have fewer Pokémon inside the walls. This worked out when after about five minutes after I changed locations, I found the yellow shiny Pokémon staring at me. He quickly ran up to me and I caught him. It may have taken a couple of throws though.
Well, that’s it for this batch. Tune in again for wherever I manage to round up more of these guys. Until then, see you!
I will be honest with you. I had a lot of technical problems over the past couple of days. So, the only games I ended up playing were Pokémon-related. I said I would try and move away from Pokémon this week, but I didn’t want to rush something out of nowhere or try and frustrate myself with more technical issues. So, I figured I would at least do something short and talk about my shiny alpha (shalpha) Pokémon. This should not be an issue next week and it won’t affect anything going forward so long as nothing else happens. Fingers crossed. So, let’s talk about them. One you may remember from before, but since I only have five at the moment, I will still give it some spotlight. Let’s start with the first one.
Interestingly, this alpha is probably the least common of the ones I have. Back when the game first came out and I was hunting to complete my dex, I spent every chance I could hunting to complete the dex. Unfortunately, a couple still eluded me. One of them was the Pokémon Cleffa. At the time, I thought that they would only spawn during a full moon and not just at night. That was my mistake. Thankfully, one day a massive mass outbreak had a hoard of Cleffa for me to check out. So I started going through the outbreak by catching them when something shocking happened. A shiny Cleffa spawned while I was catching Cleffa. I didn’t want it to run away so I backed off and got ready to save the game. While I was in the process of doing this, I caught another Cleffa and so an alpha Clefairy spawned from the outbreak. So this outbreak spawned back-to-back shiny Pokémon and one of them was a shalpha. I don’t think that will ever happen to me again, but man was I lucky. I had to reload the save a couple of times to get both, but that is how I got my first.
My next one was found by hunting using a specific method I found through watching YouTube videos. I learned that massive mass outbreaks sometimes spawned over an alpha Pokémon spawn in the overworld and if you cleared the outbreak completely before it ended, then you could save and reset your game to find the alpha again. It turns out you could manually keep resetting after that until you found the alpha shiny. I have only been successful in this once. I just don’t have a lot of patience for soft resetting. Random encounters I can handle, but soft resetting is hard for me. There is only one other Pokémon I have ever done that with for its shiny form and that Pokémon is Darkrai because it is my favorite mythical Pokémon. So, you can understand that just testing this out was draining. I wanted to do it at least once though. In the Crimson Mirelands, I tried going for shalpha Ursaring using this method. Don’t ask me why, I don’t know myself. Well, I kept it up until I got a shiny… Teddiursa. Well, I least I knew the method worked. So I caught it and well to the other Ursa ring spawn and used the same method. This time though I got the target. I haven’t used this method since, because it isn’t as much fun as finding them randomly. I would recommend it if you have a specific target you want though. Just note this doesn’t work with every alpha.
This third one is the one you might be familiar with from before. It is that shiny Gligar I found when I went back to this game again. You know, the one that appeared literally right after I finished facing the shiny Bronzor. This was a static spawn that appears in the Coronet Highlands and its appearance is what started getting me excited for shiny hunting in this game again. It is kind of funny how this guy is once again in the middle of the pack since he happened to be the third shiny I found in that post too. It was also the first time I had a shiny Gligar in any game. So that’s cool. Anyway, let’s head to the next one.
Now a couple people may have noticed that the post about returning to Pokémon Legends: Arceus had shinies that all spawn in the Coronet Highlands. That is because I specifically wanted to hunt there to increase my odds of finding a target. I have a dream to have my current team in the game be shalphas. This means that I need to find six specific Pokémon. Of these six, three of them can spawn in this area. One of them even happens to be a static spawn. This is the one I was hoping for when heading around the map. The bad news is I haven’t gotten it to shine for me yet. The good news is another one did. The static alpha Mothim shined for me during one of my runs. Honestly, it is always shocking to find a random alpha. I caught it easily and that made number four. The light blue makes this my favorite shalpha I have currently, with Gligar being a close second. Third place goes to our final participant.
Now as I have made abundantly clear, I tend to get tired of doing repetitive things. So I did start exploring other areas in hopes of finding other shiny Pokémon. I did end up finding a few, but most of them were repeats. Thankfully, I could at least evolve them for my dex unlike for the challenge I am doing in Pokémon Violet. For instance, in the Crimson Mirelands area, I found a shiny Haunter in a massive mass outbreak and since it was my second shiny Haunter I could evolve it into a Gengar instead. I haven’t done it yet, but that’s mainly due to laziness. Now after the massive mass outbreak was over, I decided to check the map to see if I could find anything else. I went all over the map, but I didn’t find anything else. I was about to leave when I remember Unown could sometimes spawn on this map without an outbreak, so I headed over to their spot and I heard the sparkle sound to indicate a shiny. I was very glad I checked, but strangely enough, as I got closer I also heard the alpha music as well indicating there was also an alpha. I was hoping the alpha wouldn’t be too obnoxious with me catching the shiny Unown, but I soon realized the shiny was the alpha. It was a shalpha Unown chilling in the back. I caught it quickly and headed out. Now technically this Pokémon has the most forms in this game with there being twenty-eight versions of it. Each one is based on either a letter of the alphabet or one of two punctuation marks. You can probably see which one I have.
Well, that’s all I have for now. I’m hoping to get even more in the future. I do want to say that if you are interested in shalphas, it mainly requires patience and a bit of luck. Finishing the dex entries for your Pokémon and getting the shiny charm is also pretty helpful. There is another method as well involving a certain way of hunting in outbreaks, but I will probably only do that if it is for a target I really want. Now, if you will excuse me, I have to go and do the Chesnaught raid. Apparently, Appletun can make quick work of it. Let’s hope so. See you next time, and here’s hoping for my laptop to stay alive next week.
We have finally reached the halfway point! Woohoo1 Unfortunately things are only going to get more difficult from here. However, I am still going strong. My only problem is I need Pokémon HOME to be accessible for this game because I am starting to run out of box space with all of these extra shiny Pokémon. That’s for future me to worry about though. Let’s get things started.
Number 191
Now you might remember that last time I used a fighting sandwich to find a shiny Mankey pretty quickly. Unfortunately, the sandwich still had a lot of time left on it and there were not many fighting types in the area. That meant I had a very high likelihood of finding a repeat. So I had to move elsewhere. After stopping for a bit I decided to head outside of Medali where I could potentially get Primeape or Breloom. It took about ten minutes before I had my answer. It was a shiny Primeape. Even though the only differences are that its fur is a bit darker and its limbs are green, I noticed it immediately. That makes two shiny Pokémon for this sandwich. Can we go for three?
Number 192
Well, we didn’t end up getting three shinies during the sandwich. We ended up with four. Yeah, not only did a second shiny Primeape spawn in, but right behind it was a shiny Tropius. Unfortunately, Tropius was a repeat but man that was one crazy sandwich. The second Primeape wasn’t a repeat since I needed it for its new evolution. In this game, Primeape can evolve into the Pokémon Annihilape once you satisfy its evolution conditions. The in-game explanation for it is that Primeape gets so angry that it dies and evolves into its new evolution. That’s insane. Its shiny form isn’t as insane though with the limbs and fur of the Pokémon only being more blue. It is more noticeable with its limbs, but it is a little difficult to notice at first. And with only one level two fighting sandwich the entire Mankey line is finished.
Number 193
So, every now and then I try to catch others live streaming shiny hunts since it helps motivate me when seeing others doing hunts as well. I decided to ask the streamer what type of Pokémon I should hunt for to mix things up. They said I should go for a rock type. So that’s what I did. I didn’t have too many hunts I could really go for at this point, but I just kept jumping around until I got lucky. Fortunately, things paid off after I made my third sandwich while hunting in the autumn forest by the lake. I managed to find a tree that was not a tree. Only this time it was more obvious than ever because it was a different color than the others. The shiny Sudowoodo has a lighter body and red bulbs on the end of its arms so while it may blend in with the autumn leaves, it was still easy to spot.
Number 194
Now I decided to go back to hunting for electric types. You may remember that I acquired a Pachirisu last time. This time, I was dead set on completing the Luxray line. Somehow in both this game and Pokémon Legends: Arceus I managed to get a shiny Shinx and a Shiny Luxray. That means I need a shiny Luxio in both games. Naturally, I prioritized the game I actually am working towards collecting them all. I decided to move a bit away from the trees in the previous location to minimize Pachirisu spawns. That way the only Pokémon I should be likely to find are Luxio and a couple others. Well, guess what happened. I did not find a shiny Luxio. Instead, I found myself a secondary target. It was a pink Pawmo. The likelihood of me getting this before the Luxio was pretty low and yet here we are. This game really likes to mess with me huh?
Number 195
Once again, we have a rare occurrence of an outbreak that I haven’t seen yet showing up. this time it was a Bagon outbreak and since Luxio was refusing to show up, I figured I would head over. So, I did the usual hunt for it and kept riding around until one turned green. It only took about an hour or so, maybe less. It was refreshing to see how helpful outbreaks can be. It’s a shame I don’t get useful ones as often anymore.
Number 196
Honestly, that took way longer than expected. I didn’t think it would take that long just to find a yellow Luxio. This isn’t like some of my other hunts where more common spawns appear instead. It is the most common spawn in that area and they spawn in groups of five. And yet it took me so long to finally find one. Seriously, I can’t tell if my luck is good or bad sometimes. Well, at least I finally completed the Luxray line. That’s three lines completed this week. Sweet.
Number 197
So now that the Luxio hunt is finally over, it was time to change targets. I was sick of electric types so I decided to mix things up a bit and go hunt for a fairy type instead. Specifically on an icy mountain. The only fairy-type Pokémon that spawns on the mountain is Ralts and each group of Ralts is always supervised by a Gardevoir. So, after making the sandwich it took roughly two minutes to find a shiny Ralts. That was easy. I figured I might as well stick around for the Gardevoir only to find another shiny Ralts. This one happened to have a lunchtime mark making it Ralts the Peckish. It has been a while since I’ve found a marked shiny Pokémon. Welcome aboard! That’s one more blue shiny to add to the collection.
Number 198
I didn’t have a plan in mind. And whenever I don’t have a plan, it is time to hatch some eggs. So, I gathered up a couple batches and just started hatching them. I could either get another Sprigatito or the final Fuecoco I need for the Shiny Dex. However, even with the Masuda Method I never really expect to get lucky with any of these eggs. So, I was watching YouTube while doing some egg hatching. After all, nothing about hatching eggs over and over is exciting. At least, until you find a shiny Pokémon in the batch. I was watching a video when I suddenly heard the shiny sound coming from my Switch. I looked over and saw that I had just hatched a shiny Pokémon. This time it was another Sprigatito, which meant I could evolve it into a Floragato. again it is a more subtle shiny color palette with it being lighter and using purple in certain places instead of pink, but it still looks very nice. Only two more starters before I have them all.
Number 199
Now this one was another on-and-off hunt I decided to try for again. This time the Pokémon in question is Paldean Tauros. Now this Pokémon had appeared in outbreaks before, but I opted to not visit these outbreaks for three big reasons. The first is because of their aggressive nature. They love to charge at you out of nowhere and after experiencing that with Veluza, I didn’t want to have to deal with an aggressive outbreak again. The second reason is its shiny form. Normal Paldean Tauros is grey with a black mane, but shiny Paldean Tauros is the reverse with a black body and gray mane. So, while it may stand out in an outbreak, it wouldn’t be something I could easily spot before I get rushed by seven other Tauros. The third reason is the biggest though.
Do you remember how I said I wanted to go for the alternate forms of every Pokémon? Well, I did mean that. I am still a ways off from doing that successfully, but I do work on it. Now, Paldean Tauros actually has three forms. The first form is its base form. The other two are rare variants that can spawn depending on which version of the game you have. Blaze Breed Tauros is in Scarlet and Aqua Breed Tauros is in Violet. These can spawn in as the head of the packs rarely in the overworld and can be made more common by using either a fire-type boost or water-type boost sandwich depending on which version you own. So naturally, if I have to hunt for it, I might as well hunt for the rare form at the same time. So, I did do that every now and then, and the other day I finally got one of the Tauros to be shiny. It was the regular one, but that was the expected outcome. Oh well, at least I can mark it off. Although since it was still early enough in the sandwich I kept hunting in the area. Turns out, this was the right call as I found the rare shiny Aqua Breed Tauros in the same sandwich about fifteen minutes after the other shiny Tauros. What a useful sandwich.
After that successful hunt, I realized something about the area I was in. This was the perfect place to hunt for Flaaffy. Flaaffy is the evolved form of Mareep, and while its shiny form is often looked down upon in the Ampharos line, I still quite like it. Its fur and body change to a bright pink and the orb on its tail changes from blue to green. After making an electric sandwich like I had been doing for my Luxio hunts, I figured I would be able to spot it easily if I came across it. And I was totally right. It really popped out at night and to commemorate finding my 200th unique shiny, the game blessed with a mark on the pink sheep. So that makes Flaafy the Sleepy my 200th shiny and the second one for the Ampharos line.
With that, we are almost halfway done with this project of mine. However, I don’t expect it to end anytime soon. I’m just glad I managed to get this far before my birthday tomorrow. I’m getting closer to the end and I can’t stop now.
So recently, and by recently I mean yesterday, I finally found shiny Pokémon number 200 for the Shiny Dex. That means I am halfway done with this project. Woot! Hopefully, I will have the latest ones up by the end of the weekend. That’s not relevant right now, instead, I thought it would be fun to rank my top ten favorite moments while doing this shiny quest. That and I wasn’t able to play a lot of games this week so I needed something to write about for today. When in doubt, Pokémon is a free ticket to a decent post. Plus I get to reuse pictures for once. Nice. If I’m being honest it was a little difficult to narrow down which ones I wanted to highlight save for the top three. However, I managed to come up with a list eventually. Don’t worry there are no spoilers for the next shiny hunting post. While there were some good ones there, I didn’t think I could have any others on this list. So let’s get started.
10. Gastly (#111)
I usually try not to hunt the same outbreak repeatedly for shiny Pokémon. I do make exceptions for the rarer ones if necessary, but I would rather space out hunts in the same outbreaks. For that reason, I never linger too long once I have found my target and usually move on to something else or take a break. So what makes my encounter with Gastly memorable is how two of them managed to spawn at once. I have had my share of luck with outbreaks in this game, but I think that is the lucky encounter I’ve had so far. Shame it was a dupe, but it was at least a cool moment. Enjoy the recognition Gastly.
9. Rockruff (#153)
I felt this one also deserved a special mention for being one of the most unexpected shiny Pokémon on the list. Most of the Pokémon on the list are ones I have specifically hunted for but there are a couple that happen at random. This one is a favorite because it was the second fastest back-to-back shiny encounter I’ve ever had, as well as the fastest for not being a duplicate. The best part is I wasn’t even hunting for it. So, with all that I put it in the ninth spot on the list.
8. Lechonk (#1)
Now I can’t create a list like this without bringing special mention to the Pokémon that started me on this path in the first place. I had always hoped to find a random full odds shiny encounter during my playthrough of the game. My hope was answered by a pink pig while I was on my way to open one of the sealed ruins. My first shiny Lechonk will always be special. It probably would have made it higher on this list had I not found three more during this hunting challenge.
7. Tatsugiri (#15)
The main reason this one is on the list is that I still find it astounding how I managed to find all three forms without a repeat. Especially since the first form I found is the one that is the hardest to spot. I have found repeats since then, but it was still one of the most fun hunts I’ve had. This next hunt wasn’t as fun, but it was definitely memorable.
6. Basculin (#85)
This wouldn’t have been as memorable a moment if the shiny Basculin I found was from the outbreak I was at. I spent so much time at the outbreak only to get the other form. What’s even funnier is if the game was coded properly, the Basculin at the outbreak would have been the form of the one I got. If that happened, I would have never known how lucky I was. So I guess I should thank Pokémon Violet for being broken enough to give me a fun memory.
5. Sprigatito (#145)
When going for the starters I decided to do it through roulette. I gathered all three starters with a Ditto and waited to see which one I would get lucky with finding. I found the starters Fuecoco and Quaxly very close together since I got them in the same egg batch. However, Sprigatito was nowhere in sight. I don’t know why it took so long to get it, but I think that is why I was the most excited about it when I finally found it. Also, it does help that it is my favorite shiny color palette of the three.
4. Gothorita (#105)
Now if you do start hunting in these games, the most important thing to remember is to be paying attention. Since the only way to find a shiny Pokémon is by looking at them, you need to have some knowledge of what the shiny Pokémon looks like. I think I was pretty good at having a grasp on the appearance of shiny Pokémon but this was an exception. To this day I am amazed that I managed to find a shiny Gothorita just by looking at its face. One of the few shiny Pokémon in the game that I didn’t know what it looked like and I still snagged it. What a lucky break.
3. Larvesta (#23)
This Pokémon is the sole reason that I don’t give up on a hunt until the final hour. I spent days on the hunt, got lucky enough for an outbreak to spawn, and didn’t find the shiny one until one minute before every outbreak reset. I still consider this to be the luckiest outcome of any hunt I have had in this game. That is why it deserves top 3 status. I will never forget that the hunt only ends when you give up on it.
2. Bounsweet (#179)
This is definitely the longest going hunt that I have had success in at the time of writing. Honestly, I had started this thinking it wouldn’t take so long. I was so wrong. The thing that made it worse though was that I was just not finding much of anything. I was halfway into gaslighting myself into thinking that I didn’t need it. When this thing finally did show up under the tree, I could’ve sworn it was Christmas. There is only one other Pokémon I was that excited to find. That’s right it’s time for our number one pick.
1. Hoppip (#8)
Now you are probably wondering how the heck this made it to the number one most memorable Pokémon out of them all. Well, honestly if we were just talking about memories, this one would take the cake because I currently have seven of them. I can’t believe how many of these I currently have and frankly looking at them makes me feel sick at this point. I have more than a full party of them and figured that’s impressive enough for a shoutout before we get to the real number one.
1. Ditto (#61)
This was one of the first hunts in the game that I really wanted to do. The main reason was it is a Pokémon I have always wanted blue. I have tried looking for it in so many games to no avail. However, this time I stuck to it until I got the ble guy. It took seven phases to find it, but I was never more excited to see my Pokémon refuse to attack another. I actually saved and reopened the game to remove its disguise and take pictures with it. It was definitely one of the hardest hunts I have done in this game, but also one of the most rewarding. I cannot think of a more deserving Pokémon for my number favorite shiny Pokémon I have found so far in this journey.
Who knows if this will change in the future? Only future me I guess. Hopefully, I’ll get to meet him soon. In the meantime, it is back to hunting for more shiny Pokémon and more fun memories.
And now back to our regularly scheduled program of hunting for alternate color palettes of virtual creatures. We are almost to the halfway point so let’s keep it going.
Number 181
So another Charcadet outbreak spawned for me. This time though, I decided not to put my full attention on it. Even though I would need at least three of these for the Shiny Dex, I still didn’t feel like trying to kill myself looking for the ones with blue eyes. Seriously, it’s such an awful shiny Pokémon. However, somehow that resulted in me successfully finding one on my third check-in of the day. It doesn’t really make sense to me how usually when I don’t want something, it ends up showing up. Well, I guess that worked out. That makes one blue-eyed fire boy for me.
Number 182
Now I got lucky with that first one, but I didn’t think I was very likely I would get another. However, it was late, and since the reset timer was getting closer I figured why not test my luck some more. So, I gave it a shot and found another one with twenty minutes to spare. Now, the question is what to evolve it into? Not really. I have Violet so at the moment I can only go with evolving it into Ceruledge. Armorouge will have to wait. It’s a shame that Ceruledge can look so cool and yet have such a sad shiny form. All they did was have his eyes glow yellow instead of purple. Seriously, why are they so obsessed with eyes?
Number 183
I headed to the area where I normally hunt for Flareon again. I had a different target in mind this time around. I wanted to go for a Pawmo because I needed to find two to get the Pawmot I needed and it would be better to start on that now. Unfortunately, I screwed up the sandwich so it result in only a level one boost for electric types. Since I didn’t want to waste the sandwich I figured I would stick with it. Did I find a pink shiny? Yes. Was it my target? Of course not. Why would it be? It wasn’t the lucky Ampharos find either. It wasn’t even an electric type. It was a random Jigglypuff in a group with a Wigglytuff in the center. I double-checked it just to be sure and sure enough one of the Jigglypuffs had green eyes. I sure as heck wasn’t going to notice that it was a slightly different shade of pink. Also, I promise this is the last one dealing with different colored contact lenses.
Number 184
The rest of the hunts weren’t anything special. Some days are just better than others. I was planning to call it and head to bed when that weird glitch happened again. Specifically, the one that refreshes all of the outbreaks on the map out of nowhere. I have no idea why it likes to do this right before I go to bed, but I wasn’t in a position to care at this time. The reason was there was a new outbreak I had never seen before, a Vesbiquen outbreak. For those who don’t know, Vesbiquen can be difficult to ordinarily get shiny since it has a special evolution condition. If I weren’t doing a special challenge, I would still need to ensure I found a shiny female Combee, since only female Combees evolve into Vesbiquen. So naturally, when I saw this outbreak appear I booked it over like it was Black Friday.
Unfortunately, the Pokémon that spawned in the outbreak were annoying ones such as Lokix, Hawlucha, Houndoom, etc. I normally wouldn’t care about these aggressive Pokémon, but I had a time limit. I only had about half an hour from when the outbreak spawned to when the game reset them again at midnight. Every second counted. After all, just cause I knock out sixty Vesbiquen doesn’t mean I will find it right away. At least, that’s what I would say if it didn’t spawn right after defeating the sixtieth Vesbiquen. Getting the red Vesbiquen was thankfully not as painful as it could have been, and I’m glad I got lucky.
Number 185
After that luck with the Vesbiquen, I went to bed and woke up the next day with a new plan. I went back to the area I hunted before where I randomly found the Jigglypuff and decided instead to hunt for another Pokémon. I decided to use a steel boost sandwich this type since there were only two types of Pokémon that were boosted with that sandwich. The Lucario line and Tinkatuff. Both are pretty easy to spot since both Riolu and Lucario are yellow and Tinkatuff has a bronze hammer. There were four Pokémon I had as targets. I needed a Riolu, its evolved form Lucario, and two Tinkatuffs. The questions were who would I get first and would there be any repeats? I’ll hold off on the answer to the second question for now, but the answer to the first is surprisingly Lucario. Yeah, I managed to get the yellow Lucario first. Nice.
Number 186
One target down and three to go. Now, I was feeling pretty good about not finding a repeat since Lucario was the rarest spawn in my list of targets. So, I kept going to test my luck and at the end of the same sandwich I found Lucario, I managed to locate another target. This time it was the little pink troublemaker with the bronze hammer. That’s right, I got myself a Tinkatuff. I was glad to find it before the Riolu because I didn’t want to use a fairy boost sandwich and risk running into another shiny Jigglypuff. Two targets down and two to go.
Number 187
Well, somehow I ended up continuing the lucky streak that I was on since the next sandwich netted me another shiny Pokémon that wasn’t a repeat. In fact, it was one of the two remaining targets. I know I am using sandwiches for this, but sometimes it surprises me when they work so well. I managed to get a shiny Riolu a little before the sandwich ended. I honestly almost missed this yellow guy, but thankfully I spotted it in time. With that, I managed to complete the line and only have one target to go.
Number 188
So, I was faced with a choice now. Do I continue using steel boost sandwiches, or do I switch to fairy boost sandwiches for the last target? I still needed another Tinkatuff to acquire a Tinkaton for the Shiny Dex so I either had to risk getting a repeat steel type or a repeat fairy type. I eventually decided that it would be better to go with a fairy boost sandwich because at least I could get a Wigglytuff out of it if I missed my target. It turns out I was right to do this because eventually I was greeted by the sight of another shiny Tinkatuff charging down the hill like it was about to meet its mortal enemy on the battlefield. Thankfully I am not a Corvisquire and was able to catch it quickly. Then I evolved it to have the ultimate bronze death hammer for its final form. Say hello to shiny Tinkaton!
Number 189
Now it was time to get back to hunting for electric types, but I was realizing that finding two Pawmo isn’t super likely to happen without repeats. Don’t know why I thought otherwise for even a second, but whatever. So I decided to keep things a bit more flexible. I decided to hunt for Luxio in a place where they spawn along with Pawmi and Pawmo. I figured that was my best chance to find Pawmo and maybe I could also complete the Luxray line as well. The plan was foolproof. I’m serious this time. Nothing out of the ordinary happened. After all, I wouldn’t forget there was another electric type that spawns there. Wait, what are all of these Pachirisu doing here? Well, it’s still fine, right? After all, it isn’t like that will end up being shiny instead of the targets I came here to find. WHAT DO YOU MEAN THAT ONE IS PINK!? Sometimes, this game enjoys messing with me and you can’t convince me otherwise. It was honestly the pink shiny I had the least interest in finding here, but I can’t stay mad after seeing this little one. She’s adorable.
Number 190
Now after that debacle, I thought that maybe a fighting boost sandwich would be the better way to go. After all, this way I wouldn’t spawn any Pachirisu when searching for Pawmo. Like the last plan, I once again made a critical error. I didn’t anticipate the Mankeys. Once I used that sandwich, they were coming out of nowhere and without remorse. I realized that this had suddenly blown out of proportion, especially when I found a green Mankey five minutes into the sandwich. I really underestimated this angry monkey. Well, at least I got a new shiny Pokémon right?
I’m not going to lie and say that the last sandwich I made was definitely a happy accident. But it wasn’t over yet. I had twenty-five minutes left on the sandwich and if I stayed there, I probably wouldn’t be able to avoid another shiny Mankey. So, I improvised as best I could. Find out what I did next time when we finally reach the halfway point of this adventure.
As you may know, I have spent a lot of time playing Pokémon Violet lately since I am trying to find every possible shiny Pokémon. However, playing the same game for a while can start to wear down on you after a while. That hasn’t really happened to me, but I know that does happen to some people. Actually, what is annoying is past me not accounting for all of these repeats that I keep finding. After finding seven green Hoppips, I decided to change things up before I lose my mind. So, I decided to head back to Pokémon Legends: Arceus. After watching most people go back to hunting shinies in those games due to the performance issues most people were having with the game, I figured I’d also give it a shot. So, the first thing I did was to organize the Pokémon boxes I had in the game. My god, was it bad. It took me nearly four hours to do so and I found out I had a full box of shiny Pokémon. Here they are.
I realize that some of these are repeats, but I am too lazy to evolve them right now. However, now that I was done with organizing, it was time to hunt for some more shinies. So, I went to the Obsidian Fieldlands for a few hours and found absolutely nothing. Off to a great start right? So, I decided to change to my favorite area which is the Coronet Highlands, and do a couple more runs before bed. Nothing, but I didn’t mind. The next day was a bit different though. I actually managed to get a few things. First was a Bronzor, which I already had in Pokémon Violet. I wasn’t complaining though since I actually had space for it. Then the craziest thing happened: I went up the cliff to find a bunch of Gligars, one of which was shiny. I think that was the first time I got two shinies in one run without the use of outbreaks. The next time I found a shiny was another shiny Gligar in a different area. I still love the blue of this shiny over its usual pink so I was not complaining. The last two I got were during a massive mass outbreak, which is an event where lots of outbreaks appear on the map at once. The first one was a shiny Luxray that wasn’t actually part of an outbreak and just happened to spawn randomly. The second was a shiny Sneasel in one of the outbreaks. I should explain that while I have Sneasel in PokémonViolet as well, it isn’t the same as it is with Bronzor and Luxray. Sneasel has an alternate Hisuian form in this game that is purple and white, but when shiny it is gray and yellow. This is what they all look like together.
From left to right we have Sneasel, Bronzor, the two Gligars, and Luxray in their shiny colors. These were the ones I managed to find after a few hours of hunting. It was fun to come back to this game after a while, so much so that I don’t want to stop playing it right now. However, I still have the Shiny Living Dex I am going for in Pokémon Violet so I can’t just stop now. So, I decided to add a little side challenge. I came up with this idea ever since I found the Shiny Luxray. I have used six Pokémon during my playthrough of this game and part of me always thought it would be cool to have a full shiny team. That never did up coming true, but I never tried too hard to make it a reality. However, all that is about to change. I am doing a side challenge to fulfill this wish and I will take it one step further. You may have noticed in the previous picture that the two Gligars are vastly different sizes despite being the same Pokémon. There is a reason for that. I left out the fact that the first Gligar was an alpha Pokémon. Alpha Pokémon for those who don’t know are bigger and more powerful versions of normal Pokémon. In the wild, they are very aggressive and they all have red eyes. It is possible to find every Pokémon in this game shiny save for legendaries. that means that alpha can also be found shiny. These Pokémon are also referred to as “shalphas” because they are shiny alphas. You can probably see where I am going with this.
That’s right, I will keep hunting until I find all six of these Pokémon as shiny alphas. Ignore the Chimeco floating over the old lady, he’s just chilling as a wind chime. That means the Luxray from before doesn’t help here. Now some of these are easier since they are static spawns you can hunt, but others will be more of a challenge. It will be a challenge, but I think I can do it. Also, I am allowing myself the ability to evolve them in case of a duplicate unlike in my main quest since these things are pretty rare. I will see if I can create a tracker for the future since I probably won’t do big posts for this challenge. I’ll figure something out, but that’s all I have for today. Thanks for reading and wish me luck. Although I won’t deny this is partially just an excuse to play this game some more. Oh, and expect the next part of the main quest sometime this weekend. Have a good night!
That Casual Gamer Guy 