How To Hunt Shiny Pokemon

This week [Feb 28th, 2018] I caught my 240th shiny Pokemon. Not a bad return for someone who has only been playing the game for 9 months. Some Pokemon trainers focus on completing their dex. Some are passionate about collecting 100IV mons. This article is for all Pokemon trainers who enjoy nothing more than the thrill of finding shinies. It contains tips and strategies that will increase your chances of encountering and capturing the sparkly stuff. 

Disclaimer: The post also refers to the use of GPS tools to move location in Pokemon Go. And to multi-accounting. Both practices breach PoGo's Terms of Service and may result in a temporary ban. 

Which Pokemon are shiny?

The code for shiny versions of all Pokemon is currently embedded in the game. That does NOT mean that they are all catchable … yet. Niantic will decide when to ‘flick the switch’ on any particular Pokemon and make its shiny version available. Today (Feb 2018) we can obtain shiny versions of the following:

Magikarp [Wild + T1 Raid] > Gyarados 

Pichu [Egg only - very rare - do not evolve!] + Party Hat Pichu [From Eggs on Feb 27/28]
Pikachu > Raichu + Party Hat Versions of both [Feb 27/28]

Sableye [Wild + Egg + T2 Raid]

Duskull [Wild + Egg] > Dusclops

Shuppet [Wild + Egg] > Banette

Mawile [T2 Raid only]

Absol [T4 Raid only]

Snorunt (Male) [Wild (snow) + T1 Raid] > Glalie
Snorunt (Female) [Wild (snow) + T1 Raid] > Save it for Froslass in Gen4!
Aron [Wild + Egg] > Lairon > Aggron
Swablu [Wild + T1 Raid] > Altaria
Luvdisc [Wild + Egg] 
Poochyena [Wild+ Egg] > Mightyena
Dratini [Wild+ Egg] > Dragonair > Dragonite

In other words, you can potentially have 29 different shiny variants in your Pokebag (includes both Snorunt genders*). Note: the Shiny Hat Pichu, Pikachu and Raichu are not registered in your Pokedex.

* NOTE: Currently, both Male and Female Snorunt will evolve into Glalie. However, if you capture a Female shiny Snorunt it might be worth saving it for Gen 4, when it can be evolved into a shiny Froslass. Ideally, shiny completionists will want to catch 3 shiny Snorunt: keep one as Snorunt, evolve one now into shiny Glalie and keep a female to become shiny Froslass in Gen 4.

Evolving Shinies

Remember, if you evolve a shiny Pokemon, it will change into a shiny version of its evolution (so a golden shiny Magikarp transforms into a red shiny Gyarados). Both versions will appear in your Pokedex, and stay there forever, but only the final evolution will remain in your Pokebag. So if you want to put both a shiny Magikarp into a gym and a Shiny Gyarados into battle, you’ll need to catch two shiny Magikarp but evolve just one.

While it is possible to evolve a shiny Pichu (hatched from a 2k egg) into a shiny Pikachu and then evolve it again into a shiny Raichu, I would not recommend this. Shiny Pichu is arguably the most rare Pokemon in the game. Keep it in your Pokebag! There will be plenty chances to catch a shiny Pikachu in the wild and evolve it.

It’s All Random

The most important thing to remember when shiny hunting is that the whole process is based on a random number generator (RNG). In other words, you need to get lucky. It's impossible to snipe a specific, shiny Pokemon using coordinates. They do not show up as shinies on your game radar or on any third party scanner. You will only know that a Pokemon is shiny when you physically tap on it and go to the capture screen. If you’re lucky, you’ll see a circular burst of stars, your device will buzz and a shiny version of your chosen Pokemon will present itself for capture. Nothing in the game beats the thrill of that moment!

So the bad news is that it’s all down to chance. The good news is that there are numerous ways to tip the odds in your favour and increase your likelihood of encountering a shiny. First up, let’s assess those basic odds -

Shiny Rates

There is a lot of conjecture on the chances of encountering a shiny version of a particular Pokemon in the wild. The popular consensus is that the odds are either 1 in 256, or 1 in 512.

That does not mean that you have to catch 511 Magikarps before you get your shiny on the 512^th attempt. Many trainers report getting a wild shiny on their first encounter. Others are still waiting after thousands of encounters.

Below is a table that documents my own experience of encountering my first 103 shinies (caught 101 and 2 fled!). I will refer to back to this table in the course of this post as it's important to look behind the headline numbers and learn from them.

* NOTE: Shiny Magikarp was already in the game when I first started playing, so my data above is entirely accurate. Shiny Pikachu was not introduced until 3 months after I started playing, so I had already encountered many Pikachu before a shiny was possible. To mitigate this, I have applied a 10% discount to the number of Pikachu encounters in the above table. Also note that no data is available for my single shiny Pichu as I have no idea how many eggs I hatched since its introduction. I do know, however, that it appeared in my very first hatch on the day it became available (none since, though)!

One thing is certain, if you are determined to catch a particular wild shiny, be prepared to dig in for the long haul. You may need to use every ounce of patience you have. On the positive side, there are occasions where the odds of catching a shiny are drastically reduced

Broadly speaking - using multiples of the reputed 256/512 for wild pokemon and applying my own catch rates - I'd guess that the following rates might apply to shiny pokemon, depending on how they are encountered:

Wild:  1 in 512
Wild Launch: 1 in 256
Raid Exclusive: 1 in 32 or 64
Safari Event:  1 in 32 (most of my Pikachu and Magikarp were caught at events)
Community Day:  1 in 25-32

Raids

It is currently possible to battle 6 Raid bosses that have shiny potential: Magikarp, Snorunt and Swablu [T1], Sableye and Mawile [T2], Absol [T4]. Anecdotal reports suggest that if you capture any of these raid bosses, the odds of it being shiny (when you get to the capture screen) could be as low as 1 in 32 for the 'Raid Exclusive' ones [Mawile and Absol].

My own experience tells a slightly different story, albeit I can confirm that the odds of capturing a shiny in a raid are greatly reduced in your favour (when compared to the 1/512 or 1/256 wild rates). 

I have now caught 2 shiny Magikarp, 1 shiny Sableye, 5 shiny Mawile and 3 shiny Absol from raids. But given that the first two are also available in the wild, we can only determine raid data from Absol and Mawile which are confined to raids (for now). 

In my experience, the chance of getting one of these two shinies in a raid are between 1/51 (Mawile) and 1/77 (Absol). Which doesn't tell the full story. I use five accounts (more on that later), and my first two Absol were captured in the same account (Lvl 21), which shows a rate of 12 seen and 2 shinies (or 1/6!). 

NOTE: This teaches us an important lesson ... don't believe the online hype. If you follow Twitter, it can sometimes feel like everyone is catching shinies all the time. People are predisposed to post screenshots of their shiny catches (myself included), but for every shiny posted, you aren't seeing the hundreds/thousands of failed encounters. Put it this way: my Lvl 21 trainer would have you believe that shiny Absols are two to the dozen. Only 1 of my other 4 accounts has since caught one.

Conclusion: Raiding is still one of the best ways to increase your chances of catching a shiny. I scoured the world for a shiny Sableye, encountering over 2000 in the wild with no luck, before capturing a shiny in my first Sableye raid at my local park!

Safari Events

Without doubt, the best way to reduce your odds and (almost) guarantee a shiny is to catch Pokemon at one of Niantic’s regional events, like the Pokemon Safari series (most recently at the Lantern Festival in Taiwan), or the annual Pikachu Outbreak in Japan. One of the key selling points of these events is that Niantic often increases the shiny rates considerably.

Obviously, we can't all afford to fly around the globe, so a GPS tool is necessary to move location in the game. See the disclaimer at top.

Dedicated shiny hunters should grind like hell at these events. Sometimes the event may only last a day, but that is plenty time to bag lots of shinies. I caught 12 shiny Pikachu on just one day in Yokohama. I caught half a dozen golden Magikarp in one afternoon in Paris. Same for Taiwan. You can see the results in the table above. Again, my rates of 1/155 (Magikarp) and 1/103 (Pikachu*) are much better than the reputed 1/512 or 1/256 for wild encounters.

Conclusion:  Events are shiny heaven! To date, only Magikarp and Pikachu have been available as shinies at regional events. It is my hope that all the others will feature in future events where the shiny rate is increased.

Community Days

It is now established that Shiny Rates are increased for these monthly events. Research on PokemonGo Hub suggests shiny encounters are 1 in 25. I caught 33 shiny Dratini in just three hours, including 3 in under a minute! Also, Niantic views them as an opportunity to release new shinies like the Dratini line and, in March, the Bulbasaur line. 

Conclusion:  Community Day represents your best chance of capturing shinies. Use every minute of the three hour window. Be aware that if you get a shiny in your capture screen, but need to 'cool down' before catching it, then it will revert to a normal Pokemon if your catch occurs after the 3 hour event window expires.

The Grind

As mentioned, catching shinies (outside Raids and Events) isn’t easy and will require all of your patience and perseverance. And that means a LOT of grinding.

TOP TIP:  when a new shiny is first released – as was the case with Duskull, Shuppet and Sableye at Halloween – the shiny rate appears to increase (certainly spawns are vastly increased). My advice is to focus on these newly released shinies and tap on as many as you can … relentlessly! Because when the launch event window closes, their spawns will be greatly reduced.

A good example of this was the Xmas Ice and Water event, where shiny Snorunt was released. Grinding around New York, Seoul or San Francisco, I would encounter hundreds of Snorunt, and many cluster spawns. But now Snorunt has almost disappeared entirely from the game. It's rarer than hen’s teeth! Fortunately I caught two shinies in this period – a male and a female. But I must’ve tapped on 1000+

TOP TIP: And this brings me to an important grinding tip - when you tap on a Pokemon, and it appears as a normal version (not a shiny) in your capture screen, DO NOT ATTEMPT TO CATCH IT. Simply exit and move on to the next one. This way you can grind a lot faster until you find a shiny … and importantly, you can jump locations without having to wait for a cool down period.

Weather-Boosted Spawns

Taking the rarity of Snorunt (above) as an example, the introduction of Weather into the game has given Shiny Hunters a boost. Snorunt will now spawn heavily during snowy weather. Use the online Pokemaps for Toronto, Vancouver, Seattle, Chicago, NYC, Boston and even London to filter Snorunt spawns when snow is confirmed in these cities.

https://torpokemap.com/
https://vanpokemap.com/
https://seapokemap.com/
https://chipokemap.com
https://bostonpogomap.com
https://nycpokemap.com/
https://londonpogomap.com/

Nests

It makes sense to grind for shiny Pokemon in a place where you are most likely to encounter lots of them. And where better than a Pikachu or Magikarp nest! To locate specific nests for potential shiny Pokemon, you can use online tools like the Nest Finder Atlas on The Silph Road, or sites like Pokefetch or the Pokemaps (google them!). These will provide you with live maps dotted with icons showing the locations of specific Pokemon. Simply use the map filter function to select only those Pokemon that are currently available as wild shinies. 

There are no guarantees with this method, but it will greatly increase your number of encounters and speed up your grind. I have caught many shinies this way.

100IV

The Holy Grail of shiny hunting (for some) is to catch a 100IV shiny. Personally, I’m not too bothered about the IV’s on a shiny as long as it sparkles!

One of the best resources for locating 100IV Pokemon is Twitter. There are many contributors posting coordinates for 100IV Pokemon 24/7. Why is this useful? Well, I have caught 2x100IV shiny Magikarp, 2x100IV shiny Pikachu, 2x100IV shiny Aron, 3x100IV shiny Dratini and a 100IV shiny Snorunt ... all by following the coordinates supplied by Twitter feeds. 

It's probably coincidental, but is it possible that shiny rates may are increased when many people are chasing the same particular pokemon? Is the high IV a factor? Who knows, but having caught 10 top IV shinies this way, I can certainly recommend it.

Important - A shiny pokemon will not appear as a shiny to everyone that taps on it. 100 people could tap on the same pokemon and only 1, or even none, might get a shiny. 

Catch Tip: if you get a glitch or error when trying to catch a shiny pokemon, exit the capture screen (or log out) and go back to it. If it is still there and hasn’t despawned, it will still be shiny for you.

Multi-Accounting (Gotta catch 'em all?)

Shinies are so rare that it is highly unlikely that you will ever capture every shiny in one account. If Niantic introduces more shinies like Pichu that only hatch from eggs, then it will be bordering on impossible to secure all shinies in one account unless you spend an eye-watering amount of money on incubators and dedicate every minute of every waking day to the grind. And let's not even begin to calculate the long odds of catching and evolving every possible shiny in the Eevee family ... nevermind a shiny Vileplume / Bellossom / Poliwrath / Politoed etc.!

TOP TIP: To have any chance of catching all shinies, you need to form a team. My advice is to play with a minimum of 3 accounts … in the hope that Niantic introduces trading at some point. When they do, all shinies can be swapped into your main account. See disclaimer at top.

There are other advantages to multi accounting. Firstly, you get more free daily raid passes. Which means more Mawile, Sableye and Absol raids. Secondly, when you are grinding and you encounter a cluster spawn of eg. Snorunt, or a Shuppet nest, you can stay in the same location and simply log in and out of your various accounts to multiply your chances of encountering a shiny. I have 5 accounts, so when I see a cluster of 3 Sableye, I get 15 chances (not 3) to encounter a shiny. So for every 500 'encounters' in my table above, I may only have actually 'seen' 100 pokemon.

Never Give Up

If your goal is to capture every shiny, you’ll need a steely resolve and unwavering determination. It can be dispiriting to encounter 2000 Sableye and not catch a shiny (I’ve been there). But the moment you find one, and the stars pop around it, all that grind and effort evaporates into a glorious explosion of joy.

As long as you remember that it’s random, and that you aren’t entitled to a shiny, then everything else is a bonus. You need that dose of realism or you’ll just get angry and frustrated. Shinies are rare ... and that's what makes them so special. In my experience, they tend to appear just when you’re ready to throw in the towel! 

Polite Notice

I do not do this full time. I don't - and will never - ask for money. I do not sell accounts. I do not 'farm' Pokemon for others. I'm merely a Shiny fan who enjoys hunting and collecting them, and sharing tips with others who enjoy it too. Thanks!

I have caught 240 shinies in 9 months by following the tips above and so can you. I hope this article is useful. Happy shiny hunting!