[TUTORIAL] Pokemon Sword & Shield Shiny Hunting Megathread

[Kris]

Hi all! It feels great to be in a brand new Generation of Pokemon, and with each new Gen comes a new way to shiny hunt, so I'll help break down everything we know about hunting these elusive Pokemon so far in this thread, and give my own insight as to how the new method works.

1. What's Back?

Well the two mainstay shiny hunting methods are back in this gen of course, with Random Encounters and Masuda Method Haatching. To quickly go over these, Full Odds Random Ecounters offer the usual 1/4096 chance of finding a shiny, and with Shiny Charm that gets cut in half. Masuda Method offers you a 6x multiplier (so 6/4096, and the same for Shiny Charm, but cut in half), if you breed two Pokemon from different languages with each other. You can start Full Odds Hunting after exiting the Slumbering Weald, and you gain access to two daycares, one in the Wild Area and one on Route 4. Ditto can be found in Raids or at the Lake of Outrage.

2. What's Gone?

Well, besides a few obvious ones like Horde Hunting and S.O.S. encounters, Chain Fishing, and device specific hunts (Dex-Nav, etc.) are also gone. You also cannot soft reset for stationary Pokemon, and although this was stated before launch, I'll remind everyone here, you cannot reset for a shiny starter, you'll have to breed for it. Along with Catch Combos, another feature from Pokemon Let's Go that is gone is Pokemon appearing as Shiny in the overworld. You will have to encounter each Pokemon to see if they are shiny.

3. What's New?

Now we're really getting into the bulk of it all, heres a quick summarry of our new hunting method. Start a chain of 25 Pokemon by defeating or capturing them to increase the odds of finding a shiny Pokemon from that same species. Now this is pretty standard for Pokemon, and you can just go in with 25 Chained Pokemon and try get a shiny, your odds for this are a 25% increase, so roughly 1/2090 or so. However, you can drastically increase your odds, up to 1/598. Here's how it works.

When you have a chain in SwSh, it will automatically check to see the total number of Pokemon you have battled before, and depending on the number there, you will be given an additional reroll. A reroll is what determines the likeliness of a Pokemon to be shiny, and obviously the more rerolls the better. For example, full odds hunting gives you no extra rerolls, but the shiny charm will give you an additional two. Essentially, you can have a current chain going which gives you your standard increased odds, but if you've battled a certain ammount of Pokemon, you'll gain additional rerolls for a Shiny. Specifics below.


While that looks a bit confusing, just remember that your chain will add on to how many Pokemon you've battled, and increase your odds accordingly. For the Number Battled count, you dont have to battle, say, 500 Pokemon in a row, just over time. You can, but it isn't needed, the only number needed is the 25 chain.

Heres a rundown of how I got my first Shiny, Nickit yesterday.
 

I got my number battled count to 500 to help increase my odds when I started my chain, from there, I saved the game before beginning the chain just in case i messed up, and proceeded to defeated 25 Nickits. I don't think it's needed, but I didn't run into any other Pokemon while doing this and only fought Nickit. After the 25, I decided to run from battles to see if this method worked. And, after 19 run aways after maxing my chain, I found the shiny. So, tl;dr to maximise odds. Get the Pokemon you want to 500 Battled, chain it to 25 without battling or catching any other Pokemon, then run until you find the shiny.
 

Additional stuff, I didn't leave the route when i did this. Now I don't know if this affects anything, but I kept resetting the route earlier when I was chaining and didn't find anything, but as soon as I stayed on the route, I got the shiny. So it is likely that leaving the route or entering a building, flying etc, will break the chain. You can also find yellow aura Pokemon when you start chaining, it is currently unkown if these have higher shiny odds, but they have a high chance of having a Hidden Ability and come with at least one perfect IV and an Egg Move. Lastly there is a chance that you will find a shiny Pokemon in a Max Raid battle, however we don't know the odds for this, or if they have increased odds. This will be updated when we find out. If you have any questions, ask below!