Image: The Pokemon Company
Shiny hunting has never been easier.
For many Pokemon players, shiny hunting is a fun way to keep playing new Pokemon games even after wrapping up the story. While the chances of finding a shiny Pokemon in the mainline games are pretty low at just 1-in-4096 encounters, a recently discovered exploit in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet raises those odds significantly.
Here’s the best part: you don’t have to play Pokemon Scarlet and Violet very long to make this exploit work. This method involves the player setting up a picnic - one of the games' Pokemon hangout mechanics - only to repeatedly pack it up while an outbreak is going on around you. Mass outbreaks cause a specific Pokemon to group up in hordes within an area, and packing up your picnic can make these Pokemon repeatedly respawn.
Since this method allows you to grind through multiples of a certain Pokemon at one go, the odds of finding a shiny among them are increased and all that’s left is to knock them out. YouTuber PhillyBeatzU demonstrates the exploit, dubbing it the ‘Shiny Picnic Reset Method’ in the video below:
For the unfamiliar, shiny Pokemon are just variants of regular Pokemon that appear in different colours. They’re essentially in-game collectibles given their rarity, and if that’s not enough to tempt you into hunting for one, they also pop into battle in a burst of glitter. Diehard shiny hunters spend hours on end grinding Pokemon games to get a full trio of shiny starter Pokemon before taking their hunt into the wild. By comparison, this exploit makes shiny hunting effortless in Scarlet and Violet.
According to YouTuber PhillyBeatzU, the trick is in finding an outbreak and then setting up a picnic. When you defeat 60 Pokemon during a mass outbreak, your chances of finding a shiny version of that Pokemon are doubled. If this shiny hasn’t spawned however, keep hope alive by setting up a picnic table. This causes the game to despawn all the Pokemon in the outbreak, only to respawn them once you’re out of the picnic. That lets you grind out outbreaks for all they’re worth to find a shiny Pokemon. In the video, it takes PhillyBeatzU 15 picnic resets to find a shiny Drifblim, but other users report around 15-20 tries to be the sweet spot. All in all, it should take you half an hour at the most. If you’re a diehard shiny hunter, that’s nothing!
There’s a small chance that Gamefreak is going to patch this exploit out with a future update, but until then, happy hunting.