Pokémon Legends: Arceus turns the video game series on its head in more ways than one. and from its open-world concept to the redesigned way you interact with wild Pokémon, plenty of these changes are for the better. And one of the biggest isn’t obvious, but might dramatically affect the way you catch Pokémon from now on.
When you encounter wild Pokémon in other games in the franchise, the creatures that appear are randomized each time. As you run through the tall grass, you might encounter any available Pokémon, with varying types, genders, and, rarely (but most importantly, to some), colors. If you have luck on your side, you might meet a shiny Pokémon, which sports a different color but is otherwise the same as its normal Pokémon counterpart.
For most games, the chance of running into a shiny is one in 8,192. According to Austin John Plays’ video on catching shinies, Legends: Arceus has a shiny rate of one in 4,096, doubling the chances of finding one (but still making them quite rare). There are additional deviations to this statistic, such as if you use the Shiny Charm found in more recent titles, but even still, catching shiny Pokémon has always been an exercise in patience—and stress.
Why stress? Because in order to capture a shiny Pokémon, you, of course, need to capture it when it appears. If you finally manage to come across a shiny in the wild, you better hope you don’t accidentally kill it or scare it away. If you lose the battle, that’s it: That shiny is gone, and you’re back to another 4,096 random encounters before you find another (statistically speaking).
Legends: Arceus makes catching shinies much easier
That is, until Pokémon Legends: Arceus. Game Freak’s latest title seemingly changes the traditional formula when encountering random Pokémon. If you save before heading into an encounter, resetting the game from that save point will produce the same exact Pokémon on your net run: the same stats, same levels, same color. This is a major deviation from past games, where Pokémon would be entirely randomized every time you booted up from the same save.
While Austin John Plays covers this tip in his video, Reddit user Azoth_Magnum was the first I saw discussing it. They discovered it by accident, running into a shiny Glameow only to scare it away moments later. Azoth_Magnum had just happened to save seconds before the encounter, and, on a whim, tried restoring from the save. Lo and behold, the shiny Glameow was there to greet them as if it had never been scared away in the first place, giving them another chance to capture it.
This new encounter system has more implications than solely shiny hunting. If you’re looking for a particular Pokémon with specific stats, for example, saving ahead of time can ensure you get more chances to capture it. However, I can imagine those looking for shinies will get a lot of use out of this quirk.
Here’s another tip from the comments of that Reddit post: Turn off the game’s default autosave feature if you’re going shiny hunting. That way, you can save manually before running into an area without worrying the game will autosave after you lose a shiny.
For more tips on shiny hunting in Legends: Arceus, including how to increase the shiny appearance rate as well as where to look for shinies, definitely check out Austin John Play’s video.
