Can you believe it? Pokémon Sword and Shield are nearly one week old. In this short time frame, players have learned a lot about the new entries. One of the more interesting discoveries is the two different types of shiny animations.
This adds an extra layer to the hunt for shiny Pokémon. If you do encounter a shiny in the wild, upon entering battle, you'll either see the traditional stars animation play or an entirely new effect featuring spinning squares.
While it's all down to luck, there's also a bit of a "programming quirk" – here's how Serebii.net explains it:
With breeding Pokémon, static encounters and Max Raid Battles, when you encounter a Shiny Pokémon it will have a 15/16 chance of being a Pokémon with the Stars sparkle and a 1/16 chance of having the Squares sparkle. However, due to a programming quirk, at time of writing when you encounter a shiny Pokémon as a standard wild encounter, this is essentially inverted with a 4095/4096 chance of the Pokémon having the Squares sparkle and a 0.9375/4096 chance of it having the stars one when encountering a Shiny Pokémon.
Have you caught a shiny? Comment below.
[source siliconera.com, via serebii.net]
Comments 30
There's probably some sort of meaning to the difference in the sparkle animation.
A shiny will be a shiny regardless, but the sparkle animation apparently suggests that it became shiny with or without boosted odds or something. Not sure yet.
But it amounts to "yeah it's a shiny but it's not a RARE shiny"
I have a grand total of 2 shinys throughout all the games I have. A Budew in Platinum and an Audino in Y. Thrilling stuff.
Caught a shiny Bisharp in Sword yesterday.
In my whole life I got maybe around 10 shinys, but I never look for them.
Most funny shiny? A Snorlax in Pokémon Heart Gold because I killed it and had to restart the game and then it was shiny.
For the rest all the other Pokémon were sheer dumb luck.
I randomly found a shiny diggersby when I first got to wild area. I almost didn't catch it but I eventually caught it. It was my first shiny, although I don't recall it having the special animation.
Im mad that shiny pokemom arent as rare as they used to be, so I guess squared shinies are what I will be hunting in this case
Oh now there will be people completing square shiny live dexes
Might be a step to mitigate the issue of transferring forward Shinies.
Remember, shinies are relatively easy to get your hands on in Pokémon GO, and Kantonian shinies from that game can already be transferred to Let's Go! on the Switch. Once Pokémon HOME is available, any of those shinies that are in the Galar Dex will be available to bring forward to Sword & Shield. I would assume any transferred Shiny would be a standard sparkle one.
Hey. We found out where all the extra animation budget went.
All that work went on squares?
Worse than me at university.
@entrixx A little. Aside from what is mentioned in the post, I think "guaranteed" pokemon i.e. your starters and legendaries cannot be Shiny. Presumably event shinies will still exist, and also I assume that you can still breed for shiny starters
I'm glad that shinies are a little easier to obtain than they used to be. Life's too short to be wasting such ridiculous amounts of time on something so inconsequential and trivial (though cool for us Pokémaniacs ).
I tried shiny hunting in earlier games with no luck whatsoever (all of my prior shinies were due to dumb luck).
When I obtained the Shiny Charm in X, pretty much my first wild encounter straight off the bat was a shiny! I caught three shinies in that four day period. It was madness! I couldn't believe my luck!
When breeding a living Dex (post Shiny Charm) in X version, I believe, I also ended up with a shiny Maractus and Purrloin, though that's taking into consideration that around 600-700 eggs had been hatched in that process.
Shiny hunting is also a lot more fun in Let's Go (and the incentive of receiving truckloads of candies with latter catches is a nice bonus), but almost all of my shinies were caught when either no shiny-increasing multipliers were active, or during a combo under the cap of 31. It seems that whenever I persist with a combo over 31 that I'm doomed to spend hours empty-handed, and eventually give up and try to catch a Porygon east of of Celadon City so that my 100+ combo isn't completely wasted.
I also think that the idea of ultra-rare albino Pokémon would be a really cool concept to supplement shiny forms.
So... Shiny Shinies?
I’ve played Red ,Yellow, white, white 2, alpha sapphire, Y, sun, moon, and ultra sun and have never once came across a shiny Pokémon. Ok maybe one time I did. But like... the odds are insanulous.
The only shiny Pokémon i have ever cought is the Red Gyarados in Silver version
(its also in Gold version btw)
Probably a bug, knowing how this game was developed xD at this point I dont think anything in this game is intentional anymore
I have seen people posting videos of a shiny being their first catch in S&S, but I have yet to encounter one :T
@Silly_G The shiny/white Eevee is probably the closest to an albino Pokemon we'll get!
I caught a shiny + squares animation Woobat
My Growlithe had stars
what are your favourite shiny pokemon?
I like crobat's shiny form
I've gotten a shiny Nickit random in the wild & a shiny Minccino. Also breed up a shiny sobble, and I never checked for the shiny whether they have stars or squares going to have to check while at lunch today lol!
Caught a shiny Galarian Meowth yesterday but didn't notice the sparkles. Prolly a normal one. Either way I'm happy!
@dougphisig "I've gotten a shiny Nickit random in the wild & a shiny Minccino"
What location where you at?
Not like anyone has the time to track down a shiny. It was a lot better in Pokemon Lets Go, where you could usually get 1 all 2 hours with the catch streak. In Sword Shield, its again just boring mindless grinding for days. Booo!
@SwitchForce I got mine less than an hour into playing on route 2 i believe it was. Minccino was about 20 hours in out in the wilds, neither of them I was shiny hunting for, and were just random shiny's. Besides those 2 i haven't seen anymore in the wild, both of those ended up being square shiny's and the breed sobble was stars.
I have been playing Pokemon for 20 years, and not even once have I seen a wild shiny that wasn't scripted. (Red Gyarados in SS/HG comes to mind.) Maybe that says something about me, I am more of a casual player, but I must have the worst luck.
@dougphisig hmm...I have to look at my map and try again.
I caught two Shiny Pokemon in this game; I chained for a shiny Yamper - he has the square animations, and I caught a shiny Dreadnaw as a random encounter and it is also Square variant.
I have the rare shiny!!!
@AshFoxX That is miserable luck.
I have found SO many it feels like I may have a horseshoe up my arse. First two days with this game I got a shiny a day.
Tap here to load 30 comments
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...