Shiny hunting is one of the biggest post-game activities for players in every new Pokémon game, and that fact remains true in the revamped Sinnoh region featured in Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl.
Whether you are looking for Shinies before you even beat the game via one of the regular methods, or want to wait until you have access to the Shiny Charm and Poké Radar after you become the Champion, there are plenty of ways to start hunting.
If you don’t have the Shiny Charm, which you will receive in the post-game, your base or “full” odd chances of encountering a Shiny in BDSP is 1 in every 4096 encounters, which has become the new standard for the series. This can be modified using various methods or items, but that is what your chances are for running into a Shiny Pokémon at random in the wild.
So if you plan on trying to track down a Shiny variant of your favorite Pokémon, here are just a few ways you can accomplish that task.
Static restarts
For Pokémon that are listed in the game as static, or stationary encounters that never change and are set in the game’s code, you can easily Shiny hunt by soft resetting your game every time you obtain the Pokémon or enter the encounter.
As a basic example, the starter Pokémon in BDSP are not Shiny locked, which means you have a chance of starting your Sinnoh adventure with a Shiny Turtwig, Chimchar, or Piplup if you get lucky. And even if you aren’t lucky, you can save right before you select your starter, send it out in the battle against your rival, and then reset to try again until you end up with a Shiny—though it will always be full odds since you have no way to modify a reset like that.
The same applies to most Legendary, Mythical, and other static Pokémon available in the game, though a few like Mew, Jirachi, and Manaphy are all Shiny locked via their current obtainable methods. Thankfully, resetting for most static encounters is faster than starters because you won’t have to go through a lot of text and can reset as soon as you enter the battle if the Pokémon isn’t Shiny.
General chaining
Just running around in the tall grass or other areas where you can encounter wild Pokémon is also a great way to start Shiny hunting. Especially because these rates stack as you capture or defeat Pokémon of the same species.
So say you are hunting for a Shiny Starly. The more Starly you capture or defeat, the higher the chances you can encounter a Shiny will become stacking every certain number of encounters. For BDSP, this is the current Shiny odds for chaining in a row.
- Defeat/Capture 50 or more Pokémon of the same species in the wild
- 1/2,048 odds
- Defeat/Capture 100 or more Pokémon of the same species in the wild
- 1/1,365 odds
- Defeat/Capture 200 or more Pokémon of the same species in the wild
- 1/1,024 odds
- Defeat/Capture 500 or more Pokémon of the same species in the wild
- 1/683 odds (capped)
Breeding/Masuda Method
The Masuda Method, named after long-time Pokémon franchise composer, director, and producer Junichi Masuda, utilizes two Pokémon from different geographical real-world versions of the game to increase the Shiny odds from Eggs obtained via breeding.
Essentially, having a Pokémon from your region placed in the Daycare with a compatible breeding partner from another region of the world that you obtained via trade will result in a five times multiplayer bring applied to the resulting Egg’s Shiny odds, bringing the total odds to 1/683.
The most sought-after Pokémon for use in this method is a Japanese Ditto because it applies to basically every region in the world and can breed with any compatible Pokémon—but any Pokémon not from your game’s region will work.
Poké Radar chaining
The Poké Radar, a Key Item that allows players to more easily encounter rare Pokémon in tall grass once it is obtained in the post-game, makes a return in BDSP.
This is a favorite item of Shiny hunters, as it helps players chain encounters with rare Pokémon more easily by causing grass with specific Pokémon in it to shake and start an encounter when walked into, even while using a Repel to avoid other encounters.
Similar to the general chaining, if the wild Pokémon is knocked out of captured it will start a chain. This will automatically cause the Poké Radar to start again, with a higher probability of encountering the same species in one of the new patches of shaking grass. Defeating or capturing that Pokémon again will increase the chain by a unit of one, up to a maximum cap of 40.
Essentially, if you can successfully continue a Poké Radar chain using the general encounter method up to a chain of 40 encounters without breaking it can give players a 1/99 odds to encounter the special Shiny patch of grass. For a detailed breakdown of what to do and what to avoid while using the Poké Radar, Reddit user Ephenia has written up a detailed guide to the process.
