Pokémon Scarlet and Violet continues to ring in its opening week with some solid co-op outshone by destructive glitches, but now there’s a new exploit in town. YouTuber PhillyBeatzU describes what he calls the “Shiny Picnic Reset Method” (it’s more prescriptive than descriptive) in a recent video—where repeatedly packing up your picnic amidst an outbreak triggers the same few Pokémon to respawn, increasing your chances of getting a shiny one.
A shiny Pokémon, we discussed before, is a normal Pokémon with a more rare color variation. A commenter pointed out that, critically, shiny Pokémon also have their own special glittery animation when they walk out to battle. There are few things I care less about than rare glitter animations, and most of them likely involve Charli D’Amelio, but if shiny hunting is what you want, I’ll give you shiny hunting. And according to PhillyBeatzU, taking advantage of Scarlet and Violet’s exploit is easy-peasy.
“Step one is, open your map and select any mass outbreak area you can find,” he said. A Pokémon outbreak is probably the most pleasant iteration of the word you’ll come across—it means there is a gaggle of a certain Pokémon concentrating in one area, and you’ll see it marked on your map by a blinking red symbol. Before you dig in, you should make sure one of your Pokémon has the move False Swipe, PhillyBeatzU says, but once you do, you can start “killing Pokémon, like a normal mass outbreak.” Brutal.
After knocking out 60 Pokémon, PhillyBeatzU says you have a 1 out of 1365 shiny rate. He saves his game and sets up a picnic table to make the outbreak despawn.
“When you get out of your picnic, all those Pokémon are going to respawn,” he says. “Think about it like this: Instead of having a one, one, one chance every time you knock out something, now [there are] all those, like, 20 Drifblim in the background, all spawning in, giving me a higher chance of a shiny spawning.” After 15 resets, he succeeds and comes across a shimmery yellow and blue Drifblim.
“This was HUGE for me. Got a shiny Magnemite and Psyduck after 15-20 picnic resets,” one commenter wrote. “Thank you.” Polygon recently confirmed this exploit works, too, so I didn’t have to. Hehe! But for the shiny lovers in our midst—get out there, and hunt while you can.
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