Based on my limited research on the best way to shiny hunt, I came across this video which suggested getting either a Trevenant or Exeggutor with the Harvest hidden ability. Not a big fan of the Alolan form of Exeggutor so I made Trevenant my first priority. And I figure if I’m going to try and get it with its hidden ability, I’ll have a good chance of getting it shiny too.
Shiny Phantump
The first Phantump was pretty easy to get. It only took 103 SOS calls. Five Shiny Phantumps later, I finally get one that’s both shiny and has Harvest! One quick trade and a couple of Move Tutors later:
Shiny Trevenant
Skill Swap will swap abilities with target Pokémon. Trick will swap held items. This will give target Pokémon a Leppa Berry, and Harvest will let that Pokémon regenerate a berry letting me just keep the one weakened Pokémon while I SOS chain the day away. And it worked! I got the next three using this trick, all were Larvitars with two eventually being evolved to fill out the dex:
Shiny Larvitar
Shiny Pupitar
Shiny Tyranitar
Things were going great. I was catching shinies left and right. Here’s my run of shiny Pokémon hunts this week:
| Pokémon | SOS Chain Length |
| Phantump | 103 |
| Phantump | 151 |
| Phantump | 169 |
| Phantump | 56 |
| Phantump | 47 |
| Larvitar | 79 |
| Larvitar | 111 |
| Larvitar | 201 |
| Larvitar | 153 |
| Larvitar | 170 |
I caught multiple Larvitars to go for its Hidden Ability too, Sand Veil, which I thought was going to stick through its evolution up to Tyrannitar but I was wrong. No matter though because that’s not really the point. Just look at those numbers! With a Shiny Charm, an SOS chain of 30 or more would increase my chances to getting shiny to 1/273. A shiny charm and SOS chains made me believe that hunting shiny Pokémon was no longer a possibility but an eventuality. But I was a fool to believe such a thing, because Psyduck broke all of that:
Shiny Psyduck
This little bastard took 858 SOS calls. And it didn’t even have Damp as its ability. If I was starting to believe that catching shinies would be easy, this run was a cold splash of water to my face. Well, the universe must have taken pity because the next one only took 89 calls:
Shiny Golduck
I have to believe that the first 10 caught shinies of Phantump and Larvitar were a fluke and that the first Psyduck run is the norm. We’ll see how long the next couple of runs are. Ten down, three hundred eighty-three to go.
Update: Corrected the numbers.
