When figuring out what Pokémon to shiny hunt for next, usually I just scroll through the computer inside a Pokécenter and just pick one at random, whatever catches my fancy. Or I think about some odd encounters that would prove to be challenging. After the massive Shiny Eevee hunt, I was thinking about some other low-level Pokémon to get, and Abra came to mind as being potentially difficult. Encountering Abra in the wild, I had to immediately throw a Quick Ball at it to catch it because if given the chance, it will teleport away. To counter this, I found somewhere online that using the move Mean Look will prevent this from happening, and one of the better Pokémon to use the move is Smeargle since it can also learn False Swipe and just about any move that exists in Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon. So I went hunting for a Smeargle, and then this happened:
Shiny Arcanine
It was a Random Encounter shiny of Growlithe, but I hit him with a Fire Stone to get Arcanine. I don’t name my captured Pokémon but if I did this one would be called Lemon Meringue. This is the second RE shiny I’ve gotten in this game, and it’s WAY more thrilling than getting one from an SOS battle. After that, I hunted for my original target and got:
Shiny Smeargle
It’s initial move is Sketch and it always copies the last move made, so I had to bring out my Shiny Starmie and use Recycle. Then switch to Trevanent for Trick so it would carry a Leppa Berry, and then switch back to Starmie. Once the shiny popped at 410 SOS calls, I would use the Recycle move again so the new Smeargle would learn that, swap back to Trevanent, take the Leppa Berry from the anchor Pokémon, and then give it to the shiny one. I’m honestly surprised I didn’t screw that up and feint the shiny.
After that, I had to settle my OCD. With Pelipper and Arcanine both stemming from RE shinies, I had to fix the gaping holes in their evolution lines and get Wingull and Growlith sooner rather than later or else bad things would happen. Don’t ask me what those bad things are, but they are bad. I’m actually surprised I let Wingull go for so long. Anyways, since I was in the neighborhood, I stuck around to look for a Growlithe.
Shiny Growlithe
He finally poked his head out of the wilderness at 359 SOS calls. This, after the long Smeargle run, I was getting tired. Next up was Wingull…
Shiny Wingull
The green-striped Wingull took only 212 SOS calls. Not as long as the others but still exhausting. Fifty-one down, three hundred forty-two to go.
