Shiny Hunting Isolated Encounter Method Guide How To Pokemon Scarlet And Violet

One of the most exciting things about the Pokemon games is the ability to hunt for shiny Pokemon. Players love to show off the different colored companions they have found throughout their adventures. The only problem is that the default odds of you finding a shiny in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet are 1/4096. Therefore, some players never find a single shiny during their playthrough.

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While shiny Pokemon are extremely rare, there are ways to make finding them easier. For example, you can hunt them during mass outbreaks, get the handy Shiny Charm, or use sandwiches. However, there is another way to boost your odds of finding them, and you can do it early on. This other way is by using the isolated encounter method.

What is the isolated encounter method?

This method allows you to limit the number of Pokemon that can spawn in a particular area to just one of a specific Type. The game pulls from a list of encounters every time a player loads into an area. This list helps ensure that the Pokemon that spawn are supposed to be wherever the player is. As a result, Water-Type Pokemon spawn in the water, Ice-Type Pokemon spawn in snowy areas, and lower-level ones spawn in the earlier areas. They’re all pulled from this list.

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Whenever you enter an area, the game pulls from the encounter list based on the location, time of day, and weather. For instance, Lycanroc has three forms based on the time of day. Therefore, you would need to hunt during certain times to get the form you want. Another example is Ghost-Type Pokemon. These Pokemon usually only appear at night. The isolated encounter method uses this information to force only certain creature typings to spawn in your location. Therefore, you can narrow down the potential Pokemon you’ll meet, and so find particular shiny species.

What else is needed for this method?

There’s more to the isolated encounter method than just showing up somewhere. If you want a stunning Shiny Pokemon, you’ll have to put some work in. First, you need to ensure that you understand where Pokemon spawn, and which places only have one Pokemon from a certain Type. Once you figure this out, you can find out where to hunt for each Pokemon you want. To make this easier, Youtuber cbk zip created a Google Doc showcasing the best places to isolate every Pokemon in the game.

You’ll also need the ingredients to create a sandwich that will boost your chances of finding shiny Pokemon of that specific type. These ingredients are the Herba Mystica you find throughout the game with Arven. They can be found in Five-Star Tera Raid Battles and higher.

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If you wanted to shiny hunt Lycanroc, for instance, you could hunt near the Psychic Gym. Since it is the only Rock-Type that spawns there, it will be the only one that spawns, period. If you use two Salty Herba Mysticas, you’ll also have the increased shiny chance buff for the Rock type. This will ensure that the game is forced to only spawn in Rock-type Pokemon, and that a shiny is far more likely to emerge.

Shiny Sandwich Ingredients

Knowing which ingredients will get you which Shiny Type Power is essential before you create your sandwich. Via Pokemon player TTiN on GBateMP, the recipes for each Type are pretty easy to replicate for players. He found the following recipes:

Isolated Encounter Method Walkthrough

The first thing you want to do before shiny hunting is to ensure that your auto save is off. Doing this before anything else will allow you to reset the game and gain your sandwich ingredients back, if you don’t have a lot of time to hunt.

After you check your auto save, you want to go somewhere you can isolate a single Pokemon. For instance, right outside Alfornada, the city with the Psychic Gym, you can isolate Lycanroc. You can pick any area that only has one Pokemon of the specific typing you want.

Once you’ve decided on an area and have made your way there, you’ll want to set up a picnic and begin making a sandwich. In order to enter creative mode, the mode that allows you to create your own sandwiches, you must press X. To isolate Lycanroc, you would need to create a Rock-type Shiny sandwich. This includes adding two Salty Herba Mysticas, as discussed above.

Next, you’ll want to begin the hunt for your Pokemon. They will start to spawn more frequently as you wait for your new shiny friend.

In order to force the game to respawn all Pokemon around you if they aren’t shiny, you can throw down a picnic (depending on where you are, as discussed in our picnic reset method guide). This forces the game to completely reload the Pokemon in the area, which will allow you to hunt for your shiny Pokemon even faster.

Once you find your shiny, be sure to enter the options and save the game. This will allow you to reset if you happen to have issues catching the Pokemon, as it will still be there.

Finally, you can go ahead and catch your new Pokemon! You can repeat this process as often as you’d like to catch all the shiny Pokemon you want.

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