Pokemon Legends: Arceus changes the formula of Pokemon in many significant ways. Yet at its heart, Pokemon Legends: Arceus remains an RPG designed around capturing and collecting Pokemon, regardless of how it's done. It's no surprise then that months after launch, Pokemon Legends: Arceus players continue to hunt for rare Pokemon and particularly shiny Pokemon. This new style of Pokemon experience has created new methods of hunting shiny Pokemon, though. Some ways may even be a little too efficient.
A newly discovered method of hunting shiny Pokemon, and shiny Alpha Pokemon at that, in Pokemon Legends: Arceus has drawn a lot of attention. The method has been credited to Twitch streamer SBCoop, though they aren't necessarily the first to discover the trick. What it does is allow players to soft reset their Pokemon Legends Arceus game over and over, each time respawning a static Alpha Pokemon, giving it a chance to spawn as a Shiny each time.
The setup for the trick requires there to be a Massive Outbreak at the location where a static Alpha Pokemon spawns. The Massive Outbreak forces the Alpha Pokemon to despawn, with the Alpha Pokemon only reappearing once the Massive Outbreak is completed. What Pokemon Legends Arceus players want to do is go to the location of the Massive Outbreak, confirm the Alpha Pokemon is despawned, and then complete the Massive Outbreak. Once it's completed, players should save and then exit the game.
What's happened is that players will have created a game state where Pokemon Legends Arceus does not have a static Alpha Pokemon spawned where it should be. As such, when players load their save, Pokemon Legends: Arceus will immediately load in a new Alpha Pokemon. This newly spawned Pokemon will have a chance of being a shiny. If players then close the game and restart it, it will once again load a new Pokemon with a chance of being shiny.
For Pokemon Legends: Arceus players, this is an easy way of creating an Alpha Pokemon shiny farm. The game just needs to be closed and opened over and over until a shiny spawns. It's not exactly fun, but for Pokemon players who want to catch shinies, it's easy, efficient, and faster than other methods.
It's going to be interesting to see how Nintendo and Game Freak end up handling introducing Pokemon Legends: Arceus to the greater Pokemon economy. There are rumors that Pokemon Legends: Arceus will be connected to Pokemon Home, allowing Pokemon to be transferred to other games, later this year. If shinies are much more easily farmable in Pokemon Legends: Arceus, that could be seen as something to be disallowed. But maybe it's not much of a big deal. More shinies means more happy Pokemon trainers, after all.
Pokemon Legends Arceus is available now on Switch.
