Pokemon players can spend ages and tons of pokedollars in Pokemon Let's Go just to get their hands on that shiny Pikachu or Charizard, but one fan in particular has just completed a three year quest to obtain a shiny Magikarp, the water type Pokemon that is widely considered one of the most useless Pokemon of any generation.
For the uninitiated, Magikarp is a fairly common catch in most of the mainline Pokemon games, but once the fishy Pokemon is caught it is more or less useless until it reaches level 15 and finally learns an attack that actually does damage. That's not hyperbole, either. Before level 15 the only attack Magikarp knows is Splash, and it literally does zero damage. For Reddit user GimmeDatGrimoire, however, obtaining a shiny version of the Pokemon from a notorious NPC in Pokemon Let's Go became a matter of principle.
To break it down, the NPC stands in a Pokemon Center and offers to sell the easily obtained, low level Pokemon to the player. If the player actually purchases a Magikarp from the salesman, the game is not shy about letting them know that they've basically just been scammed. Well, after first being scammed by the NPC three years ago, GimmeDatGrimoire decided to turn the tables and farm the salesman until the transaction resulted in the transfer of a shiny Magikarp. Fortunately, unlike the player whose 100 hour quest to catch a shiny Mewtwo ended in disappointment, GimmeDatGrimoire's journey was a successful one.
In order to reach their goal, the Redditor saved the game in front of the NPC and spent 375 hours approaching him, then resetting the game when the NPC was not selling a shiny Magikarp. It took three years before the shiny Magikarp finally showed up, at which point GimmeDatGrimoire still had to pay 500 pokedollars to complete the transaction. The right Pokemon cards can fetch a pretty penny in real life, and a shiny Magikarp was the only Pokemon GimmeDatGrimoire was going to spend more than a few digital bucks on in the virtual Pokemon world.
After they finally got their hands on a glorious, shiny Magikarp, the game's text box told GimmeDatGrimoire that they had spent an outrageous amount of money on the fish, but the Redditor knew their journey had finally come to an end. "Was it all worth it?" they wrote. "Absolutely." As the player who spent six years beating Pokemon Ruby with nothing but a Magikarp would likely agree, sometimes it is about the destination, and GimmeDatGrimoire got their Magikarp and bested the notorious NPC.
Fans who want their own shiny fish Pokemon might have an easier time catching a shiny Magikarp in Pokemon Go, the franchise's mobile game, but anyone who also wants to best the scamming Magikarp salesman in Pokemon Let's Go will simply have to clear their calendar for the next three years.
Pokemon Let's Go is available for the Nintendo Switch.
