Highlights
- Pokemon Scarlet and Violet's latest patch, The Teal Mask, addresses performance issues and fixes the problem of mass outbreaks not working correctly for Pokemon with multiple forms or variations, making shiny-hunting easier.
- In addition to mass outbreaks, players can also use Herba Mystica sandwiches to increase their odds of finding shiny Pokemon, although they have no control over which form appears. However, with the fixed mass outbreaks, players can now find specific forms of Pokemon and shiny-hunt more effectively.
- The Teal Mask DLC introduces shiny-locked creatures and encounters, making it easier for players to shiny-hunt the rarest shiny Pokemon in the game. The combination of mass outbreaks and Encounter Power boosts significantly increases the chances of finding shiny Artisan Form Poltchageist.
When Pokemon Scarlet and Violet first launched, some players were not happy with the state of the game due to performance issues, lag, and various other problems that went unsolved for the longest time. Among them is the fact that, up until Pokemon Scarlet and Violet's The Teal Mask patch, mass outbreaks were not always working correctly, especially in the case of pocket monsters with multiple forms or variations. Critters like Tatsugiri, Flabebe, Squawkabilly, and more were near-impossible to shiny-hunt because all mass outbreaks for those Pokemon would always default to their base form, even when the icon on the map was different. This is changed in The Teal Mask, and its rarest shiny Pokemon can now take only a handful of minutes to find.
Luckily, Pokemon Scarlet and Violet's mass outbreaks were not the only shiny-hunting method on launch, and instead, players could rely on Herba Mystica sandwiches to dramatically increase their odds of finding one of these rare critters. For example, one could make an Encounter Power level 3 Dragon-type Herba Mystica sandwich to shiny-hunt for Tatsugiri, and while all of its three forms could appear, players had no control over which one showed up - if at all. Now that mass outbreaks have been fixed, players can not only use them to find pesky shinies, but also to find ones that would have insurmountable odds of appearing in the wild.
How Pokemon Players Can Get a Shiny Artisan Form Poltchageist in Scarlet and Violet
The Teal Mask DLC in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet features several shiny-locked creatures and encounters, and while those will never yield any different results, the newest expansion and patch do make things easier for players in multiple ways. With the change to mass outbreaks in Gen 9, they will now always feature the correct form of a given Pokemon when they appear on the map, and all critters in the outbreak will share that form.
With the Tatsugiri example, this would mean that a Stretchy Form Tatsugiri mass outbreak would indeed only feature specimens of that specific form, rather than the default form or variation of the species. In the case of The Teal Mask DLC, players can now shiny-hunt Artisan Form Poltchageist, specifically, and thus eventually evolve it into Masterpiece Sinistcha if they ever find a shiny critter. Previously, finding a shiny authentic Sinistea (and then evolving it into Polteageist) was a matter of pure luck with base odds of 1 in 409,600 even in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet.
Similarly, the base odds for a shiny Artisan Form Poltchageist would be 409,600. However, players can now disregard this entirely by finding mass outbreaks in The Teal Mask DLC where Poltchageist is always Artisan Form, meaning a shiny specimen will also always be Artisan Form. Although some mass outbreaks are weighted to be easier to find than others, players can make Encounter Power Ghost sandwiches even without Herba Mystica, and those will boost their odds of finding a Poltchageist mass outbreak whenever outbreaks are reset. However, the catch is that no outbreak is guaranteed to be of a given form or version in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet.
Still, one of the rarest shiny Pokemon ever made can now show up in a matter of minutes, provided players find the correct mass outbreak for it. With mass outbreaks providing boosts to the rate at which players can find shiny Pokemon after 30 and then 60 defeated creatures within that same outbreak, and considering that this bonus stacks with the one provided by Pokemon Scarlet and Violet's sandwiches, any given shiny can be found in no time. The fact that this now applies to the game's rarest shiny is the icing on the cake.
Pokemon Scarlet and Violet are available now for the Nintendo Switch.
