Highlights
- Getting a Pokemon infected with Pokerus is incredibly rare, but one lucky first-time player managed to get it in Pokemon Soul Silver.
- Pokerus doubles the effort values (EVs) that a Pokemon earns from battling, with no downsides, and the boost is permanent.
- Despite his luck, the lucky player who got Pokerus never played Pokemon again, and Game Freak may remove the condition from future games.
One fan has recently taken to social media to recall how their friend got incredibly lucky the very first time they played a Pokemon game, having managed to get their party infected with Pokerus within minutes of starting Pokemon Soul Silver. Their story prompted everything from amazement to playful jealousy among the fans, many of whom spent years trying to reap the benefits of the little-known Pokemon condition that is Pokerus.
Originally introduced in the Generation 2 games, Pokerus is a virus that has a minuscule chance of infecting a given pocket monster after each battle. While that doesn't make it sound like a desirable condition, there are actually no downsides to contracting it, as the only thing Pokerus does is double the effort values (EVs) that an infected Pokemon earns from battling. The creature will also recover from the condition within four days, consequently becoming immune to the virus, while permanently retaining its EV boost.
While not every hardcore fan managed to encounter Pokerus in all their years playing the games, at least one first-time player was lucky enough to do so as soon as they started their first playthrough of Pokemon Soul Silver. That's according to Reddit user KingOnixTheThird, who recently recalled a story about how they introduced a friend to this DS remake of Pokemon Silver, only to see him obtain a Pokerus-infected creature during his visit to Violet City. For context, Violet City is the first major metropolitan location in the game which players tend to reach in about an hour.
The lucky player was completely oblivious to the significance of Pokerus, his friend recalled, adding that they themselves have been playing Pokemon games since 2005 without ever contracting the condition legitimately. Despite his luck, the fortuitous fan "never played Pokemon again," KingOnixTheThird revealed.
In all of the classic Pokemon games, Pokerus has a 1 in 21,845 chance of infecting a single pocket monster after each battle. That makes it nearly three times rarer than stumbling upon a shiny in the wild, which is an encounter with a 1 in 8,192 chance of happening.
Obtaining a Pokerus-infected creature did become easier from Generation 4 onward, after Game Freak implemented online trading features into its hit RPGs. However, the Japanese developer might now be planning to scrap the condition altogether, not least because the Pokerus virus has been effectively removed from Pokemon Scarlet and Violet; the last two mainline installments in the series do keep track of pocket monsters with Pokerus traded from the previous games, but the condition no longer provides any gameplay benefits and cannot be contracted from battling.