Defeating or catching 500 Pokémon will max out shiny odds, Nintendo confirms

The recent release of Sword and Shield has players racing to catch shiny Pokémon, which changes their physical appearance with unique markings and colors. And while data miners provided some insight on shiny hunting already, Nintendo officially revealed how to increase the odds of landing that rare Pokémon.

Nintendo broke down shiny hunting in an article on the Pokémon website today, explaining how the odds for the rare appearances change depending on the number of battles you have with a specific species. The chances of landing a Brilliant Pokémon, who come with higher stats, also improves by besting a species in battle.

“As you catch or defeat more and more Pokémon of the same species, you’ll gradually become more likely to find Brilliant Pokémon and Shiny Pokémon of that species in the future,” Nintendo said. “You don’t need to find these Pokémon consecutively, and you can see how many times you’ve encountered a species by checking your Pokédex.”

While this information isn’t exactly new, since players have already been defeating Pokémon for an increased chance at shinies, Nintendo provided a table confirming the odds.

Defeating or catching 500 Pokémon will max out the likelihood of running into a shiny by six times. All subsequent Pokémon encounters of that species won’t improve the odds at all.

And data miners thought the lifetime knockouts and chain methods, where you continuously encounter the same Pokémon in a row without running or turning the game off, worked hand-in-hand to improve shiny odds. But it appears the two methods are separate entities and not connected, according to Nintendo.

For a full breakdown of how the data mined and official Nintendo information link up, you can check out Kotaku news editor Laura Kate Dale’s Twitter thread.