Pokémon players are convinced The Teal Mask has boosted Scarlet and Violet’s Shiny odds

Pokémon Scarlet and Violet’s first expansion, The Teal Mask, was officially released on Sept. 13, and players are already seeing a noticeable uptick in what is supposed to be a rare occurrence.

Players have started to report on social media what they believe to be an influx of Shiny Pokémon sightings. In a thread on Reddit last night, one player noted that they found five Shiny Pokémon without necessarily going out of their way to do so.

“I haven’t hunted and I’ve eaten no sandwiches, yet I’ve stumbled across five different shinies just following the story and exploring,” the user said. “Had the shiny charm for MONTHS now, and it’s never been this easy.”

Other commenters noted that they’re having the inverse experience in Kitakami, so the feat might be a situation where things are averaging out to what is a normal amount of Shiny sightings. But this player in particular could just be one of the luckiest gamers of all time.

Shortly after the game’s release, some data miners noted that static encounters in the DLC were Shiny-locked, making it a little bit tougher to get your hands on a Shiny Pokémon. That hasn’t seemed to stop some players from finding those Shiny companions in abundance out in the wild, though. So perhaps the probability of finding Shinies in the wild was adjusted to account for the lack of Shinies in static encounters.

The Teal Mask has only been out for a few days, so it’ll take a little bit of time for players to dial in exactly what the probabilities and best practices are for collecting Shinies. But at least for now, someone organically finding so many in such a short period should certainly give us hope that there are more out there for us.