My Alpha Sapphire Shiny Playthrough
This is basically just an overall review of my shiny playthrough of Alpha Sapphire, including introducing my teammates, explaining the methods I got them, and my overall opinion of this playthrough. (Brace yourself it’s long)
I guess I should start with why I started this playthrough. Basically, I got my hands on a copy of Alpha Sapphire, one of my many fav Pokémon games from my childhood. I was trying to figure out what kind of playthrough I wanted to do.
I didn’t really want to do a mono type one (specializing in only one type of Pokémon) because it there weren’t a lot of Pokémon I like with each type available. I didn’t want to do a nuzlocke, because I had already done quite a few of those, and wanted something more casual. I could’ve just done a normal playthrough with just the Pokémon teams I’ve done before, but I wanted *something* new and interesting to do with this playthrough.
The thought of a shiny playthrough crossed my mind. Something I’ve always avoided doing because “who would wanna spend hours of their time getting a different colored Pokémon instead of actually playing the game”. But the idea of having an all shiny team did sound appealing, and it was also the only challenge I had never tried before.
So I thought “fuck it. Let’s try it this one time and see if I like it”.
Thus, we start the hunt for my starter Pokémon - Gummy Goo the Mudkip (now a Swampert)
To anyone who doesn’t know, to get a shiny starter, you need to do the soft reset method. This means you need to save at the point right before you receive the shiny, see if it’s indeed shiny, and if it’s not you press L + R + select/start to quickly reset that encounter from that save point.
To put it in better perspective, I’d interact with the bag, select my starter, and throw it at the Poochyena to see if it’s shiny. If it’s not shiny, I do it again. Repeat process until I get shiny.
Now for extra context, I’m not playing on an emulator or an “illegal” copy. This is a legit copy of the game on my 2DS. Meaning there’s no speeding up the process to do this super quickly. The only advantage I have is that in these modern games, shiny odds are 1/4096 instead of 1/8129. So it *hopefully* wouldn’t take too long.
That said, I was completely prepared to take at least a couple weeks to get this starter,
I tried to do anywhere between 200-600 resets a day, which was a little difficult with my busy IRL, but I managed.
After a long 11 Days, and 3988 resets, I was finally graced with my beautiful, cute purple boi!
Words cannot describe my joy when I finally got him! I was literally cheering and jumping excitedly. And I made sure to save - three times.
I named my special boy Gummy Goo. The names will have a theme, see if you can figure it out.
Anyway, I didn’t get my second shiny until after I got my first gym badge. I wanted to do it this way to give me one on one time with each new member, increase the difficulty, and also not burn myself out by shining hunting too often I’m comparison to actually playing. Luckily, the first gym was a breeze. Water beats rock, go figure.
Soon, I went for my second shiny - Jax the Whismur (now an Exploud)
Now, I had a lot of options for where to shiny hunt my second team member. Several routes, a couple caves, and a big forest. With a plethora of Pokémon to hunt. I had the hardest time deciding what to do, because I didn’t want an “obvious” shiny hunt, like Ralts. But I also wanted a Pokémon I liked and hadn’t used before, which was hard for me….i think when it comes to the entire Pokédex, Hoenn is one of my least favorites.
After lots of thought, I firmly chose a cave that *only* had Whismur. So I can get a shiny Whismur. Now obviously, it wasn’t smart to pick a normal type right before the fighting type gym - but I didn’t care.
I used the horde method to get this Pokémon. For anyone not knowing, the horde method is when you have a Pokémon use Sweet Scent in a grass patch, cave, etc, and it summons a horde of five Pokémon. This made hunting a shiny much easier, because you encounter five Pokémon at a time instead of 1. So the odds drop down to 1/819.
Another perk to modern day games.
Even though the odds were better, I still wasn’t expecting a shiny until at least a week - so imagine my surprise when only on my second day (Father’s Day ironically) and 1680 encounters (336 regular encounters) I already had my shiny Whismur.
I fell in love the moment I saw those green ears and feet.
I named her Jax, and she became our second teammate.
One gym battle and a couple Team Aqua encounters later, I began hunting my third shiny - Scratch the Electrike (now a Manectric)
Now, I had no specific plans for what Pokémon to get specifically. My plan this time was to just run around in a patch of grass and find a Pokémon the old fashioned way. Is it non-efficient? Yeah, it is. But I didn’t do the horde method because only certain Pokémon could be horde hunted (and I didn’t like them), and I didn’t want to get all my shinies *that* easily.
I was basically gonna get the first shiny I come across. And the options in this grass were Electrike, Plusle, Oddish, Voltorb, Wingull, and Zigzagoon. Not the greatest roster, of course, but I didn’t feel too picky this time. Obviously, my preferred choices were either Electrike or Plusle - but beggars can’t be choosers.
Similar to Mudkip, I tried to do 200-600 encounters a day. This hunt was definitely longer, and a tad draining. Thankfully, 6 days and 2013 encounters later, I somehow got my amazing shiny Electrike.
God I loved that blue color it had.
Oh by the way, catching a shiny Pokémon is one of the most intense things ever. When I was catching this Pokémon, I was a little unprepared and only had 14 regular pokeballs. I didn’t catch the Electrike until I only had 3 left.
I named my new, precious new dog Scratch. Love her to bits.
Again, catching an electric Pokémon before the electric gym isnt the smartest move. But hey, Manectric is a great Pokémon overall. Besides, Gummy Goo took care of it without any issue.
Also, it was this moment that I made a separate, very unbelievable discovery about my teammates. So - who here has heard of Pokerus?
Probably not a lot of you. I didn’t either. The best way I can explain it is, it’s a rare, contagious “virus” your Pokémon can get in the game. A virus that double the effects of IV training for PvP battling. Basically it’s just stupidly easy to make your Pokémon stronger. The virus can technically be “cured”, but it keeps the beneficial effects of it.
Why am I mentioning this? Because when I went to heal my team, Nurse Joy informed me my teammates were “cured” from this rare virus. Curious, I checked my Pokémon’s stats.
For extra context, only 1/21,000 Pokémon get this disease. Three times the rarity of a shiny Pokémon with the old odds.
And I discovered not just one - but TWO of my shinies had this disease!! Gummy Goo and Jax specifically!!
I was fucking shocked!!
Now, my guess is that only one of them was initially infected, and passed it on to the second one. But I have no idea who patient X was. Either way, it was cured, so it couldn’t pass on to the other teammates. Regardless, this was just a fucking awesome occurrence that had my super excited. My already super rare, shiny Pokémon had an even more rare condition.
And again - this is on a legit game copy with no modifications! I just got this out of the blue!
We move on to getting the fourth shiny - Angel the Skarmory
Okay - this Pokémon was a fucking process lol.
So, I very specifically wanted this Pokémon. It would just balance of my team very nicely - and I *needed* a Pokémon whole could learn Fly.
Now, here’s the hard part - the only grass it can found in, it only has a 5% chance of appearing. The other two options being Spinda and Sandshrew. I could do the horde method, but it’s the same issue - 5% of the hordes would be Skarmory, 95% would be Spinda.
As such, my best chance was to use the DexNav method. In the game, there’s a device you can use to track down specific Pokémon and run into them over and over, increasing your chances of getting that specific shiny. The problem is that it involves “chaining”, meaning if you accidentally run into a different Pokémon, or scare it away, or don’t kill/catch it, you break the chain and you gotta start over. It’s a pain in the ass.
So, I first tried the horde thing. I figured even if I run into a shiny Spinda, the encounters happened so often that a shiny Skarmory had to appear eventually…then 4800 encounters later, there was no shiny. Not even a shiny Spinda.
At this point, I didn’t want to risk running into a shiny Spinda instead of Skarmory and doing this all over again. So I switched to the DexNav method….sort of.
I didn’t do the whole “chaining” thing. It seemed too tedious, and I didn’t have the supplies to do it. Instead, I used the DexNav tool to find multiple Skarmory and raise my “search level” which when high enough, helps your chances of finding that specific shiny. But, the best chances didnt come until you got to around lvl 900 - which meant I’d need to run into at least 900 Skarmory before I had a chance at a shiny.
Thanks to the previous horde method, it was already at 300. So I only needed to encounter roughly 600 more Skarmory. It was a tiring 7 Days of effort. But once I was well past the 900 search lvl, and after 5456 encounters (horde ones included) I finally got my shiny Skarmory.
Again, a very intense catch. But I had Great Balls this time, so it was easier. And I had beautiful platinum, green colored metal bird.
I named her Angel, and she joined the team.
Again, not smart to catch a steel type right before the fire gym. I didn’t care.
Boy was I exhausted after that hunt, and enjoyed simply playing the game for a minute. However, the team was coming together and looking real good.
After my fourth gym, I started my hunt for the fifth shiny - Kinger the Lileep (now a Cradily)
My god…this hunt was draining.
Now, Lileep is a fossil Pokémon. Getting the fossil was easy, just go into the desert and get the fossil. But I once again had to do the soft reset method - where I revived the fossil, checked to see if it’s shiny, and repeat.
The hunt isn’t hard at all. Just takes *lots* patience. It was exactly like it was with Mudkip, resetting over and over and over and over again until I hopefully got the shiny Lileep.
After a very long 11 Days and 3487 resets, my green boi finally popped up.
I was certainly happy finally getting this guy - my hands were literally shaking. But I think I was more relieved than anything else. I finally had my Lileep.
I happily named him Kinger.
After the exhausting combo of Angel and Kinger’s hunts, I didn’t get my last team member until after my sixth gym badge. Why? Cause one, I didn’t like many of the route Pokémon coming up, and they overlapped with the other types on my team. Two, the Pokémon I *did* want I didn’t get until I was at Mt Pyre, after the sixth gym.
It wasn’t too long till I went for my final shiny Pokémon - Pomni the Shuppet (now a Banette)
Thankfully, in Mt Pyre, the horde encounters were 100% Shuppet. So, I figured it’d be an easy Pokémon to hunt for.
Once again, I wasn’t expecting an actual shiny until at least a week, even if I was doing the horde method. But once again, 2 Days and 1875 encounters later (375 regular encounters) I had my shiny Shuppet.
She’s an absolutely baby and I was happy to have her.
I decided to call her Pomni.
And, that’s all the shinies I got. Sure, I could’ve gotten more. But I only wanted enough to make a full team, and I was very happy with how my team turned out. So I used these six to beat the rest of the gyms and the Elite 4.
So, now that’s it’s over, what did I think of this shiny playthrough?
Honestky, this was one of the most fun playthroughs I’ve had in a long time. It was so much fun fighting trainers with my special shinies. Plus the limited number of Pokémon made it more challenging, and I liked that. Plus, while some of the hunts were obviously long or difficult, that excited rushyoud get from running into a shiny made it all worth it! It also made every encounter far more personal, so I felt more connected to each team member. I was also happy my team not only had a good color variety, but all happened to be Hoenn Pokémon.
Plus - shiny mega Pokémon look fucking awesome!
That said, I’ve decided I hate soft resetting. It seems to be the longest method. Not to mention, it’s very repetitive and brain numbing in comparison to running into a shiny in a grass patch. Several times I felt nervous I somehow missed a shiny and accidentally saved over it. DexNav “chaining” is pretty tedious too, considering how carefully you gotta perfect the chain.
Overall though, I thoroughly enjoyed this playthrough. Enough that I think maybe in the future I’d do it again. But only on a modern game - if I did the 1/8129 odds, I’d lose my mind. I won’t be doing this again for a while though. For now, I’m gonna enjoy the post game with my shiny team.
Whelp, I think that wraps up everything. I hope you liked reading about my silly shiny adventure. Enjoy some cute images from the ending credits.
