Shiny Pokemon odds just changed in a BIG way

A new report on the latest Pokemon game seems to confirm the early leak about the odds of new Shiny Pokemon encounters in the near future. According to the folks at Serebii, specifically the writer Jon Hatch, it's shown that "encountering the same Pokemon in a chain increases shiny chance!" This means the odds of a Shiny version of a Pokemon get better each time you encounter a Pokemon with the same name in an unbroken line of encounters. God help you if you encounter a Ditto*.

Let's say you've encounter a Skwovet. It's a tiny baby squirrel Pokemon in the Galar Region. This Pokemon is in Pokemon Sword and in Pokemon Shield, and appears in a LOT of different areas in the game. You can find Skwovet on Route 1, Route 2, Route 3, Route 4, Route 5, in the Dappled Grove, near the Motostoke Riverbank, North Lake Miloch, Rolling Fields, Slumbering Weald, and by the Watchtower Ruins – it's very common.

*While earlier reports suggested Ditto was not in the games Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield, we've confirmed that this monster IS, indeed, in the game. It's not yet known whether it has a shiny edition, but it's in there! Ditto's national Pokedex number is 132, and Galar Region Pokedex number is 373.

According to research done by Serebii, the basic, base, standard Shiny Pokemon rate is 1/4035. That's pretty much just as astronomical as it's been in the recent past – save the original Shiny Pokemon encounters which were more like 1/8192. But we're well beyond that nonsense!

Now, according to this research, if you're able to chain-encounter any Pokemon in the Galar Region, you get better chances of finding them appearing Shiny! This works all the better if you get yourself a Shiny Charm – so easy, right?

Of course these odds are still pretty crazy compared to the Pokemon GO universe, which... is a completely different story. Unless this week's appearance of Galar Region Pokemon in Pokemon GO changes the way it all works – we shall see!