Pokémon Legends: Arceus players find a glitch to exploit shinies

Shiny hunting feels easier in Pokémon Legends: Arceus than it has in past Pokémon games. But shiny Pokémon are still rare, and finding lots of them is time consuming. Players have already started perfecting the art of the shiny hunt, and now that includes exploiting glitches to spawn even more of the creatures.

This method is limited to shiny Pokémon that spawn out of trees, rocks, and treasure chests. You still have to do the hard part in finding the initial shiny Pokémon, so start cracking open those rocks. But once you’ve found one, you can exploit that find and multiply those shinies. The method was discovered by a Twitter user called @Kqttling, and detailed on YouTube by creator PhillyBeatzU. You can see detailed instructions from those intrepid trainers, but here’s the gist of it.

Once you find a shiny Pokémon from an rock ore, treasure chest, or tree, catch it and move on — specifically, move on into a nearby cave that’ll take you out of your current environment, but not fully. (Leaving for Jubilife Village, for instance, will not work; you must stay in the area, but “refresh” with a screen load.)

Players say you must wait in that area for around a half hour before heading back out to that same rock ore, treasure chest, or tree. It’ll be shaking again, denoting that a Pokémon is hidden inside. Send a Pokémon at it, and you should find that it’s the same exact shiny Pokémon you caught earlier, down to the same stats.

Then the shiny Pokémon is yours. You’ll get credit from the Professor for documenting them, but you’re also free to trade them as you will, meaning your friends may benefit, too.

Now for the ethical question: Is this cheating? Some players say so, considering that you’re using an exploit or glitch to get more rare Pokémon. But Pokémon Legends: Arceus, at this point, is a single-player game and players aren’t competing directly with each other, and this exploit isn’t necessarily giving players a more powerful Pokémon.