A Pokemon of a Different Color

May 23, 2009

Red Gyarados

Ever since we all saw that first red Gyarados in our adventures in Johto, different colored, or shiny, pokemon have been a rare find, and heavily sought after. The chances of randomly finding a shiny pokemon in the wild, through fishing, or normal encounters is a staggering 1 in 8192. This means that through the normal course of a game, you probably won’t come across one at all!

During the days of Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald, but luckily the game developers felt that we, the players, deserved a couple different avenues to make shinies a little easier to come by.

The most common method today to get a shiny is though chaining, using the Poke-Radar. There is still skill involved, which I personally have had very limited luck with.

The other way to make things a bit easier is using what has been coined ‘The Masuda Method’. The Masuda method is a way to have a little better luck in obtaining a shiny under the right circumstances.

It was revealed through a blog post by Junichi Masuda, who is a director on the board of Game Freak inc, that it is advantageous to use the GTS. He pointed out several different benefits. You can read the full blog post here.

One line in particular is important here, “rare colored Pokemon’s Egg can be found little easier.” This meant that by utilizing the GTS, it would be easier to hatch a shiny egg. Well, this didn’t exactly give the entire picture, but it was intriguing news nonetheless! After months of research (by someone else, mind you) it was discovered that this meant there was an interesting interaction with pokemon from different languages. So those that were able to tear apart the game’s code and figure out what was going on, were able to determine that taking 2 compatible parents (for instance, one American male Charmander, and one Japanese female Charmander) and depositing them into the daycare had a dramatic impact on the chances of finding a shiny.

The odds went from 1 in 8192 to 1 in only 2050, that is almost four times easier than a normal encounter!

Here is a video showing a hatching of a shiny charmander using this method on my platinum cartridge!

A few notes that may help answer some of your questions – thanks go to several members of the pokefarm public that helped to dig up this info!!

  1. This will work with any breedable pokemon.
  2. This will work using a foreign Ditto and another breedable pokemon from your own game.
  3. If you save after picking up the egg, you can soft reset for better IV’s.
  4. IV’s are the only properties of the egg that is set upon hatch, rather than on picking it up from the old man. (i.e. Nature, Ability)
  5. Natures will not pass from the parents when they are of different languages, so an Everstone will have no effect when held by the mother in this case.
  6. This method works in Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum.
  7. In order to check it’s IV’s without saving you’ll have to either have many Rare Candies (about 30-40 to narrow it down very well) or to get a rougher idea, visit our PokeFarm forums for tools to help you on finding out more.

I believe that covers all the main questions that have been asked lately. If you have any questions that aren’t covered here, make sure to check the Diamond/Pearl/Platinum Question and Answer section and ask away!

See you on the Farm!

Whitdjinn

Whitdjinn is one of the original farmers from when we still used HMTK.com as the base site to distribute Pokemon.

Posted by HMTKSteve | Filed Under Tips  4,548 views

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11 Comments »

Comment by Quark
2009-05-24 12:53:39

I’ll have to try this.

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Comment by Murky
2009-05-29 18:17:50

That is an awesome trick.

I didnt know about the IVs thing either, about them being set upon hatch.

Thanks a bunch, guys!

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Comment by Jordan Sjodin
2009-05-30 20:46:03

What does IV mean?

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Comment by Trombones13
2009-05-30 20:52:44

IVs are Individual Values.

http://forum.pokefarm.com/showthread.php?t=4855
Some great reading in this thread; look at post #4 in particular.

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Comment by Rover
2009-06-02 16:22:06

OMG. That would explain the shiny beldum I got. I’ve put it away for a future restart!!!!!

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Comment by shinyabork123
2009-07-13 14:03:00

I tried this and the 24th egg was shiny. It really works!!!!!!!

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Comment by flamingdarkdragon
2009-07-19 01:41:32

Okay, so lets say I breeded a charmander and the parnts were both American. Then i got an egg and then I saved the game. After that I put a Japanese Ditto with a random pokemon. If I try to hatch the egg and with luck, will it have a better chance being a Shiny Charmander?

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Comment by alex
2009-07-31 16:16:43

so how offten do you hatch a shines whith this every thoused pokemon

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Comment by Rain
2009-08-09 12:20:16

does its name have to be a different language? i have a gallade and when it was a ralts its name was japanese but it turned english when it evolved. will it still work for the gallade since its from japan?

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Comment by ????????
2009-11-01 16:15:04

Cool i need to get a japaneese ditto then!! :)

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Comment by kirby12
2010-02-18 00:11:54

where can i get a japanesse ditto

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