Pokémon Legends: Arceus hasn’t launched with nearly as many exploits as last year’s Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl remakes, but players have still managed to discover one particular glitch with huge consequences for Shiny hunting. Want to start raking in Shinies and dish them out to all your friends? Here’s how.
The trick, first found by Twitter user Kqttling (via Polygon), revolves around Pokémon that spawn specifically from trees, rocks, chests, and other hiding places. By following the specific steps below, you can cause exact copies of any Arceus Pokémon lurking in these objects to endlessly respawn. While that means you can’t clone every Shiny Pokémon this way, it still makes it a lot easier to hunt down quite a number of them.
The steps, according to a video guide by Kqttling, are as follows:
- Turn off auto save
- Choose a map with cave that requires you to press A to enter
- Find the shaking Pokémon spawn you want to clone
- Save your game
- Go enter the cave and wait there for 30 minutes (time spent in battle doesn’t count)
- Go back to the spawn and it will be shaking again
YouTuber PhillyBeatzU tested this method a few times, and while he didn’t find any Shiny Pokémon to duplicate, he did verify that the Pokémon he was getting were exact copies of one another, down to their registration number. In addition to letting you gift unlimited Shiny Gravelers to your friends, the exploit is also perfect for one of Pokémon Legends: Arceus’ most aggravating quests: “To Bloom or Not to Bloom”
It requires capturing a Cherrim and maxing out its Pokédex entry. Cheriim is a rare find to begin with, and it only spawns from trees, and it’s very good at escaping from Pokéballs. Making things even worse is the fact that Cherrim can transform during battle, and once it does it can no longer be caught thanks to a current glitch. This new Shiny Hunting exploit, while still time intensive, will give players an unlimited number of shots at trying to capture one.
I found a Cherrim mid-way through Pokémon Legends: Arceus and caught it on the first try. It was probably the Almighty Sinnoh’s way of making up for the fact that 25 hours into the game I still haven’t found a big Buizel.