#catch combo

Pokemon Lets Go hunts via catch combo.

Well to be fair, shiny pidgey broke my chain for Growlithe, so I went and hunted Psyduck for a bit.

I finished Let’s Go, Eevee!, including the entire story and completing my pokedex, in one week. Next, I set out on my next goal: I wanted a shiny black Charizard to fly around on. 

Let’s Go has a nice mechanic where if you successfully catch the same Pokemon a certain number of times in a row, you get certain benefits, including (at 11 catch combo) higher rare Pokemon spawn rate, and (at various catch combos, but maxing out at 31) a higher shiny rate. 

Since Charmander is pretty rare, I transferred in 11 from Pokemon Go (common this weekend from the community day event), caught them all to kick off my streak, and then wasted hours of my life running around Route 4, Route 5, and Rock Tunnel looking for my shiny. 

Supposedly the shiny rate should be 1 in 293 (with 31 catch combo and Shiny Charm), which according to my calculations meant that I should have a 50% chance of a shiny after encountering 200 Charmanders, and an 87% chance after 600. Easy, I thought!

I was so confident I went to the Fortune Teller, who “tells your fortune” for 10,000 pokebucks, and guarantees the nature of Pokemon you encounter for the rest of the day. The nature slightly boosts 1 of the 6 stats, and lowers 1 of the 6 stats. For my Charmander I wanted Jolly (high Speed, low Special Atk), since I planned to use it for physical attacks only, and could afford to dump special.

Well, long story short, I didn’t find a shiny Charmander that first night, though I did see a shiny green zubat flying around the Rock Tunnel.

The second day I thought, that was a fluke, probability is on my side. I paid the fortune teller again and this time wandered around the grassy fields of Route 4. 

Friends, I tried all sorts of methods to see as many Charmanders as possible. When you leave a map and come back, it resets the spawns there, so I triggered that in several ways: in the Rock Tunnel, I’d go up and down a ladder, each time refreshing the map to see more Charmanders. On Route 4, I flew around on my (existing, non-shiny Charizard) between two grass patches, and each time I left one patch and came back, there’d be fresh spawns.

I also tried the method where you stay in the grass and run up to each Charmander that spawns, and then flee. There can only be one Charmander spawned at a time, so this allows the next one to spawn (hopefully soon). I found this last method most efficient, and I wound up doing this in handheld mode while watching Netflix. I had Pokemon cries turned up, and all other sounds turned off, so that whenever I heard the Charmander cry, I could look down and quickly encounter it and then flee.

The second night I saw not one, but two, shiny spearows fly by. The entire time I could see the shadows of Dragonites flying overhead. But I stayed the course. I was not tempted. And finally, finally, I got my shiny! However, it was not Jolly. In fact, it was low Speed, high Special Attack, literally the exact opposite of what I wanted.

It turned out that it was 18 minutes past midnight, and my fortune had expired...

Regardless, I went through the Elite 4 a couple of times for experience and now have my shiny black Charizard to fly around on.

With this I’ve accomplished all my game objectives! I guess now I’ll just... fly around... now... 

catch combo anywhere means it’s time for chansey

Ok kind of a weird post but stay with me.

I had a dream the other night about hunting magikarp in let's go. So i decided to actually do the hunt.

I got the first shiny (Brooke the magikarp, named after a goldfish cracker mascot) at chain 31, after about 80 minutes.

The second shiny was taking forever though, and the hunt was occupying my switch and keeping me from hunts I wanted to do. And cmon its magikarp, theres a million ways to hunt it. So after 7 hours waiting for the second shiny, I decided to hunt it in oras alongside the let's go hunt. If it shined in let's go first, I'd abandon my oras hunt. If it shined in oras, I'd abandon the let's go hunt.