#shinypatch

The concept of chaining has appeared in a handful of Pokémon games since its introduction in Diamond and Pearl, but wow did things get off to a cryptic start! The only in-game hints in Diamond and Pearl that the chaining mechanic even existed -- at least so far as I was aware -- were 1) a few lines of nonchalant NPC dialog and 2) the Trainer Counter pokétch app.

In regards to the NPCs, if you visit Sandgem Town post-game and speak to Lucas or Dawn, they'll ask you how things are going with the poké radar and then casually drop that the grass patches that shake farthest away from you will have the highest chances of containing consecutive repeat pokémon. Neat, you think. Something to keep in mind if you want to save time seeking out a particular nature or doing some EV training or something.

But then if you pick up the Trainer Counter pokétch app too, you're like, okay, there must be something else to encountering the same species of pokémon over and over again in a row, because why else would the game be putting this much effort into tracking it?

Naming this the "Trainer Counter" didn't make anything clearer, unfortunately.

But the really intriguing bit happens when Lucas or Dawn -- and again, this is expressed to you in just one or two lines of optional post-game dialog with a character you may not be particularly inspired to check up on -- makes an offhand comment about a "sparkling" grass patch that sometimes shows up when you use the poké radar. They claim that these patches will have a different-colored pokémon inside but then quickly reframe this as perhaps more rumor than fact by ending on a wistful, "I wonder if that's true?"

It was this mention of a sparkling grass patch that stuck in my mind enough (read: adhesed forever) that on the random day in 2008 when I was stunned by the appearance of one -- at an incredibly low chain, before I even knew what chaining was -- I was able to make the connection and understand what I was seeing. But from that point on, all of my knowledge about chaining, shiny or otherwise, came from the fan sites, LiveJournal posts, and YouTube videos I found when I started searching the internet to see if other people had experienced this phenomenon too.

And just to fully set the scene here, the only -- only -- footage of an actual shiny patch I was aware of in those days was this two-second YouTube video. There were no gifs or other screenshots to reference anywhere. Eventually more videos would follow from folks setting up their digital cameras or DV camcorders to film over their shoulders, but for a few years the shiny Pokémon LiveJournal community I'd joined had to live with the ongoing subdermal dread of, "Even if I do this whole laborious process right and it actually works, what if a shiny patch happens and I don't recognize it?" If you'd never seen one in your game before, how could you be sure you'd know?

So of course now that we have Nintendo DS capture devices, I'm obsessed with making these.

Fan-made written guides for shiny chaining did exist by the time I was looking into things in 2010, and I specifically remember using an earlier version of this Smogon University guide to wrap my head around the process. But I would love to know the story behind the folks who originally dug through the game's code and pulled out this information, because I just can't get over how a game mechanic this robust -- robust enough to be its own minigame with its own custom animations and BGM tune, which directly and secretly affected shiny odds -- was barely explained in any official capacity at the time.

I cracked open my Pearl and Platinum manuals and my Diamond/Pearl Official Prima Game Guide Volume 1 just to make sure there wasn't something about chaining in either place that I'd somehow overlooked. Not only is there not, but there is no mention of the poké radar at all, and the Game Guide doesn't include the Trainer Counter app in its pokétch section. I suppose this makes some amount of sense since the poké radar isn't given to you until you've finished the main storyline, but still. Pretty interesting.

The pokétch pages in the Prima Game Guide Volume 1.

That said, I can't speak to what is or isn't in the Prima Game Guide Volume 2. I should grab a copy for research purposes. 😄 And I will also note that in Platinum, which came out two years after Diamond and Pearl, Lucas or Dawn will give you a short demonstration of how to use the poké radar... but they really don't give you any new information beyond what was already said in Diamond and Pearl. They certainly don’t mention a relationship between chain numbers and shiny odds. They just spell out the process a little more clearly, show you some actual rustling grass, and suggest that you buy some repels. Helpful, yes. But still barely scratching the surface!

So now what about you? When and how did you learn about shiny chaining? What were your experiences with the poké radar in gen IV? Was there some official information out there that I missed back in the day? Replies are welcomed!