Guide to Shiny Pokemon Hunting: Soft Resetting

By Jo

In their efforts to find shiny Pokemon, shiny hunters have discovered a way of obtaining shiny Pokemon in nearly every game. The method? Soft resetting. So what is soft resetting, and how can it help you in getting a shiny Pokemon of your own? Let’s find out.

I know I tend to repeat this in all of my shiny hunting posts, but I can’t stress it enough: to hunt for shiny Pokemon, no matter the method that you’re using, you’re going to need a bit of time as well as a great deal of patience. Soft resetting is no exception to that rule. As time passes, you’ll begin to feel as if your search is fruitless and begin to doubt yourself, as well as become frustrated. If you keep to your search, it will eventually be worth it in the end.

Now that that’s been said, we can get into what soft resetting actually is. Soft resetting (pressing the Start, Select, L, and R buttons all at the same time) resets your game and brings you back to your main menu without having to turn off your gaming system. Though when you think about it, soft resetting sounds pointless unless you’ve reached a certain part in your game. Most of the time shiny hunters soft reset in front of legendary Pokemon that have set locations, or when they’ve just begun a game so that they have the chance of picking a shiny starter. They save just before picking/battling and then they just reset the game until the desired Poke shines. This process may take hours, days, weeks, or even months – it all depends on their player’s game cartridge. Because this process takes so long, players will often use a synchronizing Pokémon (a Poké with the ability Synchronize) so that when they finally reach their shiny, it will almost definitely have the same nature as the their Synchronizer (they’ll breed/catch these synchronizers to have the desired nature of the Pokemon they’re trying to catch as a shiny).

Soft resetting can be used at a few other times in the games as well, probably when you wouldn’t expect it. One of which would be at the Game Corners. Once a shiny hunter has earned enough tokens for the desired Pokemon they want to soft reset for, they’ll simply save before they talk to the woman at the prize exchange and keep soft resetting their game until they get their shiny. They could also soft reset eggs that are given to them as well as Pokes that are considered “gifts” (Pokemon that you don’t have to trade for), though most would just rather use the Masuda Method due to soft resetting taking so much longer.

Tags: Nintendo DS, Pokemon Black & White