Guide To Shiny Pokemon Hunting: Masuda Method Part 2

By Jo

If you’ve ever gone on a Pokemon forum or have tried to read something on shiny hunting, I’m sure you’ve read something concerning the Masuda Method. So I’ve decided to break down the Masuda Method and explain how you can use it in obtaining a shiny Pokemon. In Part 1, I went over the basics of egg hatching and what the Masuda Method is, so I suggest you read that beforehand if you haven’t already. Keep in mind, to use the Masuda Method you’ll need some spare time, quite a bit of patience, and a little bit of luck. So let’s get started!

To start off, you’ll need two breedable Pokemon – one being from your country, and the other from a different one. I’ll use Litwick as an example since that was my first hatched shiny in my White game. Now I went off and caught my Litwick that I planned on breeding with and just traded a Ditto I’d caught for a Japanese Ditto. I could have gotten my Ditto from any other country (excluding the US, since that’s the Country I currently reside in), or I could have chosen to trade for a foreign Litwick (or any of its evolutions) instead. Anyways, you put the two Pokemon you’ve chosen into the Daycare Center and find a route that’s pretty long (I normally use the route right off of the Daycare Center so that I don’t have to fly anywhere). You’ll be using it quite a bit in your egg hatching, so you should try to become familiar with using it and how to avoid moving characters there (if there are any).

Suggestion-wise, you should probably have a few boxes in your PC empty before you start hatching eggs because they add up quickly, as well as a Poke with the ability Flame Body or Magma Armor. Those abilities speed up your hatch time and make egg hatching in general much quicker, though you need said Pokemon and the eggs in your party for the ability to work. The effects of Flame Body/Magma Armor will not stack up if you have more than one Pokemon with the abilities in your party, so don’t even bother with that. I would normally just empty out my party and leave my egg hatcher (Poke with Flame Body/Magma Armor) so that you can work on hatching five eggs at once. I normally save right around here just so that if my battery becomes low somewhere in my egg hatching and actually ends up dying, my work wasn’t all in vain. And then you get started by riding your bike up and down the route that you’ve selected.

Some say that it’s quicker to fill up your boxes with eggs then concentrate on hatching them afterward, verses hatching them and placing them in your boxes and then releasing them, but I normally go for the latter method. It’s up to you to decide which one to use. Now here comes the hard part – exercising your ability to be patient. You’ll be hatching quite a few boxes in your quest for a shiny so it’s very easy to become disheartened or frustrated. I try doing my hatching in spans of four boxes so that the hatching goes by quicker. If I haven’t hatched any by that time, I’ll reset my game and fill those boxes over again (that way, hatching doesn’t give me a bunch of wasted hours on my game and I don’t have to release all of those boxes). And know that even while you have better odds in hatching a shiny, does not mean you become more likely to hatch one the further you get into hatching. Each egg has the same chance of being shiny. No more, and no less.

It could take you 50 or 500 eggs to hatch a shiny. I hatched my shiny Litwick in 73 eggs, while my first attempt at MMing an Eevee on Soul Silver took me months. Like I said, you need lots of patience and a little bit of luck as well as a bit of time on your hands. In the end, if you can keep to it, your hard work will pay off.

Tags: Nintendo DS, Pokemon Black & White