Part 40: Side Note 06: Hunting with the Poke Radar!
Side Notes 06: Hunting with the Poke Radar!
Poke Radar
So you want an easy shiny, do ya? Well think again, the Poke Radar is a powerful tool in the right hands, but it requires a bit of work to get going, but is definitely worth it. Firstly, it needs 50 steps to charge, but that's easy, secondly you need to be a in a large patch of grass, there's a fair few places you can do this easily enough. Thirdly, you need a lot of Pokeballs and repels, well, Quick Balls and Super Repels I suppose. Finally, you need to know what you're hunting for, since you can do this with any Pokemon on a specific route, even those from the dongle method or swarms or whatever, and especially with the mon exclusive to the Poke Radar. So with that all set, let's turn it on.
Around you, a maximum of 4 patches of grass with shake. These are chosen randomly within 4 rings around where you activate it, the first ring being the eight squares around you, the second ring being the sixteen squares surrounding the first ring, etc. If one of the rings didn't have a shaking patch, then it randomly chose a patch without grass. This can happen for all 4, where your chain will automatically break, so be aware of that! Take a very hard look at the grass that's shaking, it'll either shake gently, or vigorously, and that's important for two reasons. Firstly, the radar exclusive Pokemon will never appear in gently shaking grass, and secondly, the Pokemon you chain will always use that shaking animation, so if you choose a gentle shake and it's the mon you're looking for, it'll always be in gently shaking grass, but don't take it to mean that only local Pokemon will appear in gently shaking grass, it's the swarm or dongle or radar Pokemon that will never appear there.
Defeating or catching the Pokemon will continue the chain, knocking out the Pokemon in any way is fine, and four more patches will shake. The probability of it being the same Pokemon you just encountered depends on the rings, the first ring is a 28% chance, second is 48%, then 68%, then 88%, so try and go to the furthest ring when possible, but note that four new patches will be created from that spot, so don't go too close to the end of the grass patch, or you'll decrease the chance of a fourth ring spawn. Catching the Pokemon boosts these chances by 10%, making the fourth ring a near guarentee, but always remember which shake animation is being used. If you believe none of the patches will continue the chain, either wrong animation, or they didn't spawn, or it spawned in an awkward location, you can always use the radar again to spawn four new patches, this will not break the chain, but there are a number of things that will break the chain:
If a different species is encountered in any way, if the chained Pokemon is not defeated or captured, if you naturally encounter another Pokemon, even if it's the same one as the chain, if you use the Bicycle, if you move too far from the shaking patches, if an Egg hatches, or if you enter the wrong patch, even if you happen to encounter the same Pokemon you were chaining, this will all end it, so it's a lot to keep in mind, but the rewards are definitely worth it.
As your chain increases, so too does your shiny chance. Now you have a chance of naturally encountering a shiny while doing this, the chance of EVERY shaking patch is the same, regardless of what Pokemon it is. When the radar forces a shiny Pokemon, the patch will glow twice and the PID will roll until the Pokemon can be shiny. If it's in the fourth ring, it's probably your chained Pokemon, but this can happen at any time while you're doing this, at max chain chances, with all four patches, you have a 1/50 chance of seeing a shiny. The chance increases slowly to begin with, with the chance beginning at 8/65536, the true rate, and increases when certain chain amounts are reached, going up to 9/65536 to 10/65536, incrementing at an almost exponential rate until 40+, 328/65536, or around 1/200. When you reach this part, there's no need to continue to find Pokemon with the possibility of breaking your chain, you can just run around to charge your radar and keep resetting the grass until one of them is shiny. And if it is the chained Pokemon, you can just keep doing it! It's actually insane how good the odds get, so I wonder how lucky I'll be...