Pokémon fans know just how rare finding a “shiny” is: you can play multiple games across generations and never encounter monsters in a special coloring. Typically, you have a 1 in 4,000 chance of finding a shiny, which is pretty low. Ultra Sun and Moon change the odds by giving you another sure-fire way to find shinies, and players are collecting them by the truckload.
To shiny hunt, you’ll need to beat the base Ultra Sun and Moon game. Then, I’d highly recommend going to Heahea City on Akala island. Specifically, you want to go into the Game Freak building, to the right of the Pokémon center. Go to the second floor and into the door, where you’ll find this guy on the left:
Here, you can change your control input while traveling through Ultra Wormholes. In my experience, it’s better to use the circle pad over the motion controls, so it’s worth tweaking—and this is the only place you can do it.
Once you’ve got that out of the way, you’ll want to Charizard Glide straight to the Altar of the Moone, which is located at the top of Poni Island. There should be a warp hole there. Enter it!
Inside, play through the Wormhole mode as you normally would: gather golden globes to gain speed, and try avoid crashing into blue spheres or colored wormholes. You want to get as far as possible into the warp. Once you start losing speed and start getting gently pulled into wormholes, you’ll want to look out for white wormholes with rainbow edges. That’s where you’ll have a chance of finding a shiny.
You’ll want to travel around 3,000 light years away from where you start (the game will tell you how far you’ve traveled once the mini-game ends). It’ll probably take a few tries to get the hang of how long it takes to travel that far, but eventually you should get a feel for it. I found that getting as many golden orbs near the start of the mini-game, when there aren’t many obstacles, was key to picking up a lot of speed.
With this method, it took me around 15 minutes to find a shiny the first time around. It was a level 60 Nuzleaf:
I’m definitely not alone, judging by posts on social media:
Nope. I'm done. No more shinies please haha. The Shiny rates here are broken…
Only a few more Legends to get so I wonder if I'll get more pic.twitter.com/QWqDdCWC02
— Joe Merrick (@JoeMerrick) November 16, 2017
Fourth shiny from wormhole method… crazy! @aDrive_tK @Data_DaveLive pic.twitter.com/PQCOWBNy8W
— PinkShinyMareep 251 (@DustinDoesStuff) November 20, 2017
SHINY AUDINO ONLY TWO WORMHOLE ENCOUNTERS @Rozoken @RyanYags pic.twitter.com/J77sttTQal
— HatchiBattles03 (@HatchiBattles) November 20, 2017
The luck keeps coming! Wormhole shiny number 4, 14 wormholes after the last at a distance of 3,600! pic.twitter.com/049j8KfIfX
— Shiki 251 (@The_Ninth_Tails) November 20, 2017
10 wormholes in + a distance of 2,800 = shiny Crustle! My first wormhole shiny, I'm so HYPED!! pic.twitter.com/JoDrZ96zRi
— Shiki 251 (@The_Ninth_Tails) November 20, 2017
Shiny Medicham after 3 wormhole encounters!! pic.twitter.com/xBgtXupDIJ
— kyle021sii (@KyleStenstrom) November 20, 2017
Previously, Sun and Moon allowed players to “chain” encounters for shinies, but that method is time-consuming and, frankly, boring.
Perhaps the biggest benefit of shiny hunting through wormholes is that failing sometimes means you encounter a legendary Pokémon instead. I actually encountered a Zapdos before the Nuzleaf. Better yet, there’s a chance you can find a shiny legendary, as many of them aren’t “shiny locked” as they are in other games. According to Serebii, you can soft reset after saving on the other side of the wormhole, meaning that you can make sure the shiny has the nature and stats you want. It’s fantastic.
Players aren’t certain of what the new shiny encounter odds are in wormholes, but it’s clear that the game makes it relatively easy to find them. Many players are reporting finding tons of shinies in wormholes, and it didn’t take me long at all to confirm it. If you’re jonesing for a rare monster find, wormholes are your best bet.