Shiny hunting has taken a massive hit in Pokémon Legends: Z-A. Shiny Pokémon are highly sought after for their alternative color palettes, and have become a bit of a series staple. They do feature in Legends: Z-A, as they have in pretty much every Pokémon game since Gen II.
But a series of new features introduced in Legends: Z-A makes it a lot harder to get Shinies to spawn, which throws a wrench in the works of concentrated Shiny hunting. However, it does make the process a little bit easier once you’ve found one.
Some Pokémon Are Shiny Locked In Legends: Z-A
No Shiny Starters, Mythicals, Or Legendaries
Unfortunately, there are quite a few Shiny-locked Pokémon in Legends: Z-A. A Pokémon is Shiny-locked when it never spawns as a Shiny, usually because the game is programmed to prevent it from doing so.
In Legends: Z-A, the following Pokémon are all Shiny-locked — some of them only under specific conditions, which we’ll go over below.
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Legendary Pokémon
- Xerneas
- Yveltal
- Zygarde
- Mewtwo
- Mythical Pokémon
- Starter Pokémon
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Gift Pokémon
- All Pokémon given as quest rewards
Legendary and Mythical Pokémon are always Shiny-locked in Legends: Z-A; there’s simply no way to get them, at least not at launch. In more recent games, Shiny Legendaries are typically added post-launch as event rewards, so this isn’t unheard of. Likewise, Pokémon given as gifts for finishing quests will never appear as Shinies, either, but you can catch their Shinies elsewhere.
It is possible to find Shiny starters, although the actual starter Pokémon you choose at the beginning of the game will never spawn as a Shiny. You’ll have to seek out and catch Shiny versions of Chikorita, Tepig, and Totodile later if you want them.
This is a departure from previous Pokémon games. While it’s not unheard of for starters to be Shiny-locked, it’s a relatively recent development; older games allowed players to replay their tutorials multiple times in the hope of spawning a Shiny starter. That possibility is off the table in Legends: Z-A.
Legends: Z-A’s Autosave Makes Shiny Hunting Harder
No More Soft Resets
To make matters worse, Legends: Z-A makes it harder to encounter Shinies in the wild due to its mandatory autosave feature. The autosave automatically overwrites your save file at certain critical points, e.g., when loading a new area, starting a story-critical quest, or taking on a difficult battle.
This is basically the final nail in the coffin for Shiny hunting in Legends: Z-A. In every Pokémon game where they’re featured, Shinies spawn randomly, based on random numbers generated (RNG) by the game’s code.
One of the most important strategies used in Shiny hunting involves repeatedly refreshing the RNG, and thus the likelihood of spawning a Shiny, by soft resetting the game.
The strategy goes as follows: save the game immediately before entering the battle you want to spawn a Shiny in, usually against a Legendary Pokémon. Then, engage the Pokémon repeatedly, resetting the console and loading your save until it spawns as a Shiny.
This isn’t necessarily guaranteed to spawn a Shiny, except by a sort of infinite-Mankeys-at-infinite-typewriters justification; if you keep at it long enough, you’re probability-bound to hit the Shiny jackpot eventually. But it takes time, and it can be a tedious strategy to execute.
Underpinning that strategy, though, is the ability to save and load your game at will. When you’re forced to use an autosave feature that could overwrite your save at any time.
However, as Reddit user Nindroid012 points out in a thread discussing this change, the Gameplay settings page for Pokémon Legends: Z-A is surprisingly bare. More than half the screen is taken up by white space, with only three actual gameplay options available.
Thus, this fan speculated, the ability to turn off autosave could be added in a later update. For now, though, if you’re out Shiny hunting in Lumiose City, you can only hope the autosave doesn’t come along to ruin your run.
Legends: Z-A Makes One Part Of Shiny Hunting Easier
Shinies Don’t Despawn
The good news is that Legends: Z-A does make certain aspects of Shiny hunting significantly easier. The Shiny sound, an audio cue that alerts you to the presence of Shinies, has returned. You can get a Shiny Charm to boost their overall spawn probablity. And, once you’ve found a Shiny Pokémon, it’s much less likely to despawn.
If you lose a battle with a Shiny and are forced to respawn at a Pokémon Center, you can return to the spot where you found the Shiny, and it’ll almost certainly still be there. Some players have even reported that you can fully leave the area where a Shiny appears, come back, reload it, and it’ll still be there waiting for you.
So really, it seems like Legends: Z-A is embracing a new paradigm of distributing Shinies. It’s now much harder to get them to spawn forcibly, but, once you do so, it’s a lot easier to catch them. Catching a Shiny is based more on luck than on patience and willingness to grind, which actually does make it feel a little more special when you get one.
It may be bad news for compulsory Shiny hunters, but, if it bothers you that much, you can always catch Shinies in older games and transfer them when Pokémon Home connectivity becomes available in 2026. Until then, though, the Shiny hunting meta will have to evolve with Pokémon Legends: Z-A.
- Released
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2025
- ESRB
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e
- Developer(s)
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Game Freak
- Engine
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Proprietary Engine
