Pokemon players team up & smash record for most Shinies caught in 24 hours

A group of Pokemon content creators have put in a massive team effort to set a new record for the most Shiny Pokemon caught in 24 hours.

There are a tonne of different ways to play and enjoy Pokemon and the franchise has captured players of all persuasions. Some focus on building strong teams to take on each region’s gym challenge, others want to ‘catch ‘em all’ and fill out the Pokedex.

For hardcore players, the games have an intricate set of mechanics to master for truly competitive battling and the fan-made Nuzlocke rules can be a fun challenge. Perhaps the most dedicated Pokemon fans of all are the Shiny hunters who battle incredible odds to track down incredibly rare variants of the little monsters that have an alternate color scheme.

The rarity of Shiny Pokemon is off the charts so the previous record of the most caught in 24 hours by a group being 588 is actually pretty impressive. Pokemon YouTuber PM7 assembled a crack team to smash that record and the result was a whopping 1,708 Shiny Pokemon caught in the allotted time.

For some context, the odds of coming across the Shiny variant of a Pokemon are about 1 in 8,192. That’s a minuscule 0.0122% chance of hitting the jackpot and getting a green Onix, a red Gyarados, or a… slightly darker yellow Pikachu. Yeah, some aren’t as sought after as others.

So, how did PM7 and his cohort of Shiny hunters manage to overcome these abysmal odds and catch well over 1,000 ultra-rare Pokemon? Well, we can’t speak for all of them but PM7 himself broke down his method to increase the chance of running into Shiny Pokemon.

When playing Pokemon Scarlet or Violet, you have the ability to make Sandwiches which increase your chances of finding a Shiny Pokemon. During Mass Outbreaks, you can further increase that chance by battling and defeating 60 of the same type of Pokemon.

By combining Shiny Sandwiches, the Mass Outbreak method, and a Shiny Charm, PM7 was able to shift the odds to a more manageable 1 in 512 chance of encountering a Shiny Pokemon. It’s likely that his cohort used similar methods and that resulted in the significantly higher world record that they managed to set.

For transparency, the participants kept a log of the Shiny Pokemon they’d managed to catch and PM7 added an impressive 55 to the count.

Given the size of the team involved, its likely this new record won’t be beat for quite some time.