Ever since Pokémon Gold and Silver, Shiny Pokémon have been the rarest form of a Pokémon you can find, signified with a color variation and that tell-tale sparkle when entering battle; Pokémon Sword and Shield, however, are shaking this up with a brand new type of Shiny Pokémon.
Dubbed “Square Shinies” by fans, these new Shiny Pokémon only have one small difference: instead of that tell-tale sparkle, they’ll enter battle with a flurry of squares/diamonds around them. That’s it: that’s the only difference.
Twitter user Kaphotics, who was responsible for the datamine leaks before Sword and Shield launched, took a look at the files and noted that the chance for the Shiny Pokémon to display squares is 1/16.
This means on any given encounter, provided that you have full odds for encountering a Shiny, you have a 1/65536 chance of encountering a Square Shiny. However, it appears Kaphotics has also discovered that Shiny Pokémon found via “chaining” are more likely to have squares
Shiny Pokémon rarity has been split! Same 1:4096 odds to obtain a shiny, but there are two types of shiny. 15/16 show stars, 1/16 show squares. Square rarity is 1 in 65536!
Basically, if your Trainer ID cleanly matches the PID (xor), it will be squares rather than stars. pic.twitter.com/Lerr23LtB7
— Kurt (@Kaphotics) November 20, 2019
Keep in mind that this phenomenon is still being researched, and it’s likely more data will continue to be discovered about this new type of Shiny Pokémon in the future.
What to know everything you can about catching Shinies in Sword and Shield? Check out our Pokémon Sword and Shield Shiny-hunting guide!
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Written by Jaxson Tapp
As a lover of gaming and the written word, Jaxson currently fills his time not only with playing games, but also writing about them. Ready for anything, Jaxson’s passion for puzzle games, JRPGs, tough platformers, and whimsical indies helps him bring a well-rounded opinion to Nintendo Wire’s reporting.
