Pokemon Scarlet and Violet Mass Outbreaks Guide: Easy shiny Pokemon guide
How to use the Mass Outbreak Method
Here’s how Mass Outbreaks work in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, your best, and easiest way of finding shiny Pokemon in the game.
While finding the exact species of Pokemon you’re looking to hunt may take some time, once the Pokemon you want appears in the Mass Outbreaks spot on the map, getting that Pokemon as a Shiny becomes much easier.
So read on below to find out how to use the Mass Outbreaks Shiny Odds system to get almost any Shiny Pokemon you want in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet.
We have the most comprehensive shiny hunting guides around on Pokemon Scarlet and Violet so be sure to check out our others to find out exactly how to hunt every Pokemon that’s shiny eligible in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet.
What is a Mass Outbreak in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet?
A Mass Outbreak is when a large number of the same Pokemon appear in one spot on the map. Almost every Pokemon in the Pokedex, aside from Legendary Pokemon and starter Pokemon, can appear in these outbreaks.
The game will tell you when a Mass Outbreak is starting, this means the map will refresh and show you around 5-7 Pokemon that are appearing in Mass Outbreaks.
However, since the list of Pokemon you can get in these Mass Outbreaks is so long, it might take a while to find the one you’re looking for. Thankfully there’s a quick way to refresh the spawn pool.
Mass Outbreaks Shiny Odds: How to change the Pokemon appearing
To reset the Pokemon that appear in Mass Outbreaks, simply head to the system menu of your Nintendo Switch and change the day. It was originally believed that players would have to save and exit their game, and then change the time to 23:59 to trick the game into changing the Mass Outbreak spawns, however it’s been discovered that you can change them simply by changing the day, without even closing your game.
Mass Outbreaks Shiny Odds: How to increase Shiny odds
Mass Outbreak Shiny Odds are very easy to manipulate to the point where you can essentially get the odds down to 1/1, as in, your odds will be around 1/512 with all bonuses, but you can encounter over 500 Pokemon during a Mass Outbreak if you do the steps correctly.
When you reach the area of the Mass Outbreak, place down a manual save, and make sure autosaves are off, if not you could easily encounter a shiny, fail it, and have no way to return to your state prior to this as the autosave function triggers after every battle.
Following this, you’ll begin to encounter the Pokemon you’re trying to hunt. Then, begin capturing, or defeating them, until you’ve done this 60 times.
This dramatically increases the chances that a Shiny Pokemon will appear. You can use the Let’s Go feature to quickly defeat Pokemon below your level.
As you defeat Pokemon you may see messages in the top right corner telling you that the number of Pokemon is going down, thankfully you can ignore that. While exactly what triggers these messages isn’t clear, it’s believed to be time-based rather than based on the number of Pokemon you’ve knocked out, as it’s not currently believed that you can end an outbreak by knocking out of all of the Pokemon.
Mass Outbreak Shiny Odds – 30 Pokemon Captured/Defeated = 1/2048 (No Shiny Charm)
Further research into Shiny Sandwiches has found that there are actually potentially hundreds of different combinations that can generate both sparkling power (which is used to increase shiny odds) and encounter power, which forces the game to exclusively spawn Pokemon of that type if they appear in the spawn table.
Once you have your sandwich ready, we recommend you wait until you’ve defeated/captured 60 Pokemon before eating it, and also make sure you save before this too. This means if you don’t encounter the Shiny Pokemon you want, you can turn off your game and your extremely rare ingredients will be saved.
Mass Outbreak Shiny Odds – Base odds = 1/1024
Mass Outbreak Shiny Odds – Base odds = 1/683(Shiny Charm)
Mass Outbreaks Shiny Odds: Isolated encounter method
If you can’t find a mass outbreak for the Pokemon you want, even after resetting the game hundreds of times, then there is a mechanic in the game that allows you to closely recreate the conditions of a mass outbreak when hunting for shiny Pokemon.
The Isolated encounter method seeks to completely eliminate most of the Pokemon from appearing in the overworld. Each area has a list of Pokemon species that can appear, that only change based on weather conditions or time of day. This means that using this method, you’re actually able to force the game to only show the Pokemon you’re looking for.
For a full breakdown on how to do the isolated encounter method, and a full list of all the Pokemon that you’re able to do this with, check out our guide here.
Mass Outbreaks Shiny Odds: All mass outbreak Pokemon
Below is the full list of Pokemon that can appear as part of a mass outbreak.
