Every time you encounter a wild Pokémon in Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl there’s a chance that it’ll be a “Shiny” Pokémon, which are Pokémon with an alternative color scheme. Shinies are popular among players, as many like to collect them. However, the chances of encountering one are astronomically small — it’s a 1/4,096 chance, meaning you have a 0.02% chance of encountering a Shiny Pokémon on any given wild encounter. These same odds also apply to your chances of getting a Shiny starter or Shiny Legendary Pokémon, both of which are only available in limited quantities throughout the game. Fortunately, as you can control when you acquire these Pokémon, you can use soft resetting to retry these encounters until you finally secure your precious Shiny starter/Legendary Pokémon.
Before soft resetting, save your game prior to the encounter’s start. If you’re seeking a Shiny starter Pokémon, you would want to save right before you and your rival venture into Lake Verity. In the case of Legendaries, such as Dialga or Palkia, you would want to save while on top of the Spear Pillar, immediately before you take on your version’s Legendary Pokémon. From there, begin the encounter.
If your starter/Legendary is not Shiny, perform the soft reset by pressing the “Home” button on your Nintendo Switch’s controller, closing the game, and then booting it back up. Once you load your save file, you’ll be right back where you were before the encounter began. Simply repeat this until you acquire your desired Shiny Pokémon.
However, this method does have its limitations. Soft resetting does not work for Pokémon located in the underground; which Pokémon are present, as well as whether they’re Shiny or not, is determined upon entering a room. Furthermore, certain Pokémon are Shiny-locked, meaning they do not have Shiny versions. Lastly, this is a very time-consuming method, so be prepared to possibly dedicate hours at a time to unlocking a Shiny version of just one of the game’s over 400 Pokémon.
