The ultimate Pokemon Emerald completionist is finally ready to tackle the first gym after 20 months of hunting shinies for a challenge so brutal even using a bot barely helps

(Image credit: The Pokemon Company)

The entire Pokemon series is a completionist’s dream – with the whole concept being to, y’know, catch ’em all, there’s always plenty to do for those dedicated enough to fill out their entire Pokedex. But what if you wanted to take things a step further?

Well, that’s exactly what content creator 40 Cakes is doing in Pokemon Emerald. Since January 1, 2023, they’ve had a bot running 24 hours a day in an attempt to complete a Professor Oak’s Living Shiny Dex challenge. A mouthful of a name, but it essentially means that before each gym badge, they must find every single possible shiny Pokemon (rare, alternate color palette Pokemon), with the goal of owning one of everything in sparkly form. They can’t catch just one shiny Poochyena, for example, because they need to own both a Poochyena and its evolution, Mightyena. If it’s possible to obtain something before a badge, it’s got to be collected at that point.

You might think that employing a bot to do all of these random encounters and catch the shinies would make the challenge redundant, but I promise that’s absolutely not the case. In fact, the whole concept is so difficult that only now, almost 20 months in, it’s become possible for 40 Cakes to take on the first gym. Their bot found hundreds of shinies in that time, though, so what was the problem?

The answer lies with one ridiculously rare, weak Grass-type that lurks in Route 102 – Seedot. For some reason, Seedot only has a 1% encounter rate, which makes it hard to come by at the best of times, but when you’re looking for a sparkly one in a game with 1/8192 shiny odds, that means you’re looking at a 1/819,200 chance to find just one of them. Before they could enter the first gym, 40 Cakes unfortunately had to find two so that they could add shiny Nuzleaf (its first evolution) to their collection. It took 457 shinies before this second acorn eventually showed up, appearing after a grand total of 3,848,934 encounters and over a year after the first one.

After a FULL YEAR (and 2 days) since the first shiny Seedot, the bot has FINALLY found the second one! 🎉WE CAN FINALLY PROGRESS TO THE FIRST GYM AFTER 605 DAYS OF 24/7 SHINY HUNTING!!! ✨✨ pic.twitter.com/XeC43ZSrA1August 29, 2024

Wanna know what the worst part is? Eventually, 40 Cakes will need to find a third one to get Seedot’s final evolution, Shiftry – the hunter was only exempt from this before the first gym badge since they’d need a Leaf Stone to evolve it, which can’t be obtained at that point. Unfortunately, while you can find wild Nuzleaf in Emerald, too, they also only have a 1% encounter rate, so 40 Cakes will be facing those awful odds no matter where the bot looks.

I can’t imagine how long this challenge is going to take to complete given what a journey it’s been so far, but if you’re interested in keeping up with it, it’s being streamed constantly over on the creator’s YouTube channel. Who knows, maybe in another year, 40 Cakes will finally have that shiny Shiftry.

Be sure to check out our list of the best Pokemon games to see where your favorite ranks.

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I’m one of GamesRadar+’s news writers, who works alongside the rest of the news team to deliver cool gaming stories that we love. After spending more hours than I can count filling The University of Sheffield’s student newspaper with Pokemon and indie game content, and picking up a degree in Journalism Studies, I started my career at GAMINGbible where I worked as a journalist for over a year and a half. I then became TechRadar Gaming’s news writer, where I sourced stories and wrote about all sorts of intriguing topics. In my spare time, you’re sure to find me on my Nintendo Switch or PS5 playing through story-driven RPGs like Xenoblade Chronicles and Persona 5 Royal, nuzlocking old Pokemon games, or going for a Victory Royale in Fortnite.