Shiny Scatterbug has been added to Pokémon Go years after its debut, forcing trainers to search for friends across the globe for a chance at finding one due to its unusual encounter.
When opening gifts from friends, you can pin their postcards, and after pinning a set amount of postcards, you encounter a random Scatterbug on the Medals menu. It requires three postcards to get your first encounter from a specific region, nine for a second encounter, and 15 pins for all future encounters.
As you can imagine, getting 15 postcard pins further on is a daunting task for those trying to Shiny hunt Scatterbug, so here are some tricks and tips to help you on the grind to hopefully catch this hard-to-find Shiny bug.
How to get Shiny Scatterbug in Pokémon Go
The first task to starting the Scatterbug Shiny hunt is to make sure you have a lot of friends from different regions. Having all your friends from the States won’t lead to many encounters, so it’s crucial to add friends from all over the world, from Japan to Europe. To maximize the number of different region postcards, you must have the most Scatterbug encounters possible.
Once you meet the postcard requirement, you can Bank these encounters as you pin postcards from other regions, allowing you to do multiple encounters simultaneously. If you trigger an encounter, any additional pins from a region won’t count until you catch the Scatterbug, so make sure not to over-pin on U.S. region postcards, as they won’t stack.
You can’t keep pinning the same postcard, so you need to open the gift you pinned the postcard from and reset that area. You also only need to pin a postcard, not keep it, so you can immediately unpin it and still open the gift for it to count towards your encounters.
There is a limit on the number of postcards you can pin, so make sure you unpin and delete postcards once you finish the encounter. Additionally, if you have Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, you can send your postcards to the Switch instead. This also unlocks these additional benefits:
- Encounter Vivillon of that region in-game.
- Get the Coin Bag to encounter Gimmighouls.
- Earn progress for a Golden Lure.
You can also pin your own postcards, which is handy if you are on vacation to somewhere like Hawaii, which has a small player base. You can only pin three of your own postcards per day, however. There is also a Reddit community dedicated to trading friend codes with people from certain regions to maximize the different types of Vivillion patterns you can find, which is excellent for those looking to complete the medal.
Shiny Scatterbug will have increased chances to spawn up until Feb. 20 from Feb. 18, 2025, so it’s the perfect opportunity to max out all these different options and make the most of these tips and hopefully come across a handful of Shiny bugs to add to your collection., After all, we don’t know if the Shiny will stick around after the mini-event or disappear for a year like Shiny Smeargle and other Shiny Pokémon
