Highlights
- Shiny hunting in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet is both rewarding and grueling, but immensely satisfying when you finally find a different colored creature.
- Eating special sandwiches and collecting the Shiny Charm can alter the odds of encountering shiny Pokemon, making them more sought-after.
- The shiny versions of Pokemon like Lechonk, Sylveon, and Iron Valiant have eye-catching color combinations that add to their original designs and make them stand out.
Manipulating odds and hunting for hours to get a different colored creature is rewarding, grueling, and immensely satisfying. Pokemon Scarlet and Violet bring shiny hunting to an open-world game, and Shinies now appear in the overworld, eliminating the need to encounter every monster.
Odds can be altered by eating special sandwiches and collecting the Shiny Charm after completing the Pokedex. However, there are some new Shiny Pokemon that will likely become the most sought-after due to their eye-catching color combinations. After all, if you’re going to spend hours looking for a different colored Pokemon, it might as well be the best of the bunch.
Updated on September 25, 2023, By Cameron Miller: If everyone were honest, they’d admit that there are never too many shiny Pokemon out there to catch. As you comb through every inch of Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, you’ll want to keep an eye out for these shinies in particular thanks to their fantastic designs and what they’ll bring to your team.
20 Lechonk
Lechonk quickly became one of the most popular Gen 9 Pokemon after its reveal. It’s a little pig with a name that was immediately beloved on the internet.
Normally a dark brown pig, the Shiny variant is interesting as it keeps a brown spot on its face but the rest of its body pink, resembling a real pig that stuck its head in the mud. A great Shiny Pokemon plays on the original design well, adding to its theme, and Shiny Hunters will have a field day tracking it down.
19 Sylveon
Sylveon is a great Fairy-Type form for Eevee, but the design hasn’t had an incredible reception from all Pokemon fans. Those people might want to take a look at the shiny version of this newer Eeveelution and rethink that opinion.
Simply swapping the secondary colors around for Sylveon makes it feel like a very different Pokemon. It’s still cute, but something about blue being more pronounced with pink eyes to accent the design makes it look like this version of Sylveon is set to do a lot more damage.
18 Iron Valiant
Iron Valiant is already one of the cooler-looking Pokemon in Scarlet and Violet, showing a futuristic, robotic Gallade and Gardevoir awesome combination. The normal coloration is based on normal Gallade and Gardevoir, having a green and white color with pink accents. Shiny Iron Valiant, though, leans more into its futuristic traits rather than its classic ones.
It becomes almost entirely silver while keeping the pink accents on its chest and blades, and it’s a visually stunning change without taking away from the initial design. But with it being a Paradox Pokemon, you’ll have your work cut out for you if you try hunting down this Shiny.
17 Copperajah
While Copperajah does have a simpler shiny appearance than many other Pokemon, the small change that is made gives it a huge visual boost. The Steel-Type Pokemon has orange accents lining its body in its original form, but that changes when it is shiny.
A shiny Copperajah takes on a deeper green color on its skin and its orange accent swaps into a more yellowish-gold. For whatever reason, this shiny version just looks like the way Copperajah was always intended to look, making it a must-have for shiny hunters.
16 Cetitan
Cetitan is a monstrous Ice-Type Pokemon that can be hard to track down in the mountains, with its pre-evolved form being much more common. It can hit hard and has massive defense stats, making it capable of withstanding numerous blows.
Due to its type, it’s almost completely white, not standing out much in the color department. The Shiny form makes a very dark grey its primary color while adding orange accents on its fins, so it almost looks like it’s covered in black ice, adding a lot more flair to an already cool-looking Pokemon.
15 Klawf
Klawf is one of the first new Pokemon you’ll encounter in Scarlet and Violet, likely being the first Titan you’ll face. It’s based on a rock crab and can scale walls and bite back with its huge pincers.
Shiny Klawf changes the theme from a desert crab to a Maryland blue crab, a great example of the shiny adding a noticeable color variation that still makes sense for the Pokemon itself. The color alone is likely to get many hunters excited to add this one to their collections.
14 Lyanroc
Lycanroc is already one of the coolest-designed Pokemon in the whole series, but when it is shiny, it becomes that much cooler. The base Lycanroc resembles a pretty standard wolf-like creature, but when it is shiny, Lycanroc takes on a blue shade to its fur, resembling more cartoonish depictions of wolves.
A simple change in the color of Lycanroc’s eyes also goes a surprisingly long way. The blue fur adds a lot of personality to Lycanroc, and somehow, the simple change manages to make the creature’s Midnight Form all the more imposing.
13 Scizor
Some people might already love the red color of Scizor in its usual form, but the shift to green in its shiny redesign is a thing of beauty. Instead of feeling like a Steel-Type through its design, Scizor feels a lot more bug-oriented when it’s fully green.
Matching much closer to its previous evolution as Scyther, Scizor still looks as imposing as ever while still being a Bug-Type. It’s no secret that most Bug-Type Pokemon don’t strike fear into anyone, but Scizor might just be able to do that in both its original and shiny forms.
12 Toedscruel
Toedscruel already has a great design, since it’s a Tentacruel that is adapted to move around on land instead of swimming through the water. Boasting the Ground and Grass dual-typing, it’s easy to see why many trainers brought this walking jellyfish on their journeys in Scarlet and Violet.
The Shiny variant is likely just as eye-catching, if not more. Toedscruel’s head becomes black with transparent white gems on either side, while its body and tentacles have a pink-to-purple gradient, making it look like a Poison-Type and harkening back to Tentacruel’s Water and Poison dual-typing.
11 Rellor
Pokemon has been around for decades, so it was only a matter of time before Game Freak created a dung beetle Pokemon. Rellor is a little creature that rolls around a giant ball.
Its normal coloration is what you’d expect — it looks like the bug it’s based on while pushing around a giant, brown ball. Its shiny form is where things get interesting, though.
While the bug itself doesn’t change all that much, the ball becomes entirely gold, implying that there’s some sort of material change. What’s more interesting is that the Shiny forms of Rellor, and its evolution, Rabsca, hint that these Pokemon aren’t quite what you expect.
10 Wooper
If you find a shiny Paldean Wooper, you may need to look twice, because it may not seem like much at first. The Paldean Wooper regional variant is a Poison-Type and Ground-Type, preferring to spend its days in the mud rather than swimming around in lakes like its Johto counterpart.
As such, it’s almost entirely brown. The Shiny variant, though, brings back the coloration from its original form — it boasts the light blue of a classic Wooper, and familiar pink gills on the sides of its head. This is such an obvious yet satisfying design that you’re almost guaranteed to hunt for it.
9 Drifblim
There’s no way around it, Drifblim is just a strange-looking Pokemon. The Ghost-Type, Flying-Type hybrid looks more or less like a giant weather balloon, and its purple color does give it a ghostly vibe, but it’s not anything special to look at.
When a Drifblim is shiny, it becomes one of the coolest-looking Pokemon around. Shifting from purple to a bright yellow and blue, Drifblim manages to somehow look more menacing while having an even better design that does suit the types of Drifblim less, but that doesn’t stop it from being amazing.
8 Haxorus
Haxorus might already be more than cool enough for fans of Dragon-Type Pokemon, but its shiny form only serves to make it all the more scary. If you’re trying to have the edgiest team possible, you might actually want to get your hands on a shiny Haxorus.
Losing all of its gold plating, a shiny Haxorus is simply black with some red accents. That simplicity works wonders for this Pokemon, making it look like it’s ready to bully any other Pokemon unlucky enough to cross its path.
7 Maschiff
Maschiff is a Dark-Type dog Pokemon found in Scarlet and Violet. You will be more familiar with its evolution, Mabosstiff, due to its place in the story for the games, and Maschiff has a much different color from its evolution, having a warm red with yellow accents on its fur.
Its evolution brings its colors closer to its fully evolved form, having deep greys and blues, giving a nice hint at what it evolves into. Unfortunately, Mabosstiff doesn’t get a Shiny that reflects the colors of Maschiff, so it may not be worth evolving a Shiny Maschiff if you manage to catch one.
6 Florges
Florges is another Pokemon that has a fantastic base design, and it’s actually hard to imagine how the team behind Pokemon could make the design any better, but they actually managed to arguably do so with the Pokemon’s shiny form. The simple switch to a purple-based color palette gives shiny Florges a unique twist.
While still a cute Fairy-Type Pokemon, the purple color that replaces the green plant-like areas gives it a slightly more mysterious and sinister look. Florges almost takes on a slightly alien appearance as purple plants are the kind of thing everyone expects from sci-fi rather than Pokemon.
5 Umbreon
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The shift in the underrated Dark-Type Umbreon’s design may be a small one, but it makes a major difference. The main change within this shiny Pokemon design is that the yellow parts of its design have been shifted to a light blue color.
Thanks to the hue of the blue, it almost looks as if Umbreon is glowing whenever it takes the field. It may not suit its Dark-Type as much, but it does make one of the more ignored Eeveelutions a lot more interesting.
4 Revavroom
Revavroom is a Pokemon you’ll see quite a bit, as Team Star uses them to power their giant Starmobiles, and you have to take down five bosses before you see the credits roll. Once you finally see a Revavroom in the wild, you’ll notice it’s a much less obvious Pokemon than Team Star would have you believe.
Based on a car, it’s a silver engine with black wheels, but Shiny Revavroom changes its engine color to gold without altering the wheels. It’s like having a vintage gold car from back in the day, which makes it one of the most sought-after Shinies.
3 Dondozo
Dondozo is one of the new fish Pokemon in Scarlet and Violet, and while fish Pokemon are a dime a dozen, Dondozo has a more unique design that makes it stand out from what came before. It’s based on a giant catfish while having design elements that give it a folklore-inspired look.
Dondozo is all in all a great Pokemon, and its Shiny form makes it look even cooler. Instead of the standard blue and white color scheme, Shiny Dondozo is white and gold, leaning more into the myths that likely inspired its creation.
2 Toxicroak
While many shiny Pokemon designs swap color palettes or choose new colors entirely, shiny Toxicroak does something a little different. Its palette is simply adjusted slightly for a lighter blue and a more pink-purple color where it was red.
The small adjustment manages to make Toxicroak look all the more menacing, while also making it look even more exotic and potentially more poisonous. Croagunk might not look quite as good with the Shiny swap, but it’s worth it when you know you’re going to have that fantastic Toxicroak eventually.
1 Salazzle
The original dual Poison-Type and Fire-Type Salazzle already look excellent in their original form. The black body with pinkish-red accents suits its typing perfectly, but somehow, the shiny form which swaps out much of the black for white still manages to absolutely suit the creature’s look.
Thanks to Salazzle’s sleek design, the different coloration almost makes it feel more regal. It’s probably safe to say that most people like this shiny design so much that they wouldn’t be mad if it were introduced to the series as a simple palette swap for the base version.