After nearly a decade of hunting for a shiny Sentret in Pokemon FireRed, Youtuber CandyEvie has finally achieved their goal. Hundreds of hours and thousands of encounters later, the shiny Sentret popped up on screen during a Twitch stream earlier in May. Playing Pokemon FireRed finally led to the rare encounter after finding numerous other shiny Pokemon but never the one they were aiming for.
Shiny Pokemon came to the franchise in the 1998's Pokemon Gold/Silver titles and are often regarded as the ultimate prize for players of these games. The base rate for shiny Pokemon from Generation II through Generation V is 1/8192 and it is the rarest form of Pokemon in the game.
CandyEvie announced on the stream and the accompanying Youtube video that it took them 7 years to catch the normal type Pokemon. They were able to capture 12 shiny versions of other Pokemon along the way but the Sentret proved elusive. This despite the regular version of the Pokemon being the most likely to be encountered in the areas CandyEvie was hunting.
The difficulty even led them to quit the hunt multiple times over the course of several years out of frustration but CandyEvie was not to be denied. This latest journey back into the game finally bore fruit and the hunt that began when they were 15 finally came to a close on a twitch stream on May 9th as a shiny Sentret appeared on-screen.
The likelihood that trainers run into shiny Pokemon is so small that some players may run through an entire title never having encountered a single one. This hunt is an impressive test of endurance as it must have required tens of thousands of encounters with various Pokemon and therefore hundreds of hours of gameplay. And, as CandyEvie admits, a shiny Sentret isn't even the most desirable of the bunch but they felt that this hunt needed to be completed. There was unfinished business.
This is a story of determination and sheer willpower. CandyEvie's hunt for a shiny Sentret over the course of seven years is just insane when considering the odds. Definitely worthy of note is that the Pokemon developers cut down the difficulty for finding shiny Pokemon from 1/8192 to 1/4096 between Generation V and Generation VI. While this story is impressive it really shows that the hunt for shiny Pokemon back in these generation games was just too much to ask of players.
Then again it is their rarity that makes catching shiny Pokemon so rewarding. This hunt must have been incredibly frustrating but so satisfying when it came to a close for CandyEvie. Shiny Pokemon definitely grant players who go through the challenge of finding them the respect of the community. Either way, this hunt has come to a close and CandyEvie has their shiny Sentret, just a handful of years after they thought they would.
Pokemon FireRed Version is available for Game Boy Advance.