The Unofficial Pokemon Trainer Club

i caught palkia before i knew about the shiny odds and im p broken up about it, i love shiny palkia. ive got a huge bank of mons im willing to throw around for it (including an obscene amount of competitively bred venipede please im begging somebody to take them off my hands.)

I am mostly a shiny hunter. These are observations I have made while shiny hunting. My primary goal has NOT been to understand how this works but to find efficient paths to Lugia/Alolan Raichu to grind with NPCs.

When you undertake a DA, the game saves twice, once before and once after. If you soft reset at any point in between, including on the screen where it lets you take a Pokémon home, then when you come back and initiate another DA, the scientist will lecture you before letting you in. Do this three or more times in a row, and the scientist will begin fining you dynite ore. If the price becomes too steep you just have to complete one DA without resetting; all will be forgiven. If you run out of ore you should be able to get more from raids, but I have never run out of ore.

Why would you soft reset? One reason would be if you want a shiny in a rare ball, since you get the ball back if you reset. But, more importantly, it preserves the map.

Each DA gives you a map full of Pokémon, along with a selection of rental Pokémon. If you reset your game and load up another DA, you will get the SAME map and rental Pokémon. However, their shiny odds will be rerolled. You can verify this by running an adventure and checking the natures of the Pokémon, then resetting and doing the same adventure again: the natures (and genders, and IVs) of the Pokémon will be different. I can 100% confirm that shininess is also rerolled because I have found two shinies by doing this, oranguru (unwanted) and Alolan raichu (very wanted!!!).

Not only does it preserve the location of Pokémon, but I've also noticed something...strange...about the NPCs. As long as your behavior is consistent, the NPCs' will be too. When I say "behavior" I mean which rental Pokémon you select, and whether you swap to or decline any Pokémon found along the way.  This does NOT include any of the moves or RNG inside of battle.

Say you do an adventure once, you pick persian, you fight lopunny first, and you and all the NPCs decline lopunny. Then, if you reset, pick persian, and fight lopunny first, then you know all three NPCs will reject lopunny. At this stage, they will not try to take lopunny whether you select it or not, because your behavior has been the same up to this point. However, if on the second go-around you DO take lopunny, then their behavior may be different in later rounds.

I'm working on a theory that you can intentionally manipulate the NPCs once you see the shape of the map, but I have no good evidence for this.

Anyway, among other things, this means that NPCs swapping Pokémon is completely unrelated to the health of their current Pokémon. It doesn't matter whether Dean's toxtricity is perfectly healthy, or at 10HP and burned: whether he switches or not depends on YOUR actions.

This means that if you get either a really easy path, a path that provides Pokémon good against the final boss, or a path that contains Pokémon you want to hunt--or, in the case of fighting Alolan raichu on the way to lugia with a team of dark-types, all of the above--then resetting can preserve this path and allow you to grind quickly with NPCs.

If you complete a DA without resetting, you WILL lose your preserved path.

The map is independent from the final boss. One time I accidentally selected zekrom instead of lugia, but other than the final boss, the whole map was the same.

If you join someone else's DA, you will get the host's map and not your own. You will lose your preserved path, unless you happen to be the host.

The locations of scientists and backpackers will remain consistent. Backpackers' items seem to be completely random each reset, although there may be some seed/frame business going on that we can't see. Scientist Pokémon swaps are controlled in the same way as after-battle swaps. The scientist Pokémon seem to be consistent (i.e. if you get ditto one reset you will get ditto the next time as well)...except...

Two things I have done once and then not tested again, so my memory could be faulty:
- The scientist's Pokémon may change depending on your behavior. I swear the first time I did the sandslash map, the scientist wasn't giving out ditto. However, from the second time onward--where I chose to take a Pokémon I had rejected the first time--it was ditto every run.
- I think that if you load up a path where you are NOT the host, connected to other people online, then disconnect to reset, then the pool of Pokémon will remain the same BUT their location on the map will change. I don't feel like testing it because I think it's rude to start up a game with other people with the express intention of DCing.

Summary:
If you reset during a DA, then when you go back in with NPCs, the map will be identical. This can help you grind.
As long as you make the exact same decisions of what Pokémon to take, the NPCs will also make the same decisions. If they make good decisions, DON'T change your behavior; but if you think they could have made better decisions, DO change.
I can 100% confirm this works because I have gotten two shinies this way.

...Three, make that three, I just found another A-raichu by accident. I've found sixteen total DA shinies, three on reset hunts.
One hour later, shiny lugia has been found!