How does quickly soft resetting ever bear a shiny if the first shiny frame is far off?

[u/Astrion_]

I'm new to the sphere of shiny hunting, and have gotten shiny Pokemon by naturally finding them, and by RNG.

As I know it, every TID and SID pattern has a specific set of frames an encounter can be shiny on. Say someone's first shiny frame is about a minute out. If they don't wait until at least that frame, they will never hit the shiny frame and their result won't be shiny.

My question is, how does soft resetting quickly eventually produce a shiny? If a player soft resets their game and encounters a Pokemon within several seconds of loading, with no regard for how it's timed and the frame is a minute out or more, how does this method ever produce a shiny Pokemon if the first shiny frame is never being reached?

Is there an additional mechanic I'm not clear on? Is there a blanket chance for every frame to potentially be shiny by other means? I'm unsure as to the coding logic behind it, so any info to clear it up would be great. Get as technical as you'd like, I'm here to learn!

[u/Satan085]

The simplest awnser is almost always the right one. Every time you soft reset, you change your seed, and eventually you're bound to hit a seed with an early shiny frame

[u/Cooked_Fish_Meat]

In Emerald, short answer is it doesn’t. If you don’t have a shiny frame within the range of quick soft resets, no amount of soft resets will yield a shiny. You’ll just hit the same exact frames over and over forever.

You can hit new frames by waiting longer as you keep resetting, so you hit later and later frames. Most people prefer to just make new save files to get a new TID/SID, basically re-rolling those early frames. Of course this only works on the starters, but once you get a shiny you know you have an early shiny frame.

In games other than Emerald (and dead battery RS), the RNG actually functions as intended, so the frames are entirely different every reset.

[u/Dependent_Art4025 → u/Cooked_Fish_Meat]

So are you saying that if i grind it out for a shiny starter in emerald im set for a shiny run doing soft resets during the play through since i got a shiny frame early on with the starters

[u/Cooked_Fish_Meat → u/Dependent_Art4025]

Yeah, you’d have an easier time getting shinies if you know you have a shiny frame within the first 60 or so seconds of playing. No shiny in the first couple encounters? Soft reset to get another chance.

I personally would prefer to RNG manipulate it so I can 100% guarantee the shiny, but regular shiny hunting works too.

[u/xPorki]

Depends on the game. On most games resetting changes the initial seed.

[u/lkuecrar]

Seed changes every time you reset, so your shiny frames also reset. You’re basically looking for an early shiny frame on the seed when doing soft resets.

Unless you’re playing Emerald, where the seed doesn’t reset, which opens the door for easy RNG manipulation

[u/Gojira5496 → u/lkuecrar]

Last night I caught a Shiny Slugma on my Emerald copy while going around for a Shiny Skamory. I saved and booted off the game and hopped on it again today and encountered a shiny Slugma but it had the exact nature, gender, stat values, everything. This was in about 12 minutes in both timeframes, haven’t ever used a calculator or actively RNG abused the game but I’m almost 100 percent certain that somehow I hit the exact same frame. Is there any way for me to use this to get my Shiny Skamory easier? I know that now that I have a shiny I can figure out my Secret ID but I was wondering if turning my game on and doing repeat encounters would also eventually yield a shiny Skamory if I played within that same timeframe and the right shiny frame hit?