Technologies

Shiny Pokemon in Scarlet and Violet: How to Find and Catch Them

You can collect a sweet team of shiny Pokemon in Scarlet and Violet — if you have the patience for it.

Nothing worth having in life comes easy. If you want a shiny Pokemon, you’re going to have to work for it! Thankfully, it’s actually easier to catch shiny Pokemon in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet than in previous games — but «easier» doesn’t mean «easy.»

When Pokemon spawn in Scarlet and Violet, they have about a 1 in 4,000 chance of being shiny. Those odds are no good but can be improved by three methods. Two of them are only available in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet’s postgame, but one strategy can be harnessed from very early on.

If you’re wanting to hunt shiny Pokemon in Scarlet and Violet, here’s what you need to know.

Pokemon outbreaks are your friend

Here’s the basic method of shiny hunting in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet that you can do no matter how early in the game you are.

First, you need to look for Pokemon outbreaks. If you look on your overworld map, you’ll see icons of Pokemon scattered across Paldea. These denote an outbreak, where an area is swamped by the Pokemon in question. (Note that if you see a question mark on your map, it’s an outbreak of a Pokemon you’ve not encountered before.)

If you’re unsatisfied by the Pokemon on offer, you can rotate the selection by doing a dodgy move. Go into your Switch’s settings and change the date and time to be a day in the future. A new day brings new Pokemon outbreaks.

Say you’re after a Magneton, and you’ve found an outbreak in Glaseado Mountain. You now need to go about killing Magneton — lots of them. Press ZR to activate Let’s Go mode, at which point your lead Pokemon will come out of its ball, then seek and destroy. This is much more efficient than engaging Pokemon one by one in standard battles. Your odds of finding a shiny Pokemon go up once you kill 30 — and go up even more once you kill 60.

Make sure you keep a tally in your head or your phone or computer. After you’ve downed 60 of a certain Pokemon, the odds of finding a shiny version of that Pokemon go from roughly 1 in 4,000 to just over 1 in 1,000.

Once you’ve killed 60, it’s shiny hunting time. Scope out the area for shinies. If there are none, setup a picnic and then pack the picnic up. Doing so resets the Pokemon in the area, giving you a new set of Pokemon in which a shiny may be lurking. Keep going until you find your prize.

It’s crucial to note that finding a shiny Pokemon often means closely inspecting it. There’s no shiny gleam around them in the open world, nor any sound or other stimuli that indicates their presence. It’s only once you initiate a battle with a shiny Pokemon that, during its opening battle animation, it’ll be shrouded in sparkles.

Shiny Elemental Boost	Sandwich Recipe
Shiny Normal Sandwich	1x Chorizo, 2x Salty Herba Mystica
Shiny Fighting Sandwich	1x Pickle, 2x Salty Herba Mystica
Shiny Fire Sandwich	1x Basil, 1xSweet Herba Mystica, 1x Salty Herba Mystica
Shiny Water Sandwich	1x Cucumber, 2x Salty Herba Mystica
Shiny Poison Sandwich	1x Noodles 2x, Salty Herba Mystica
Shiny Ground Sandwich	1x Ham, 2x Salty Herba Mystica
Shiny Rock Sandwich	1x Jalapeno 2x Salty Herba Mystica
Shiny Psychic Sandwich	1x Onion, 2x Salty Herba Mystica
Shiny Electric Sandwich	1x Yellow Bell Pepper, 1x Salty Herba Mystica, 1x Spicy Herba Mystica
Shiny Dark Sandwich	1x Smoked Filet, 1x Sweet Herba Mystica, 1x Salty Herba Mystica
Shiny Dragon Sandwich	1x Avocado, 2x Salty Herba Mystica
Shiny Ice Sandwich	1x Klawf Stick, 2x Salty Herba Mystica
Shiny Ghost Sandwich	1x Red Onion, 2x Salty Herba Mystica
Shiny Steel Sandwich	1x Hamburger, 1x Salty Herba Mystica, 1x Sweet Herba Mystica
Shiny Fairy Sandwich	1x Tomato, 2x Salty Herba Mystica
Shiny Bug Sandwich	1x Cherry Tomato, 2x Salty Herba Mystica
Shiny Flying Sandwich	1x Prosciutto, 2x Salty Herba Mystica
Shiny Grass Sandwich	1x Lettuce, 1x Salty Herba Mystica, 1x Sour Herba Mystica

This method works, and can be done early in the game. But your odds of finding a shiny Pokemon can dramatically rise once you beat the main storyline.

You’re going to have to Tera Raid

If you’ve played Pokemon Scarlet and Violet for any length of time, you’ve surely participated in a few Tera Raids. These are key to hunting shiny Pokemon.Once you complete the games’ three main quests, you’ll gain access to five-star Tera Raids. In these boss encounters, you’ll take on level 75 Pokemon made even more powerful by their terastalized state, harnessing the chaotic crystal energy that flows throughout Paldea.

To maximize your odds of finding a shiny Pokémon, you need to collect Herba Mystica sandwich ingredients. Once you have the right combination, you can make sandwiches that boost your chances of finding a shiny Pokemon by 300%. To collect Herba Mystica ingredients, you need to compete five-star Tera Raids.

Unfortunately, Scarlet and Violet don’t exactly hand these out — I had to do about six of these high-level raids before I got my first Herba Mystica. Note that you can also receive Herba Mystica from six-star Tera Raids, which you unlock after beating all Paldea gym leaders for a second time and winning the Academy Ace Tournament, but your odds of getting them don’t seem higher. So it’s best to stick to the easier (but still hard) five-star Tera Raids.

To give yourself a good chance at succeeding in these five-star Tera Raids, you’ll want a crew of Pokemon around levels 80 to 90. Head to the Delibird Presents shops around Paldea and collect items designed to be held in battle. Especially helpful are the Choice Band and Choice Specs, which greatly enhance your attack and special attack, respectively, and the Metronome, which empowers a move if you do it several times in a row.

Once you’ve completed a few of these five-star Terra Raids, with luck you’ll collect some Herba Mystica. They come in several varieties — sweet, salty, spicy and so on. If you make a sandwich with the right combination of ingredients, you’ll boost your rate of encountering a shiny Pokemon by 300%. The catch is that each recipe correlates to an element of Pokemon. So for instance, I wanted to hunt for a shiny Magneton, which is an electric-type Pokemon. So I created a sandwich that boosts the likelihood of finding a shiny electric Pokemon.

And to boost your odds of finding a shiny Pokemon even more, you can use the Shiny Charm item. But to get this, you have to first complete your Pokedex by catching all 400 Pokemon in Paldea. If you’ve caught all Scarlet and Violet’s Pokemon, speak to Jacq in your school’s biology lab to get the shiny Charm.

Pokemon outbreaks + sandwiches = shiny success

Now it’s time to put it all together. Once you’ve found an outbreak and killed 60 of the same Pokemon, it’s time to shiny hunt in earnest. First, pause the game, go into options and disable autosave. Then, manually save your game. Finally, craft your sandwich using your precious Herba Mystica ingredients.

Sandwich buffs in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet only last 30 minutes. The reason you’re disabling autosave and then saving before making the sandwich is so that, if you don’t encounter a shiny Pokemon within 30 minutes, you can close your game and reboot it before you used your scarce Herba Mystica resources. If you fail, you can then reset it to after you’ve killed 60 Pokemon, meaning you won’t have to go through that laborious task again.

As you’ll see once you put your sandwich together, you’ll get a 3x buff for sparkle Pokemon of a certain type (see image above), depending on the recipe you used. Now it’s time to employ the same method above: Search the area for Pokemon, reboot the Pokemon in the area by setting up and closing down a picnic, wash, rinse and repeat until you find your shiny.

The hardest part is collecting Herba Mystica from the five-star Tera Raids. Once you’ve done that, you can usually find a shiny Pokemon around an hour if you follow this method. Good luck!

Technologies

Today’s Wordle Hints, Answer and Help for May 11, #1422

Here are hints and the answer for today’s Wordle No. 1,422 for May 11.

Looking for the most recent Wordle answer? Click here for today’s Wordle hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

I have a feeling today’s Wordle puzzle could be tricky. The solution isn’t a word that would immediately come to mind, unless you’re a woodworker.

If you need a new starter word, check out our list of which letters show up the most in English words. If you need hints and the answer, read on.

Today’s Wordle hints

Before we show you today’s Wordle answer, we’ll give you some hints. If you don’t want a spoiler, look away now.

Wordle hint No. 1: Repeats

Today’s Wordle answer has no repeated letters.

Wordle hint No. 2: Vowels

There are two vowels in today’s Wordle answer.

Wordle hint No. 3: First letter

Today’s Wordle answer begins with the letter D.

Wordle hint No. 4: Rhyme time

Today’s Wordle answer rhymes with a word for something you might take to the beach.

Wordle hint No. 5: Meaning

Today’s Wordle answer can refer to a peg of wood that holds things together.

TODAY’S WORDLE ANSWER

Today’s Wordle answer is DOWEL.

Yesterday’s Wordle answer

Yesterday’s Wordle answer, May 10, No. 1421 was YEAST.

Recent Wordle answers

May 6, No. 1417: SUITE
May 7, No. 1418: MACHO
May 8, No. 1419: BALMY
May 9, No. 1420: TRIPE

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for May 11, #700

Hints and answers for Connections for Mother’s Day, May 11, No. 700.

Looking for the most recent Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Connections puzzle is pretty fun. I patted myself on the back when I spotted the purple connection right away. Say some of the clues out loud to yourself, and look for a word that fits into a phrase with four of them.

Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.

The Times now has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. Players who are registered with the Times Games section can now nerd out by following their progress, including number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.

Read more: Hints, Tips and Strategies to Help You Win at NYT Connections Every Time

Hints for today’s Connections groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group, to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Good vibes.

Green group hint: We lost ’em!

Blue group hint: Atari, Nintendo.

Purple group hint: Not father.

Answers for today’s Connections groups

Yellow group: Make happy.

Green group: Evade.

Blue group: Common video game features.

Purple group: Mother ____

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is make happy. The four answers are delight, please, suit and tickle.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is evade. The four answers are dodge, duck, shake and skirt.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is common video game features. The four answers are boss, health, level and power-up.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is mother ____. The four answers are earth, goose, may I and superior.

Technologies

Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge: What We Know Ahead of the Slim Phone’s May 12 Debut

Samsung’s Galaxy S25 Edge will be getting its own Unpacked event on Monday.

Samsung’s Galaxy S25 Edge will be the fourth edition to the company’s flagship phone line, with a thin and light design that’s meant to set it apart from the Galaxy S25, S25 Plus and S25 Ultra. While Samsung initially gave the device an early look during the same January event that debuted the rest of the S25 lineup, the Edge will get its own Galaxy Unpacked event on Monday, May 12, at 8 p.m. ET (5 p.m. PT).

And in an early tease of the event, Samsung has also announced that the phone will get a new glass ceramic display called Gorilla Glass Ceramic 2 and a 200-megapixel wide camera. Outside of that display and camera announcement, the S25 Edge may have also received its biggest unofficial leak yet, with a post from WinFuture that claims to describe the phone’s design, dimensions, camera and other details about its internals.

Here’s everything we know so far, along with some rumors on what we could get with the S25 Edge.

What does the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge look like?

The Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge’s actual dimensions aren’t yet available but a display (which attendees couldn’t touch) showcasing a surprise first look during Samsung Unpacked event in January revealed that it’s noticeably slimmer than a standard Android flagship phone. Samsung placed its first look of the Edge alongside stand-in models that approximated the typical thickness of other phones.

That display implied that the S25 Edge would have similar height and width dimensions to phones akin to the standard Galaxy S25 but would be noticeably slimmer. Unlike other S25 phones that have three or more rear cameras, this edition will include only two, like the foldable Z Flip series. One of those cameras will be a 200-megapixel wide lens, which Samsung confirmed when announcing the Edge’s Unpacked event.

We do know that the display will be made from the new Corning Gorilla Glass Ceramic 2 for a «sleek yet strong design,» according to Samsung’s announcement of that display.

That display announcement lines up with prior comments on the phone’s durability, which Samsung UK Marketing Director Annika Bizon said was a priority despite its thinner frame. After remarking on the phone’s design that was revealed in January as a top feature, Bizon began teasing the phone’s durability during an interview with TechRadar at Mobile World Congress 2025.

«With anything slim, durability [has to come as part of the package]. Those are the two features [of the Edge] that are exciting [for us]. Well, I know durability isn’t exciting, but it’s really important. So watch this space because there are some exciting things to come regarding this phone,» Bizon told TechRadar.

While we don’t have official specs yet on the phone, a reportedly leaked Galaxy S25 Edge specs list has popped up on WinFuture that claims to reveal the phone’s dimensions, battery, colors and other features. These include a 3,800mAh battery, a 6.7-inch AMOLED display, the Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy chip, 12GB of RAM and storage variants that include 256GB and 512GB. The list also claims that the confirmed 200-megapixel main camera will come alongside a 12-megapixel ultra-wide camera but no details about the front-facing camera. Samsung typically offers its phones in a variety of colors, but the WinFuture report claims that Jet Black, Icyblue and Silver will be among what’s available. It’s expected to weigh in at 163 grams (5.74 ounces).

When will the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge arrive in stores?

A specific release date has not yet been revealed for the new phone, but it seems likely that the phone’s release date will become clear after the May 12 Unpacked event. This will likely make the Edge phones available in the late spring/early summer time period, which lines up with the aforementioned WinFuture report that suggested a launch at the end of May.

Samsung’s TM Roh, the company’s president of mobile devices, told Bloomberg in January that the Edge would be one of at least two new devices on the way, including a mixed reality headset that will run on Android XR.

How much will the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge cost?

In the same Bloomberg report, Roh said that pricing wasn’t settled by Samsung yet, but that the Edge is expected to be cheaper than the $1,300 Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra.

«Our goal is to position this at pricing that is lower than the Ultra models so it’s more accessible and has more customers,» Roh said in the report.

This lines up with WinFuture’s spec list, which claims that the S25 Edge will cost 1,249 Euro for the 256GB variant or 1,369 Euro for the 512GB variant. By comparison, Samsung’s Galaxy S25 Ultra costs 1,449 Euro for the 256GB model and 1,569 Euro for the 512GB model.

Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge

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Will the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge include a curved screen like prior Galaxy Edge phones?

Samsung formerly used the Edge name to delineate Galaxy phones that had a curved screen. This included Edge editions of the Samsung Galaxy S6, S7 and the Galaxy Note. While the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge appears to be a revival of the name, it does not imply a curved edge display.

If you are looking for a phone with a curved edge display, though, last year’s Motorola Edge and the OnePlus 12 each include displays that wrap around the edges.

What about Apple’s rumored iPhone 17 Slim?

Apple is rumored to be developing its own slimmer take on the iPhone and it’s possible that Samsung’s Galaxy S25 Edge could beat it to the market. We have an entirely different rumor roundup on what we’ve heard about a possible iPhone 17 Slim, which might replace the «Plus» edition of the iPhone that Apple’s been releasing since the iPhone 14.