I Shouldn't Be Able to Shiny Hunt This Pokémon

This is Shaman, one of the rarest mythical Pokemon you can encounter in Brilliant Diamond and Shannon Pearl. In fact, Shaman is such a rare mythical Pokemon that it's only ever been legally obtainable in three Western Pokémon titles: Pokemon Platinum, Pokemon Legends Archus, and Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl. But there's something slightly unusual about this one right here, because technically I shouldn't be able to get to this location in game. See, Shaman and Brilliant Diamond and Shin and Pearl was originally locked behind a one-time only event called Orc's [music] Letter, which Pokemon only distributed for a single month back in 2022. Once that distribution had ended, uh, if you hadn't downloaded the event, that was it. The Path to Shaman in these games was permanently [music] locked forever. And well, here I am 4 years later after that event ended on a copy of Brilliant Diamond that never received [music] OG's letter. But I haven't spent the last year and a half trying to get here just for any old [music] shaman encounter. If that was what I wanted, I could have just booted up a copy of Pokémon [music] Legends Archus and caught one there, saving myself a whole bunch of time and a lot of money along the way. Nope. That's because this particular shaman is special. Because unlike the shaman I could have encountered in Legends Arcus, this one in Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl can be shiny. And that leaves us with one pretty obvious question. The only event that allowed us to reach Shaman ended over four years ago. How am I standing here right now? [music] This journey began when I stumbled across a Reddit post one night talking about revised copies of Nintendo [music] Switch games. At the time, I had absolutely no idea what a revised version of a game was. But as I started to look through the list of games, I realized that this could actually open up a really weird way for me to shiny hunt shaming. See, when a [music] physical game launches, thousands of cartridges are manufactured and that production can continue for some time after launch. But if a game receives updates while those cartridges are [music] still in production, later copies can sometimes have those newer versions of the game included directly on the cartridge. These are known as revision copies. So, you could have two seemingly identical copies of the exact same Nintendo Switch game, but depending on when they were manufactured, the version of the game actually stored on [music] each cartridge could be slightly different. And this is where Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl [music] become particularly interesting. Because when these games released, it's fair to say they had their fair share of glitches and exploits. [music] Duplication glitches, menu exploits, ways of getting out of bounds. players found all sorts of ways of completely breaking [music] these games. And because so many of these were being discovered shortly after release, Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl received a number of updates in a very short space of time to patch them out. And because the games were also still being manufactured while all of this was happening, some of those different versions made their way directly onto later cartridges. Now, exactly how many copies of each revision produced isn't known, but with some of these updates releasing only weeks apart, certain versions potentially had a very small print run [music] before the next update arrived. But the important thing here is there isn't actually just one physical version of Pokemon Brilliant Diamond in Shining [music] Pearl. There are several different revisions. Well, one of these revision contains something [music] very important for this particular shaman hunt. But to understand this, we need to go back to when [music] Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl first released. Before the games were even officially launched, they had already received a pretty hefty update. Firstly, even before release, version 1.1.0 added a huge amount of content [music] into the games, including mystery gift functionality, online communication features, Ramona's Park, and even the game's finished opening and ending movies. But most importantly for this story, it also made Sea Break Path, Flower Paradise, and The Shaman Encounter totally functional within the games. So although the original version 1.0 cartridges contain plenty of glitches that could potentially be exploited, [music] the actual shaming content I needed wasn't there until version 1.1.0. Then just before release 1.1.1 arrived, primarily optimizing the data included in that previous update. So, this essentially was the version of Brilliant Diamond [music] and Shining Pearl that most players started exploring when the games officially launched. And it didn't take long for those people to find those exploits. Players found duplication glitches, ways of moving around while menus [music] were still open, methods of skipping certain parts of the game, and even ways of [music] using surf online land to explore areas where you normally shouldn't have been able to go. These out of bounds areas were commonly known as the void. essentially the empty space outside of areas in the game you're normally tied to. And if you knew exactly where you were going, you could use the void to reach [music] somewhere interesting for this story, Flower Paradise. And remember, this was November 2021. Orc's letter wouldn't officially be distributed until [music] February of the following year, but the Shaman encounter itself was already there, meaning players had found a way to reach and encounter this mythical Pokémon months before they were ever supposed to. Unsurprisingly, Nintendo started fixing these [music] exploits pretty quickly. Less than two weeks after Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl released, version 1.1.2 arrived. Officially, Nintendo simply stated that the update fixed issues that could have prevented progress alongside some other problems, but it [music] also patched out several exploits players had discovered. The original menu glitch was fixed. [music] Some of the duplication methods were patched and one of the original methods players had been using to surf out of [music] bounds was fixed as well. And for a moment, it looked like that might have closed the door on reaching shaming early. Except players broke the game again. New methods of manipulating the game's menus were discovered, including one involving strength, which once again made it [music] possible to surf somewhere you weren't supposed to. And crucially, that method worked on version 1.1.2, too, which meant players could still break outside of the normal map. And most importantly, they could still enter the void. They could make their way to Flower Paradise, [music] and Shaman was sitting there waiting for you to catch them or shiny hunt them. But once again, that [music] didn't last very long. Just 20 days after this, version 1.1.2 released, another update arrived, version 1.1.3. And this time, Nintendo did something that made all of those different ways of reaching Flower of Paradise essentially useless for what I wanted to do. Because [music] even if you could find a way to get out of bounds and make your way all the way to Flower Paradise, Shaman [music] was gone. From version 1.1.3 onwards, simply reaching Flower Paradise early wasn't enough [music] anymore. Without properly activating the event using Oak's letter, you could make it all the way there only to find an empty Flower Paradise waiting for you. And remember, at this point in [music] the game's life cycle, Oaks Letter hadn't even been distributed yet. So suddenly, version 1.1.2 became incredibly important. It was one of the last versions where I had both things I needed at exactly the same time. A way to reach Flower Paradise and Shaman actually waiting for me when I got there. But that creates what seems like a pretty obvious [music] question. Why couldn't I go even further back? Surely I could use one of the unpatched 1.0.0 versions of the game. Uh surely they were completely unpatched uh versions of Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl that would be even easier to [music] break. And you'd be right in thinking that there was just one pretty major problem. Remember that huge version 1.1.0 update I mentioned earlier? That one the original cartridges were manufactured on? [music] And while version 1.00 00 contained plenty of glitches that could be exploited. Sea break path, flower paradise, and shaman event weren't yet functional in that original version of the game. So once again, even [music] if I could break out of bounds and travel to where shaman was supposed to be, in that version, there would be no [music] shaman waiting for me to hunt, which left this incredibly specific window in the middle. Version 1.00 [music] was too early. Version 1.1.3 was too late. I needed a version in between [music] that contained the updated shaman content but also allowed me to reach Flower Paradise and actually find Shaman was waiting there. And the version I needed was 1.1.2. There was just one problem. [music] You see, you simply can't pick which update you want. If I took one of those original 1.00 [music] cartridges today and connected to my Switch internet, I couldn't choose to download version 1.1.0, zero, then 1.1.1.1, then 1.1.2, [music] and then stop there. See, that's because the Switch would simply download the latest available [music] update. So, I couldn't use an original day one cartridge. I couldn't use a fully updated cartridge either, and it couldn't simply download [music] the specific old update I needed. I needed a copy of Brilliant Diamond that already had version 1.1.2 stored on it. And this is where that Reddit post about revised cartridges suddenly became incredibly important. And that's because amongst the [music] documented revisions Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl had, there was one very particular cartridge, revision 002. [music] And stored directly on that cartridge was version 1.1.2. The exact version I needed. No downloading an old update, no trying to downgrade the game, no connecting [music] to the Nintendo servers. Everything I needed was already physically stored on that cartridge. [music] Basically, revision 002 had captured this tiny window where everything I [music] needed existed in the game at exactly the right time. And suddenly, [music] after stumbling across this random Reddit post, I knew how I could make this hunt possible. [music] There was just one problem. The problem, I actually had to find one of what was probably a very small number of these revision [music] cartridges out there. The first place I looked, like most people probably would be in this situation, was eBay. Although this immediately created its own problem, as most people listing the game, only took a picture of the front of the cartridge at best. And for [music] context, yes, there was a very subtle way to tell exactly what revision of the game you were buying. See, printed on the back of every Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pill cartridge are two different number sequences. >> [music] >> There's an indented number sequence, H A C008. And right below that is another printed [music] sequence. And it's that second sequence that can tell you whether the cartridge is one you're looking for. So the one I needed for this shaman hunt with update patch 1.1.2 was cartridge with a number sequence ending 002, [music] which immediately led me to sending a lot of DMs to pretty much everyone listing Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl on eBay. Most people understandably had absolutely no idea what I was asking them to look for, but to their credit, they were pretty accommodating. Sadly though, none of them turned up any revised copy I was looking for. So, my next approach was visiting any secondhand game stores. And again, despite the slightly weird requests of asking to see every [music] Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl cartridge they had in stock so I could check the serial numbers on the back, they all didn't seem to mind. And even on one occasion, amongst [music] all of the 0000 cartridges I repeatedly encountered, I actually found a 003 revision. It was completely useless for what I needed it for, but I ended up picking it [music] up anyway because I thought it was pretty cool to find what appeared to be a pretty uncommon revision sitting in a local game store. But months continued to pass with no sign of a 002. I tried Facebook Marketplace, Vintage, pretty much any online space that I could look for, trying to find the Elusive Revision 002 cartridge. And then in November 2025, I came across a tweet from Professor Rex where they'd finally managed to get a hold of a 002 copy of the games themselves. I was super happy for them. Like the tweet, and then replied something along the lines of, "Congrats. I've been hunting for one of these for forever. Uh, they're like gold dust." Off the back of that message, Rex then DM'd me. They told me they knew of another 002 copy they might be able to help me out with before asking if I'd be at EYC a few months later. I couldn't believe my luck. Of course, I said yes, [music] and the rest is history. EYC rolled round. I met up with Rex and the rest of the Pokémon Rescue [music] crew and finally picked up the cartridge. Now, I really can't thank Rex [music] enough because this crazy quest I'd been on for the best part of a year at this point was finally coming together. I had version 1.1.2, [music] I could finally shiny hunt Shaman. So, that was February 2026, and this video is due to come out in late September. So, I know what you're probably [music] thinking. Did the shiny hunt really take that long? Well, no. To simply put it, I just didn't start it. And that's because shortly after receiving the 002 revision cartridge I needed for this project, we got the news unexpectedly that my mom had been diagnosed with stage three cancer. And that's something I really struggled with for a long time. If you've watched the channel on a regular basis, you'll have probably noticed a big drop off with content here. And that's one of the reasons why uh it's reason why we've kind of shelved this project as well. um because I tried to deal with it by myself for the longest time and it wasn't until I started speaking with friends and family around me that things started to get better. Now, this isn't something I normally share here, but I think the underlying message is when life does take those unexpected turns and things aren't going as you plan. Don't feel like you need to deal with them by yourself. Talk to people around you and it will get better. I promise you that. So, I'm just going to say a quick thank you to everyone who has supported me, been kind to me, talk to me, uh, over this last year. Uh, it has really helped more than you could notice. I can't name names cuz there's so many of you, but you know who you are. Other news is mama has had a first course of treatment. She responded incredibly well to it, so all very grateful for that. [snorts] Anyway, eventually things reached a point where I felt ready to properly pick this project back up. And on August the 1st, with my revision 002 copy in hand, the hunt finally began. To do this though, I would first need a blank Nintendo Switch. Thankfully, now that most of [music] my save data is transferred over to my Nintendo Switch 2, my original Switch seemed like a worthy sacrifice for a brand new playthrough on this cartridge. Although, this did mean wiping Thea's Sims data in the process. Sorry, Thea. Hopefully you and your Sim family can understand it was all for a worthy sacrifice. And to access the surf glitch, of course, for this method of getting shaming, if you hadn't guessed it already, I first needed to get surf in game. That meant playing through the game until Fantina and earning my fifth gym badge. At this point, I was in a bit of a hurry to finally get caught up on this hunt and get this video out as soon as possible. So, I tried my best to speedrun my way there, and I was carried pretty heavily by a lot of X items and my starter, Pokemon, Chimcha, who soon became an Infernape. At the time, I thought this would be the hardest part of the process. How wrong was I? My speed running skills clearly needed some work because getting my fifth gym badge took a total of around 5 hours 32 minutes. But with surf finally unlocked and the ability to use outside of battle, I was ready to make my way to Flower Paradise. To execute the exploit, I first needed to travel to Pastoria City and head east onto Route 213. And here at the shore is a house we'd be using to activate the surf glitch for the first part of this very long road ahead. But before showing you how this actually works, I need to give a huge shout out to fellow [music] content creator Dead Man Bomber here on YouTube. They had a great guide showing the exact setup and path needed to reach Shaman using this exploit, and it's the guide that I used right here in this video. So, after activating the glitch and failing many times, I finally got past the NPC blockading route 222. And following a very specific path from here, it eventually allowed me to reach Sunny Shore City. And once you arrive here, a very short cut scene with Flint begins. But [music] once that ends, you can continue along another specific path that eventually allows you to access the void. or at least [music] supposed to because I messed up the next step pretty badly. So, I [snorts] had to go all the way back reactivate the surf glitch again. But thankfully, this could be done from Sunny Shore. So, it saved another trip back to Pastoria. And after multiple attempts, I finally managed to escape the city's boundaries and enter the void. And from here, thankfully, things became pretty simple. I continued running until I hit water, surfed through this area and past the Pokémon League until eventually reaching another invisible wall. From here, I could finally run again or hop onto my bike. And this invisible stretch of land is actually seabrake path leading all the way to guess where? Flower paradise and shaman. After everything it had taken to get here, I finally arrived. The shiny hunt could begin [music] finally. except I was ridiculously underprepared to actually take the shiny hunt seriously. At this point, checking my bag, only having one Pokémon in my party wasn't bad enough. But I also realized I had barely any supplies to help me out with the actual hunt when I finally encountered shiny shaming. So, I had to fly all the way back to Sunny Shore City, stock up on potions [music] and ultra balls, which meant doing the entire surf glitch. I just spent the last hour struggling with all over again. But fast forward another 20 minutes and I was finally stocked up on supplies [music] and I was standing back in front of Shaman. But before I could finally start the shiny hunt, there was just one thing I should probably make clear. Back when Orc's Letter was originally distributed in 2022, I did actually download it on my original Brilliant Diamond save file. So technically, I already had access to Shaman that I could shiny hunt. I didn't need to spend over a year looking for this [music] cartridge, start an entirely new save file, and glitch my way through the void just to get another one. But that wasn't really the point of doing this. See, I wanted to know if this hunt was still possible today. Could somebody who completely missed Ox's letter back in 2022 start a brand new save file today and still somehow reach this shaman? [music] No modded switch, no external tools, just the right physical copy of the game. And [music] after everything it had taken to get here, the answer was resoundingly yes. So if you still have an old copy of Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl sitting around somewhere in your room gathering dust on a shelf you haven't looked at for a while, it might be worth checking it out. Because depending on which revision of the game is stored on that cartridge, you could potentially have access [music] to this exact hunt without even knowing about it, even if you'd missed Oak's Letter event all those years ago. And having spent the last year and a half figuring out whether this was [music] still possible, there was absolutely no way I was leaving now without a shiny shaman. The shiny hunt could [music] finally begin. Now, the shiny odds in Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl are 1 in4,096. And unlike other games, there are no magic items or methods to improve these odds. That's what we have and had to deal with. Now, the quickest method for hunting shaman was the runaway method. All this meant was encountering Shaman and once the battle began, if it wasn't shiny, simply hitting run. Then it'd walk [music] back onto the sea break path before returning to Flower Paradise, where Shaman would have respawned, ready to be encountered again. Each runaway encounter took around 42 [music] seconds, which honestly didn't seem that bad at the beginning, but it did mean we could potentially be [music] in for a pretty long hunt because just reaching odds would take approximately 48 hours. And honestly, I wish it had taken that long. At this stage of the hunt, I genuinely thought that because of the ridiculously long journey it had taken me to get here, learning about revision cartridges, hunting down that specific one, playing through the game, and finally reaching Shaman, the shiny would appear in no time at all. I couldn't have been more wrong about this, though. 3 weeks later, I'd clocked over 130 hours of this save file. I'd encountered more than 11,000 shaman. I was approaching three times of the original odds and shaman still hadn't shined. And honestly, this was the point where I started thinking about giving up. Not permanently. After everything I had taken just to make this hunt possible, there was absolutely no way I was ever going to leave the sham in here forever. But I was starting to seriously consider shelving this hunt and coming back to it at a later date. I'd already spent 3 weeks doing almost nothing but encountering the exact same shaman over and over and over again. I'd gone past the one in 4,096 odds, [music] then doubled those odds, and now I was closing in on three times the odds with absolutely nothing to show for it. And 130 hours is a long time to spend doing anything, let alone running away from the same Pokémon every 42 [music] seconds. Especially because this was also a time where I'd already been struggling to get regular [music] content out onto the channel. Every day I continued hunting shaman was another day I wasn't working on something else. So eventually I reached a point where I had to ask myself how much longer [music] do I keep doing this because there was no guarantee the next encounter would be a shiny. There was no guarantee that the next thousand [music] would be either. That's the horrible thing about a one in4,096 shiny hunt or double those odds in older games. [music] Going three times over odds though doesn't make the next encounter any more likely to be shiny than the encounter [music] number one. Every single shaman is still just another one in 4,096 [music] chance. And with the trip to San Francisco coming up eventually, I decided that maybe this was where I needed to draw the line under it for now. I'd put the game down, go away, come back, and finish the hunt at some point in the future. [music] After waiting nearly a year and a half to even start this hunt, waiting a little bit longer wasn't going to hurt. And honestly, that's very nearly what happened. [music] Because the day before I was due to leave for San Fran, I still had a million things I probably should have been doing. Packing, preparing for the trip, probably anything other than encountering more shaman. But knowing I was about to put the hunt down for a while, I decided to give it one last session. Just a few more hours, one final attempt to somehow get this thing before I left. And so I sat back down. I picked up the controller and carried on doing exactly what I'd been doing more than 11,000 times before. Encounter shaman, not shiny. Run away, leave Fire Paradise, come back, encounter shaman again, nothing. And the encounters just kept climbing. 11,500 12,000 12,288. Three times the original 1 in4,96 odds. Still nothing. 12,500 encounters. And by now, this hunt had gone from something I thought might take a couple of days to one of the longest shiny hunts I'd ever done. But I kept going anyway. 12,700 [music] ticked round 12,800. And then two encounters later, after a year and a half spent trying to make this hunt possible, after tracking down one incredible specific [music] copy of Pokémon Brilliant Diamond, playing through the game, breaking out of bounds, traveling through the void, and spending [music] almost 150 hours encountering the same Pokémon over and over again on encounter number 12,82. Yes. Shiny shaman. Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god. I can't I can't believe it. We finally got it. Oh my god. No way. [laughter] No way. That is nuts. Nuts. We finally done it. Oh my gosh. Oh man. That is crazy. 12,000. What is it? 12,82 encounters. Oh, now I have to worry about not failing the shiny. I can't believe it. This hunt, this was literally my last day. I I head out to Worlds tomorrow to San Fran for the next week. And I was like, "Okay, let's give it a a shot today to try and get it." Not thinking it was going to happen. It's been weeks of just relentless runaways from this. And I I honestly I was in the misconception thinking I'm going to get this under odds 100%. And with three time three times over odds now, which is just absolutely nuts. I thought this game this project was cursed, but we finally got it. Oh man, this is this is so good. Can we get it in an ultra ball? Can we? Come on. Okay, we got to soften. We got to sh soften Shaman up. A leech seed is not ideal. I hope I've got like enough potions. cuz I think yeah. Oh, we've got we've got an amount. I'm really worried now just failing this more than anything. Okay, just keep ourselves healthy. If we faint, we lose it. So, we've got multiple things happening all at the same time. If we faint, we crit the shaming. It can all go very very wrong. I there's a part of me that feels like every time we click this flame wheel button, we we could be risking it all. Okay, so I'm hoping now hoping now we can just ultra ball it and we can get it. It's yellow in the yellow health bar. Come on. Let's just lock it in. One. Come on. Two. Two. Two. Could this be it? This could be it. This could be it. We got it. Yes, we've got it. We've got shiny shaman. We finally done it. Oh man, that is mad. That is mad. Of all days to get it as well. Ah, I cannot believe it. I am so happy this is finally over. We've done it on this 1.1.2 cart. That is nuts. And just like that, after 12,82 [music] encounters almost 150 hours of shiny hunting and a journey that had started over a year and a half earlier, shiny shaman was finally mine. And looking back, I [music] think that's what makes this one of the most memorable shiny hunts I've ever done. Not necessarily because of the 12,82 [music] encounters, although I definitely could have done without those, but because the shiny was really only the final part of the story, [music] the closing act, as they say. When I first stumbled across that Reddit post about revised Nintendo [music] Switch cartridges, I had no idea would eventually lead me to spending over a year searching for one incredibly specific copy of Brilliant [music] Diamond. And weirdly, all because of three tiny numbers printed on the back of the cartridge. Crazy, really. A physical copy of Brilliant Diamond that just happened [music] to be manufactured during a tiny window in the game's history where everything I [music] needed lined up perfectly. Flower Paradise existed. Shaman was there. And the game was still broken enough to let me reach it. And that's probably my favorite thing about this entire story. [music] OG's letter might have stopped being distributed over four years ago, but the shiny hunt hasn't completely disappeared. There [music] are still probably hundreds of revision 002 copies of Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl sitting in people's collections on shelves and probably in secondhand game stores right now. And some of the people who own them probably have absolutely no idea what they are. So, if you've still got a [music] physical copy of Brilliant Diamond or Shining Pearl, maybe go and turn it over, check those last three numbers, [music] because if you're lucky enough to see 002, one of Pokémon's long expired shiny hunts might have been [music] sitting on your cartridge this entire time. As for me, though, I think I've seen enough shaming for a while.