Data on the friend safari shiny rate

[CanadianFlygon]

I have a theory:
About five minutes before this post I found a shiny vivillion in my friends safari. Seems normal right? I don't normally get shiny pokemon in the fs, but what was unusual about this encounter was that I had been hunting in another safari prior to my shiny encounter (hunting for about an hour) This lead me to write this equation:
New Shiny Rate= 4074\Number of encounters. Some sort of stack effect that affects your shiny rate upon entering a safari. I watched two people get a shiny (or two) from the safari under these circumstances. If someone else (besides me) could confirm/ test this. It would be great
as despite the scientists conclusions (outstanding btw) I think there is more to this than a conventional rate. Let's find some answers!

Update: Did some more testing, found a shiny espurr after stacking in a water type safari, although there have been no other shinies yet. Anyone have anymore data/theories?

 

[smaller]

This is spectacular. Exactly the sort of rigorous testing I kept hoping to find someone had done. Thank you so much for doing all that data collection/analysis and sharing it!

 

[farmer Potato]

I have been hunting for this info for months! Thanks!

Canadian, I do not FS shiny hunt, but I would not mind helping.

 

[nocturne24]

Hey scientist

Have you noticed any specifics as to what pokemon appear as shiny? I have been recently hunting for a few third slot pokemon, and failing miserably --- finding upwards to 6-7 shiny (slot 1 and 2 pokemon at about 50:50 rate) and not meeting the slot three pokemon I was looking for. This comes from 3 such hunts and 10 or so separate safaris.

In general it seems shinys appear more often in slot 2 with me rather than slot 1, or slot 3.


Any thoughts?

 

[The Winged Cherry Pie]

I am so grateful for all the testing that you've done, thank you! I remember shiny hunting for Eevee a couple days ago. I finally found one, but it died on me. Fairly soon after, however (within probably half an hour), I encountered a Shiny Loudred, which really intrigued me. In the OP, you mentioned the minimum number of encounters before a shiny was one. I personally don't think it matters much in relation to increasing/decreasing shiny encounter rate, just something I found interesting that I'd like to note.

I also wanted to mention that, while tipping does not seem to increase shiny encounter rates in the Friend Safari much at all (if at all), it should be important to note that such data only applies to Friend Safaris and should not be considered evidence for its potential increase (or lack thereof) in shiny encounter rates elsewhere.

Another something I'd like to note, as pertaining to tipping, is that, as previously mentioned, the Shiny Charm seems not to have an effect, and obviously we can't use the PokéRadar in the Safari, so I believe that if tipping were to increase the Shiny encounter rate, it would only work outside of the safari, as other methods of increasing the shiny rate have been pretty much proven ineffective. It appears that the Safari is exempt of all other methods of increasing shiny encounters. I'm not saying that tipping is likely to increase shiny encounter rate outside of the safari, I'm just saying that it seems logical that it wouldn't affect the shiny encounter rate inside the safari.

 

[Ausgirl]

This is interesting cos I seem to have insane luck in the safari zone (I wish I could say the same about other aspects of my life lol). I haven't spent much time in the safari zone, yet all of my random shiny encounters in Kalos were found in the safari, except for one MM breed. One time I even found two shinies in the same safari within like seconds of each other. Not that I care for shinies that much, but that's saying something.

 

[Non-Guest 31415]

I have a theory:
About five minutes before this post I found a shiny vivillion in my friends safari. Seems normal right? I don't normally get shiny pokemon in the fs, but what was unusual about this encounter was that I had been hunting in another safari prior to my shiny encounter (hunting for about an hour) This lead me to write this equation:
New Shiny Rate= 4074\Number of encounters. Some sort of stack effect that affects your shiny rate upon entering a safari. I watched two people get a shiny (or two) from the safari under these circumstances. If someone else (besides me) could confirm/ test this. It would be great
as despite the scientists conclusions (outstanding btw) I think there is more to this than a conventional rate. Let's find some answers!

Update: Did some more testing, found a shiny espurr after stacking in a water type safari, although there have been no other shinies yet. Anyone have anymore data/theories?

This seems unlikely. I'm not an expert, but I don't believe Game Freak uses anything like what Dota erroneously calls pseudo-random distribution (more info here: http://dota2.gamepedia.com/Pseudo-random_distribution) anywhere in the Pokémon games. Your chance for critical hits, critical captures, misses, et cetera is the same on the fifth try as the first. Your method is a neat idea, and in fact the concept is used (with wrong values at some points, but used nonetheless) in Dota to create an effect where random things happen about as often as they should, but they have fewer long strings of successes or failures. This method is useful for creating a system where random events happen with the same probability but are more likely to happen at the "right" times; note that this only works for boolean/binomial variables, where they can either happen or not happen, so this could, in theory, be used with Shinies but NOT with IVs, Natures, wild encounters, et cetera.

 

[CanadianFlygon]

Sorry it took so long to reply, I had been horde spamming for a shiny ampharos, (he is super cute found him last night). Anyway, I am conducting this theory as well as another one in which I shall speak of now. Whenever I found a shiny it had been in one of my friends whom I had met locally and battled and traded tons of times. I know this is a little bit of a stretch, where did your shinies from the fs come from, your best friends safari? Or someone who you barely know? I think that the more times you interact with someone the more your rate increases. Or maybe it depends on if you met them locally or over wifi. Think about, tell me about anything you find.

May the flygon be with you...

Sorry about the incorrect information, I was at my parent's when I posted this. Their wifi sucks I pretty much made the values as to what I thought they were. Anyway the hunt starts tonight!!

 

[cardmaster12]

I have been hunting for the last 2 days in a fire safari, i just got the shiny charm. I got a shiny ponyta almost immediately yesterday, about 25 encounters, then today,after exactly 136 encounters, i encountered a shiny braixen. This is with the shiny charm. currently i am 88 encounters into my 3rd hunt, for a shiny pyroar. According to some people, the shiny rate depends on the trainer id of the safari's owner, but what if the owner of the safari doesn't have a game?

i will report back when i get another shiny in this safari.

 

[cardmaster12]

"Another something I'd like to note, as pertaining to tipping, is that, as previously mentioned, the Shiny Charm seems not to have an effect, and obviously we can't use the PokéRadar in the Safari, so I believe that if tipping were to increase the Shiny encounter rate, it would only work outside of the safari, as other methods of increasing the shiny rate have been pretty much proven ineffective. It appears that the Safari is exempt of all other methods of increasing shiny encounters. I'm not saying that tipping is likely to increase shiny encounter rate outside of the safari, I'm just saying that it seems logical that it wouldn't affect the shiny encounter rate inside the safari.

i beleive the shiny charm has an effect, i've had it for a week, and in the last 3 days, got 2 shiny cubchoo, 3 shiny poliwhirl, a shiny ponyta, and a shiny braxien, the shiny braxien and ponyta seemed to be above average rate in the safari... i've also encountered a shiny shuckle immediately after i got the carm in a safari.... the odds for me with the charm seem to be about the same as hordes, 1/273.6

 

[cardmaster12]

Hey scientist

Have you noticed any specifics as to what pokemon appear as shiny? I have been recently hunting for a few third slot pokemon, and failing miserably --- finding upwards to 6-7 shiny (slot 1 and 2 pokemon at about 50:50 rate) and not meeting the slot three pokemon I was looking for. This comes from 3 such hunts and 10 or so separate safaris.

In general it seems shinys appear more often in slot 2 with me rather than slot 1, or slot 3.


Any thoughts?

i got a shiny 3rd slot braixen on my second ever safari hunt, which was today, i think it depends on the safari

 

[Furfrou]

i've been shiny hunting literally all day, and i'm on my 405th encounter or so. super helpful thread! gives me a perspective as to how long it should actually be until i catch a shiny. probably will have to leave my 3ds on over night and continue first thing in the morning

 

[-=Blu=-]

A standard deviation of almost the value of the mean is kinda obscure isn't it? Whats skewing that?

 

[Meep]

All these calculations are making me dizzy. Anyways, thank you so much for this! A+ for effort and precision

 

[mammothFATMAN]

For your data I've meet shiny dwebble in my first encounter in the moment I entered the safari.and I meet two shiny in a row in the flying safari, so after I meet shiny pidgeot then I meet shiny hawlucha right after that . Well hope this help you

 

[shinyhunter]

1/512 seems about right, i saw this same statistic somewhere else, months ago. I think the friend safari all have same shinies, logically why would they make a game that have 1 safari that has a higher shiny chance than the other. 1/512 is certainly an ample choice, considering a shiny in horde encounter is 1/819.2. and chaining at 40 is 1/200. Still these odds are significantly low of getting a shiny. still high but small, .2% is about 1/5 of a percent.

 

[Pokedexfiller]

Ok, so I know you said that the shiny charm does not affect it. But i do think there is a chance that it does. So I think everyone should report data WITH ALL THE INFORMATION, for example at what encounter number did they get their shiny, and did they have a shiny charm or not. Because so far only one person has said data saying that the shiny charm doesnt work. For example I dont have 538 encounters and counting, still no shiny and I do not have the shiny charm. The reason why I do think the shiny charm works is because (if i am correct) it stacks with the masudo method as well since all it does is make the ds redo the calculation one more time if the first time didnt produce a shiny. So I would think that the shiny charm does affect it. But glad to see that a person is putting actual data than a bunch of kids saying that they found 10 shinies in 100 encounters each time.

Also someone used a bot (without a shiny charm i believe) on the friend safari, video is on youtube, and said the encounter rate was 1/4096 chance of getting a shiny pokemon in a friend safari...i think, his description is weird, here is the link

 

[The Scientist]

I've been away the last three months, but I'm glad to see the thread did not die. :)

Addressing some of the questions...

nocturne24- I have not noticed whether one slot is more frequently a shiny than the other slots. In fact, it looked evenly dispersed among the three slots.
Non-guest 31415- I am currently testing the shiny rate outside of the friend safari with tipping. Mind you I have the shiny charm as well. I'll report on the data in a few weeks.
cardmaster12, Pokedexfiller, and all others thinking the shiny charm affects the shiny rate in the friend safari- another user, dahlialia, tested it, and found there was no difference between a game with the shiny charm and a game without the shiny charm. See here- http://www.diyode.com/2014/02/shiny-charm-and-friend-safari-preliminary-data/

Pokedexfiller- I don't think we need to take his encounter rate seriously since he says it so matter-of-fact without any data. Sounds like he's just getting it off a site. I bet if you asked him now, he'd say a higher probability than 1/4096.

After 185,227 encounters and 344 shinies, I finished with friend safari after having collected enough data and having caught all possible shinies. The number is pretty irrefutably 1/512. If anyone else would like to check my data and statistics, feel free to do so in the Google spreadsheet in my signature. As said, I've been hunting outside the safari now, and have been tipping between shiny encounters, so I'll report my numbers once I have an appropriate level of data. It's going to take a lot longer since the shiny rate is so much lower.

 

[breh]

I control f'd it in this thread but couldn't find anything; do you happen to know if having a lot of steps (on the order of 4000+) changes friend safari shiny chance?

Nice to know that this is 1/512 just like masuda method shiny charm eggs.

 

[Spikeroy]

I have a question about the amount of Pokemon that you fought were you running away from them or were you just making them faint ?

 

[The Scientist]

Just running away, never fainting.

I'm planning on posting some results from tipping maybe next week, so stay tuned.

 

[The Scientist]

Below are results from 20 trials with tipping outside of the friend safari (shiny charm obtained). I tipped $1000 five times to the story teller in the Pokemon Center in Kiloude City before each trial. The trials took a lot longer than they should have since I've been traveling and so I could only run the shiny hunter at certain times. The numbers are the number of encounters until a shiny was found.

1869
1462
710
1100
6883
324
482
2367
555
3739
1540
3950
961
1868
562
723
339
2978
233
2842

The average is 1756 with a standard deviation of 1636. If the shiny rate outside the friend safari with shiny charm obtained is 1/1365, the data support the hypothesis that tipping does not increase the shiny rate. The average is a little higher than expected, but totally within the range of a reasonable estimate given the small sample size.

We'll see what OmegaRuby and AlphaSapphire bring in terms of mysteries on the shiny rate. I'll be happy to run tests on that game as well after I've played it for a bit, so stay tuned once that game is out.

 

[Magicxgame]

I'd just like to say your work is impressive, Scientist.

Hopefully this will kill the anecdotal "Tipping increases shininess!!!1!" posts, but we all know it won't happen. >_>

 

[Jikuumoogle]

Very cool thread, interesting read for sure, well done Scientist! allow me to add my 2 cents to the cup on the things i noticed during all my shiny hunting;

Out of all the previous mentioned things that could influence the odds i would like to focus on the people on my friend list.

I looked at the friends safari's i caught them in and they are pretty varied, all added online, from all over the planet, never met / traded / battled with up close and personal, not all of them have the 3rd slot revealed, however they all do share one trait in common, they all sit at the top of my Friend Safari list. I encountered most (7 out of 9? *lol unintended Star Trek reference*) of them in under an hour, several from the same safari's, spread evenly across the 1st, 2nd and 3rd slot with only 2 dupes.

So atm i am hunting a Hawlucha, from a safari i have only added a few days ago, and after 2 days *approx 8 or 9 hours of grinding while watching Netflix* i have come up with nothing to show for :(

HOWEVER; going by the findings presented here, what if, the duration of friendship with the person's Safari you are in increases the odds of shinies showing up? As all of the shines i have caught originate from the top of the list, people i have had on my friend list for ages, most of them from before Pokémon X/Y was even released, while i've added others a lot later from specific safari combinations that have yielded little of no result.

I haven't seen any mention of it in this thread, so it might be worth looking into, interesting to hear about your own findings on the matter, did your shinies come from your long term friends or passing acquaintances?

 

[Space Dandy]

So I'm doing a math internal assessment based on this, yet I was wondering if you used any formals? Basically relating shiny Pokemon to rare occurrences which leads to normal distribution leading to bell curve, and statistics and probabilities.