When I earned my shiny charm, my daughter and I were discussing how useful it would be to know if it changes the shiny rate in friend safaris. We wanted to see if we could collect enough data to have an answer. We knew we needed an automated solution though, because we aren’t that dedicated.

We had looked at the Poke-O-Matic made by dekuNukem on reddit, but since neither of us can afford to replace our 3DS, we didn’t want a solution that required taking the units apart and soldering to it. So on to plan B. We asked my husband if he could build a machine that would work with an intact 3DS.

Between us, we built and tested 2 Safari Hunters (http://www.diyode.com/2014/01/safari-hunter-the-shiny-pokemon-finder/ ), and have been using them to collect data for several days.

We collected the data by first running around in each other’s safaris at the same time, then switched to running around in 3rd person safaris (we both ran around in the same safari at the same time).

I’m not a very good statistician, but looking at the data we have so far, it seems that:

1. the Shiny Charm does not improve the rate in Friend Safaris

2. the Friend Safari shiny rate is likely in the range of 1/600 to 1/1000

3. given the default shiny rate in xy of 1/4096 (according to serebii http://www.serebii.net/itemdex/shinycharm.shtml ) , my guess is that the Safari rate is specifically 5/4096 (1/819, 0.00122%)

We are going to keep testing and see how the numbers settle out, but this is what we have found so far!

/u/dahlialia and /u/iheartfennikin