Unown Challenge - 2026

Unown are freaks.

Once a year in February, the legendary Combee-addict, Ronk, hosts the Unown Challenge, probably my favorite shiny hunting event ever.

First, you gotta get a shiny Unown. After that, you have to catch a shiny Pokémon whose name begins with the same letter as the Unown you caught.

So if you catch an Unown A, you can hunt an Azelf or an Ampharos.

It’s a really simple concept, but I love not fully being able to choose what I’ll be hunting. You’re forced into one kind of hunt, so you can do a different, less restrictive hunt later on, determined by the restricted one. It’s a nice mix of freedom and restriction, I love it.

I decided to join in this year to try to catch more shinies in my gen 3 games.

In FireRed and LeafGreen, you can find Unown in the Tanoby Ruins, where each chamber has its own set of Unown. Because of the way the Unown's form and shiny-ness are determined in these games, some forms of Unown will be easier or harder to find based on your TID and SID. Checking mine, I found I'd have the easiest time in the Rixy Chamber, so I went there.

Most Unown here had a 1/6144 chance of being shiny, but being new to Full Odds hunts, I wasn’t feeling super confident in being able to find one before the event was over. I decided to boot up an “emotional support” 4096 game, Shining Pearl, in the hopes of finding something sooner.

Luckily, it wasn't long before I found a shiny Unown V in Pokemon FireRed.

This was my third full odds shiny hunt at only 2430 encounters. Three shinies into my Full Odds career and I'd still never even seen half odds. I was beyond lucky, and beyond happy to have another shiny in generation 3.

I named it volkSWAGon for some reason.

With one half of the challenge done it was time to figure out what I was hunting next.
There are some cool Pokémon starting with the letter V, but I had the TID 00069 in my copy of FireRed so I was pretty much locked to those games if I wanted the shiny to be cool.

I flew to the Mt Moon Pokemon center and hunted in the grass to the North.
Guess the nearby Power Plant is leaking Voltorb or something, cause they’re fairly common finds at 40%.

Voltorb and Electrode are some of my favorite generation 1 Pokémon. Something about a guy that goes crazy fast and can blow up when the going gets tough really appeals to me.

I was on my shit, hunting every night of the week for hours on end. I was streaming more than ever before, and was even checking in with other hunters/streamers about how their Unown Challenges were going. I can think of a good number of friends (real celebrities) I hang and hunt with today that I might not have spoken to if not for this challenge.

One day, in someone’s chat, they told me I should bring in some White Flutes from Ruby and lead with Staryu at the front of my party to get more encounters per second. This is like, basic shiny hunting 101 in these older games, but I hadn’t thought about it, and I was excited to be able to hunt even faster.

After a while, I had hit half odds for the first time. Shortly after that, I found myself going overodds.

I was honestly excited.
Obviously going overodds isn't really a huge deal. I think I saw someone say it's about 1 in every 3 hunts goes over? For me, it was a sign that my luck was changing. See, having gotten all of my shinies so under odds, I didn't feel like I had a good grasp on what a "real" shiny hunt was like. I couldn't expect every shiny to just fall into my lap, barely 5 hours into hunting, so I was excited to face the music and see what reality had in store for me.

Well dammit, I was standing in those odds.

9K came and went, up to 10, 11, 12, and beyond.

I was hunting on this route everywhere I went, including to a barcade for my buddy’s birthday, where we totally popped a tire on the way back and had to change to a spare on the side of the highway (you know I was still hunting).

Eventually, I had hit double odds, and truly thought I might be going crazy. I was so certain I had missed a sandshrew or spearow somewhere in the mix, but even if I had, what would that have mattered?

Finally, at 19,450, 10 days after volkSWAGon, I found a shiny sandshrew. A lovely generation one Pokemon with an amazing shiny post-evolution. I was really excited, glad to step outside of the odds once again.

I ran another 400 encounters before logging off for the night.

I washed up and got ready for bed. On a whim, waiting for my girlfriend to finish brushing her teeth, I grabbed my counter, booted up my SP, and started hunting.

Sure enough, only 31 checks into this session, a little blue ball slid across my screen.

I was freaking out. I screamed and ran out of bed to grab my phone.

Kira, like any sane partner, came rushing out of the bathroom to see why I was screaming and running around. She hadn’t ever seen me react to a shiny in-person before, and I genuinely startled her.

I had cloned some cool Pokéballs in Emerald and transferred them over to FireRed using Pokémon Box, but I guess I never gave myself any Dive Balls, which is what I was wanting to catch this in.

I never said I was smart.

You can see me in the video having absolutely no clue what to name it.
I’m very clearly high off of my ass there. Again, I was expecting to like, zonk out and go to bed. Not find my fastest shiny ever. (encounters-wise).

This was a month of shiny hunting I will never forget.
I really feel like I came into my own as a hunter. I got my stream layout cleaned up, made a lot of friends, and got to throw myself head first into the odds.

I will always look forward to hunting some Unown in February, and suffering alongside my fellow creeps and weirdos.

Toodles, poodles. Stay nasty.