Exclusive Hunting for Dummies!

Howdy! This is my first guide, so please bear with me. I'll try to make everything as clear as possible, but I'd love some feedback to improve it, especially if you have more ideas/tips/etc that were not included! :D This guide will be long-winded because it was written by me, and I am trying to explain everything as thoroughly as I can. It'll contain a lot of things you may already know, things that might be obvious to a lot of players, so don't feel obligated to read every single letter if you already know what I'm talking about! ESPECIALLY correct me if I say something that is incorrect! A lot of this info has been gathered by asking around and my own general observation, and I don't know if it's 100% factually accurate! And finally, my way is not the only way! Please don't feel like you HAVE to do things like I have recommended here, there isn't just One Way of hunting exclusives! If you want to try something different and if another method works for you, please, do so! This is just me explaining how I exclusive hunt, and hopefully will help those who have never hunted get some footing and learn what to expect when doing so! INDEX 1. Introduction 2. Preparation 3. Red Giga for Dummies 4. General Hunting Tips 5. General Funding Tips 6. TL;DR

So....exclusive hunting! I'm not a ~~~~professional~~~~ exclusive hunter by any means, but I feel as if I have a pretty good grasp of the mechanics and what goes into a successful hunt. Exclusive pokemon have a much, MUCH lower breeding percentage than (breedable) non-exclusive pokemon. This means you will be needing a lot of tools not usually required for non-exclusive hunting, namely, the Red Gigaremo and Sweet Hearts. I don't know the exact breeding rate compared to non-exclusive pokemon, but it is much, much, MUCH lower, even when the breeding rate is raised with the Red Giga. To add onto this, most exclusive eggs are DELETED once you release them from the daycare! Again, I don't know the exact percentage, but I'm fairly sure it's less than 5%. I've once (accidentally OTL) released over 70 eggs from my daycare before, and could find NONE in the shelter afterwards, even after extensive searching. This means that in order to hunt effectively, all of your eggs will be coming from your daycare. If you want to hatch more than 12 eggs a day, you're going to need DayCare Passes. These factors combine into a hunt that requires a LOT more effort and funding than a standard non-exclusive hunt, which can get along with 0 funding and much, much less effort. Due to their more difficult and more expensive nature to hunt, exclusive specials generally fetch much higher prices than their non-exclusive counterparts. There are much less exclusive hunts being done, and especially for more obscure exclusives, some have been only hunted very few times, meaning you have something not many others have, and therefore will have people interested! You may not get all of your spent funding back, but selling specials are a significant part of your funds while you're in the process of hunting. Exclusive hunts also can go at a much faster pace than non-exclusive hunts, as you are not bound by the shelter adoption limit! If you have a day you feel extra motivated and have a lot of time to sink into the hunt, you can hatch 300+ eggs if you wish! Are you willing/able to massclick for extended periods of time? Are you willing/able to get up to 50k-100k interactions daily without too much issue? Do you have full special boosts (HM+uber+charms+max charge albino radar)? Do you have funds for a hunt that will require a LOT of GP (~8kGP per 1k eggs)? Do you have an exclusive you REALLY like, and would love to have a full collection of, or would like to hatch the specials of yourself? Are you willing to accept you might lose funds overall as a result of the hunt? If you answered yes to all of these, congrats! You might be ready for exclusive hunting! :D A full list of exclusive pokemon can be found on the wiki HERE! With the exception of Bunbori, Shinorin, Sikannos, Magquaza, XD001, Formes exclusive to PFQ such as Megas and Primal Formes, and Exclusives released in the two most recent Tournaments, you can use this guide to help you hunt! Special note for difficult breeding: Kinaster, Koroku, and Exclusives from the 3rd most recent tournament have SIGNIFICANTLY reduced breeding rates (Kinaster being the most infamous case). While this guide's general methods will work in hunting these pokemon, please keep in mind it will be MUCH more difficult than standard exclusive breeding, and will require MUCH more clicks and MUCH more Sweet Hearts than other exclusive hunts. However, this also results in a hunt with specials that are in high demand! Specials from these hunts tend to go for a lot more than specials of standard exclusives. Special note for Maravol: Maravol's patterns are account locked, similar to the way Vivillon's patterns are account locked. There are 21 patterns in total, which means there are less hunters for each pattern as avid hunters are stuck with their own patterns and cannot hunt other ones. You may be one of, if not The first person to do an extensive hunt of your pattern, so your specials may be in higher demand than other exclusives! Special note for MCW Variants: If you receive a variant from MCW, congratulations! You now are in possession of a variant not many others have which will more than likely be in high demand for a few days! If you're quick, these can be great short-term hunts, as even the regular hatches are in demand in the first days as people look for breeding pairs!

You do have full special odds/boosts, don't you? You have HM, ubercharm, shiny charms, and a fully charged albino radar, right? If not, I would recommend refraining from exclusive hunting until you do! Exclusive hunting is already SO expensive even with full boosts! If you can't afford full odds, you can't afford a practical exclusive hunt, I'm sorry. I'm not your dad, I can't stop you from doing it, but sinking your hard-earned currency into boosts and upgrades will be MUCH more helpful for you than sinking it into what will be a very, very large amount of stock-standard exclusives you can't do anything with. (P.S. Get HM first. Please. Please please please please please don't go for uber/charms before HM, HM gives you so many more benefits and better boosts PLEASE get it first im begging you) First off, like any breeding-based hunt, you're going to need a breeding pair! Especially for exclusive hunts, with their low breeding percentage, it's VERY important to get a pair in the high 90s, 97 at the very lowest! It might be a hassle to get a 99% pair, but trust me, it makes a difference for hunts like these where you might be making eggs just barely as fast as you're hatching them from clicking! There's already a wonderful guide on making a 99% breeding pair that can be found here! If you don't know how to make a 99% pair already, it's almost required reading, as it also goes into detail on other things that affect breeding rates beyond the matchup percentage. You can also just simply buy a breeding pair from someone, but I still do recommend the guide as it goes into how levels influence the amount of eggs produced and so on. Often shortened to "Red Giga" or just "Giga", this account upgrade will DOUBLE your breeding pair's breeding rate, at the cost of decreasing their happiness! I will go into deeper detail about the Red Giga's mechanics later, but for just starting out, all you need to do is buy one. You can find it in the DayCare page, scrolling down to "Upgrades", and in the last tab labeled "Advanced Upgrades". It costs 2000GP, so it's a good idea to wait for an Eltafez bonus day to get a GP discount! The fuel that keeps the Red Giga engine a-goin. These treats are obtained during the Valentines event every year, and can be bought for other users but not for yourself! This is the only time of year these are generated, so the further from February you get, the more expensive Sweet Hearts tend to get due to decreasing supply. If you didn't get many during Valentine's, don't fret! There are plenty for sale on the Marketboard at all times! You will need a lot of them, so make sure to stock up! (I try to keep >2k at all times, but I buy a few x99 packs from the market on an almost daily basis to keep myself topped up!) Ahh, the sweet lifeblood of exclusive hunting. This is what most of your funds are going to be sunk into. DayCare Passes (often shortened to DCP) allow you to adopt an egg from the daycare after you have used up your 12 free adoptions. You can buy DCP from the DayCare page, by scrolling down to the "Upgrades" section and clicking the "DayCare Passes" tab. You can buy DCP by single passes or by packs, in either a x10 pack or a x60 pack. For exclusive hunting, I highly recommend buying x60 packs, as it gives you the highest discount than you would by buying singles/x10 packs. Like the Red Giga, I also recommend waiting until Eltafez's Bonus Counter day for the GP discount! As I said before, you'll be spending a LOT!!! of GP on this hunt, so every single little discount you can get REALLY matters. In a pinch, you can also buy DCP on the Market, though I don't recommend doing so unless you absolutely have to! DCP on the market are generally much more expensive than DCP bought directly from the DayCare page. Even if you have much more CR than GP, I would recommend going through the trouble of trading your CR for GP and buying them from the DayCare page rather than spending 40GP+ more on packs from the Market. However! Checking the market frequently can be rewarding, as sometimes people sell DCP for cheap! It doesn't happen often, and they're usually snapped up quick, but I've caught a few good deals there just by persistently checking back. If you have the time and are really dedicated to getting DCP for as little as possible, make sure to check the market listing frequently! Finally, you can also buy DCP from other users by using the Trades Forum! You can set up a post advertising your hunt for DCP, as well as look for posts of people selling their DCP! Like the market, if you keep your eyes open, you can get some good deals! Just be sure to not buy DCP for more than what you would from the DayCare! In a very general sense, I price each DCP at 8GP each. This is the average price per DCP when buying a x60 pack from the daycare on an Eltafez day. You can strive to get a lower price per DCP, or you can be more willing to spend a little bit more per DCP, it all depends on what your funds are and how diligently you're willing to be in obtaining DCP. REMEMBER: Each DCP is one egg. For a standard melan hunt, you want to prepare for at LEAST a chain of 1k eggs, but you much more than likely need a LOT more. For 1k eggs, you need 1kDCP, which would be around 8kGP if you price each DCP at 8GP like I do. For 2k eggs, you need 2kDCP, which is 16kGP. For 3k eggs, you need 24kGP, and so on. This is what I mean by "You really need funds for these hunts" X<X This one is just good to have regardless of exclusive hunting or not! While you're clicking away to produce eggs, you can hatch the eggs in your party fairly easily! This helps you hatch a LOT more eggs than you would if you were restricted to just passively waiting for them to hatch, either by the Egg Timer or by other user interaction. As exclusive hunting is driven by such extensive clicking, the EXP. Share shines much more than from a non-exclusive hunt! EXP. Shares can be found on the EXP Boosts page, under the third tab down labeled "EXP. Share". It costs 450GP, so again, wait until an Eltafez day for that discount! Z-Crystals aren't required in the slightest, BUT do certainly shine on Sei days and the boosted shiny chance that come from those. Z-Crystals increase your odds of an albino by 50% for three days after you use it. Z-Crystals are GREAT if you have the funds to use them constantly, but even if not, having one or two stashed away for Sei Days is a great idea, and is what I do, personally! Z-Crystal Fragments are just what they sound like, fragements of Z-Crystals! On their own they're pretty useless, but if you combine 7 of the same type together, they form a complete crystal of that type! This can be done on the Albino Hunting page, located on the third tab down labeled "Z-Crystals"! Z-Crystals are obtained through the monthly Type Race! However, you may not be on the Team of the type you're looking for, which is why the Market and the Trades Forum are both excellent places to find Z-Crystals! Keep in mind that it might be cheaper to buy 7 Fragments and combine them rather than buying an already formed Z-crystal, so be sure to check! (Also check to make sure the opposite isn't true, either!) Like anything else you buy on the market/forums, keeping an eye out can net you some good deals if you're vigilant enough!

The Red Gigaremo was practically made for exclusive hunting, I can't imagine hunting without it. The Red Giga doubles your pair's breeding rate. In more technical terms, it halves the amount of interactions you need to make for the chance of an egg to be produced. Normally, every 64 interactions there is a chance of an egg to be produced (determined by the pair's compatibility) but with the Red Giga, this drops to every 32 interactions, effectively....doubling the breeding rate. The catch is, while the Red Giga is being used, it comes at a cost of your pair's happiness. If their happiness drops to 0, they will go back to breeding at a one chance per 64 interactions rate, until their happiness rises again. You can raise a pokemon's happiness via their field placement, but that is a very slow process that wouldn't nearly keep up with the pace of your hunt. This is why the most common way to raise a pokemon's happiness is via consumables, namely, Sweet Hearts. -- Many things have changed regarding the Red Giga and breeding compatability since I wrote this guide, so much of the information in the hidebox is outdated. While I eventually intend to write a more in-depth guide, my current advice is this: - Use sweethearts to get your breeding pairs to 100% happiness. - Use the "change target" option on one of your breeding pokemon and select for "Happiness is below [value]", say, 44%. - Massclick until the notification goes off that your pokemon is under that set happiness. - Feed breeding pair 7 sweethearts each (or whatever number gets them closest to 99, but not over 100 so you don't have to close the feeding menu) - Repeat, keeping the menu open in a separate tab/window for faster feeding

These are just a few miscellaneous things that are useful during any hunt, but they can be useful for exclusive hunts as well! Of course, having a Z-Crystal every day would be the ideal, but not everyone has funds for that (including me ._.). Instead, save your crystal for Sei days! As exclusive hunts aren't bound to shelter limits and generally don't require Niet days due to their intensive clicking nature to breed/hatch eggs, Sei days are the most useful days for any exclusive hunter (besides maybe Eltafez days)! While you can never control your schedule and your motivation, try your best to utilize every Sei day that you can get! Many of my melans were the result of brute-forcing my luck with high percentage Sei days combined with the recent doubling albino power of Z-Crystals! Unless you like having to click to make eggs every single time you hatch them, it's nice to get a stockpile on reserve so you can take a breather for an hour or two while still having something to hatch. I usually like having 50-70ish eggs on hand at all times, especially when I'm... Hey! While you're spending hours and hours massclicking, why don't you put some of that elbow grease towards getting RUS? You're massclicking anyway, and with how long you need to click, you're almost guaranteed to get it eventually during a hunt! Just make sure to have a stock of eggs ready, because nothing's more disappointing than having rus but only having 2 eggs in reserve to hatch. >~< Lucky Eggs increase the amount of EXP the pokemon/eggs in your party get whenever you make an interaction! Lucky Eggs are timed, and can provide a limited amount of EXP total. If you have some GP and a large backlog of eggs to spare, you can maybe look into Lucky Eggs! They're a bit pricy, and may not be worth it depending on your funds, but especially for high-yield days such as Sei days or Z-Crystal days, they're a great way to zip through a good number of eggs if you aren't having any RUS luck! Just make sure to buy them on an Eltafez day, and, if you can make the investment, get the largest bundle! You can also get them via the market for not too bad of a price, but if you plan on using them often, do save up and get the large bundle, as they can be extremely handy! A PR Memory Stick will save your chain and store it for you, letting you resume it any any time in the future and allowing you to start a new chain without worry. You can buy it here from the second tab down labeled "PokeRadar"! While this one doesn't let you hunt better, it's a good thing to have as a backup. If your hunt is going on forever, you're spending much more of your funds than you were expecting/than you can make back, your hands hurt like they've been mashed to pieces, and you don't want to or can't continue the hunt any further, you should leave yourself an out! Nothing's worse than being stuck in a hunt that you can't afford to continue! If you need to put the hunt on pause, do so! Do some non exclusive hunts, gather some more funds, and come back to it later when you're more prepared. Your pokewallet will thank you, your hands will thank you, your brain will thank you! This one is only relevant if you're melan hunting, and not just looking for shinies/albinos. Arceus Rank, while a pain to get for some people, can be absolutely nifty for melan hunting. I'm not sure if I can say for certain that Arceus Rank has made melan hunting easier in any capacity, but especially for exclusive hunting, where the longer the chain goes, it not only is wasting my time but wasting my money, I want every single advantage I can get so the hunt stops ASAP. There's many trade shops that offer dex trading as a main service! You can also make a post in the Trades Forum; there's plenty of users that would be more than willing to help, either for very cheap or even free! ^^

I plan on making a separate guide on how to earn currency in general one of these days, but here's a few general tips on stuff you can do while exclusive hunting! As I said before in this guide, selling your specials is a great way to get funds for your hunt! It's unlikely you'll get back everything that you've spent, but exclusive specials generally go for much higher prices than non-exclusive specials, so you'd be surprised how much of an impact they can make on your funding! I wish I could give pricing advice, but anything I'd say will be outdated within a couple of months. Pay attention to the market, see what exclusives are common in the market and which are not, and don't sell yourself short right out of the gate! Newer exclusives tend to go for higher prices than older exclusives, and more uncommon exclusives tend to go for higher prices than more common exclusives, but even this is totally dependent on the current market and is not set in stone. This is definitely not an option for every exclusive, but especially for newer exclusives, people are looking to make pairs for themselves and may be interested in buying regular exclusives from you! You won't get much from them, usually 5GP or less per, but something's better than nothing! Make sure to keep a few of each gender/nature on hand, just in case! Hey, you know how you've been clicking your fingers off? Check out your IP! It's probably a LOT higher than what you started with, and, more importantly, is a LOT more than you'll probably ever need. You need 100kIP every day to fully charge your albino radar, but besides that, you don't need it for anything else! There's no reason to hold onto 5milIP! This is why you should buy Albino Radars with them! (Found on this page, second tab down labeled "Albino Radar") You can buy Albino Radars for 750kIP, and sell them from your inventory for 125kCR each! That means if you have, say, 4.5milIP that you absolutely don't need, you can turn that into 750kCR that can go towards your funds! I usually keep around 2milIP with me at all times, just to make up for me being lazy for a few days, but you can probably get by with a lot less! Also, be sure to not sell all of your radars, because then you won't...have any. >_>;;;; Boxes, boxes, boxes, the holy grail of funding in my eyes! You've probably heard me raving over boxes before, but here's the gist: If you're on PFQ for extended periods of time like I am, you should send out your scours at every chance you can! Dedicate a field of pokemon to scouring, and find all of their preferred areas. Buy 2 Scour Slots and 2 Scour Boosts, then send those babies out every single chance you can get. 21 Boxes make a Box Box, which goes for 500GP/500kCR/100ZC fairly regularly on the Trades forum! If you don't mind pure CR, you can sell them on the market for even more, sometimes over 600kCR per! Again, this is all depending on the market and is subject to change in the future as it has in the past, but Box Boxes are such a reliable way of gaining currency with little to no effort, just three clicks an hour! You do participate in the Weekly Tournament, don't you? Not only do they give a good distraction during the endless hunting grind, but the Tokens that're given out as rewards are a great source of income, especially during the beginning of the tournament! Especially if you're needing the funds, it might be worth to cut into your hunting time to dedicate time towards tournaments! You can sell Tokens on the Trades Forum or on the Market! Generally, the Market will net you a higher reward, but keep an eye out on the Trades Forum! Some people are willing to spend a pretty penny to get tokens fast, but make sure you aren't selling for less than what the market price is!

This guide is so long because exclusive hunting involves many different aspects of the game, and I tried my best to do so in detail so any questions that might be had would be able to be answered. I wanted this guide to be informative, but that came at the cost of its approachability. I tried to separate everything into categories and subsections, so if you just scanned the headers you could have a basic grasp of what is needed, and would be able to stop and read more information about what you wanted to learn more of. I know it's not perfect, so I'll try to recap everything in a fairly short summary below. I'll be leaving out a lot of key details here, so if you want details, please scroll up, they're all there!! Exclusive hunting is more difficult than hunting non-exclusives, because exclusives are much more difficult to breed. These hunts require a lot more clicks and a lot more funding, specifically GP. This makes for a more challenging but also more rewarding hunt. You should have full special odds/all boosts, a high 90% breeding pair, a Red Gigaremo, an ample supply of Sweet Hearts (~2k), an even More ample supply of DayCare Passes (~2k), an EXP. Share, and optionally a Z-Crystal or two. You need to massclick while exclusive hunting, because exclusives are much harder to breed than non-exclusives and take many more clicks to produce eggs. You can look for curated lists of users with large fields, or use the site stats page to find people to massclick. There is a CSS code you can use that will help you massclick more efficiently. There are many ways to massclick, depending on what tools you have available (Mouse/Keyboard, Mobile, Tablet), but the most important thing is to do as many actions as possible within the shortest amount of time; This usually involves using as many fingers as possible to press as many buttons as possible. Don't use autoclickers, that's cheating. One Action = One Interaction. Please be careful when massclicking. Take many breaks, don't hurt yourself while playing a silly pokemon egg game. The Red Giga doubles your pair's breeding rate. To use the Red Giga in the most effective way, max out your pair's Happiness, make one or two interactions, then click 20 full fields. After that, feed your pokemon one Sweet Heart each, and click another 20 fields, and repeat. You can also max out your pokemon's Happiness, then click until their happiness goes to 0%. You can then max out their Happiness again, and repeat. You can use Z-Crystals on Sei days, make sure you have ~50-70 eggs in reserve, RUS hunt while massclicking, and use Lucky Eggs if you have a surplus of eggs and aren't getting RUS. It's a good idea to have a PR Memory Stick on hand in case you run out of funds or run out of fun during the hunt. Getting Arceus Rank might be a good idea if you're melan hunting. Sell your special exclusives, sell your regular hatches for breeding pairs, buy Albino Radars with your IP and sell them from your inventory for CR, take advantage of the Scouring system to collect and sell Box Boxes for funds, and participate in Weekly Tournaments to obtain and sell Tokens.

Um...that's about it! Thank you for reading! Again, I apologize for how long-winded this guide was, but I really do hope it's helpful for those who really want to know all there is to know about exclusive hunts. As I said in the beginning, if there's any other ideas/methods that I missed that you wish to tell me, please do! And if you have proof that anything I have said here is incorrect, please tell me as well!! If you have any more questions, please feel free to ask! Again, as I said, I'm not a master of this by any means, but I hope I can help in any way I can! o/

[Reserved!]

Aaand, I think.......I THINK...........this guide is....open? Done? o>o;;;; I might keep adding to it every now and again if I think of more things, or notice a wording error or anything, but yeah! :V Feel free to post with any questions/feedback/whatever! I really do hope this guide helps ya out! ;w;/