Pokémon fans are having their Shinies stolen by an NPC in Legends: Z-A

Shiny hunting in Pokémon Legends: Z-A is fun. The grind to unlock the Shiny Charm is long, but the sound effects and sparkles that come out of wild Shiny Pokémon make the process feel extremely rewarding… until someone ruins it.

Taille, an NPC who gives you Side Mission 098 in front of Wild Zone 15, asks you to capture a Pumpkaboo of the Jumbo Variety, the largest one there is. When you accept her quest, she explicitly says, “I need you to catch a Jumbo Variety Pumpkaboo for me!”

Apparently, that wasn’t clear enough for some players. One of them shared on Reddit that they had a Shiny Pumpkaboo of that variety, which is rare both for its base 1 in 4096 odds of spawning a Shiny and being a Jumbo. They offered it to Tallie, thinking she only wanted to see it. What happened instead was that the NPC kept the Shiny for herself, making the player lose a rare variety of Pumpkaboo forever. Others made that same mistake.

What makes this an irreversible mistake is Legends: Z-A’s autosave. This feature is always on and triggers at specific moments in the game, one of them being when you finish a side mission like Taille’s. So, by the time you realize Taille is keeping your Pumpkaboo, the game has already saved your progress and made that a final decision. Your precious Shiny really is hers now.

This Side Mission only shows up late in the game, after you unlock Main Mission 35. Up until this point, every requester who asks to see a Pokémon will, at most, borrow it and return it to you, such as the lady who wants to make perfume out of Skiddo leaves and Vannilite snow. That’s why it’s natural to expect Taille will not keep your Pokémon as well if you ignore her dialogue.

When playing Legends: Z-A, remember one of the most important life lessons you were probably taught as a kid: don’t let people borrow your valuable things—even if they’re a video game character. You never know what they’ll do with it.