What is the shiny rate for Lugia in Ultra Moon and Sun???

Question

I know that the encounter rate for a shiny is 1/4096, and with shiny charm it’s 1/2048. What if you actually pass the boundaries of 4096 soft resets for a shiny Pokemon (like the new ultra wormholes where you get Pokemon and legends)? What will the shiny rate will be? Will it go back to the original form like the other games, instead of 1/4096 (will it become 1/8192)? Is lugia shiny locked in Pokemon Ultra Moon as well?

And anyway, just answer: What is the actual lugia shiny encounter ratio, and what if you pass the 1/4096 (or just 1/2048)?

Thanks for anyone that answers this.

Comments

I'm pretty sure the chance is the same no matter how many times you soft-reset.

Answer 1

No, Lugia is not shiny-locked and, as you said, the probability of getting a shiny is 1/4096, or 1/2048 with the Shiny Charm. With soft resetting, the shiny rate doesn't change; each Pokémon you encounter has the exact same chance as the last.

But even though these are the odds, you're not guaranteed a shiny if you SR that many times. Your question suggests that you might not understand how probability works. As a simple example, let's say that you have two Pokémon with a 50/50 gender ratio, and you're looking for a female. There are four possible configurations for what their genders could be:

1. Female/Female
   
2. Female/Male
   
3. Male/Female
   
4. Male/Male
   

As you can see, only three of these outcomes contains a female, so even though there is a 1/2 chance of getting one, in a group of two, there is only a 75% chance that one of them will be female. The same logic goes for shiny Pokémon. That's why some hunts yield a shiny in just over a hundred encounters while others can last well over 10,000 (I've even seen some stretch into the 200,000 range).