This next section covers some commonly asked questions about donuts.
Help, I don't like the donut I just made! Can I undo it?
Normally, the game autosaves after a donut is created, so you cannot revert to a previous save to undo an unwanted donut. However, if you are unhappy with the donut that was generated, you can still recover your berries by reverting to your backup save.
While on the title screen, pressing ▲, B, and X simultaneously will allow you to access a save that restores you to your progress from the most recent time you fast traveled, but spawning in at the location of the last Pokémon Center you visited. This is a failsafe for releasing players who saved after getting stuck somewhere they weren't able to escape from, which was an issue in some older games. If you warped to Hotel Z just before creating your regretful donut, you won't lose any progress and you'll get the ingredients back.
What is butter?
Butter is a key item that determines how many berries you can use in each donut. You unlock more butter as you progress through the DLC storyline, so it's best to play through those missions before working on things like shiny hunting, as you'll be able to create more useful donuts.
There are 6 types of butter:
- Lumiosian Butter - 3 berries
- Nice Butter - 4 berries
- Great Butter - 5 berries
- Amazing Butter - 6 berries
- Supreme Butter - 7 berries
- Hyperspace Butter - 8 berries
What's the best donut recipe for shiny hunting?
The most reliable recipe is a donut made with 8 Hyper Tanga Berries, resulting in a total of 760 Sweet. This donut gives you Sparkling Power around 98% of the time: Lv. 1 around 27% of the time, Lv. 2 around 36% of the time, and Lv. 3 around 35% of the time. Unfortunately, there's no way to influence what type your donut is associated with, so it's just a 1/19 chance for each outcome (one for each type and one for "All Types"). You'll need to have progressed up to a certain point in the DLC storyline to be able to use 8 berries.
Although you only need a Sweet score of 420 to be able to roll Sparkling Power, saving your berries to create fewer but maximally reliable donuts is more efficient than making a larger quantity of unreliable donuts.
What's the deal with "guaranteed shiny" or "forced shiny" Pokemon?
If you enter a distortion using a donut with Lv. 3 Sparkling Power, you will be guaranteed to find a shiny Pokémon of the type denoted as long as a Pokémon of that corresponding type is present in the area. The reason this happens is that while the game is generating the Pokémon for the area, the first Pokémon that matches the type on your Lv. 3 Sparkling Power will be checked to see if it's shiny, and if it's not, the game will rewrite its ID to cause it to be shiny.
There is no appreciable difference between "natural" shinies and these "forced" shinies, either visibly in-game or in their programming. In fact, it's unlikely but entirely possible that the first Pokémon generated was coincidentally already shiny, such that the Sparkling Power didn't even make a difference. "Forced" shinies are an intended game behavior and are not in any way hacked, illegitimate, or fraudulent, though some players avoid using this mechanic as a self-imposed challenge.
What's the deal with the "Catch Shiny Pokémon" survey task?
When you enter a distortion that contains a shiny Pokémon, you will get a survey task that wants you to capture a shiny. Even though you'll usually see this when using Lv. 3 Sparkling Power, this happens regardless of what powers you're using and regardless of how the shiny was generated. The survey task isn't causing a shiny to appear, but simply reporting that one is present.
What are Hyperspace Berries?
Hyperspace Berries are berry items that can be found mainly by breaking floating Poke Balls in Hyperspace Lumiose. You can also receive them as a gift from Couriers in Hyperspace Battle Zones.
These berries are extra flavorful, so it's best to use them over normal berries as soon as you have access to them. There isn't really a correlation between a normal berry and its Hyper counterpart besides sharing a name and shape.
Distortions of different star ratings contain different types of berries. You can view a list of all the possible berry rewards here.
How can I quickly get more Hyperspace Berries?
Big Haul Power and Item Power: Berries are flavor powers that will significantly increase how many Hyperspace Berries you get from floating Poke Balls. These are powers that appear with Sour donuts.
Like all other recipes, there's no way to guarantee a certain flavor power, but having a higher Sour score gives you a better chance of getting high levels of both Big Haul Power and Item Power at the same time. The most reliable recipe is 8 Hyper Kasib berries for a total of 760 Sour. Unfortunately, there's no way to influence what type of Item Power you get, so there's always going to be a 1/6 chance of getting Item Power: Berries.
It's best to target 4-star distortions, since these contain the most useful berries, including Hyper Tanga And Hyper Kasib berries.
What are Rainbow donuts?
Rainbow donuts are made when 2 or more flavors are tied for the highest flavor score, since there is no dominant flavor. They may have flavor powers associated with more than one flavor.
Rainbow donuts are described as "slightly more powerful" in the game. What this means is that a Rainbow donut of a certain flavor score is slightly more likely to roll higher leveled flavor powers than mono-flavor donuts of the same score.
For instance, a Rainbow donut that's both 420 Sweet and 420 Sour will, on average, roll higher leveled Sweet powers and Sour powers than a mono-flavor 420 Sweet donut or 420 Sour donut.
If you just want the best donut for shiny hunting or the best donut for berry farming, the aforementioned 760 score recipes are more reliable, and it's worth saving up your Hyper Tanga and Hyper Kasib berries for them. However, Rainbow donuts can be a good way to make efficient use of all your less valuable berries.
Sources
Aside from my own experience and in-game tool tips, credit to:
- Dataminer Anubis for most of the figures for specific parameters. Anubis also provides information on Twitter, Smogon, and Serebii.
- YouTuber Papa Jefé for data on Encounter Power, backup saves, and donut experimentation. I highly recommend this video if you want a more detailed analysis on what donuts are the best for shiny hunting or berry farming.
