Shiny hunting in *Pokémon Legends: Z-A* is a thrilling experience. The grind to unlock the Shiny Charm may be long, but the sound effects and sparkles that accompany wild Shiny Pokémon make the process feel extremely rewarding—until someone ruins it.
Taille, an NPC who appears in front of Wild Zone 15, gives you Side Mission 098. She asks you to capture a Pumpkaboo of the Jumbo Variety, which is the largest one available. When you accept her quest, she explicitly states, “I need you to catch a Jumbo Variety Pumpkaboo for me!”
Apparently, that wasn’t clear enough for some players. One Reddit user shared that they had a Shiny Pumpkaboo of the Jumbo Variety—a rare find, given the base 1 in 4096 odds of encountering a Shiny and the scarcity of the Jumbo form. Thinking Taille only wanted to see it, they offered the Shiny Pumpkaboo to her.
What happened next was a shock: the NPC kept the Shiny for herself, meaning the player lost this rare Pokémon forever. Others have made the same mistake, resulting in irreversible loss.
What makes this especially frustrating is *Legends: Z-A*’s autosave feature. Autosave is always on and triggers at specific moments in the game—one of which is upon completing side missions like Taille’s. By the time players realize that Taille has kept their precious Pumpkaboo, the game has already saved the progress, making the decision permanent. Your shiny companion truly becomes hers now.
This side mission only appears 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 temporarily and return it to you. For example, the lady who wants to make perfume out of Skiddo leaves and Vannilite snow never keeps your Pokémon.
Because of this, it feels natural to assume that Taille will not keep your Pokémon either—if you don’t pay close attention to her dialogue.
So, when playing *Pokémon Legends: Z-A*, remember one of the most important life lessons you probably learned as a kid: don’t let people borrow your valuable things—even if they’re video game characters. You never know what they’ll do with them.
https://www.destructoid.com/pokemon-fans-are-having-their-shinies-stolen-by-an-npc-in-legends-z-a/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=pokemon-fans-are-having-their-shinies-stolen-by-an-npc-in-legends-z-a