Pokémon Scarlet and Violet are rife with dupe glitches

Pokémon Scarlet and Pokémon Violet had a rough launch, though you wouldn’t know that from its sales numbers. It’s got a lot of visual and performance problems, like pop-in, clipping, and slow frame rates, and alongside those bugs, there are issues that players are able to exploit for their own benefit. A bunch of those bugs allow players to duplicate items and Pokémon — both shiny and legendary pocket monsters.

Videos of the exploits have gone vital on TikTok, Twitter, and other social media platforms. The first of the lot is pretty easy, but its value is middling: Players can duplicate items found in the world as shiny spots on the ground, but they won’t know what they’ve got until they pick it up or start the duplicating process.

Here’s how it works: Once you’ve found a shiny spot on the ground, place your picnic setup right on top of that spot. After idling for a bit, check your picnic basket. There won’t be an egg inside, but you should find an item. That same item will keep spawning in the basket if you keep waiting for longer and longer.

It feels like this is how picnics are supposed to work — at least, having your Pokémon pick up items around the area. But the glitchy part seems to be how the item keeps spawning. A lot of the time, you’ll find TM ingredients under these shiny spots, which aren’t particularly valuable. But sometimes you’ll get rare or valuable items that your Pokémon can use or that you can sell for money.

We’ve been able to replicate this bug after seeing multiple videos on TikTok.

The next item (and unintentional Pokémon) duplication bug is a bit more in-depth, and requires you to have beaten Pokémon Scarlet and Violet’s Area Zero questline. You’ll need to be able to turn your Miraidon or Koraidon into its battle form. Basically, you give you Miraidon or Koraidon an item to hold — anything you’d want to duplicate — and battle a wild Pokémon and catch it with a full team. You’ll try to swap it out with Miraidon or Koraidon, attempting to send the legendary ride-on to your Pokémon storage box, which, of course, isn’t possible. Unless you hit the A and B buttons so fast that it confuses the game. If you do it correctly, Miraidon or Koraidon will be duplicated into your Pokémon storage box, and the item it was holding will be added to your bag.

But because you didn’t actually put your Miraidon or Koraidon into a box slot, when you add it back to your party from its ride-on mode, it’ll still be holding the item, too — so now you’ve got an extra.

It’s complicated, but we were able to replicate this bug with a Rare Candy, and others on TikTok have done so with a Master Ball, for instance. People on TikTok warned that adding the duplicated Miraidon or Koraidon to your party could mess things up, so be wary there if you do try these out.

YouTuber Austin John found another duplication glitch, one that allows players to catch multiples of the same shiny Pokémon. It’s one of those scenarios that works only in a specific instance — in particular, when you’re right outside of towns and cities that don’t require a load screen before walking in. This glitch takes advantage of an issue that has Pokémon loading and reloading when you cross a “threshold” separating the wild areas from the cities. (It’s one issue that caused problems for me; Pokémon will de-spawn in the wild area if you cross into a town line, and if you don’t do these specific actions, those Pokémon won’t come back when you cross over again.)

Here’s the video where Austin John outlines the steps in full detail:

But why would you want to catch multiples of the same shiny Pokémon? Maybe you want to give them to your friends? Bragging rights? That’s your decision. (We haven’t tested out Austin John’s method for confirmation, by the way.) This exploit is on top of an earlier find with Scarlet and Violet’s picnic exploit that makes finding shiny creatures a lot quicker.

As with any exploit, we want to make it clear that this isn’t how The Pokémon Company intended people to play the games. It’s unclear if The Pokémon Company can or will take any action against folks who take advantage of them. The exploits don’t exactly impact Scarlet and Violet’s multiplayer or competitive modes, which would expressly make them unfair, but others do consider it cheating.

In any event, The Pokémon Company will likely eventually patch these exploits out, just like Nintendo did with Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ similar duplication glitches.