Poke Balls and their variants are some of the most important items in all of Pokemon Scarlet and Violet. Without them, all players can do is defeat Pokemon in battle with no hope of adding them to their roster of creatures. Because of this, it’s important that Pokemon Scarlet and Violet players have a healthy supply of Poke Balls ready in case they come across a Pokemon they want to catch, whether that’s a rare one, an especially powerful one, or a shiny one.

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Reddit user calpolsixplus found this out the hard way in the early hours of playing Pokemon Scarlet and Violet. While exploring the Paldea region, they happened to come across a shiny Drowzee. Whereas the regular version of Drowzee is yellow, the shiny variant of the Psychic-type Pokemon is pink. Unfortunately, calpolsixplus did not have any Poke Balls they could use to catch the shiny Drowzee, so they simply defeated it in battle and continued their adventure, but not before grabbing a screenshot to vent to others online.

Some commenters offered to help calpolsixplus, but they hadn’t saved their game before the encounter and so it was too late to catch the shiny Drowzee. One user offered to give calpolsixplus a code for 100 Poke Balls, while someone else suggested doing an online trade for a Pokemon holding a Poke Ball. These solutions would have potentially worked, but the damage had already been done.

The only time Pokemon Scarlet and Violet players are likely to be short on Poke Balls is during the early hours of the game, so calpolsixplus was just extremely unlucky. Beyond that point, players have the opportunity to purchase as many Poke Balls as they need to from shops, and they should also find plenty simply lying around the open world Paldea region. Bumping into a shiny Pokemon so early in the game and without any of the items that increase shiny encounter odds is an extremely rare occurrence, though, so most new Pokemon Scarlet and Violet players shouldn’t have to worry about running into similar problems.

Pokemon Scarlet and Violet are out now, exclusively for the Nintendo Switch.

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