Pokemon Go Player Baffled as Shiny Legendary Flees
One player in Pokemon Go is still reeling from the shiny Nihilego they missed because it fled their encounter.
Jamie Moorcroft-Sharp 
Image via the Pokemon Company
A Pokemon Go player has shared their heartbreaking experience of attempting to catch a shiny legendary, only for it to flee partway through the encounter. It’s a tragic story that some fans believe should be a lesson to the player, while others have managed to dodge similar situations.
An encounter with a shiny Nihilego was cut short for one player because they were riding past its location in a car. This caused the Pokemon to flee, but some fans have shared stories to the contrary, leaving the player feeling confused and a little bit cheated out of their rare catch.
Related: The best moveset for Nihilego in Pokemon Go
Player Misses Out on Shiny Legendary in Pokemon Go Due to Speed Cap
Twitter user @JohnathanDelcid shared their recent encounter with a shiny Nihilego in Pokemon Go. Despite being in a moving vehicle, as a passenger, they could trigger a battle with the Pokemon and attempt to catch it. After a few attempts to capture it, the Pokemon fled, and they were devastated.
JohnathanDelcid asked other fans on Twitter why they missed out on capturing the shiny legendary, to which many responded that Pokemon Go’s speed cap caused it to flee. The speed cap is designed to discourage players from using Pokemon Go while driving, but JohnathanDelcid has made it clear they were a passenger and couldn’t ask the driver to pull over. Still, the system worked as intended, and really it’s lucky JohnathanDelcid was even able to trigger the encounter at all.
While it’s easy to discount this as a casualty of the speed cap, other Pokemon Go players have responded with their own shinies that have been caught while in a moving vehicle. One claims they caught a Kyurem in a car going 85 MPH. While this could be a bluff, there’s no denying that Pokemon Go isn’t the most stable game, and there are flaws in many of its systems, including the speed cap. However, those that have captured Pokemon while in moving vehicles are the ones experiencing the bugs in the system, not users like JohnathanDelcid who miss out because it did what it was designed to.
There’s no perfect system that Niantic could put in place to allow players to catch Pokemon in a moving vehicle. This is, unfortunately, an example of one of the cases where being able to tell the game a user is a passenger would be incredibly useful but impossible to implement. JohnathanDelcid will need to wait for the next rare encounter with a shiny legendary to add to their collection and ensure they get out of the moving vehicle, if they’re in one, as quickly as possible.
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