Shiny Pearls are one of the most-needed resources in Pokémon Pokopia's Bubbly Basin expansion, and the game does a poor job of telling you how to actually get them. You won't find them sitting on the ocean floor. Getting them requires a specific Pokémon ability, and if you don't know which one, you'll be sitting on a pile of useless Grubby Pearls wondering what went wrong.
What are Shiny Pearls and why do you need them?
Shiny Pearls are a refined material used in a wide range of crafting recipes and Pokémon requests throughout Bubbly Basin. As you rebuild Cerulean City, demand for Shiny Pearls ramps up fast, and running dry on them will stall your progress significantly.
The raw form, Grubby Pearls, are plentiful in Bubbly Basin and easy to collect. The problem is they have zero direct use on their own. Every Grubby Pearl needs to be converted into a Shiny Pearl before it becomes useful, and that conversion process is the part most players miss.
Grubby Pearls before conversion
How do you get Shiny Pearls in Pokémon Pokopia?
Shiny Pearls cannot be found directly in the overworld. The only way to produce them is by assigning a Pokémon with the Scrub specialty to process your Grubby Pearls. Without a Scrub Pokémon in your setup, those Grubby Pearls will sit in your inventory forever.
The first time most players encounter this mechanic is through a request from Mareanie, who asks for a Shiny Pearl. That request effectively serves as the game's tutorial for the system, pointing you toward Cloyster as the most accessible Scrub Pokémon at that stage.
How to get Cloyster for the Scrub specialty
Cloyster is the easiest entry point for the Scrub specialty in Bubbly Basin. It spawns from the Swaying Flower Bed & Seaweed Habitat, which you can build yourself once you know the recipe.
The habitat requires:
- 4x Seabad Flowers
- 1x Chimney Rock
- 2x Lush Seaweed
Once the habitat is placed and Cloyster spawns, you can assign it to process Grubby Pearls into Shiny Pearls. The habitat requirements are revealed as part of Mareanie's request, so following that quest line is the most natural path to unlocking this conversion chain.
Cloyster habitat build requirements
All Pokémon with the Scrub specialty
Cloyster isn't the only option. Two other Pokémon also carry the Scrub specialty, and running multiple Scrub Pokémon simultaneously is the fastest way to process a large Grubby Pearl backlog.
Splitting a large stack of Grubby Pearls across Cloyster, Shellder, and Sharpedo at the same time cuts down the wait considerably compared to routing everything through a single Pokémon.
Tips for keeping your Shiny Pearl supply healthy
The crafting demand for Shiny Pearls in Bubbly Basin is consistent enough that running out is a genuine problem if you're not proactive. A few habits that help:
- Keep track of where your Scrub Pokémon are located at all times so you can assign them quickly when a batch of Grubby Pearls comes in.
- Build multiple Scrub-compatible habitats if you want a faster pipeline. Having Shellder and Sharpedo alongside Cloyster means you're never bottlenecked by a single Pokémon.
- Prioritize Grubby Pearl collection during your regular Bubbly Basin sessions so your Scrub Pokémon always have material to work with.
Assigning Cloyster to Scrub tasks
What else should you know about Bubbly Basin?
Shiny Pearls are just one piece of the Bubbly Basin resource puzzle. The underwater area introduced with the Expansion Pass brings a lot of new systems, habitats, and Pokémon that interact in ways that aren't always obvious. If you're still getting started with the DLC, the guide on how to unlock Bubbly Basin covers the prerequisites and how to find the underwater gate. For a full breakdown of every new Pokémon added and their specialties, the Bubbly Basin new Pokémon and specialties guide is worth bookmarking so you can plan your island layout from the start.
For everything else the expansion has to offer, the full Pokémon Pokopia guide collection has you covered as more content rolls out.