Whenever you encounter a wild Pokémon in Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Brilliant Pearl there is a chance that it is a "Shiny" Pokémon, meaning Pokémon with an alternate color scheme. Glitter are popular with gamers, as many like to collect them. However, the chances of encountering one are astronomically small - it's a 1 / 4,096 chance, which means you have a 0,02% chance of encountering a Shiny Pokémon in any given wild encounter. These same odds also apply to your chances of getting a Brilliant Starter Pokémon or Brilliant Legendary Pokémon, both of which are only available in limited quantities throughout the game. Fortunately, since you can control when you acquire these Pokémon, you can use soft reset to retry these encounters until you've finally secured your precious Shiny / Legendary starter Pokémon.
Before performing the soft reset, save your game before the match starts. If you're looking for a Shiny starter Pokémon, you'll want to save right before you and your rival venture into the Lake of Truth. In the case of Legendaries, such as Dialga or Palkia, you will want to save while atop Spear Peak, immediately before taking on the Legendary Pokémon of your version. From there, the meeting begins.
If your starter / Legendary is not Shiny, soft reset by pressing the "Home" button on your Nintendo Switch controller, closing the game and restarting it. Once the save file is loaded, you will be back exactly to where you were before the match started. Simply repeat this until you acquire your desired Shiny Pokémon.
However, this method has its limitations. Soft reset does not work for Pokémon that are underground; whether these are Shiny or not is determined upon entering a room. Also, some Pokémon are locked with Shiny, which means they don't have Shiny versions. Finally, this is a time-consuming method, so be prepared to devote hours at a time to unlocking a Shiny version of just one of the game's 400+ Pokémon if possible.
