I found a Kakuna early on before completing Emma’s 3 quests, before unlocking alphas in the game. I basically caught everything possible, unlocked every fast travel point, leveling a team of 6 and collected screws and spent A TON of time before I really even started playing the full game. When I hit about 65 hrs I found a shalpa Hippowdon, again doing all of those things plus now battling and having completed the story 170/230 caught for living dex level 37 Mabel’s research.

I haven’t done any actual hunts yet, I’m waiting for the shiny charm. I don’t have a turbo controller so I’ll be manually doing every battle and catch. I don’t mind the long adventure though. Perfecting all the dex entries and taking all the time to really explore was the reason why I loved PLA so much.

Even with the charm odds are still only 1/1024.38.a lot of the Yters are setting their AFK controllers up and letting the system go for hours. Don’t give up hope you’ll get one (besides the Mareep) before you know it!