Where to find the Shining Pom in West Crossbell Highway

Need to find the elusive Shining Pom in The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero? This guide shows you exactly where to look on the West Crossbell Highway and how to increase your spawn chances.

Shining Poms are basically the Metal Slimes of the Trails series – super rare, tough to beat, and quick to run away. You'll need to find them if you want to snag the [The Usual Suspects] achievement. Unlike regular rare monsters, Shining Poms pop up on their own, but their spawn rate is painfully low. Just running back and forth between areas won't cut it; you usually need to return to a safe zone like Crossbell City to properly reset their spawn chance. The more screens you have to traverse between the spawn point and the reset zone, the more of a hassle it becomes.

When you finally spot one, make sure to save your game! Shining Poms can sometimes appear with a whole group of other monsters. They're also notoriously hard to ambush and will likely try to flee the moment battle starts. It would be a real bummer to go through all that trouble only for it to bolt.

How to Find the Shining Pom on the West Crossbell Highway

This particular Shining Pom is one of the easier ones to hunt down. You'll find it on the fifth screen of the West Crossbell Highway. Look for the area between a bridge (near the exit to the fourth screen) and a ramp leading down to [Bellguard Gate]. The good news is you can easily farm this one by just zoning back and forth between Bellguard Gate and the fifth screen of the West Crossbell Highway. Press the [Map] button (usually ) every time you enter the West Crossbell Highway and check the center of the map. Normally, there are seven monsters here, but if you see an eighth, congratulations – the Shining Pom is up! (Make sure you have the Information Quartz equipped to see enemies on the map).

Warning: This Shining Pom is Level 16 and has surprisingly high DEF, making anything less than an S-Break pretty ineffective. It's a good idea to have your CP maxed out before you engage if you want to do more than just Analyze it. Its STR and ATS are both around 200 on normal difficulty, which is way higher than other monsters in the area. While Shining Poms aren't usually a major threat, this one can hit hard with its CP Slurp and Brilliant Shine attacks, which deal 300+ damage. Since Brilliant Shine is an AoE, a couple of these can be dangerous, especially if multiple Poms spawn at once.