by Alex Prestia
This is Part 2 of my Pokémon Guide. This part is about the fastest ways to train Battle-ready Lvl 100 Pokémon in Pokémon Sword and Shield. Part 1 of the guide is about the mechanics under the hood in Pokémon games and can be found here.
From reading part 1 of this guide, you have a full idea of how the mechanics behind Pokémon’s stats work. You know the difference between EV and Eevee, and you’ve which natures are beneficial for a Charizard.
What that part of the guide didn’t explain, however, is how to actually get your Charizard to have the right nature. Or how to correctly EV train it without hunting and killing 126 Chanseys just to raise its HP stat.
This part of the guide is all about how to train Pokémon in Pokémon Sword and Shield for the Nintendo Switch. Basically, I’m going to show you how to make a Pokémon Factory that can churn out competitive Pokémon at maximum efficiency.
First, I’ve got good news for you- training perfect Pokémon has never, ever been easier than in Pokémon Sword and Shield.
Seriously, things that used to take hours (like breeding for IVs or grinding for EVs), now take minutes. Leveling your Pokémon to level 100 is now as easy as feeding them a bunch of Rare Candies.
Even things that used to be unchangeable in a Pokémon, like their abilities or natures, can be changed with items in this new generation of games. There’s never been a better time to start your own Pokémon factory, especially after the Crown Tundra Expansion release.
But I do have to warn you, even with all these changes, making good Pokémon is still a grind. Just catching the right Pokémon for your team can take hours. Then, after catching it, making sure it has perfect everything (IVs, EVs, Nature, held item, Ability, etc.) takes resources.
Making a Pokémon factory requires a lot of time grinding. Luckily, grinding in these games is pretty fun.
In the next sections I’ll explain how to make sure your Pokémon get their maximum stat totals in their best stats, how to find Pokémon with hidden abilities, how to raise Pokémon quickly to level 100, and all the other little things that will make your Pokémon a tier above your friends’.
Grinding:
The primary way of grinding is running between Max Raid Dens and fighting the Pokémon within them. Each den will give you 2000 watts, a chance at catching a decent new Pokémon, and a bunch of rewards like EXP Candy or Bottle Caps for defeating it.
You’ll make a path through the Wild Area, stop at each Max Raid Den, defeat the Pokémon within it, rinse, and repeat. That’s the base grind of this game.
I highly recommend (and will do so quite a few times in this article) that you buy the DLC and do this grind on the Isle of Armor or Crown Tundra instead of the base game’s Wild Area.
When it comes to doing the grinding, I highly recommend making a path that weaves around the area you’re using while knocking off dens one-by-one. When you have beaten the Pokémon at every well in an area, they will automatically refresh all of the dens within that area.
Use the party you beat Leon in the main game with, or use whatever Legendaries you might have until you’ve trained your own level 100s. Once you’ve gotten a few ‘well-trained Lvl 100 Pokémon, then you can kick into high gear and start using them to do the Max Raids.
Take the time to switch between Pokémon before rushing into a den. Picking the right Pokémon is always worth your time. And typically Dynamaxing on your first turn is too. Don’t be discouraged by the derpy AI teammates. After a few tries any raid is winnable.
Grind until you have about 250,000 Watts. It’s just a random benchmark I picked, but at this number you should be able to afford all of the things you’ll need to make a team of 6 perfectly trained Pokémon.
Put on a podcast, or a TV show while you do it. Turn off Battle Animations if you really want to speed things up. Just grind baby, grind.
Catching your team:
Now that you’ve grinded enough it’s time to catch your team.
If you don’t have it already, consider using Wishing Pieces on Max Raid Dens to catch really good, training ready, Pokémon.
To look up which max raid dens contain your favorite Pokémon use this: https://www.serebii.net/swordshield/maxraidbattles.shtml
Simply search for your favorite, open tabs for each of its dens, and pick which den has the best odds or most interesting set of Pokémon.
I’ve got to caution you here. Finding Pokémon in purple (rare) dens can take a really long time. If it only shows up 5% of the time in a purple 5 star raid, don’t pick that Pokémon for your first team. Seriously, you’d have to grind for hours and hours and still rely on a lucky roll.
The Pokémon you caught while grinding earlier? Check if they had really good stats, IVs, or even rare Hidden Abilities. You can even rate them based on how much it will cost to perfectly train them.
In general, from least resource intensive to most resource intensive, here’s a ranking of the different factors that go into an optimally trained Pokémon-
Dynamax Level< Level 100 < EV Training < IV Training < Natures < Hidden Abilities < Held Items
More than just coincidentally, that is also the order in which I’ll be covering them in this guide.
After we get through all those, I’ll also give a quick rundown on what Egg Moves are and how to get them.
Dynamax Level:
Giving your Pokémon 10 Dynamax Candies in order to raise its Dynamax Level is the easiest part of optimizing a Pokémon.
In fact it’s so obvious and easy to do, that I’ve forgotten to do it multiple times.
Dynamax Candies raise a Pokémon’s Dynamax level from level 1-10. At level 10 a Pokémon will have double HP whenever it Dynamaxes.
There’s no choice to make here. Even if you’re confident that in absolutely no scenario the Wobbuffet you’re training will need to Dynamax during a battle, you’re better off raising its Dynamax Level to 10 anyways.
There’s no trade off, there’s no downside, just give your ‘Mons the candies.
It’s cheap as hell too.
Dynamax candies will flood your inventory with even minimal grinding. You’ll be hard pressed to run out of them.
Even so, every once and I while I realize that I forgot to give them to some of my well trained Pokémon and feel like a bum.
Don’t be like me, remember to feed these to your ‘Mons.
Level 100:
Getting Pokémon to Level 100 is easy, too. Give them Exp. candies. Make it rain Exp. Candies.
For competitive formats a Pokémon’s level is automatically lowered to 50 before the battle, and then reverted afterwards. But when using your Pokémon for Max Raids, accessing IV Hyper Training, and for general “I have ten level 100 Pokémon” bragging rights, you’re better off raising them all the way to Lvl 100 rather than just 50.
Don’t try raising your Gardevoir’s level through old-school malarkey like battling other Pokémon. It’s slow and boring. Just use the candies. They are, by leaps and bounds, the fastest way to level your Pokémon up in Sword & Shield.
Exp. Candies are rewards for beating Max Raid Battles. You know, that thing you’ve already been doing. From the grinding section. That’s why you were grinding. These dumb candies.
They’re one of the main resources being gathered by the grind, and they have different levels of efficacy.
XL’s and L’s are amazing- we’re talking level 1-100 for almost any Pokémon after only 34 XL Exp. Candies.
Just feed your Pokémon 34 of these bad boys, and POW! Level 100. I told you it’s never been easier to get perfect Pokémon, right?
Some raids will net you 2 or 3 XL candies along with multiple L and M candies.
Rare Candies are great too. They automatically give 1 level. However, there is a slightly more useful thing to do with these. So I recommend using the other candies primarily, while saving Rare Candies for later.
EV Training:
Now to quickly train EV’s we aren’t going to waste time hunting down wild Chanseys in the overworld. That’s slow, and lame, and should disgust your patrician sensibilities. Instead, we’re going to spend hella Pokémon money and skip the whole process.
You’ve probably noticed items like Protein (Attack), Carbos (Speed), and Iron (Defense). These give your Pokémon 10 EVs into a stat each time you feed them one.
Basically, instead of slowly grinding against wild Pokémon, you can give your perfect lil’ boyz 26 Protein, 26 Carbos, and 1 HP UP, and then call it a day. That Haxorus is now set up to be a very competent glass cannon.
Now in order to afford Vitamins you need Pokebucks, but that ain’t a problem. You’ve already done the grinding, now time to cash in.
That’s because money in Sword and Shield is one of the easiest things to get. This economy is more broken than (insert relevant political joke from latest Chapo Trap House or Ben Shapiro Podcast, based on your personal leanings, up to you).
Making that money is all about balls. You see, there are these random dudes selling TR’s and special Pokeballs in the base game’s Wild Area.
On almost every day (maybe 1/10 days he won’t show) one of these dudes will be selling Luxury balls for 100 Watts apiece. Immediately buy 999 of these for 99,900 Watts.
Now head into town, any town, sell those Luxury balls for $1,400,000 monies (gil? Idk, I know the lore of these games pretty well, and I still don’t remember what the money is called in Pokémon world. Hold on, I looked it up: Pokedollars. Fuck, that’s a really lame name. Let’s agree to keep using the term monies. It makes me chuckle).
Anyways, that’s 100 Watts for 1,500 monies.
Now you can buy the 53 Vitamins a Pokémon will need in order to be perfectly trained at either the Wyndon Pokemart in the basegame for 10,000 Monies per vitamin –or- upgrade the Dojo in the Isle of Armor expansion to buy them for 5000 Monies per Vitamin (obviously you’re gonna want to do the latter).
At the better price, it will only cost 265,000 Monies for a perfect EV spread on a single Pokémon. That’s like nothing, a pittance.
Converted to Watts, that’s a bit less than 18,000 Watts per Pokémon. That’s 9 Max Raid battles.
Go ahead and think about how cheap that is. Imagine if you EV trained the old way. How long would it take to battle 226 Pokémon at 2 EVs a Pokémon? I told you, this game makes everything easy.
If you run out of money, just grind Max Raid battles for more Watts then turn them into Luxury balls.
IV Training:
That brings us to the hows of obtaining a Pokémon with perfect IVs.
Go ahead and check some of your Pokémon’s IVs using the Judge function. I’ll wait. Notice anything about the Pokémon you caught in the wild during your Elite 4 play-through? Yeah, they have awful IVs. Most of them probably had one or two Bests (the only acceptable one).
Now go and check a Pokémon you caught from a 5 Star raid. A bit different this time. That Pokémon was guaranteed to have 4 perfect IV’s. Pretty close to being a perfect specimen and all you had to do was catch it.
That’s why, typically Max Raid Pokémon are better starting points for your competitive teams.
That’s why, since Max Raids were just introduced this generation, this is one of the easiest Pokémon games to make competitive teams in, ever.
So starting with a good base, here’s how to get Pokémon 6 perfect IVs.
-Breeding
Pokémon can be bred, using a destiny knot, to pass on many of their IV’s to their offspring. Using a Pokémon with 6 or 5 perfect IV’s to breed another Pokémon with near perfect IV’s is a good way to make sure the IV’s are right.
Ditto’s can also pass their IV’s. This is part of the reason that 5 or 6 IV Dittos are such a boon to have. You can take any random Pokémon, breed it with a Ditto and have stronger offspring of the non-Ditto species.
-Bottle Caps
These were introduced in Generation 7 and are a lifesaver. Instead of breeding a Pokémon to have perfect IVs, you can raise any Pokémon to level 100, bring it to the Battle Tower in Wyndon, and then Hyper Train each of its stats using Bottle Caps.
Standard Bottle Caps raise one stat’s IV’s to a perfect score. Gold Bottle Caps can raise all of the Pokémon’s IVs to perfect.
Obtaining Bottle Caps is the catch. In the base game (no DLC) the best way is to spend Watts at the Digging Duo (always the left one, always to the max) and keep tapping A while you watch a TV show or something for an hour. By the end of that hour you’ll probably have 10ish bottle caps.
Basically the Digging Duo Way sucks and I had to use it for a few months. I would put on a movie, detach a Joy Con, and mindlessly press A while I watched Putney Swope.
The new way is one of the most ridiculously complicated but oddly cool systems I’ve ever messed with in a video game. Let me introduce you to the Cram-o-matic.
The Cram-o-matic takes 4 items that you choose, applies a numerical value and a type value to them, then uses those values to determine which item it will transform those 4 items you gave it into.
You can use the Cram-o-matic to make bottle caps. You can use 3 bottle caps and a piece of garbage to make a Gold Bottle Cap.
The Cram-o-matic is your best friend now. Part of me wants to add an extra 1500 words to this guide by explaining exactly how the Cram-o-matic works.
But Serebii.com did a way better job and I’m just going to put the link here: https://www.serebii.net/swordshield/cram-o-matic.shtml
Basically, now that you know you’re trying to make Bottle Caps, use that chart to see what items you should use to convert.
This is by far the best way to get Bottle Caps, and by extension, the fastest way to perfect your Gengar’s IVs.
Natures:
Setting natures is one of the more costly and time-consuming parts of creating good Pokémon. Luckily, this generation made it easier than ever by introducing Mints. Mints change which stats are boosted and lowered by a Pokémon’s nature.
The best way to get mints, however, is spending BP or Battle Points, which can only be gained through the Battle Tower or Restricted Sparring.
You can also give an Everstone to a Pokémon with the nature you want and breed it with a female of the species you want to get an offspring with the perfect nature and species.
Keep in mind when doing this, a Pokémon will always be the same species as the mother Pokémon. Mother Pokémon can breed with any Male Pokémon of their egg group (listed on both Serebii and Bulbapedia). So if you have a male Wailmer (Field egg group) with a Timid nature (+Speed, –Attack), you could breed it with a female Eevee in order to get an Eevee that is also Timid natured.
Yes, I just recommended you force a whale monster to breed with a cat monster. You’re welcome, Internet.
Ditto’s can be almost too good in this sense. I have an adamant Ditto, any species I want to be adamant, I just breed it with my Everstoned Ditto.
Again, natures make a huge difference in a Pokémon’s final stats. Play around with different options on different Pokémon based on what they need.
Abilities:
Hidden Abilities were one of those things that could only be obtained from Pokémon in Max Raid Battles or bred down from Pokémon caught in previous generations.
That was up until the Crown Tundra Expansion. Now you can spend 200 Dynite Ore to purchase an Ability Patch. This will change a Pokémon’s regular ability to a Hidden Ability.
Be mindful, 200 Dynite Ore is pretty expensive. You’re looking at about an hour or two of grinding Max Raid Battles in the Crown Tundra or doing the Max Raid Lairs, in order to afford just one Ability Patch.
Keep this in mind when you’re planning your team.
Held Item:
You can buy most good battle items from the Battle Tower for BP. Remember that you can only have one type of each item on any team. Berries are super useful. Choice band, specs, and scarf are great for certain formats and Pokémon. There are plenty of other useful items that can give your team the edge.
Be careful, a lot of these are expensive. The White herb costs 15 BP and disappears if it is used outside of a Wi-Fi battle, Battle Tower, or Restricted Sparring even once. So make sure to take off held items from Pokémon you’re going to use during Max Raids.
Grinding BP is a rich get richer, poor stay poor situation. In order to buy an item that costs BP, you need a team that can beat the Battle Tower or Restricted Sparring. In order to beat the Battle Tower or Restricted Sparring, it really helps to have Pokémon that use purchased Held Items.
Restricted Sparring gives way more BP than the Battle Tower, so I’d recommend grinding that. Also, you can certainly design a team that doesn’t overly rely on Held Items at first.
Egg Moves:
So you want a Vaporeon with the move Wish, huh? You saw that opportunity for healing itself or its teammates and now you’re obsessed with the idea.
Well you can get the Vaporeon to learn Wish, but it’s never as simple as it seems. See, Wish is an egg Move of the Eevee evolutionary line. So in order to learn it, they need to have inherited it from their parents.
Many Pokémon have egg moves, some of them even have useful egg moves that you may actually want to use.
In generation 8, egg Moves are easier to get than ever.
Breed the male of the species that learns a move through leveling up with a female of the species you want the move on. The Pokémon that hatches from your forced breeding will have the egg move it’s fathers line traditionally has.
Now, the generational change: this new Pokémon can pass this egg move to other Pokémon in its own species without breeding.
Say the Pokémon you just bred was an Eevee with wish, but it’s IV’s, ability, and nature were all wrong. But you also have an Eevee with all its stats right, but no Egg Move. No problem.
Just clear one space in the Eevee with the good stats’ move pool and put them in the daycare together for a few steps. Don’t even take the egg if they make one. Just pull your perfectly statted Eevee out of the daycare and it will have the Egg Move.
Egg Moves are way easier in this generation, and remember that when designing Pokémon.
Also, just because a Pokémon has access to some Egg Moves doesn’t mean those are the optimal moves for it to use. Typically they’re just nice options.
Dynamax Vs. Gigantamax:
Prior to the DLC Gigantamax was a big deal. If you wanted a Giga Pokémon you had to grind a lot of Max Raid Dens to get it.
Now though, the Max Mushrooms in the Isle of Armor expansion make it so that you can easily switch a Pokémon from Dynamax to Gigantamax.
Remember, it’s not always optimal to run a Gigantamax version over a Dynamax version of a Pokémon.
Machamp is a prime example, his Gigantamax special move raises Critical Hit ratio for both Pokémon on the field, but his Dynamax move raises both Pokémon’s attack stats. The attack buff is obviously the more consistent and usually better choice.
Personally I have two Macahmps, one Dyna, one Giga. The Giga team is a gimmicky mess that abuses the Sniper ability on Drapion and relies on Crit boosts and a little luck. The Dynamax Machamp plays it pretty straight, and often doesn’t even Dynamax.
What I’m saying is: you got options here and it’s easy to switch between them.
Moving onto the Meta:
Congrats, it’s your first level 100 team. You really nailed it, champ. I know what you’re probably thinking: “I’m going to be king of the world. I’m taking this online and I’m getting every single win. Then I’m going to start a YouTube channel about how good I am at Pokémon.”
Chill out.
Here are two more resources for you before you get into true competitive Pokémon:
Smogon University: https://www.smogon.com/
Pokémon Showdown: https://play.pokemonshowdown.com/
Technically they’re both run by the same fella. Smogon has a strategy Pokedex that lists well-known sets for every Pokémon. Use it to learn which Pokémon are in which competitive tiers, and what sort of builds they are running.
Pokémon Showdown is an online, HTML based battle emulator. You can use it as a team builder then test those teams against real people.
You can also play games with random teams to learn how certain moves function. There’s a ladder function that keeps track of your wins and losses. Best of all: it’s totally free.
These are the places to go to learn about the competitive scene.
Older games in this series were more rigid. If a Pokémon’s IVs sucked, you needed to breed it better.
If it’s nature was wrong: you better breed it right.
Missing a good Egg Move? Back to breeding.
Accidently gave it the wrong EV’s? Better breed another.
Sword and Shield are by far the easiest Pokémon games ever to make competitively viable Pokémon in.
All those things I mentioned above, you can fix them now. At any point. On any Pokémon.
Now nothing’s holding you back from being the Pokémon Trainer your six-year-old self always dreamed of being.
- Be sure to check out Alex's other fantastic Switch guides for Mario Kart ,Super Smash Bros. Ultimate , Super Mario Party and of course part 1 of the Ultimate Pokémon Guide.
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