How to catch Pokemon Scarlet and Violet’s only Chesnaught

Pokemon Scarlet And Violet Continue their seven-star Tera raids with Chesnaught, and like most event raids, you’ll need a strong Pokemon and good strategy to catch the Kalos region’s grass starter. Currently, Chesnaught isn’t available in the Switch games, but that could change over time DLC and a Pokémon home To update. The limited-time event will take place twice before hitting the vault, but there’s still time to do some prep work before the big day. Let’s go through the who, what, when and where of Scarlet fever And Violet‘s Chesnaught event.

When is the Chesnaught Tera Raid?

The Chesnaught Raid will be available twice. The first time is this weekend, from 8:00 p.m. ET on May 12th to 7:59 p.m.

What to expect during the Chesnaught fight

As with all seven-star raids, Chesnaught is level 100, and any Pokemon you bring to battle should also be maxed out to match its power. Its base type is Grass and Fighting, but during the raid it will have a Rock Tera type. This means that it fights mostly with grass and fighting moves, but has the strengths and weaknesses of a Rock-type Pokémon and will likely have at least one Rock-type attack to deal with. The trick in battle is to bring a Pokemon that can both resist Chesnaught’s base typing and weaken his Tera-type.

For example, you could bring a water-type Pokémon Greninja to weaken his Rock Tera type, but it would be particularly weak against Chesnaught’s grass and fighting moves. Because of this, you need to change the way you fight a Terastallized Pokemon, since the way you fight them will fundamentally change as their type changes.

We don’t know Chesnaught’s full moveset yet, but based on its possible attacks and stats, we can assume that it will be a physical attacker and will have a much higher physical defense than a special defense. So it’s best to look for Pokemon and attacks that can weaken Rock-type Pokemon with special moves. Rock can be a fragile typing at times, and has a handful of weaknesses, often physical, such as combat and ground attacks. However, given Chesnaught’s affinity for physical defense, it’s best to bring a Pokemon that excels at Specialty-based moves.

Rock-types are weak to Fighting, Grass, Ground, Steel, and Water, and Chesnaught’s moveset will likely make up a large part of that. Grass attacks weaken ground and water monsters, while its combat moves handle steel. Looking at Chesnaught’s potential weaknesses and moves, it looks like Grass-types are actually one of the safer ways to play, since they can resist most of Chesnaught’s moves and weaken the Rock-Tera type. So let’s go through some options.

Grassy Terrain is your friend

If you and your friends want to lead a grass-centric team, you can’t go wrong by setting the stage with Grassy Terrain right from the start. This increases the power of grass moves during combat, meaning Chesnaught’s moves are more powerful. But if your entire team is resistant to grass movement, they shouldn’t take too much damage. Chesnaught, on the other hand, is still weak to these attacks and takes extra damage for every Leafstorm or Sunbeam you throw at it.

There are a handful of Pokémon that learn Grassland, but some that are best at countering Chesnaught have good defense and a strong special attack. Appletun is a good choice as its grass/dragon typing makes it extra resistant to grass moves and bulky with strong special attacks. The Apple Pie Dragon also has some good support moves, such as: B. Reflect, which reduces the power of Chesnaught’s physical attacks. Teaching it to recover also gives it some survivability, so it’s pretty good to use in the support role. Its signature move, Malic Acid, allows you to exploit the grass’s weakness and weaken Chesnaught’s special defense, which will be beneficial for your entire team.

Gogoat has become a fan favorite of the raid prior to its release, largely due to its Grass Pelt hidden ability, which increases its physical defense by 50% on top of its already high base HP when Grassy Terrain is active. Use EV and IV training, you can make Gogoat a pretty solid tank for Chesnaught’s grass attacks while still having some decent grass attacks to hit back harder. Leaf Storm is powerful but reduces the user’s Special Attack. Using special attack-boosting moves like Growth will help you offset these debuffs.

If you want some unorthodox tips, a few previous raid bosses might get by with Chesnaught. Decidueye, which is not only resistant to the boss’s grass moves but also immune to his combat attacks due to its grass/ghost typing, is a solid option. However, if you missed it the first raid already in MarchDecidueye is currently not available in Scarlet fever And Violet. But if you have the Archer Owl, it’s a good counter for both bolstering your team’s grass attacks with Grassy Terrain and for striking out on its own. Keep in mind that it mainly works with physical attacks, although it still has some good special options like Leaf Storm. There are some better offensive Pokémon out there, but Decidueye’s typing makes it a good defensive option. Iron Leaves is also naturally strong against Chesnaught’s typing and has grass moves/terrain abilities, but doesn’t have the same immunity as Decidueye. If this sounds tempting to you, The raid to capture Iron Leaves is underway as of the writing of this article, but will be over by May 14th, before the second Chesnaught raid begins. So if you’re looking for someone who can both deal damage and tank through Chesnaught’s moves, those are a few options.

All of these choices have their merits, but Lurantis will likely dominate the raid when he launches due to his Contrary hidden ability. This ability reverses stat changes, meaning attacks that would normally decrease a stat increase it instead. Leaf Storm is a powerful special attack that ticks all the boxes we need to defeat Chesnaught, but its downside of reducing the special attack with each use is a major downside. However, Contrary allows Lurantis to grow stronger with each use, meaning he hits harder and harder as the game progresses. With any other Pokemon, using this powerful move requires some maintenance of stat boost in order for them to hit hard, but Lurantis is lucky because it inherently becomes more powerful where others would falter. Add in Grassy Terrain and Lurantis is one of the strongest counters against Chesnaught. Give it good support with something like Appletun and Use your cheerand a well-built Lurantis will be the star of your team.

Be prepared for Bulletproof

Note that Chesnaught will likely have his signature ability, Bulletproof, rather than his default Overgrow ability. This passive ability protects the boss from “ball and bomb” moves, which refers to a handful of attacks that often include either of the two terms in their name (shadow ball, egg bomb, etc.). Unfortunately, Aura Sphere and Focus Blast, both of which would have been good choices for this raid as special moves that weaken Rock-types, also fall into the Ball and Bomb category, although those words aren’t in the name. So don’t build around these moves.

As a reminder, you can only catch one Chesnaught

As is the case with any seven star raid Scarlet fever And Violet, you can only catch one Chesnaught per save file. The Pokemon is also shiny locked. So if you want a slightly different colored version of this, you’ll need to capture this one and breed it with a Ditto until you hatch a Shiny Chespin. So don’t reset the raid multiple times hoping to face a Shiny.