If you're a veteran of the Pokemon battling scene, you'll be intimately aware of Effort Values (often shorthanded to EVs) and their impact on a Pokemon's stats. Usually, you'd have to use a Pokemon in battle against specific foes to train up the stats that are important to them.
This system is no longer present in Pokemon Legends: Arceus, but is replaced with a more visible and more impactful system: Effort Levels. These make a significant difference to your Pokemon's stats and it's important to know how to raise them!
Effort Levels Overview
As you'll likely know, Pokemon have six stats: HP, Attack, Defense, Special Attack, Special Defense, and Speed. In Pokemon Legends: Arceus, each of these stats is assigned an Effort Level. This is a number from zero to ten that may signify how much effort a Pokemon has put into training that stat, or what it's good at. Either way, the bigger the number, the higher the stat.
When a Pokemon is spawned in the world, whether it's through an event or in the wild, each of its stats will be assigned a number from zero to three. This is random, though the number will never be above three.
To increase a Pokemon's Effort Level, you will need certain items. Each will raise an Effort Level by one, but they can only be used under certain conditions.
|
Item |
Effect |
|---|---|
|
Grit Dust |
This item will increase an Effort Level by one, but only up to level three. |
|
Grit Gravel |
This item will increase an Effort Level by one, but only for levels four through six. |
|
Grit Pebble |
This item will increase an Effort Level by one, but only for levels seven through nine. |
|
Grit Rock |
The item will increase an Effort Level by one, but only from nine to ten. |
As you can see from the table above, if you wished to raise a Pokemon's Effort Level from zero to ten, you'd need three Grit Dust, three Grit Gravel, three Grit Pebbles, and a Grit Rock.
While in the traditional games Pokemon had a limit on the amount of EVs they could get, in this game a Pokemon can reach level ten in every single stat. This will require a lot of Grit items, so consider leaving out stats that the Pokemon is not likely to use, such as Attack for a special attacker or Speed for a Pokemon that will never actually be very fast.
Effort Level Impact On Stats
Raising a Pokemon's Effort Levels will have a significant impact on your stats. To illustrate, take this Mantine. As you can see, its Special Defense Effort Level is zero, making its Special Defense stat 188. As Mantine is supposed to be a very good special wall, we want to increase that stat. We will first use three Grit Dust on it.
Now it's raised all the way to 207, an increase of 10.11 percent! That's with just three Grit Gravel, a very common item in this game if you know where to find it. Raising the Effort Level to ten, however...
Mantine's Special Defense is now a fantastic 306, higher than any of its other stats and an overall increase of 62.77 percent. This illustrates just how important it will be to collect Grit items and use them on your important Pokemon if you want to have a hope of beating the hardest battles in the game.
Where To Find Grit Items
You'll find plenty of Grit items on your journey merely by playing the game normally. There are two principle sources of Grit items:
- Defeating or capturing Alpha Pokemon in the wild. Every time you do so, there's a good chance they'll drop some Grit items.
- Releasing Pokemon from your Pastures. Especially once you unlock the ability to release multiple at a time, you'll be rewarded with a ton of items when you release the Pokemon you no longer need.
- You will unlock the ability to release multiple Pokemon at once when you have totally filled up three Pastures.
There is a way to convert your less valuable Grit items into the higher level Grit items. Talk to Zisu at the Training Grounds and tell her that you want to exchange items. She will let you trade ten of one grade of Grit item for one of the next grade up.
For example, she will take ten of your Grit Pebbles and hand you a single Grit Rock. This is a great way to ensure you have the rarer items to perfect your favorite Pokemon. Unfortunately, you cannot trade the other way around - you cannot get ten Grit Dust by giving Zisu a Grit Gravel, for example.
If you have a lot of one type of Grit item, Zisu will also ask you if you want to trade them all at once to save time!