Max Raid Battles have quickly become the most important and complex new challenge in Pokémon Sword & Shield. These Dynamaxed opponents can be extremely intimidating, but highly rewarding in terms of items and powerful Pokémon. This battle is unlike any other in Pokémon history, and can be difficult both alone and with friends.
While being good at regular Pokémon battles can help, there are tons of weird quirks to Max Raid Battles that the game doesn’t tell you. As a result, these can be extremely difficult if you don’t know what to do. Here are some tips for Max Raid Battles that’ll help make them less of a pain.
10 Bring High Level Pokémon
While the levels of your opponent doesn’t show up, this isn’t because it isn’t relevant or prominent in these battles. Because of the lack of levels, it’s easy to assume that you and your opponent are balanced to a specific level here, just like in the Battle Tower or Ranked Battles online.
This is not the case, though, as your opponent will have stats equivalent to their level. As a result, you’re going to get an obscene advantage by taking a high-level Pokémon with you, which will be able to keep up with the strength of your opponent. Having a Pokémon with maxed out levels and stats will give you a massive edge.
9 If You Have Legendaries, Use Them
While it’s important to be cautious of your opponent’s type-disadvantages, but sometimes raw power is all you need in the majority of Max Raid Battles. Unlike a regular wild Pokémon, you’re trying hard in these fights to reduce their HP to zero, so you need Pokémon that you can be certain won’t be weak.
There are few Pokémon in the game that rivals the Legendary Pokémon you can get in Pokémon Sword & Shield, particularly the Eternatus you obtain as part of the game’s main story. Because of their high natural stats, they can easily do well in most Max Raid Battles without too much extra training and are great for anyone without competitively trained Pokémon.
8 Don't Damage Your Teammates
While they differ greatly from Double and Triple Battles, Max Raid Battles do have Multi Battle rules in place. This means you can do a few things to benefit your teammates like stat increasing moves, but there’s also a significant risk in that you can damage your opponents with wide-damage moves.
Attacks like Surf and Earthquake can be extremely detrimental to your team unless you can coordinate your allies to be resistant. Since you only have one opponent, these moves often won’t be as strong as single-target moves anyway, so make sure you stick to moves that only hit your foe.
7 Beware of Weather Effects
The amount of damage that can be done from a Sandstorm or Hailstorm can be greatly underestimated and is worth being prepared for. These can be activated by your opponents’ generic Rock or Ice-type D-Max moves, but also by your own. Make sure you don’t do something that unintentionally chips away at your teammates’ health.
Make sure to be careful about what weather effects you’ll face, and bring some moves to change it if you think it’ll be a threat to you or your teammates. Trying to have a Fire or Water-type D-Max move, or using a Sunny Day or Rain Dance TM, are a definite must.
6 Be Aggressive
The biggest failings you’ll see in unsuccessful Max Raid Battles are when your teammates fail to use damaging moves when you just need to knock down one of your opponent’s several barriers. Since any damaging move will normally take down one, don’t worry so much about stat-increasing moves or defensive strategies and just go all-in on damage.
While there are some exceptions, such as February’s special Mewtwo event, having a Pokémon that’s specifically built to deal damage is ideal in most Max Raid Battles. For unique challenges, it can be good to have a Pokémon that can use wall moves like Reflect and Light Screen but otherwise stick to damage as much as you can.
5 Dynamax Immediately
In the name of ruthless aggression, using Dynamax right at the beginning of a Max Raid Battle is recommended in most situations. Dynamax Pokémon attacks will destroy two barriers instead of just one, and gives you access to several stronger D-Max attacks that can raise your teammate’s stats.
If you’re playing alone with NPC partners, they also will be unable to Dynamax, so you should take as much advantage of it as you can. If you don’t use it in the first turn, you’ll often not be able to use it for a few turns later, so just use it while you can.
4 Use Items
You have many restrictions in Max Raid Battles, such as not being able to run away or swap your Pokémon, which you might not assume at first since they still appear in your battle menu. With those other lacking features, and the similarities to online battles, you might think your items aren’t accessible, they are and are a great tool to have in mind.
While aggression is important, your ability to use items is one that’s worth considering, particularly with healing items. If you have a more defensive Pokémon, being able to keep it alive when it’s low on health can give you some much-needed longevity.
3 Paralyze Your Foe
Your opponent in a Max Raid Battle has a few unique resistances that you won’t likely know until you’ve tried yourself. One of these is that a few status conditions are much less effective, such as Sleep and Burn, since the time and damage are greatly lessened by its greater health and multiple opportunities to spontaneously recover.
Because of this, Paralysis is one status condition that’ll be extra effective in most situations, since it’ll cut your opponent’s speed in half and provide a chance of it missing any number of its multiple attacks each turn. Just make sure not to use status moves while your opponent’s barrier is up.
2 Don't Bother With Multiple-Hit Moves
Since each damaging attack takes out one barrier from your opponent, you might think there are some ways to exploit this with attacks like Icicle Spear and Rock Blast that hit multiple times. These moves hit between two and five times, so you might think that they can be a way to take down multiple barriers at once.
Unfortunately, Pokémon Sword & Shield are prepared for your shenanigans, and these moves will still only destroy one barrier instead of several. There’s no easy exploit to these battles, and you just have to be prepared to mostly play by the rules you’re given.
1 Play Online
While this might be frustrating for those with a poor internet connection at home, online play with at least one other human trainer is the easiest way to make Max Raid Battles into a cakewalk. Your NPC players are quite low levels and can be extremely ineffective, often using worthless stat moves or using rarely effective moves like Counter.
With a friend, these can be especially easy since you get to coordinate your attacks and Dynamax. But even with strangers, so long as they’re aggressive and have a high-level Pokémon, they’re guaranteed to be miles better than your partners in singleplayer.