In the early days of competitive Pokémon, you’d have to find fellow players near you to hone your skills and strategies before entering tournaments. This limited the barrier to entry in competitive Pokémon, making it seem much more daunting. Nowadays, in the current day and age of online multiplayer, it’s easier than ever to get into it, with Pokémon Scarlet and Violet‘s competitive multiplayer mode.

You can find the competitive mode in the Battle Stadium via the in-game menu. You will be matched against other players at a similar rank level to you, with your rank progressing up or down based on your performance. The most common choice of the game mode is the double battle mode, with the usual team of six Pokémon being brought in and four being brought in to battle with you. You and your opponent’s teams will be revealed to each other, but not the four that you end up choosing.

Note: Each ranked Series has different rules and ban lists, so make sure to keep track of them via official posts.

You can play with a rental team if your own Pokémon aren’t strong enough, with a lot of professional players and content creators having codes to use for their teams for rent. However, if you want full control over the team that you use and the Pokémon you own, then you would need to prepare your own team. While this may seem daunting at first, once the process is broken down, it is way easier than you think!

Catch The Pokémon You Need

The metagame for each series will feature specific moves, must-have Pokémon or powerful strategies to use in competitive play. While many guides list the most powerful ones, you can also make teams based on Pokémon or moves that you like. Generally, the focus of a good team should be creating synergy around a specific Pokémon or a specific strategy between your team that allows for different outcomes throughout the battle.

The basic outline of a good competitive Pokémon team surrounds the core of your team, which means the specific Pokémon that have Synergy together. Usually, a team has a “3-3 Core” or a “2-2-2 Core”, referring to the 2 or 3 pairs of Pokémon that synergize well with each other. Usually, you should try to mix in different kinds of Pokémon as well, to make sure that you have a well-balanced team against different matchups. A 3-3 core has 2 base cores, with each core having at least 3 Pokémon that synergize with each other. While they can synergize with the other 3 in your team, generally you want to focus on the main 3 in each pair, with maybe one synergizing with both teams to finish your 4th pick.

A 2-2-2 core, on the other hand, as the name implies, has three pairs within the core, usually making it both easier to build and easier to pilot as it’s more point-and-shoot. This makes it a very easy choice for offensive and fast builds, but sometimes it can lack complexity or long-term strategies. For a more detailed guide on team building, this guide by game8 is a great resource.

Grinding/Levelling Up

EXP grinding can be a very daunting process, but there are a couple of ways to streamline the process to make the grind way less painful. A required tool that will help is the use of the EXP Share, which gives all Pokémon in your team EXP even if they didn’t participate in the battle. This means while you grind with one Pokémon, your other Pokémon are also receiving EXP, making the process way more efficient. There are a few methods to gaining EXP to grind your acquired Pokémon to a good enough level for competitive ranked. Another tool that you should use is the Lucky Egg, which you can obtain by completing your sixth Gym Badge, gifted to you by Jacq. A Lucky Egg can be given to a Pokémon to boost the amount of EXP gained via battles, which makes the process of levelling, especially in the lower levels, much faster and way more efficient.

Tera Raid battles are one of the best ways to level up your Pokémon quickly, including by gaining some EXP Candy and Rare Candy along with the EXP you gain through the battles themselves. You can find Tera Raid Battles by looking on the Paldea map, indicated by the coloured stars showing elemental symbols on them, or you can search for one online via the Poke Portal. The way to get the most EXP and the best rewards is by aiming to complete higher star-rated battles, where you should aim for 6-star or 7-star battles.

However, you will need to complete the post-game story to take part in these high star-rated Tera Raids, so it is recommended to finish the full game experience before grinding this method to its maximum potential. Even without those high-star-rated Tera Raids, you can find rare and powerful Pokémon throughout these raids, with a specific schedule that can be found here. The EXP Candies/Rare Candies are the simplest way to level a Pokémon, but they are most recommended for the higher level Pokémon in your team, as they will require more time to level up normally at a later stage. The ideal way to grind would be to use the Tera Raids to get your Pokémon to a certain level before using the EXP Candies and Rare Candies to boost them even further.

Another method that you can use is mercilessly hunting down Chansey. You can do this by going to North Province (Area Three) and eating a Ham Sandwich in order to increase the normal-type encounters that you can receive. To make the Ham Sandwich, you need Ham, Pickles, Mayonnaise and Mustard. From there, just mow down all the poor Chansey that you can find within the 30-minute period where your sandwich is active to rapidly level up your Pokémon team.

Team Optimisation

Held Items are an extremely important part of setting up and optimising your team. An easy way to obtain these items is by going to Delibird Presents, most of them can be found in Mesagoza, Levincia and Cascarrafa. While different items can be bought in different locations, most are likely to be found in the Mesagoza shop. While this topic is too complex for this guide, you can find a good resource for the best Held Items for competitive Scarlet and Violet by Game8 here.

The most complicated aspects of optimising a competitive Pokémon team are the IV, EV and Nature statistics. These are different statistics that require multiple methods to train and develop, such as through various NPCs, locations, and items. For more information on how to train these statistics, you can read this guide by DualShockers. Once you become familiar with this process, it will become much easier to train other Pokémon in the future.

Practice Makes Perfect

The final part of the process is to practice with your team, strategize what you have planned, and adjust your setup or team if needed. Practice makes perfect with anything and everything, and that applies to Pokémon, so take the time to learn the ins and outs of your team and the way that they play.

While competitive Pokémon is quite random at the end of the day, there are plenty of factors and techniques to mitigate or minimise the randomness of the gameplay, giving you an advantage in battle. Here are some links to guides on important strategies that you should employ during battle, such as switching and ability usage.

At the end of the day, experience is the best teacher, so don’t forget to go out there and have some fun while you’re at it!