Max Raid Discussion Thread

[Worldie]

I’ve been trying to catch a Frosmoth with its Hidden Ability but serebii says it only appears with Ice Scales in Sword (I have Shield btw).

The reason is due to how the possibility to have HA works in SwSh (in order to be able to have HA, the pokemon must be able to spawn as purple raid in same den.)
I would assume in Shield there's no den that can spawn Snom/Frosmoth as purple beam, thus HA isn't obtainable in that game via raid.

 

[DreamPrince]

I’ve been trying to catch a Frosmoth with its Hidden Ability but serebii says it only appears with Ice Scales in Sword (I have Shield btw). Sp far I’ve only ran into Avalugga and Vanilluxe. Am I just being unlucky? Of course if anyone has a HA Snom or Frosmoth I’ll trade you a Gigantamax Centiskorch with Flare Blitz for it.

Not true. I hosted a Shield Frosmoth Raid and got its HA.

 

[Elveman]

Since technically Pokemon is left with 1 HP after the successful raid, how does False Swipe interact with it? If Pokemon is brought down to 1 HP with False Swipe, does this trigger the catch sequence?

 

[Worldie]

Since technically Pokemon is left with 1 HP after the successful raid, how does False Swipe interact with it? If Pokemon is brought down to 1 HP with False Swipe, does this trigger the catch sequence?

No, the dynamax "explosion" animation is triggered then the mon is KOd, you still need to actually KO it first.

 

[treeston]

A few observations on barriers and multi-hit moves:

• If a multi-hit move causes the boss to hit a barrier threshold, any remaining hits will do no damage.
  • The barrier will only spawn after the entire move has resolved.
  • No barrier shields will be broken.
• If a multi-hit move causes the last barrier shield to break, any remainings hits will do full damage (up to the next barrier threshold).
  • The barrier will only break after the entire move has resolved.
  • If the second barrier threshold is low enough, the barrier break damage from the first barrier might actually kill the boss. (unconfirmed)

PS: I can only echo that I've not encountered any 5-star raid I couldn't solo by just using heavy-hitting bulky mons with good coverage. Dragapult and Coalossal are favorites so far.

PPS: The level of the AI partners scales with your own mon's. If your mon is Level 100, the AI partners are Level 70, meaning they (usually) won't all get OHKOd.

 

[Kanburi]

Gigantamax Snorlax will be available from December 4th to early January:

Its move キョダイサイセイ (Max Recycle?) allows it to recycle a used berry, hence the demonstration of it using Belly Drum first.

 

[treeston]

Alright, so I sat down and did some Science™.

First off, a few basic observations:

• Whenever you fully clear the Wild Area of active dens, you will receive a new set of exactly 8 active dens
  • You can immediately tell you've hit this respawn because the den in front of you (that you just cleared) starts glowing again and awards 200W
  • Having an active Wishing Stone spawn will prevent the new dens from spawning
• Daily reset will not give a new set of dens. Instead, it will select a new encounter to spawn from the already-selected pool for any active dens.

With that established, I went ahead and knocked out 7 rotations of dens over the last two days (that's 56 den spawns) and logged the star rating and spawn pool for each den.

Raw data

1 row per spawn rotation, I missed the star rating of one den in the last rotation.

c3 c4 c5 e4 c5 r5 c5 c3
c5 c5 r5 c3 c4 e5 c5 c3
c4 e3 c3 c5 c5 r5 c5 c5
c4 r4 c3 c3 c5 e3 c5 c4
e5 r4 c4 e4 c5 c4 c5 c5
e4 e3 c5 c3 c4 r5 c5 c4
c5 c? e4 c5 c5 c3 r5 c4

That's a decent sample size, and hits a nice balance of not driving me crazy while being representative enough.

• 27/55 spawns had a 5-star rating. That's ~50% of dens.
• 16/55 spawns had a 4-star rating. That's ~30% of dens.
• 12/55 spawns had a 3-star rating. That's ~20% of dens.

(Note: The game first determines the intended star rating and spawn pool, for the den, then selects the encounter to spawn based on the star rating.)

• 7/56 spawns were purple beam spawns, from the den's rare pool. That's 12.5% of dens.
  • If a rare beam spawning on a regular rotation were truly random, I would have expected to see either two purple beams of no purple beams on at least one of the seven rotations (with probability ≥ 99%)
  • Thus, I would theorize that each set of 8 dens contains exactly 1 rare beam.
• 49/55 spawns were red beam spawns, either from the den's common pool or from the global event pool. That's 87.5% of dens.
  • Of these 49 spawns, 39/49 were from the den's common pool. That's ~80% of red beam spawns.
  • The remaining 10/49 spawns were from the global event pool. That's ~20% of red beam spawns.

(Note: I subdivide this way because of my previous theory, e.g. that each rotation is guaranteed exactly one rare spawn. It would thus make no sense for event tables, which are always red beams, to replace purple beam spawns.)

A few final remarks:

• I believe pool and rating can reasonably be assumed to be independent, even though the sample size is too small to have statistical confidence.
• Star rating distribution changes as you progress through the game. These numbers are in postgame.
  • If anyone wants to repeat the experiment as soon as you hit the Wild Area, be my guest.
• Next up, dumping the 100k watts I got from this experiment into Wishing Stones and repeating the whole thing for off-rotation spawns.
  • The things we do for science...

 

[Misfit Reindeer]

The reason is due to how the possibility to have HA works in SwSh (in order to be able to have HA, the pokemon must be able to spawn as purple raid in same den.)

Thank you for your answer! I was wondering about this, I need a HA Zigzagoon for my research and I feel like this potentially saved me a lot of time searching for Hidden Abilities where I would find none.

 

[treeston]

Misfit Reindeer Worldie spawn data would suggest that is not actually a hard rule.

The encounter entry has a field that determines whether the mon can have its HA. For example, Brigde Field Den 6's common pool is pool #4, which has a Galvantula spawn with the Hidden Ability flag. Meanwhile, Bridge Field 6's rare pool is pool #92, which does not contain Galvantula.

PS: The den map lets you filter for Hidden Ability-capable spawns.

 

[treeston]

Finished 40 Wishing Stone spawns, across 3 different dens.

Raw data

pools 40/66 (Stony Wilderness 3)
c3 c3 c5 c3 c4 c4 r4 c5
c5 c4 c3 c4 c5 c5 c3 c5
c4 e4 r5 c5

pools 29/86 (East Lake 3)
c5 c5 c4 c3 c3 r3 c3 c4
c4 c3 c3 c4 e4 c4 c5 c4

pools 13/87 (Bridge Field 2)
c3 c4 c3 c4

• 12/40 spawns had a 5-star rating. That's 30% of spawns.
• 16/40 spawns had a 4-star rating. That's 40% of spawns.
• 12/40 spawns had a 3-star rating. That's 30% of spawns.

Note that the sample size, as with the trial I did in my previous post, is on the smaller side. For example, while 16/40 is a 40% observed rate, anything from 25% to 55% actual spawn rate would be within the realm of statistical possibility.

If somebody wants to do more trials, potentially with a larger sample size, be my guest. I've seen enough dens for now.

 

[AceofLemons]

Hey, talking about Max Raids, does the raid change the stats of the raid pokemon, or does it just add stat boosts?

 

[Arcanite]

Misfit Reindeer Worldie spawn data would suggest that is not actually a hard rule.

The encounter entry has a field that determines whether the mon can have its HA. For example, Brigde Field Den 6's common pool is pool #4, which has a Galvantula spawn with the Hidden Ability flag. Meanwhile, Bridge Field 6's rare pool is pool #92, which does not contain Galvantula.

PS: The den map lets you filter for Hidden Ability-capable spawns.

That Den Map is a fantastic resource, thanks for sharing.
Starting to get a little annoyed about my game spawning regular butterfree though

 

[CassieX]

Sorry, I'm not sure if anyone has already asked these questions but I have two:
1. When you battle a raid spawn and reset the game, is it possible that the next time you battle the same raid pokemon (without changing the date or anything) that it's stats, ability or gender will be different? Or is it the exact same pokemon every time?

2. Same question except for strong spawns in the wild area (which would be easier for me to test, I just haven't yet and thought maybe someone would know)

 

[Count Bleck]

Just wanted to let you guys know that the raid respawn tine bug has been patched out a few days ago. Tried it myself but the pillar up and vanished. Now gmax raids are back to their true rarity

 

[eworm]

Just wanted to let you guys know that the raid respawn tine bug has been patched out a few days ago. Tried it myself but the pillar up and vanished. Now gmax raids are back to their true rarity

Incorrect. You must've used a den that was spawned naturally. Wishing Pieces are necessary for the trick, otherwise the pillar of light indeed vanishes after a date change.

 

[Count Bleck]

Incorrect. You must've used a den that was spawned naturally. Wishing Pieces are necessary for the trick, otherwise the pillar of light indeed vanishes after a date change.

Oh, I see... i heard talk that it got patched out earlier and must have not done the proper method. Ill retest again in my spare time.

 

[RocketSurgery]

Alright, so I sat down and did some Science™.

First off, a few basic observations:

• Whenever you fully clear the Wild Area of active dens, you will receive a new set of exactly 8 active dens
  • You can immediately tell you've hit this respawn because the den in front of you (that you just cleared) starts glowing again and awards 200W
  • Having an active Wishing Stone spawn will prevent the new dens from spawning
• Daily reset will not give a new set of dens. Instead, it will select a new encounter to spawn from the already-selected pool for any active dens.

Something to keep in mind/look into if you or anyone else decides to do more tests is that doing enough online raids also seems to reroll dens and regenerate watts. I wasn't keeping track of things so I can't say if the numbers are the same, but I've racked up ~110k or more watts in the past couple of days without the exploit, just by doing lots of raids and them periodically rerolling dens. I'm not sure if it holds true that only existing dens get rerolled and no new ones spawn. I thought a regular raid I was heading towards disappeared after doing an online raid, but it's possible it was just a tent's smoke.

Edit: Something to add to these: I left a wishing-piece raid alone for a while (because I really didn't need another 5* Polteageist...), and no new raids spawned until after I cleared it, even though I'd done quite a few online raids.

 

[treeston]

I have no idea how Online plays into any of this. I don't have a Switch Online subscription, so all my tests were done offline.

 

[NMcCoy]

From a friend of mine's testing, each online raid you clear as a guest removes one random non-rare (and IIRC non-wish) den. This can be used to help reset dens if you don't want to do some of your own raids. I myself have verified that this removes dens (by doing an online raid while standing in front of my last non-rare den), as well as resets dens when the last is removed.

 

[Siggu]

I made a tiny test about AI partners.

Their level will be 70% of the host Pokemon's level, rounded down.

Examples:
- Level 100 host, Level 70 AI partners
- Level 58 host, Level 41 AI partners (58 * 0.7 = 41.3)
- Level 62 host and Level 100 human partners; Level 43 AI partner (62 * 0.7 = 43.4)

 

[Darvin]

Well, nothing has ever turned me against the post-game of a Pokemon title quite as decisively as max raids have. With those useless AI allies I simply cannot clear 5 star max raids to reset my board, and that prevents me from obtaining TR's. And wouldn't you know it, all the good moves are TR's and not TM's so I can't build teams to compete at the battle tower without doing max raids. Max raids aren't even very fun; the only strategy is to pick something with good type advantage and keep attacking. Maybe with human player allies you could do something like screens support, but with these useless AI's the only approach is just to deal as much damage as possible as quickly as possible.

 

[Windgrace]

Question about hidden abilities and max raids.

Yesterday I decided I want a Gigantamax Charizard, so I found the right den in Lake of Outrage and did the reset trick until I got the pink beam and then rolled forward the days until it spawned (about 45 days). Success!

There's a few HA Pokemon I am keen on getting my hands on (Hatterene and Indeedee come to mind). Do I need to follow a similar method at the proper wells to get one to spawn? Is the ability of the Pokemon that spawns locked on the spawn day (like the Pokemon itself)? So a 5 star Hatterene spawn might not have the HA and I'd need to continue changing the day until one does?

Hope this makes sense.

 

[Worldie]

There's a few HA Pokemon I am keen on getting my hands on (Hatterene and Indeedee come to mind). Do I need to follow a similar method at the proper wells to get one to spawn? Is the ability of the Pokemon that spawns locked on the spawn day (like the Pokemon itself)? So a 5 star Hatterene spawn might not have the HA and I'd need to continue changing the day until one does?

Not that I know: the abilities and stats are determined when the raid is created by whatever pseudoRNG the game uses. Thus, re-spawning it should result in different versions.

 

[DreamPrince]

Well, nothing has ever turned me against the post-game of a Pokemon title quite as decisively as max raids have. With those useless AI allies I simply cannot clear 5 star max raids to reset my board, and that prevents me from obtaining TR's. And wouldn't you know it, all the good moves are TR's and not TM's so I can't build teams to compete at the battle tower without doing max raids. Max raids aren't even very fun; the only strategy is to pick something with good type advantage and keep attacking. Maybe with human player allies you could do something like screens support, but with these useless AI's the only approach is just to deal as much damage as possible as quickly as possible.

Well, that’s the point sadly. If you don’t have any friends, the higher level raids become near impossible.

 

[CTNC]

Well, nothing has ever turned me against the post-game of a Pokemon title quite as decisively as max raids have. With those useless AI allies I simply cannot clear 5 star max raids to reset my board, and that prevents me from obtaining TR's. And wouldn't you know it, all the good moves are TR's and not TM's so I can't build teams to compete at the battle tower without doing max raids. Max raids aren't even very fun; the only strategy is to pick something with good type advantage and keep attacking. Maybe with human player allies you could do something like screens support, but with these useless AI's the only approach is just to deal as much damage as possible as quickly as possible.

My main problem with the AIs, other than the ones like Solrock that just spam moves that do nothing, is they get KOed easily. I tried Follow Me spam with a bulky high level Pokemon holding Leftovers and it works pretty well. (Good luck against spread move users though... Life Dew helps, but using it means you're not using Follow Me.) If you don't get allies that suck, like Wobbufett or Throh against Ghost Types, (I'd say Magikarp is okayish because it always attacks and barriers are the main problem.) then they should be able to win within 10 turns. Reset if you get a group that doesn't do much damage and mash A while watching Youtube or something. That said, the main reason it's not boring is the Youtube or something part.