At this point in time the Pokemon X and Y 3DS games have been out for, let’s say, two weeks and while a lot of people are most likely done with it, there are still a majority of people who are training up teams, battling with friends or preparing to hit up an Official Tournament. There are so many things to do once a Pokemon game has been completed; you can look for Mega Stones, find the Hidden Legendaries, hunt for Shiny Pokemon, etc. I, on the other hand, have been strictly working on levelling up my entire starting team to level 100 and, in Pokemon X and Y, it actually hasn’t been too difficult to do yet if you’re impatient like me then you’ll be glad to know that there are ways of speeding up the level-capping process while also keeping it enjoyable and without loosing those sweet and tasty extra stat boosts you get from EV training. While many people might already know this, I’m going to take you through what I find to be the easiest methods to levelling up your Pokemon Team.
SUPER TRAINING
While super training doesn’t exactly level up your Pokemon it does help add extra numbers onto stats when levelling up so I’m going to consider this as part of the process. I suggest that when you get a Pokemon, let’s say Aaron, you do a little bit of research on it’s final evolution, this will help you to determine how powerful it will be, what exactly it can be made to do, how exactly it will fit on your team and so on and so forth. It’s fairly essential to do this if you want a powerful team, you have to take species’ strengths and weaknesses into account as well as natures and abilities, it all adds up in the end.
Aron eventually becomes Aggron and while Aaron isn’t that great of a Pokemon, Aggron is so you’re better off putting in the time to make the final evolution even better. Aggron is incredibly defensive and has great attack yet lacks at everything else, by the advice that I read while researching I decided to Super Train my Aron in Speed and Attack knowing that it’s defences will already be outstanding. Now that I’ve done that I’ll get an extra Speed and Attack boost for every level I gain. This is what I would consider to be the foundation, don’t do anything else before you do this.
POKEMON-AMIE
While this aspect of the game does seem very reminiscent of Nintendogs it actually is a very useful little addition that will actually help you in the long run. Having your Pokemon like you in Pokemon-Amie means that not only will it give you a permenant +25% Experience boost but it will also help you in battle so you’re not always trading out or having to revive. Pokemon with full happiness will overcome status issues faster, they will land critical hits more often and, as I said just above, they’ll gain more experience.
There’s a certain method I use in Pokemon-Amie that seems to speed up the process a great deal: First you pat the Pokemon until it no longer gives of hearts, it will give off a black musical note, Second you feed it until it no longer wants any food and third you play a mini-game with it that should reset it’s hunger and petting levels so that you can repeat the process. If your Pokemon begins emitting a flurry of shinning hearts it means you’ve gone up a friendship level, keep going until you’re the best of buddies!
LUCKY EGG
This item is another essential alongside the Exp. Share which we’ll talk about soon. Before I even go on to explain it I’ll tell you where you can find it: Head to Coumarine City, there you’ll find Coumarine Hotel, within the Hotel there will be a girl with a Marill, talk to her and if your main Pokemon likes you enough she will give you the Lucky Egg. This item doubles the experience you get in battle if the battling Pokemon has it as a held item. This mixed with the extra 25 percent you get from having your Pokemon like you is a fantastic method to implement.
It’s an item that seasoned players would have used a lot in the past and it’s great to have seen them bring it back for us to use again. Don’t pass up this little guy because it’s a gem. Mixing this item with Experience Share (the item that I am about to talk about) works incredibly well considering how the Experience is distributed among your team but I’ll go into more detail about that soon enough. Change Lucky Egg’s holder constantly, I tend to place it on the Pokemon with the lowest level and I allow it to level and, hopefully, catch up to the rest of the team which, most of the time, it does.
EXP. SHARE
This is an item that you get early in the game regardless of what you do, it is just one of those items that gets given to you and it’s one of the best you’ll get in the game because it’s the one you’ll be using through the entire thing. This item has been improved in an incredible way; it now shares experience throughout your entire team and not just between the Pokemon battling and the Pokemon holding it. Like I’ve mentioned above; this item is used fantastically with the Lucky Egg (as well as all these other methods). The way that Experience is distributed with Experience Share is that the main battling Pokemon will receive 100% of the experience gained while the rest of the team each get 50% of the experienced gained which is already fantastic, now mix that with the use of a Lucky Egg with the item basically doubling the amount of experience a Pokemon gets.
It works out great and if you mix all these different methods together, which you can, with Experience Share you’ll be levelling like a League Champion in no time at all. Experience Share is also great to use while levelling a weaker team of low-level Pokemon; by having a strong Pokemon being the vanguard of your team and going up against the Elite Four, the weaker Pokemon will be levelling up like crazy with the large amount of Experience that would be gained from a League fight. It’s all very simple really, that’s probably why I understand it so well.
O-POWERS
O-Powers I find are very underrated with most people I know who play the game not even realising they could use it on themselves. There are O-Powers for almost every “boostable” aspect of the game and, much like Pokemon themselves, they can also be levelled up to be stronger. I just want to focus on one particular O-Power, that being the one that boosts Experience gained, didn’t think you’d see this one coming, right? You can find this O-Power a little later on in the game in Anistar City, more specifically; Anistar City’s Pokemon Center where you’ll find a man in a pale-pink suit who will make it available for you to use. Level One of this O-Power unlocks the potential for you to gain a boosted 25%, Level Two gives you 50% and Level Three gives you a whopping 100% boost.
I continuously use the O-Power specifically to level it up, I use it both on myself and I send it to friends who are training and the good thing is that, if they have it, they can send it to you so you get the boost for a short amount of time. Partner up with a friend so that you can go back and forth using the O-Power seeing as it costs less to send it to a friend than it does to use it on yourself. It’s these small exploits that will get you there quicker. By the end of a nice levelling session you’ll surely be up an O-Power level and so will your friend. Use the heck out of it, it’s there for a reason!
TRADE
Now this one is entirely up to you to do, it does help but I wouldn’t consider it to be an essential part of the process only because it can sometimes be hard to do, allow me to explain. A traded Pokemon naturally earns more Experience and, up until recently, I had no idea that was true but it has apparently been this way for a very long time and now that I do know about it you can bet I’ll be using it for my future team-raising exercises. If you have a good friend who you trust enough with a task and who knows something about breeding or actually Pokemon in general you can get employ them to help make you a team that is naturally suited to gaining more Experience.
Time is probably your worst enemy when it comes to this method because, while the game is mostly directed at children, a lot of adults will be training Pokemon properly and not all of us have a great deal of time to do so. If you can set a time for you and a friend to make each other some nice, low-level Pokemon then do so because, while not crucial, it does help the process and, I suppose, it’s also somewhat of a bonding exercise with your other Pokemon-playing friends.
WONDERTRADE
Ah yes, the dreaded Wondertrade, surprisingly this can actually help a great deal. While some people dabble in Wondertrade and are put off by others who tend to only offer a Bidoof or Zigzagoon, others are using this to their advantage and as a way to easily get a whole bunch of Rare Candies. With the implementation of the PSS system connecting with players locally and around the world has become so much easier and with a thing like “Poke Miles” being added to the game it gives one incentive to get out there and meet other trainers. Poke Miles are gained by Streetpassing other players and what not but the points earned are very low and don’t often make much of an impact.
The funny thing there is that meeting “Acquaintances” in the game also get you Poke Miles and the further you are away from the person you’ve met, the more points you get, that’s where Wondertrade is king. Start Wondertrading a great deal, the people you trade with will be added to you Acquiaintence list and they’ll also award you a bunch of Poke Miles which you can use to trade in for Rare Candy. In the South-Side Pokemon Center of Lumiose City you will find a man in a black suit who will trade you items for Poke Miles with one of those items being Rare Candies. There is no actual stock count which means you can buy as many as you afford and if you’ve already Super Trained, you still get those stat boosts so why not take the easy route.
To get the most out of these methods I suggest you do them all together or as many as possible together. They all, somewhat, work off of each other and when done properly the results can be easily seen. I’m definitely seeing the results now, I’ve just levelled up my original six Pokemon to level 100 and I’m about to start on another six. Pokemon X and Y has truly been revolutionary and it has really made levelling up so easy and so smooth which eliminates the need for cheating yet leaves room for methods like this to shine. I truly hope this helps you all in one way or another and if you have any methods of your own or any suggestions on how to level up, head down to our comments section below and let us all know what they are. Keep on training, Pokemon Masters!
