Pokémon Sword And Shield Trainers Reach Special Zeraora Max Raid Battle Goal

Good to hear! Me and a friend have been tag teaming these pretty hard, especially trying to find/help against any of the shiny ones.

Which btw, if anyone here wants help with one, feel free to message me, and I'll help if I can!

Well done everyone!

...wish it wasn't the shiny one though, never got the standard version.

I immediately opened my Pokemon Home on my phone, but no mystery gift yet. Is it yet to be distributed?

@Liam_Doolan tnx for the heads up . Now I can stop refreshing my phone neurotically while continuously transferring pokemon from sw sh to home.

Such a weird extra requirement. Am I able to see anywhere if I’ve checked all the boxes?

I dunno how to beat Zeraora. 😵
He always moved twice in a row.
What Pokemon should i use to beat Zeraora?

@Anti-Matter I use urshifu to beat him so I think you should use a pokemon that knows lighting rod and ground type moves.

The pokemon website says it will be distributed from the 29th of June to the 6th July

I did several of these raids to contribute but I have to say I'm shocked we actually did it! I thought one million would be a much harder goal!

@Anti-Matter most teams I've seen have had some combo of: lightning rod Rhyperior or Alolan Marowack
Palosand
And other ground types.

Palosand is good because Zeraora often uses Max Dragon which lowers attack and Zeraora is a physical attacker, Palosand is very physically defensive and uses special attacks. Lightning rod also protects stupid AI trainers who bring water types if you can't get a full party of human players. Alolan Marowack is good because he has lightning rod, is physically defensive, and also ghost type - making him immune to fighting moves - which Zeraora also has.

Certainly an improvement over the Gen 7 online events of this nature.

When in doubt, offer an event Pokemon.

@Heavyarms55
Wait, i can bring Alolan Pokemon from Let's Go to Sword via Pokemon Home?? 😲

Currently i have Gengar (Ghost type) but still not really working against Zeraora.

I knew they would unlock it, but what if they didn't meet that threshold...

@Anti-Matter any form of Pokémon in the Pokedex can be transferred Into SwSh. If it’s in the either of the Pokedexes in the game, you can transfer in their Kantonian and Alolan forms.

As for tips to beat it... for one, are you doing it alone? I’ve yet to see anyone do it without other human players (just because the CPUs die so quickly), though I can beat it consistently with two human players if we use level 100 Pokemon with type advantages. You’re going to want to either be hitting it with ground moves or use Eternatus’s signature move (which does double damage to gmax Pokemon). I wouldn’t recommend Zamazenta because it has a move that’s super effective against steel, but I haven’t tried Zacian (as I don’t have one). If you’re doing it with two players, you want to focus on offense before the CPUs die too much, and it helps to be immune to ground. With more human players, you can be a little more lenient, assuming everyone is smart with what they use. Lightning rod can help if some people aren’t using ground (but really, it’s better if they use ground because it’s super effective and has STAB, giving the biggest boost in damage). With CPUs, lightning rod might protect them... but do note that Zeraora has a move that makes all normal moves into lightning moves, as we learned when lightning rod attracted an ally’s slam. Human players hopefully won’t be using normal moves.

Basically, don’t do it completely alone and use a level 100 ground type Pokémon. That’s the best strategy.

@NookMiler then we wouldn’t get the reward. It would’ve been sad... but a million was an attainable goal, they probably didn’t think it would be risky and they were right

@NookMiler They woulda just said it was met on the last day regardless of whether or not it was actually reached lmao

@ShadJV I have actually won alone in a 5 star raid vs Zeraora. It's very hard, and very unlikely. Basically if the AI is stupid, it can be done. I did it with Palosand and won because the AI kept using electric and fighting moves and using them on Palosand.

@Anti-Matter Yes you can bring in the Alolan form of any Pokemon already in the game. And there are some in-game trades for them in the DLC too I believe.

Gengar is a cool Pokemon but a terrible choice for raids, he is fast and hits hard but super frail. Very much a glass cannon. And his typing isn't good for Zeroara either. I suppose he is immune to fighting but he takes normal damage from everything else Zeraora has.

@Heavyarms55 had a feeling it was possible but extremely luck based. Considering that, with bad luck, you can lose in 3 turn with just the CPU faints (possible with 2 players but it eliminates one of the problems). Even with 2 players, it wasn’t guaranteed, we still could lose if the CPUs were particularly dumb... but we were winning a majority of the time, once we found a good rhythm. He was using rhyperior with lightning rod (which was a double edged sword, as mentioned) while I was using either Eternatus or sandaconda. Eternatus hit slightly harder but oddly enough seemed to take more damage... but a few well timed recovers fixed that. Sandaconda was still more reliable.

Either way, interesting to hear from someone who solo’ed it. I imagined it could be done, but it seems more trouble than it’s worth. 😅

@ShadJV Oh it's absolutely more trouble than it's worth. Even with 2 players it's quite hard because as usual the AI brings garbage and often times even Pokemon weak to the target. 4 Palosand seems to be the ideal team actually. Palosand can take the hits well, can heal on its own, and doesn't care about the attack drops. He's immune to electric and fighting too. The only way Zeraora beats a team of Palosand is if he has both work up and ice punch, and boosts his attack a couple times and consistently uses ice punch.

Although I heard that there is a chance your DLC rival will join you in raids - I have no seen this happen and I've done a lot of raids since the DLC came out. I wish all named character who battle throughout the story had a chance to join, instead of just random generic trainers...

@Heavyarms55 that’d be cool if they joined, yeah. I’d say with two players (neither using Palosand) we were winning at least 90% of the time (and when a third person joined it was a certain victory), so four Palosand seems like overkill, but I’m sure it’s effective! But it’s frustrating that the biggest obstacle isn’t the opponent, it’s the AI partners. With two players we usually could KO it with only two deaths, but we were hitting it pretty hard. 3-4 turns it usually took, 5 if we were unlucky.

I smashed a fair few Zeraora solo in raids but that shiny one is a nightmare. Bummed me every time i fought it lol

Glad to be able to say I helped. This is one of the few mythicals I am missing so it’s great news!

@Friendly I looked on the news section in my HOME app and it said they would be given out by the 30th if the goal was met

@DaCh33f I imagine this whole "reach the goal" thing was introduced just to drive some more players to raid battles. "Hey, you do this one small thing for us and you get a shiny mythical, sounds good right?" Well it does sound good, very good.

@Heavyarms55 The English localisation removed all hint of it, but plenty of the random generic trainers are actually inserts based on real people connected with the Pokémon franchise.
The useless Wobbuffet trainer for example is named after James's Japanese voice actor in the Japanese anime.
But... being injokes still doesn't make them any more useful.

That's a bit of a surprise, as 1 million seemed like such a big target. I contributed and defeated one of them, and I'm looking forward to receiving a shiny zeraora.

I haven't fought him yet as I've been busy with other games, but have moved a Pokemon from Home to Shield.

Do I need to fight him as well to be eligible? It sounds like I just have to move the Pokemon.

@bluesun That's a bummer. I can speak and read Japanese but I've always played in English so I didn't want to re-learn all the move names... Maybe I'll play Sword in Japanese next.

Did we ever find out whether a trainer defeating multiple Zeraoras counted as multiple points toward the million?

@ShadJV I use the Kantonian Marowak with Lightning Rod, my Marowak has Max HP and Defense. I've Solo'd multiple 5-star raids without even needing to Dynamax my Marowak, honestly the Lightning Rod ability makes it so easy. Weird flex I know but I only said it because it's possible.

So I need Pokémon Home for this? Bummer.

Zeraora is SUCH a cheap Max Raid battle. Many battles he was moving 5 times before we moved once. The Shiny one we encountered was especially hard. We were able to move just once before we got destroyed. We were all 70+

Is it catchable during at least some of the raids or not? Official sources have been coy about it.

@Krisi I'm pretty sure you can get it with the free version if that's what you're worried about, but yeah I don't see why they couldn't have just given it out as a mystery gift instead of a Home distribution, which just adds extra hassle.

Edit: I can't even get Pokemon Home to work on my phone any more (I changed my Nintendo account password recently and the app doesn't seem to be very happy about that) so I might not actually be able to get the Zeraora

I think in order to move Pokémon between Home and Sword/Shield you have to pay for premium. The option is locked for me as I have the free version. Am guessing that's why they make you move Pokémon, so they can get you to pay.

@wazlon You can move between S&S and Home fro free, its only paid if moving from Bank to Home.

@Kimyonaakuma if you want a NON-Shiny Zeraora please contact me and ill let you know a Link Trade Code to gife you one for FREE

I'm bummed that the event requires you to also use Home. I was a huge proponent of the Bank app and used it for years, but home is 3x the cost. I just dropped 30 bucks on an expansion. It'd be great if distributions like this were for Mystery Gift...

@Anti-Matter @ShadJV I was having a ton of trouble on my own (I mean with NPCs) until I started to use Rhyperior. His Lightning Rod ability aside, I may just have a string of good luck in that I was able to win 5 matches in a row with little trouble. I'll also add that I was fortunate by the time Zeraora negated my ability, it's HP was more than halfway gone and one more attack was really all it took to finish it off

So is owning the expansion a requirement or just moving a pokemon from SwSh to Home now that 1m Max Raids have happened?

@Steven_the_2nd that because the shny one is level 100 and he still destroys people with level 100 pokemon as well.

@LowRyder If you're offering assistance, I'd love some help to secure some more. To best reach me I recommend dming me on twitter which is listed in my profile.