Pokemon Sword and Shield - Tips on Catching Pokemon

Overview

When you encounter a Pokemon, you have a chance to knock it out or catch it. Strive to catch Pokemon as soon as possible, since it can be tough to raise them when you’re already far along in the game. In the main story, it is crucial to build a team that consists of diverse types. This will put you in a favorable spot in various different battles.

When aiming to snag a Pokemon, you need to account for its health and condition. Lowering the Pokemon’s health increases your chance of capturing it. Its status condition also comes into play. A healthy Pokemon has a higher chance of breaking free from a poke ball compared to a Pokemon that is affected by a condition such as paralysis or sleep.

If you wish to capture a wild Pokemon, your best bet is to do a combination of attacks and status.

Weaken the Pokemon

You need to lower a Pokemon’s health before you have much of a chance at catching it. Use moves like False Swipe if you’re carrying a strong pokemon, or focus on moves that have low base power for some chip damage. You want the wild Pokemon’s health to fall to yellow or red before trying to catch it. Be wary of getting critical hits which can knock out wild Pokemon before you had anticipated. Some moves can also alter a Pokemon’s type. The move Soak changes any Pokemon to water type. This can make ghost Pokemon vulnerable to normal type attacks, as an example.

Another way to raise your chance of catching the Pokemon is to use status moves. Moves like thunder wave and spore cripple the wild Pokemon without causing damage. Other moves like poison powder and will-o-wisp also weaken them but continually damage the pokemon as well.

Use abilities

When used correctly, abilities can be very useful. Some Pokemon can blow up to force themselves to faint which prevents you from catching them. Thankfully, abilities can help you avoid that. Use a Pokemon like Quagsire with the damp ability after finding these Pokemon to deny them from using self-KO moves.

In addition, some abilities have been improved to also have an effect in the overworld.

Below is a table of some useful abilities.

Obtain the Catching charm

How to Get the Catching charm

Bring poke balls

Make a pitstop at the Poke mart to refill your bag. If you don’t mind using certain types of poke balls, you can purchase special ones by visiting some of the towns. For example, if you’re looking for certain traits, such as bug type Pokemon you can use a net ball to raise your chances of capturing it.

Pokeball List

Get a chance to score an item

While the main focus is to capture Pokemon, there’s no stopping trainers from getting free items on their hunt as well.

Wild Pokemon Held Item List

Knock out the same pokemon many times

If you’re hunting for a shiny Pokemon, you might have to do some preparation. You can check the number of times you have knocked out a Pokemon by looking at its Pokedex entry.

Shiny Pokemon

Recommended Pokemon

Butterfree

Due to its Compound eyes, Butterfree is a good Pokemon to start with. Compound eyes raises the chance of finding wild Pokemon equipped with held items. Another advantage is that Butterfree can use sleep power to put the wild Pokemon to sleep. Its pre-evolution, Metapod, is relatively easy to find in the wild area.

Octillery

Octillery appears much later in the story but helps deal with ghost type Pokemon. It has Soak in its moveset which turns any Pokemon into a water type. The remaining steps should be simple, switch Octillery for a Pokemon with False Swipe and bring the target down to a sliver of health.

Octillery evolves from Remoraid. Wild Remoraid can be found on Route 9.

Pokemon with False Swipe

Some Pokemon like Pangoro can be taught False Swipe. The normal type attack deals damage but will never knock the target out. Pangoro is the evolution of Pancham, which you can find on Route 3.

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