Pokémon Scarlet & Violet is out now and Tera Raids are a large part of the online component of the game. Due to the difficulty of trying to complete Tera Raids offline, Gholdengo will make life easier. Here’s a closer look at a Gholdengo Tera Raid Build you can use.

Gholdengo Raid Build Explained: Solo Gameplay¶

If you’ve been delving into the world of Tera Raids and have reached the point of taking on the challenging 5 and 6 Star Tera Raids, you may realize just how much more strategy comes into play. More importantly, you may notice that clearing these Offline with the AI is incredibly challenging, to the point of almost impossible. Even Online can be challenging if your teammates choose Pokémon that are not ideal.

You may have already seen one of the best methods for soloing these Raids in the form of Iron Hands and we’d still recommend that option if it’s available to you. One of the main issues here, however, is the fact that Iron Hands is a Violet exclusive so if you’re playing Scarlet and have no way to trade for it, it won’t work for you.

This is where Gholdengo comes in.

How to catch a Gholdengo¶

Gholdengo is available in both Scarlet and Violet, but of course it’s a much longer process to obtain Gholdengo than it is for Iron Hands. To begin with, you’ll need to catch yourself a Gimmighoul, noting that you can only catch the chest form, not the various roaming Gimmighouls you’ll encounter across Paldea.

The next step in obtaining Gholdengo is to evolve that Gimmighoul, and you’ll need to accrue 999+ Gimmighoul Coins, a task which will take some time. To make life easier, focus on the Gimmighoul Chests, these will award between 50-60 Coins per battle and massively speed up the process.

• Read More: Where to Find All Gimmighoul Chests if you want to track them all down.

Once you have all the Gimmighoul Coins, grab your Gimmighoul and level it up. You can do this easily with Exp. Candies or a Rare Candy itself although you may want to catch one of the higher level Gimmighoul’s as your base such as the level 50 Ghimmigoul location found east of Casseroya Falls on top of the watchtower. Once you level up with the coins in your inventory, you’ll have yourself a Gimmighoul while also keeping the Coins!

Gholdengo Build: The Gholdengo Tera Raid Build you need¶

Now that you have Gholdengo, what is it about this Pokémon that has the Pokémon community go wild for him? These are main moves you’ll want to make note of:

• Recover
• Nasty Plot
• Metal Sound
• Steel Beam

Recover is self-explanatory, it’s a Normal-type move that allows the user to recover 50% of their HP. This is a difficult move to learn due to there being no TM, but Gholdengo will learn this at Level 42.

Nasty Plot is an incredibly useful move that will raise your Pokémon’s Sp. Atk by 2 stages, meaning you can use it three times to max it (at 6 stages). Seeing as you’ll be using a Sp. Atk move, this is crucial. You can earn this TM by speaking to Ms. Raifort in the Staff room after completing the Midterms to start her Bonding Quest.

Complete this (which includes capturing the 4 Ruinous Legendaries) and you’ll obtain it. Alternatively, you can actually get one much easier if you have access to Area 0. Go to Research Station 2 and climb up the ledges behind it to find a pickup.

Metal Sound is a debuff move that will harshly lower your target’s Sp. Def by 2 stages, allowing your Sp. Atk to cause more damage. Thankfully, Gholdengo will learn this at Level 28.

Finally, Steel Beam will be the move you use to attack the target with, and you’ll need to track down the TM for this. You’ll find that in a cave to the west of the Fairy Crew base.

Finally, you’ll want to make sure your Gholdengo is holding the Metal Coat item, this will boost power of Steel-type moves (of which Steel Beam obviously falls under). You can simply head to the Delibird Presents Store in Levinicia and purchase it.

The strategy works as follow, and applies to most Tera Raids:

• Use Metal Sound three times (to lower the target’s Sp. Def)
• Use Nasty Plot twice (to raise your Sp. Atk 4 stages)
• Use Steal Beam

Using this method, you can use Gholdengo to carry you through Tera Raids solo or be one of the main players in an Online raid. To make life easier for yourself, be sure to Level Gholdengo as high as possible (Level 100 is of course preferable) and make use of Hyper Training to increase its stats further.