How to quickly farm EXP in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet

Leveling up Pokémon Scarlet Violet isn’t a problem throughout the main story, but if you’re trying to power up your Pokémon for endgame Tera Raids, you’ll hit a wall at around level 70.

The strongest trainers in the game that you can battle repeatedly range from level 65-70, and while you can totally spam fights against them (see one of our methods below), you’ll want an easy way to quickly increase your team’s EXP.

We have listed below a list of EXP farming strategies that we tried. We found these methods to be reliable and successful in our game.

Chansey hunting

You can find a delicious sandwich in the Paldea’s northern section, close to Fairy Team Star Base. Normal encounter power. (We used regular ol’ Ham Sandwiches, #80.)

Graphic by Julia Lee/Polygon. Source images: Game Freak/The Pokemon Company via Polygon| Source images: Game Freak/The Pokémon Company, Nintendo via Polygon

These sandwiches will make you a ton of money. Chansey You can spawn here; your entire field of flowers will be flooded with Chansey. You can earn thousands of EXP every time you fight these Chansey. (If you’re lucky, a Blissey or two might show up, which reward even More EXP.) Give a specific Pokémon a Lucky Egg for even more EXP.

Note that auto-battling the Chansey does not give nearly as much EXP, so you’ll want to actually battle them.

Tera Raids

Tera Raid battles can be rewarded with lots of EXP Candy. More difficult raids drop bigger amounts. Just from joining random online raids, we were able to amass a ton of candy to quickly level up our Pokémon.

However, this isn’t a foolproof plan. If you don’t have a team of strong Pokémon that utilize type advantages and the like, you won’t stand a chance in five- and six-star raids. (First rule of raiding: Don’t expect your other online team members to carry you to victory.)

Stick to the lower-leveled raids if you’re struggling in the higher-leveled raids and use the winnings from those raids to power up your Pokémon until they’re strong enough to participate in the higher-tier ones.

Image: Game Freak/The Pokémon Company, Nintendo via Polygon

Raiding will also give valuable items to sell or use, like mints, Bottle Caps, and (if you’re lucky) Herba Mystica, making them one of the best ways to amass both money and powerful Pokémon.

Academy Ace Tournament

This is just a repeat of the good ol’ Elite Four trick from older games, where you’d repeatedly grind against the Elite Four to amass a ton of EXP. (You can’t do this in Scarlet Violet.) Give whatever Pokémon you are focusing on leveling the Lucky Egg, and take down the Academy Ace Tournament.

You will make some extra money by doing this, however, it is not as profitable as the alternative methods.

This method can be more mindless, as if you have one or two strong Pokémon that can sweep the entire tournament, you can tune out just spam the A button while you watch a show or something to get that sweet EXP.

You can get some good additional rewards from the Academy Ace Tournament, like Apricorn Balls or Bottle Caps, so if you’re hunting for those and You might get the most out of your EXP.