Pokémon: 'Pokémon Masters Battle Villa Preparation Tips: Info, Lucky Skills, Best Sync Pairs, and More'

Each individual battle will still use Pokémon Masters’ standard 3-on-3 format, but any damage your sync pairs endure and any Trainer moves they use will be carried over when you move on to the next hall.

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Pokémon Masters

Pokémon Masters Battle Villa Preparation Tips: Info, Lucky Skills, Best Sync Pairs, and More

Pokémon Masters received an exciting twist with the introduction of the gauntlet-style Battle Villa feature during its Six-Months Celebration. This new single-player challenge rewards players who build a large and diverse squad of sync pairs with different types and skills. Ever wondered what a dream team of your favorite Pokémon Trainers and their most famous partners could accomplish? More than anywhere else in the intense battles of Pokémon Masters, the Battle Villa is where you’ll find the answer.

In the Battle Villa, you’ll build your team of nine sync pairs each day and see how far you can make it. No sync pair can take on these challenges alone, so you’ll need to build a lineup of sync pairs that have each other’s back. You’ll get great rewards like gems and lucky cookies for learning lucky skills as you progress, and more importantly, you’ll be able to say you took on one of the toughest challenges in the world of Pokémon and proved you’re among the very best.

This feature is tough, so read on to get some tips for how to prepare. With some clever decisions, you’ll be able to progress from the gates of the Battle Villa all the way to its final hall. And don’t worry if you haven’t already built up a huge roster of powerful sync pairs in Pokémon Masters. You can check out each hall of the Battle Villa before you start battling to get an idea of which sync pairs you’ll need to power up to meet the challenge. Plus, you’ll earn rewards every time you clear a hall, whether you make it all the way to the end or not.

Battle Villa Basics

The Battle Villa is a gauntlet-style feature that you’ll work toward completing over multiple days. Each individual battle will still use Pokémon Masters’ standard 3-on-3 format, but any damage your sync pairs endure and any Trainer moves they use will be carried over when you move on to the next hall. You’ll be able to use nine sync pairs each day, and once they’ve all been knocked out, you’ll have to wait until the next day to continue. You can keep swapping these sync pairs in and out until they’ve been defeated. To get as far as you can each day, you’ll need to be careful about which sync pairs you pick and when you choose moves that can only be used a limited number of times.

The Battle Villa consists of many halls and typically only lasts for a two-week period, so you’ll need to be strategic to make your way to the end. Some halls will consist of only three opponents that are all weak to the same type, while other halls might feature more powerful opponents, more total opponents, and a wider variety of type weaknesses to contend with. The toughest halls tend to be the ones that net the juicier milestone rewards, so it’s worth the extra effort to take them down.

Both sides are playing by the same rules: any damage your opponents take will also be carried over between battles. It might even take you several days to beat some of the most difficult boss stages, so try to make the most of each day! Taking down a powerful opponent’s teammates can make the next battle much easier, as will whittling away at their health. You’ll be able to pick a fresh group of nine sync pairs at the start of each day, and the sync pairs you used the day before will start fresh with full HP and MP every morning.

Building a Solid Battle Villa Team

It might be tempting to just load your team up with three sync pairs that can dish out a lot of damage against the type weakness of the hall you’re about to face, but you’ll perform much better if you exhibit a little more finesse. To make the most out of your limited group of sync pairs each day, identify just one or two sync pairs that are great at dishing out damage of the types your opponents are weak to. For instance, if your next opponents are weak against Rock-type attacks, you might want to include Olivia & Lycanroc in your next team.

Instead of matching them with even more Rock-type strike sync pairs, support them with sync pairs that have higher defensive stats instead, ideally with moves that can help Olivia & Lycanroc perform even better. Take Drake & Salamence—you’ll probably never want to have them attack, but they can restore the Sp. Def Olivia & Lycanroc lose from using Hard as Diamonds!, and they can also restore the move gauge, helping Lycanroc use the three-bar Stone Edge more frequently. Olivia & Lycanroc can already increase their own Attack, so instead of another supportive sync pair, consider finishing your team with a super sturdy sync pair like Professor Oak & Mew. You’ll deal far more damage this way than you would have if you’d deployed three Rock-type sync pairs instead.

A key element of this strategy is knowing how the opposing sync pairs strategize. Opponents generally target sync pairs on your team with higher HP and defensive stats first. Most strike sync pairs have lower stats in these categories, so they typically won’t be attacked until their sturdier teammates have already been defeated. This means you can usually get away with using one attacking sync pair at a time, and supporting them with sync pairs that can absorb lots of damage or increase the team’s stats. Unless your opponents are using a lot of attacks that hit all three of your sync pairs, your attackers will be relatively safe in early battles.

Suggested Sync Pairs: Spectacular Strikers

For the most part, you’ll want to deploy a sync pair that can attack the opponents’ weakness in each hall. Try to train at least one strike sync pair of each type so you can exploit any type weakness. The 5★strike sync pairs are all great in the Battle Villa, but lots of other sync pairs pack quite a wallop themselves, including Roxie & Scolipede, Noland & Pinsir, and Marshal & Conkeldurr.

What it takes to be a great attacker in the Battle Villa is a little different than in co-op EX Challenges, so keep a couple of things in mind if you’re just getting your feet wet. First, moves and skills that speed up the sync move countdown—or restore HP, MP, or the move gauge—are extremely valuable in the Battle Villa because they let your sync pairs fight at their full strength longer. Secondly, battles go a little quicker with all three of your sync pairs exposed, so sync pairs that are powerful because they have low-cost attacks—most notably Flannery & Torkoal—don’t have quite the same advantage in the Battle Villa as they do in co-op battles. In contrast to that hyper-efficient and fiery sync pair, Sygna Suit Red & Charizard might have high-cost attacks, but their ability to charge the move gauge and reduce their team’s sync move countdown helps make them so strong that many players choose to deploy them even when their attacks aren’t super effective.

Suggested Sync Pairs: Support or Tank

After you’ve decided which sync pair will be dealing the damage, you’ll want to support them with sync pairs that can increase their stats or absorb lots of hits for them. Sync pairs that can do both are likely to be daily fixtures in your roster. Here are some of our favorites if you’re not sure where to start.

Professor Oak & Mew are one of the most popular sync pairs for the Battle Villa because they’re unparalleled at absorbing damage. They have some truly amazing defensive stats with increased potential, and they become even more powerful if you invest in their sync grid. Shifty Striker 2 and Agile Entry 2 drastically boost their evasion, First Aid 4 and Natural Remedy help negate the attacks that get through, and Move Gauge Refresh 3 allows them to pester their frustrated opponents with a barrage of swift attacks. Their Unfortuitous 9 passive skill even lowers a random stat of each opponent hit by an attack, further encumbering the enemy. Keep an eye out for similar skills on other sync pairs—even individually they’re incredible.

If you’ve leveled up the more traditional support sync pairs for your other battles, you’ll be rewarded again here. Rosa & Serperior are sturdy enough to take attacks in place of most strike sync pairs, can increase the team’s Sp. Atk with X Sp. Atk All, and can refill the move gauge—a huge boon for sync pairs with expensive attacks. The Main Character & Torchic provide a similar effect by boosting Speed instead of the move gauge directly, and depending on what stats you want to increase, there’s plenty of other options like Skyla & Swanna, Drake & Salamence, and Rosa (Holiday 2019) & Delibird.

One important factor to consider is that HP-restoring skills are much more impactful in the Battle Villa. You can put almost any sync pair that knows Potion next to Professor Oak & Mew and get good results, and the Main Character & Pikachu get a jump start from their expanded sync grid to become one of the stronger choices for the Battle Villa because they can sometimes use Potion more than twice a day. Cheren & Stoutland and Glacia & Glalie’s capability of healing your entire team are huge in the Battle Villa, especially if you can sneak them into battles later in your run for the day once your team is worn down.

Boss Battles: Burn, Poison, and Trap

As you progress through the Battle Villa, you’ll quickly notice that some opponents—especially those guarding the milestone rewards from every fifth hall—are much more powerful than others. These sync pairs have huge amounts of HP and powerful attacks, much like those in EX Challenges. So how do you go about defeating them without burning days of attempts?

If you don’t have the perfect trio to take on the opposing team conventionally, try a different approach and stack status conditions instead. While tech sync pairs haven’t gotten a lot of love in the initial months of Pokémon Masters, very few sync pairs in the Battle Villa are immune to being poisoned, burned, or trapped by damaging effects from moves like Fire Spin and Infestation. These percentage-based effects do more damage against sync pairs with lots of HP, effectively using that strength against them.

You’ll still need your team to survive for as long as possible to make the most of these effects—status conditions don’t carry over between bouts like missing HP does—but it’s not uncommon to see residual damage ticks from these effects hitting just as hard as your attacks do against opponents with lots of HP.

Getting an Extra Edge: Level, Gear, and Sync Orbs

While you won’t be able to continue battling after your sync pairs have been defeated for the day, one thing you can do is help your squad get more powerful for the next day. Even the first opponents in the Battle Villa are powerful, so leveling up your sync pairs to their maximum is a good start. Make sure you take advantage of the training events that help you level up your sync pairs more quickly!

Another way you can get a little more oomph from your sync pairs is by getting high-level gear from the co-op EX Challenges. A full set of Lv. 15, 2★ gear will grant 50 HP, 40 Attack, and 40 Sp. Atk to sync pairs with matching types; sometimes those added stats are just enough of a boost to survive a powerful attack or to defeat a sync pair before they’re able to launch a sync move. Try to start out by getting a full set of gear matching one of your favorite strike sync pairs.

A final, crucial way to power up is by collecting sync orbs to fill out the sync grids of sync pairs that have had their sync grids expanded. A full sync grid drastically empowers any sync pair, and that extra power is more impactful in the Battle Villa than in any other battle on Pasio. Many sync pairs gain effects that restore HP or MP from their sync grids, a perfect fit for this battle of endurance.

Lucky Skills

Lucky skills—extra passive skills conferred from lucky cookies—are both a unique reward of the Battle Villa and a huge help in its halls. You’ll need to unlock the potential to learn a lucky skill for your desired sync pair by using lucky scrolls, and then hope you roll a powerful skill when you use the lucky cookie. You won’t know exactly what you’ll get until you use the item, but you can narrow things down a little by using the right kind of lucky cookie.

There are four types of lucky cookies, each tied to different skills. Crunchy Lucky Cookies will help your sync pairs learn lucky skills mostly related to attacking, Creamy Lucky Cookies will help against stat-lowering effects, Crispy Lucky Cookies counter status conditions and certain other conditions, and Chewy Lucky Cookies teach lucky skills that protect sync pairs against attacks of a certain type. Most lucky cookies also have a rarity, with 3★ lucky cookies having a greater chance of rewarding a higher-level skill.

The inherent randomness of lucky cookies means it’s impractical to expect to get the ideal skill on every sync pair you might want to use, but it makes a huge difference in battle to get a couple just right or to get helpful, but perhaps not perfect, skills on lots of sync pairs. Imagine how strong Brendan & Sceptile would be if they had Dauntless so Leaf Storm didn’t lower their Sp. Atk, or how strong Zinnia & Rayquaza would be with Clearheaded so they didn’t have to deal with Outrage’s confusion.

If you didn’t get the skill you wanted, you can use another lucky cookie to try again. You’ll then get to pick between the new skill and the old one. Keep working at the Battle Villa and collecting lucky cookies, and you’ll be able to customize your sync pairs to take on anything.

Be Victorious in the Battle Villa

Hopefully you’re feeling more prepared to tackle the Battle Villa now, so get out there and give it a shot! Whether you make it to the end or not each period, it’s fun to challenge yourself. Try it out every day, and you might be surprised by how far you get.

Show off your skills, earn some lucky cookies, and see if your team of sync pairs can make it all the way to the end of the gauntlet!

— Pokémon News
Source: Pokémon.