A Guide to Berries

[Minoru]

A Guide to Berries
Berries. They've been a part of the Pokemon video game series since Gold and Silver! Like Pokemon and Competitive battling, berries have evolved along with the games. There are many uses for berries; In some games they can be used for contests. Berries are used for many other things too! Boosting stats in battle, healing HP and PP, or even lowering the EVs you have on your Pokemon! I will go through the different berries and their uses in this article.


Contest Berries
Contest berries are berries that usually have no effect, except when making Pokeblocks or Poffins. These berries include:

Durin Berry

Watmel Berry

Pamtre Berry

Spelon Berry

Nomel Berry

Rabuta Berry

Mangost Berry

Cornn Berry

These berries can help you make your Pokemon more Cool, Cute, Beautiful, Smart, or Tough. You can enter contests in Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum. Unfortunately, they were replaced by the Pokeathalon in HeartGold and SoulSilver. Anyway, back to the berries. These can be used to make Poffins in D/P/Pt, and Pokeblocks in R/S/E. Of course, any berries can be used to make them, but the ones above are by far the best contest berries.

There is one Pokemon that needs Beauty, a contest stat, to evolve. Feebas needs to get his/her beauty to 170 then level to evolve into Milotic, who is a great water Pokemon. I'll give you the strategy I use to heighten Feebas' beauty. I feed it two Poffins made from Apicot Berries, followed by some Wiki Poffins, then the rest is Poffins made our of Pamtre berries. That should get you to 170+ Beauty, so then you just have to level your Feebas and BAM! You have a pretty great Milotic!

(On a side note, you can get his/her beauty up in HG/SS by getting massages from Daisy in Pallet Town, or a massage from the haircut brothers in Goldenrod. They both boost beauty by 22, so it'll take 8 massages!)




Battle Berries

Battle Berries are any berries that restore HP/PP, berries that cut the damage of some hits, or get rid of status ailments or boost stats during battle. In competitive you'll usually only see the boosting berries, berries that cut the damage of certain types of hits, or the status ailment ridding berries.




Stat Boosting Berries

Liechi Berry - Raises Attack when HP is below 1/4

Ganlon Berry - Raises Defense when HP is below 1/4

Salac Berry - Raises Speed when HP is below 1/4

Petaya Berry - Raises Special Attack when HP is below 1/4

Apicot Berry - Raises Special Defense when HP is below 1/4

Lansat Berry - Raises Critical Hit Ratio when HP is below 1/4




Berries that Rid Status Ailments

Cheri Berry - Heals Paralysis

Chesto Berry Heals Sleeping

Pecha Berry - Heals Poison

Rawst Berry - Heals Burn

Aspear Berry - Heals Frozen

Lum Berry - Heals Any Ailment other than being knocked out



Cuts Damage of Certain type Hits

Occa Berry - Pokemon Receives Less Damage from Fire Type Attacks

Passho Berry - Pokemon Receives Less Damage from Water Type Attacks

Wacan Berry - Pokemon Receives Less Damage from Electric Type Attacks

Rindo Berry - Pokemon Receives Less Damage from Grass Type Attacks

Yache Berry - Pokemon Receives Less Damage from Ice Type Attacks

Chople Berry - Pokemon Receives Less Damage from Fighting Type Attacks

Kebia Berry - Pokemon Receives Less Damage from Poison Type Attacks

Shuca Berry - Pokemon Receives Less Damage from Ground Type Attacks

Coba Berry - Pokemon Receives Less Damage from Flying Type Attacks

Payapa Berry - Pokemon Receives Less Damage from Psychic Type Attacks

Tanga Berry - Pokemon Receives Less Damage from Bug Type Attacks

Charti Berry - Pokemon Receives Less Damage from Rock Type Attacks

Kasib Berry - Pokemon Receives Less Damage from Ghost Type Attacks

Haban Berry - Pokemon Receives Less Damage from Dragon Type Attacks

Colbur Berry - Pokemon Receives Less Damage from Dark Type Attacks

Babiri Berry - Pokemon Receives Less Damage from Steel Type Attacks

Chilan Berry - Pokemon Receives Less Damage from Normal Type Attacks

Great uses of these berries would be like a Snorlax with a Lum Berry or Chesto Berry using Rest. Full health, no ailment other than sleeping, then the berry wakes it up! There are a lot other uses, you just have to be creative with it!




EV Lowering Berries

The last topic I'll go over right now is berries that lower the EVs (effort values) of the pokemon you feed it to. This is good when you want to EV train a Pokemon, but you have no clue what its EVs are. If you give it 11 of each of these berries, it will be cleared of EVs completely! The berries that do that are as follows:

Pomeg Berry Lowers Effort Points for HP by 10 Points

Kelpsy Berry Lowers Effort Points for Attack by 10 Points

Qualot Berry Lowers Effort Points for Defense by 10 Points

Hondew Berry Lowers Effort Points for Special Attack by 10 Points

Grepa Berry Lowers Effort Points for Special Defense by 10 Points

Tamato Berry Lowers Effort Points for Speed by 10 Points




Growing Berries

Growing Berries is fairly simple, but different in some games than in other games. In R/S/E/D/P/Pt, you could find little loamy patches of soil all around their respective regions. That is where you plant berries in those games. In HG/SS, you get the key item Berry Pots.You can water and fertilize plants in Pokemon games. This will make the amount of berries on each plot increase.

In Pokemon Black and White you can't plant berries like usual. You have to plant berries in the Dream World. You do this on your computer. Some berries take a very long time to grow, so they will take some water. However, your friends can visit your berries and water them for you (sounds like a Facebook game, haha). You start with 2 rows (6 berry slots) to grow berries with, but the more Dream Points you earn, the more rows you get. You must also offer a berry to bring a pokemon from the dream isle to your game.



Fertilizer:

Growth Mulch

-A plant fertilizer spread on soft soil. It speeds up the growth of Berries. However, it also dries the soil faster. It allows to grow berries in 3/4 th the normal time.



Damp Mulch

-A plant fertilizer spread on soft soil. It slows the growth of Berries and causes the soil to dry slower.

It increases the growth time of berries by half. If you have a berry that grows fast, not only will it grow slower, but it will increase the harvest of your berry!



Stable Mulch

-A plant fertilizer spread on soft soil. It extends the time Berries stay on their plants before falling.



Gooey Mulch

-A plant fertilizer spread on soft soil. It ups the number of times new plants grow where mature plants withered.



Well, that's about all there is to tell you about Berries in the world of Pokemon! I hope this knowledge of berries helps you become a better Pokemon trainer!

[Killah]

Berries don't see much use in the "normal" 6v6 OU metagame, but in the "VGC" or "Video Game Competition" metagame that past two years berries see a lot of use! For those who don't know, Nintendo did some national tournaments the past two years, and the format was 4v4 doubles. Lum berries are present on pretty much every team, and I've used a variety of super-effective weakening berries with loads of success. Metagross loves having an Occa berry save it from a KO, while mons like Togekiss can use Yache Berry to weaken the omnipresent blizzard. Too bad B/W didn't introduce any new berries, though =/

[Minoru]

May I add that to the guide (credit will be given of course)?

[Killah]

Oh, sure ^^

In fact, often times pokemon with a 4x weakness can use an attack-reducing berry as a surprise factor; I've run a Countercoat Swampert with a Rindo berry (weakens Grass type attacks), and Heatran often can use a Shuca berry to prevent most Earthquakes from KO'ing. Other examples include DDNite with a Yache berry or Tyranitar with a Chople Berry; these strategies are often underutilized and almost always surprise the opponent and earn you a KO!

"Pinch" berries also work great with Substitute and/or Belly Drum. Linoone is a great Belly Drum + Salac berry user with his ability, Gluttony, and his access to Extreemspeed from the 3rd-gen Ruby/Sapphire box for the gamecube, though Extreemspeed isn't entirely necessary. Substitute + Petaya + Agility on an Empoleon is also a fearsome set, and with only 2 attacks it can sweep much of a team played correctly.