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Sun and Moon's Level 100 Grind

Alola

Alola

UltraMysteryDungeon, when?
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Alola everyone! I wanted to know if anyone wanted to share their experience about grinding to level 100 in Sun & Moon? I've found myself in a position where I have to do so, and I'm not looking forward to it :cry:

In my brother's first Sun play through, he caught a Shiny Adamant Cubone. It's now a Marowak residing with me, since he did a new game, and I've decided to use it competitively. I changed its ability to Lightning Rod, so all that's left is grinding to level 100 and Hyper Training with a Gold Bottle Cap (that I got from the Shiny Silvally event). I know I could just breed a Marowak, but I don't want to pass up the chance to battle competitively with a Shiny, perfect IV Pokemon where no hacking was involved!

I know the traded boost, Lucky Egg and Pokemon Refresh will help with EXP, but it's a long way to get from level 50 to 100. Thus I wanted to know to all those who have done it before, how long on average did it take you? 10,000 Elite Four runs? A day or two in the Poni Gauntlet? Would you say it is easier to get to level 100 here or in Generation 5?
 
From what I remember as I grinded Ash-Greninja up there, Elite Four is quicker than Poni Gauntlet. You can also use the daily GAME FREAK battle in Heahea City and the Battle Buffet in Hau'oli City. If you have all the boosts, it shouldn't take too many Elite Four tries, maybe 10-20? I'm not sure.

I'd say it was easier (or maybe just less tedious) to level up in Gen V B2/W2 thanks to the Black Skyscraper/White Treehollow giving out XP; I loved those battle facilties.
 
At first grinding can be fun, but after a while, the novelty wears off quickly and it is the most boring thing to do in the game. I mean it's BORING in all capitals. I really wish they brought back the VS Seeker for something like this, because it's boring fighting the same patch of grass and the Elite Four a hundred times.

Your experience may vary. I have 5 teams that I brought up to level 100 and use them all online. Some were bred to have perfect stats without relying on Gold Bottle Caps. If you're just training one team, it shouldn't be too tedious. It can be boring, but if you go the route I went and trained all sorts of teams, it can wear you down.

I still hate the fact that Game Freak brought back that stupid mechanic of higher levels getting less points, but what can you do? I hope they dump it like yesterday's trash and bring back the old way of leveling up.

What I do to beat the tedious blues? I listen to music or watch a program on TV while points grinding. Beats the hell out of listening to the same crap over and over and over.
 
So I decided to estimate the experience gain from an Elite Four run, which is rather difficult since GF brought back the scaled XP formula for Gen VII, so I estimated conservatively using the expected XP rates for a level 100 Pokemon. Looking at all of the Elite Four's Pokemon, I estimated an average XP yield of 170, so I used this to simplify things a bit. Using this, I estimate that a traded Pokemon with max affection holding a lucky egg would gain a minimum of 55,000 XP from each Elite Four rematch run. This translates to anywhere between 13 and 34 rematches, depending on the leveling rate of your Pokemon in question. For OP's Marowak (with a medium-fast leveling rate), this ends up estimating about 21 passes through the E4 (although in practice it will be fewer given that you will be getting more XP at lower levels). For future grinds, you could have got a further 1.2x XP boost by not evolving the Pokemon right away.

This was a quick and dirty estimate, and I'll probably make and test a full calculator this evening that takes into account level growth.

During my past grinds to 100, once a Pokemon reached around level 80, I started sending it out to battle as much as I could. Generally, once I got a Pokemon to level 80, it became good enough to solo at least one of the Elite Four. This will double your XP gain for that Pokemon, but only do this if it isn't significantly slower than using your other grindmasters.

Some interesting things that I learned while doing this estimate:

In previous games, players got 1.5x XP if the defeated Pokemon belonged to a trainer. In Gen VII, this was removed so that wild Pokemon and trainers' Pokemon give the same XP.

A Pokemon only needs to have 2 hearts of affection to get the 1.2x XP boost. Based on my playthrough experiences in Sun/Moon, this can be achieved with a single rainbow bean.
 
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I am in a constant grind for this. I like to breed shinies, and then make them competitive mons. So I'm constantly leveling stuff up. I now have over 50 Pokémon that I leveled up to 100, at the very least.
I used to spend 8~10 hours on Poni Gauntlet, as then I could be very mindless about it, but I decided to switch and just do the E4 multiple times. I now can be very mindless about that, as the AI is very predictable if you use the same Pokémon to solo everything. I use my M-Megatross, and can easily tell how it all works:
Receive Fake Out from Haryiama, Zen Headbutt, Bullet Punch twice, two more Zen Headbutts. For Olivia, Earthquake Relicanth, take some damage doing BP on Golem and Probopass with Sturdy, defeat Golem with Earthquake and Probopass with another BP. BP the rest as well.
Acerola, heal before with Sitrus Berry, BP Sableye first then Frosslass when she comes last, else just Meteor Mash everything and hope for no burn for missing one of those on Drifblim.
Kahilil, Bullet Punch Skarmory then Meteor Mash everything but Oricorio and Crobat.
After that, you'll probally have to heal the burn from Toucannon, which is the Pokémon I most hate on E4, because he burns you 90% of the time.
Anyway, I'm lucky I have 6 Lucky Eggs, from trades from the GTS, and Rainbow Beans aplenty, because as it is stated, you only need two hearts on Refresh for a boost on XP, and a Rainbow Bean fits the need perfectly.
On top of all of that, I take advantage of Rare Kitchen 5*, which can level a Pokémon up a few levels. Most of the time, I level up a mon up to 89, then use a Rare Buffet to level it up to 98, then just use some candies, where the respawning one on Hau'oli city beach greatly helps.
 
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Bob Fizzle said:
So I decided to estimate the experience gain from an Elite Four run, which is rather difficult since GF brought back the scaled XP formula for Gen VII, so I estimated conservatively using the expected XP rates for a level 100 Pokemon. Looking at all of the Elite Four's Pokemon, I estimated an average XP yield of 170, so I used this to simplify things a bit. Using this, I estimate that a traded Pokemon with max affection holding a lucky egg would gain a minimum of 55,000 XP from each Elite Four rematch run. This translates to anywhere between 13 and 34 rematches, depending on the leveling rate of your Pokemon in question. For OP's Marowak (with a medium-fast leveling rate), this ends up estimating about 21 passes through the E4 (although in practice it will be fewer given that you will be getting more XP at lower levels). For future grinds, you could have got a further 1.2x XP boost by not evolving the Pokemon right away.
Click to expand...

Thank you @Bob Fizzle for taking the time to do these calculations! I wasn't expecting such a thing, but I greatly appreciate it. It gives me some piece of mind to know how long it will take to reach 100 for my Marowak.
 
Alola said:
Thank you @Bob Fizzle for taking the time to do these calculations! I wasn't expecting such a thing, but I greatly appreciate it. It gives me some piece of mind to know how long it will take to reach 100 for my Marowak.
Click to expand...

So I sat down and did some more rigorous calculations (no calculator to share though; I'm great at math but can't code interfaces) and I came up with some more accurate values for how many times you should have to run through the Elite 4.

Below is the base XP rate assuming you are using an XP share and have no EXP-boosting items or bonuses applied. Depending on the leveling rate of your Pokemon, to get to level 100 from level 1, you would need to run through the Elite 4:

Erratic: 19 times
Fast: 26 times
Medium-fast: 32 times
Medium-slow: 34 times
Slow: 40 times
Fluctuating: 52 times

To calculate how many runs you need if you have EXP boosts active, use the following multipliers:

Lucky Egg: divide the base number of runs by 1.5
2+ hearts of affection: divide by 1.2
Pokemon was obtained in a trade: divide by 1.5 if the trade was domestic (same language) or divide by 1.7 if the trade was international (different language)
O-Powers (or whatever the Rotom-Dex equivalent will be): Divide by 1.2 for level 1, 1.5 for level 2, or 2 for level 3
Pokemon fights instead of using the EXP share: Divide by 2
Pokemon is at or past the level where it is able to evolve but it has not evolved: Divide by 1.2

Assuming I'm not completely on the wrong track here, if all of the above boosts are active (except for O-powers), then you can level up to 100 in as few as 6 runs for Erratic, 7 for Fast, 8 for Medium-fast, 10 for Medium-slow, 11 for Slow, or 15 for Fluctuating. I've yet to actually do a test run myself to see how close I am with these calculations, but I'll let you all know when I do.
 
This model of EXP scaling is one of the few things they did in Gen V that I didn't want to see again.

Then again, I just abuse the hell out of the Poke Pelago glitch to get my Pokemon up to level 100 in about an hour or less and snag some colored shards on the way to hyper train them when they're fullyleveld, so.
 
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E4 Aaron said:
This model of EXP scaling is one of the few things they did in Gen V that I didn't want to see again.

Then again, I just abuse the hell out of the Poke Pelago glitch to get my Pokemon up to level 100 in about an hour or less and snag some colored shards on the way to hyper train them when they're fullyleveld, so.
Click to expand...

What? What is this glitch?
 
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