Pokémon Scarlet and Violet Elite Four and Champion guide

After you take on all eight gym leaders, you can head into the Pokémon League to fight the Elite Four and the Champion in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet.

The Elite Four is commonly seen as the last part of a Pokémon game (before any content that people refer to as “postgame”). You fight four tough battles against high-level opponents, culminating in a fifth against the Pokémon Champion. You should be prepared for a gauntlet with no Pokémon Center allowing you to heal between battles.

However, since you can access your Pokémon box from anywhere in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, you can swap out your Pokémon between battles, if you want. Swapping your Pokémon in and out of your party will not heal them. However, if you have fully-healed Pokémon in your box, then they will be fully healed when you move them to your party.

Stock up on healing items, make sure your Pokémon are around level 60, and head into the building when you’re ready.

Before you actually start battling the Elite Four, Rika will conduct an interview with you — and yes, you can fail. Most of the answers are inconsequential (like asking about your goals) or easy (like asking about what starter you picked), but Rika will quiz you on the gym leaders of the Paldea region. To help you not flunk out, here are all the gym leaders, their towns, and their type specialties:

After passing Rika’s interview, she’ll kick off the Pokémon League with your first battle.

Rika is a ground-type specialist, so her party is weak to a lot of stuff (grass-, ice-, and water-types). She throws out her Whiscash first, so start off with a grass-type Pokémon (or one with grass-type moves) if you have one to wipe it and keep the fight moving quickly.

Her party is as follows:

This battle is pretty straightforward, but as you might expect from a ground-type trainer, Rika loves to use Sandstorm to keep your accuracy low and continuously deal damage to your Pokémon.

Poppy is a steel-type specialist, so all her Pokémon are quite tanky. You’ll want to hit them with the strongest moves you have to knock them out quickly. Steel-type Pokémon are weak against fighting-, fire-, and ground-type attacks, but a few of her Pokémon are immune to ground-type moves. Her party is:

Copperajah will lay down spikes using Stealth Rock, making it so your team takes damage every time they join the battle. Bronzong also has the “Levitate” ability, ensuring that it won’t take any damage from ground-type moves, annoyingly enough. Similarly, Corviknight’s flying-typing makes it immune to ground-type moves as well.

Yes, you have to fight Larry again. He specializes in a different type than he did the last time you fought: flying-type.

Nearly all of his Pokémon have dual-typing you can take advantage of, but ice- and electric-types will largely still do the trick.

Larry will immediately set up Sunny Day, giving boosts to both his Tropius’ Solar Beam and Altaria’s Flamethrower.

Hassel uses dragon-type Pokémon, meaning they hit super hard and are a general pain to deal with. Use fairy-type moves to wipe him out quickly. You can use dragon-type moves, but this is a double-edged sword, as his dragon-type moves will also hit your dragon-type Pokémon super hard.

Rika heals your team back to full after this battle, so don’t worry about healing before the champion.

Geeta, in true champion fashion, is not a master of any specific type, but a master of everything. If you’ve made it this far, you should have a diverse enough party to take her down. Just keep in mind what she’s throwing out and make sure to counter her accordingly when it prompts you to switch Pokémon.

Her party is:

Glimmora has the “Toxic Debris” ability, meaning that if you hit it with physical attacks, it’ll put down Toxic Spikes that poison your Pokémon whenever you send one out. Either blast it down quickly or avoid physical moves.