Raid Battles

Raid Battles are a unique new gameplay element introduced in Version 1.4 which have a co-operative slant in the game. Here, from time to time, a Gym will evict all the Pokémon within it and replace the Pokémon with a giant egg with a countdown, allowing you to get to there when a Raid is about to happen. When the countdown hits zero, a giant Pokémon will appear at the top of the Gym and a Raid Battle can commence. It lasts for 45 minutes.

Raid Battles require a Raid Pass or a Premium Raid Pass to access them. You can get 1 Raid Pass a day through a Gym, or purchase a Premium Raid Pass for multiple uses in a day. You can only hold one pass at a time.

You can have both public and private raids, with each Raid Battle having a difficulty level suggesting the amount of people that are recommended. You can have up to 20 people battle in a raid at once, and everyone works together regardless of teams. Private rooms are locked using passwords based on Pokémon.

There are eight different kinds of Raid Battles, with different Pokémon appearing with different eggs. You can tell the type by the appearance

Normal	Rare	Community Day	Legendary	Elite
Mega	Legendary Mega	Super Mega	Super Legendary Mega	Primal
Ultra Beast

Community Day Raids and Elite Raids cannot be done with Remote Raid Passes

Like with standard Gym Battles, you can bring in six Pokémon into the Raid Battle. This means, with the maximum of 20 players, there can be 120 different Pokémon used against the opponent. The opponent is larger than normal and has significantly higher CP, usually in the high 10,000s or 20,000s.

The battle system is exactly the same as in normal gyms with tapping being Fast Attacks, holding down being Charged Attacks and being able to swipe left and right to dodge.

You have five minutes to defeat this massive Pokémon, but if you do there are bonuses...

First off, there are multiple different Items that can be obtained by winning a Raid Battle. You can get a Golden Razz Berry, a Rare Candy or a TM to teach your Pokémon new moves. These items can only be obtained by playing Raid Battles. In addition to this, you'll also get 3000 XP for completing a raid. You also get a number of Premier Balls. You will get more Premier Balls the more you damage the Raid Boss. 5 as standard for comnpletion then more based on the various factors. The factors are as follows

• Who owns the gym - You get more if you're on the same team as the team that runs it
• Damage inflicted by team - The team with the most damage inflicted on the boss gets a boost of Premier Balls
• Damage inflicted by teams - The more damage your team gives, the higher amount of balls of Premier Balls
• Damage inflicted by you - The more damage you give, the higher amount of balls of Premier Balls

The more important aspect, however, is the ability to capture the Pokémon that you battled in the Raid. This Pokémon will have higher CP and stats, at Level 20 in Normal Weather or 25 when weather boosted, but it can only be captured using Premier Balls obtained in the Raid. Once you are out of Premier Balls, then the Pokémon will flee, but you can use berries to make them easier to capture.

Remote Raid Battles were introduced in April 2020 as a way to battle at Raids from a distance. This requires a special kind of Remote Raid Pass to work and has a few limits

First, except for at certain times, only 10 Remote Raid Battle players can be in a lobby at any one time. This prevents lobbies from being overrun by remote raids. Secondly there's a damage reduction in damage done by players who are raiding remotely. Like the limit to players, this can be removed at certain times as environmental factors deem fit.

To Remote Raid, you have to either see the Raid on your nearby, or have a Pokémon stationed at a gym where a Raid is taking place. For this, there is a distance limit of 4 kilometres.

EX Raid Battles are a special invitation Raid Battle. On occassion, an EX Raid Battle will be assigned to a Pokémon Gym and everyone who participated in a Raid Battle at the Gym in recent times will receive an invite and a special EX Raid Pass. This allows for them to participate in the EX Raid Battle during the allotted time. Due to them being invite only, they are quite rare and there's no way to determine where one will drop ahead of time.

In October 2022, a new kind of Raid Battle followed on called Elite Raid Battles. These took place on special Gyms assigned as EX Raid Gyms and have a 24 hour wait time before a 30 minute battle. They cannot be done remotely. Following completion of an Elite Raid, rare Pokémon will spawn in a 30 metre radius of the gym for 15 minutes.

Shadow Raid Battles were introduced in May 2023 and feature battles against Shadow Pokémn. These raids feature some new mechanics

For 3 Star and 5 Star Shadow Raid Battles, as the battle goes on, the Pokémon will become enraged and their Attack and Defense stats will go up. This can be returned to normal by using the Purified Gem item in battle. This will return the stat to normal for the time being.