Pokémon Scarlet and Violet removes Tera Shard-saving exploit for Battle Teams

The Pokémon Company has released the Version 1.2.0 update for Pokémon Scarlet and Violet. Among the many changes implemented with this new update, are some that are not mentioned in the patch notes. One such change is that you must now save your game when sharing your Battle Teams online. This essentially removes one of the exploits that players could use to retain Tera Shards, leaving many competitive players feeling dejected.

Battle Teams allow you to create a number of party setups that you can quickly choose from when competing in online battles. In addition, choosing Rental Teams from the Battle Stadium menu in the Poké Portal gives you the option of sharing your Battle Teams online. Sharing a Battle Team allows any other players to use it, provided they know the ID.

Prior to the new update, you could share your Battle Teams without saving your game. Taking the game online forces you to save, but after that, you were free to share your teams without saving. Players took advantage of this as a way to adjust the Pokémon they use in competitive play without using up consumable items.

After saving, players would use any consumable items they have to set up the exact team they wanted and then share that team online. Then, once they have the team ID, they would reset their game to get back any items they had used. This allows players to keep the items they used to create their Battle Team while still being able to use that team for online battles via the ID.  

The most common reason that players took advantage of this exploit was to make it easier to change a Pokémon’s Tera Type. In the game, there is a cook at the Treasury Eater in Medali who can change a Pokémon’s Tera Type, provided that you hand over 50 of the corresponding Tera Shards. By using the Battle Team sharing exploit, it was possible for players to change the Tera Types of their Pokémon and then get those same shards back. Players are no longer able to do this, as the new update forces them to save when sharing a Battle Team.  

This kind of exploit was also present in Pokémon Sword and Shield, where it was possible to cut down on the use of various items, like Max Soup, which allows a regular Pokémon to Gigantamax. 

The main way of obtaining Tera Shards is from Tera Raid Battles, where 1-4 players team up to take on powerful Tera Pokémon. You can expect to obtain 4-6 Tera Shards of the opposing Pokémon’s Tera Type from a single battle, so building up 50 takes a fair share of effort. Now that players cannot take advantage of the exploit, they will have to put in the work to change Tera Types that was originally intended.

Those who were using the Battle Team exploit only needed to collect enough Tera Shards so that they could change the Tera Type for each of their six Pokémon. If things had remained how they were, it’s likely that the number of players teaming up to collect shards would have continued to decrease over time. It’s possible that the change in the new update was implemented as a way to keep players actively engaging in Tera Raid Battles.

Written by. Marco Farinaccia based on the original Japanese article (original article’s publication date: 2023-02-28 10:56 JST)