The corner stone to some strategies and evolution rest on Friendship or Happiness. This is something that’s very hard to track on the occasion, with only a Poketech application for some measure and 2 people in-game that can tell you. What happiness is really is quite simple: how much the Pokemon like your trainer. This guide aims to help you minimize the time needed to max out happiness and get those pesky happiness based evolutions and moves going.
Understand that time is needed regardless of which method is used. Many of these techniques are based on items, some berries (which take a while to grow and time to attend to, to allow for maximum number), and care. Using items on a Pokemon raises happiness, it’s just a fact. Even a Pokemon who you never used will get enough happiness being rare candied up to 100, well before the 90’s. While these do live up to their name though and are very hard to get a hold of reliably in the present generation, it’s one method of maximizing happiness. The stat boosting items (Carbos, Protein, Zinc, etc) also work to boost happiness effectively, but they are rather expensive (9800 poke each!). The general use of items will help as well, but are trickier as they can only be used when the Pokemon needs them.
Berries present a wonderful way to effectively max out any one Pokemon’s happiness. I personally see this to be the most efficient method, but it also takes a fair bit of preparation work to have adequate supplies. However, with it, this method makes maxing out happiness quick and efficient. These berries all take 36 hours to mature (23 with growth mulch) and a maximum of 5 berries for being well tended to. You would want about 30-40 of the berries to raise something to full happiness. I recommend taking advantage of everstones and simply bringing happiness as soon as possible to full with these because using them on EV trained stats WILL reduce them. With an everstone on, they will simply not evolve until its removed, after the Pokemon has learned all the moves you’d want it to in its base form.
Amity Square is useful, however, only select Pokemon can be let out to take advantage of it. As there is a specific list of Pokemon they have dubbed “Cute” enough to come out of their balls and walk around a bit. They are:
Piplup, Prinplup, Empoleon,
Chimchar, Monferno, Infernape,
Turtwig, Grotle, Torterra,
Pikachu, Clefairy, Psyduck,
Torchic, Parchirisu, Buneary,
Drifloon, Skitty, Shroomish,
Jigglypuff, Happiny.
While there is no real gauge to how quickly this progresses at present, it gives the sound of going at a decent pace. You also will find berries and fashion accessories around 200 steps in there, so have the pedometer application up.
Next up would be items, while mentioned briefly prior, do help a lot in raising happiness. These though, are the Luxury Ball and the Soothe Bell. The Soothe Bell increases the happiness gained from walking around. Put in a situation of a clamped D-pad, connected to a charger and a good night’s sleep, anything will love you by morning and evolve at the next level. Luxury Ball sometimes is just that, a luxury. It has a lower capture rate, on par with the Pokeball, but increases the happiness that your Pokemon gains. The previously mentioned vitamins supply a good way, if expensive, to boost a Pokemon’s happiness, though only so much as any one can only have 50 vitamins total given to it.
Now, the limited means of increasing Happiness. These limits vary, be it from daily events, from built-in restrictions or just amount of time needed. First there are the Super Contests. These help notably, but require solid time investments to execute properly. While without a true limit, they take practice to master, but after that, become a fair source of happiness. Related to the Contest and with a strict limit, are Poffins. Every Pokemon, due to its nature, has some preferred flavor of Poffin they adore eating. This also works to increase a Pokemon’s appeal within the categories of the contest. You’ll find the Poffin House in Hearthome City near the Poke Center. You can cook these with up to 3 friends, which will result in a better poffin, just coordinate what you’re throwing in, multiples of the same berry usually botch the batch. You’ll want at LEAST level 10 Poffins to get a decent effect from each. Each poffin will fill the Sheen gauge a certain bit. Once filled, there’s no way to empty it, so choose well. The Daily happiness (maximum of 2 with a good bit of work) can be found in Veilstone, directly below the Gym and in the Ribbion Syndicate in the Resort Area (with the appropriate criteria of having a lead Pokemon with 10 ribbons).
Veilstone offers the advantage of giving you accessories to work with as well. To be specific, the daily massages. The girl living in the house in Veilstone, south of the Gym, will give one Pokemon a day a massage. She will also give you an accessory which she finds on the Pokemon. The second massage location is only accessible with time, as it is Post Elite Four, and requires you to have the Lead Pokemon earned 10 ribbons. While it has a requirement, it affects the Pokemon the same as the other massage, allowing for 2 a day.
While the slowest method, it’s the most reliable: battle. Have the Pokemon in your party, it will grow to like you over time. The Soothe Bell augments this process and anything in a Luxury Ball does as well, and these two do stack. Simply using them will raise their happiness but keep these few things in mind: 1) Don’t let them stay poisoned or under any status effect for an extended period of time 2) Don’t let them faint 3) Don’t use the Herbal remedies on them!.
Those are the basics of raising happiness in ANY Pokemon of the present generation of games. While always a matter of time, this should make it a lot easier to manage and pull off. Now, my Buneary needs attention because I want a Lopunny.
