The Basics

Pokemon Contests are one new feature in the 3rd Generation. In these contests, your Pokemon is graded by an audience and the judge on one of the five Conditions. But before you actually start and enter a contest, there are some few things you should be aware of. Choosing the right Pokemon for each Condition is essential if you want to score well.

There is a total of five contests types: Cool, Tough, Beauty, Smart and Cute. There are four ranks as well; Normal, Super, Hyper, and Master. The level of difficulty to win the contest increases as you move up to the next rank. You must clear the lower ranks to get into the higher ones. Meaning, if you take a Flygon to a Hyper rank contest, it must have won both the Normal and Super ranks. To start off with Contests, you must get the Contest Pass in Verdanturf Town’s Contest Hall. The Contest Halls are located around Hoenn.

The Normal Rank Hall is in Verdanturf.
The Super Rank Hall is in Fallarbor.
The Hyper Rank Hall is in Slateport City.
The Master Rank Hall is in Lilycove City.
In Emerald however, all four contest halls are in Lilycove City.

Which Contest?

The first thing you should look at when preparing your Pokemon is its nature. A Pokemon’s nature determines which Pokeblocks it likes and dislikes. The more the Pokemon likes the type of Pokeblock, the better the effect will be. PokeBlocks are like candy, and are created by blending specific berries together. But I will get to that later. Here is a list of natures and the types of Pokeblocks that are liked/disliked. There is also a man in Mossdeep City that will tell you what your Pokemon’s favorite type of Pokeblock is.

X=Easy to Raise stat - = Neutral O= Hard to Raise Stat

When you find out what type of Pokeblock your Pokemon likes the most along with which Contest type it will excel at, you should take note of the supplementary conditions. A Pokemon that has a Lonely nature, great with Cool Contests, is also influenced by Beauty and Tough. In this case, it wouldn’t be such a great idea to use a Lonely natured Pokemon as Lonely Pokemon do not like Sour Pokeblocks that affect the Toughness rating. The best nature for a Pokemon in a Cool Contest would be Naughty or Brave. Here is a list of which Conditions influence each contest.

This also should be remembered while in a Contest. Using a Beauty move in a Cool Contest is ok, but using a Cute move will get you a penalty.

PokeBlocks

Pokeblocks are a huge important part in getting your Pokemon ready for a contest. These candies raise your Pokemon’s Condition Level. You can check you Pokemon’s Condition on the PokeNavi. To get Pokeblocks, you must blend the berries you find during the game at a Berry Blender. Berry Blenders are found in each contest hall. You can blend with up to 3 friends with a link cable, or you can blend berries with the group of in-game people. The Berry Blender is fairly easy to use. It works best when there are 3 or 4 people blending. The public blender will have 1, 2, or 3 people that will join you depending on which Hall you go to. The more people there are, the better the Pokeblock will be. There is one person to join you in Verdanturf and Fallarbor, two at Slateport, and three at Lilycove.

Your goal is to create a Block that is low in Feel and high in Level. And of course, the better or rarer the berry is, the better block you’ll get. You can tell which berries are rarer by the number they are. So, a Cherri Berry is very common while a Pamtre berry is rarer. You can get higher levels with the rare berries.

Once you pick a berry to put in the blender, it starts. You have to press the A button when the spinning red dial lines up with the red marker by your name. If you did it perfectly, a little bull’s eye will show up. If you hit A when they were close to lining up, you get an O. If you miss, you get an X. When you get a bull’s eye or an O, the dial spins faster. Try to be as accurate as possible to get it going very fast, this makes the Pokeblock have a lower feel and have a better level. X’s will make the dial slow down. At the end of the time limit, Ranking will be shown of you and your partners’ accuracy. Then you will be told what color Pokeblock you made, its level, and feel before it’s added to you Pokeblock Case.

As mentioned earlier, certain natures like certain flavors of Pokeblocks. You should use the right Pokeblocks to level up each condition. Remember that after awhile your Pokemon will no longer eat Pokeblocks so don’t feed you Pokemon random blocks. Each color block has an effect on one or more conditions. You can check each Pokeblock in your Pokeblock Case. And now for the list of Pokeblock colors and their effects. (To see which color and level a berry will produce at each Hall’s Blender, look at its BerryDex entry here on SPP http://www.serebii.net/pokemon_advance/berrydex/ )

Natures are also apart of this as well. For the Pokeblocks that raises more than one condition, like Purple Pokeblocks, natures will determine how much each is raised. For example, Lonely, Adamant, Naughty, and Brave natures will have the Coolness raised greatly by a Purple Pokeblock. Now say the secondary taste is dry. On Adamant natured Pokemon the Beauty is not going to be raised by much; but for the other three, their Beauty will be higher, though not as high as Cool.

Pokeblock levels are “ordered” as follows. The only way to get an A+ is using a Leichi berry at any of the blenders.

A+ =60
A=59=50
B= 49-24
C= 23-11

When raising a specific attribute to begin with high level Pokeblocks from Group A berries. After Group A, go down to Group B, and finally Group C only if you are trying to raise an attribute very slightly. For example, if you are raising Beauty, begin with Pamtre berries (Group A) until the Beauty stat is very high, then use Cornn, Kelpsy (Group B) and Chesto (Group C) to max it out. If specific players are willing to wait long enough, then use just Group A berries and also make sure it corresponds to the nature.

Thanks to ShiningMew for writing this for us