Pokemon Scarlet and Violet mark a new era in Pokemon multiplayer, with a brand new four-player online co-op mode, classic trading and battling options, and new Tera Raids. Not sure where to start in your Scarlet and Violet multiplayer adventures? These four ways to play together with friends, strangers, and rivals alike will keep you entertained for a long time.
Union Circle Open World Co-op
Get BWT in your inbox!
Get BWT in your inbox!
The hallmark new feature of Gen IX, Union Circle, allows up to four players to hop online and play together. It’s impressively seamless, essentially allowing you to all inhabit the same plane of existence together regardless of what trainers you’ve already defeated or which fast travel points across the open world you’ve personally unlocked.
Watch your friends battle in real-time, pick up items without stealing them from your friends, and quickly enter raids together. While you cannot engage in battles or trades together from within the Union Circle or take on gyms together, it’s still nice to know you’ve got some friends nearby and can travel and train together at will.
Local and Online Trade and Battle
Quickly and easily you can hop into the Poké Portal menu to access all of Pokemon Scarlet and Violet’s multiplayer options. Herein you will find the Link Trade, Surprise Trade, and Link Battle options where you can trade with friends, do random trades with strangers, and battle friends respectively.
Link Battling includes Single Battles for classic one-on-one matches, Double Battles, and Multi Battles, where four players compete in teams of two against each other. Set your own unique link code to bring friends together into a lobby where you can determine what rules you want to compete with, like no-repeat Pokemon, no repeat items, the number of Pokemon, level limits, and other stipulations.
Battle Stadium
Battle Stadium is where Pokemon Scarlet and Violet multiplayer takes a step up into the competitive zone. This is where you can compete in battles with strangers online in casual or competitive matches with pre-determined rules. Casual battles can be run as singles or doubles with 3 distinct pokemon at a time and caps at level 50. Competitive battles will take place over set periods of time and see players ranking against one another.
For casual play, players can rent out other players’ teams to try out regardless of whether you have caught those pokemon yourself. Any player can list their team and with the right code, you can enlist that set of pokemon to test out without having to put in the time and effort of raising up a whole experimental team first. This way, you can get a feel for certain combos before committing.
Tera Raids
The other new mode to Gen IX is the Tera Raid. Building off Sword and Shield‘s Max Raid battles, up to four players can take on tera Pokemon together in an attempt to not only defeat them but catch them. You can gather up to four friends either by approaching a tera crystal in the wild, jumping into the raid menu via the Poké Portal, or most quickly by initiating a raid during Union Circle co-op. Gathering a group with diverse typing and move sets may help make the hardest raids more manageable together rather than taking them on alone.
However you play Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, there is always a way to play it multiplayer. Don’t go it alone, play it with alongside friends, against friends, or with the help of friends throughout these four modes.
Pokemon Scarlet and Violet is available now on Nintendo Switch with new DLC out now.
