How to Evolve Rufflet in Pokémon Legends: Arceus

While many new Pokémon forms in Pokémon Legends: Arceus require different evolution methods to obtain than other Pokémon, this isn’t true for Rufflet. To evolve them into Hisuian Braviary, you’ll just need to train them sufficiently.

How to Increase Rufflet’s Level Quickly

There are 2 main ways to increase a Pokémon’s level in Pokémon Legends: Arceus. The first is the more traditional method of battling. This lets you gain experience from defeating (or catching) opposing pocket monsters. The other method is to use experience-giving items on them. This means primarily using Exp. Candy or the occasional Rare Candy.

Thankfully, wild Rufflets are found at fairly high levels. This means it won’t take you that long to get them to level 54.

Tips for Leveling up Through Battle

For the most part, you’ll get the most experience from defeating and catching high-level fully-evolved Pokémon. As you would expect, such foes are most easily found in the last area of the game: the Alabaster Icelands. There are lots of level 50 and over Pokémon here, including many alpha pocket monsters.

However, there is an easier target which you can farm for experience points. In the Cobalt Coastlands, there is a level 51 alpha Chansey on a small island in the very southeastern corner of this area.

Chansey is one of the species that give more experience points than usual. Proportionately, a defeated Chansey will give more experience points than most other Pokémon of the same level—including legendary Pokémon.

Furthermore, Pokémon Legends: Arceus has a built-in experience share mechanic. For this reason, you don’t even need to battle with Rufflet to level them up. All you need to do is have them in your party. However, the battling Pokémon will get more experience points.

A great way to get the best of both worlds is to initially send out Rufflet and then call them back to send out a stronger Pokémon. Even if Rufflet doesn’t use a move, this still counts as them being an active Pokémon in any given battle.

Where to Find Infinite Exp. Candy

If you have more money than time, using Exp. Candy on Rufflet can be a more efficient way to level them up. If you’ve completed Request #54: Serving Up Snacks, you’ll be able to buy a variety of Exp. Candy from Bonn. This sweets-loving vendor is located to the left of the entrance to Galaxy Hall. Just look for the blue umbrella.

Overall, there are 3 different types of Exp. Candy you can buy from Bonn—and each has a different price. Here’s a breakdown of Bonn’s Exp. Candy, how many experience points they give, and how much they cost:

• Exp. Candy S – 800 experience points [$1,600]
• Exp. Candy M – 3,000 experience points [$6,000]
• Exp. Candy L – 10,000 experience points [$18,000]

You can also acquire Exp. Candy without having to buy them. Many alpha Pokémon will drop Exp. Candy when they’re defeated or captured. As you could probably guess, the alpha Pokémon that give the best Exp. Candy are the highest leveled ones.

As for Rare Candy, they aren’t viable for mass-leveling. You’ll need 1,000 Merit Points to buy 1 Rare Candy from Simona (located left of Bonn’s position). You’re better off saving your Merit Points for evolution items.

Why Does It Take So Long to Level up Rufflet?

If you’re wondering why it takes so long to level up Rufflet compared to other Pokémon, it is because Rufflet is in the “Slow” Experience Group. All Pokémon belong to 1 of 6 Experience Groups.

The “Slow” group requires more experience to level up than most other groups. The only group that takes longer to level up are Pokémon from the “Fluctuating” Experience Group.

For a frame of reference, you can examine how many experience points are needed to train Rufflet up to level 100 compared to a Pokémon from the “Erratic” Experience Group (the group that requires the least amount of experience points to level up).

In order to train Rufflet (Slow Experience Group) from level 1 to level 100, they’ll need 1,250,000 experience points. But, to train a Finneon (Erratic Experience Group) from level 1 to level 100, they’ll only need 600,000 experience points. This is less than half the amount required for Slow Experience Group pocket monsters.

Reasons to (Not) Use Hisuian Braviary on Your Team

…It looks kind of cool…to some people.

To be frank, Hisuian Braviary is inferior to regular Braviary in pretty much every way possible. However, sadly, there’s no way to obtain a regular Braviary in Pokémon Legends: Arceus. The niche that Hisuian Braviary fills is not a very useful one. And it will be outclassed by many other species.

As such, the only real reason to use a Hisuian Braviary on your team is that it’s new to the Pokémon franchise. Therefore, it holds novel value. Overall, due to its less-than-ideal typing, stats, and moves, you’ll want to reconsider using this Pokémon.

The Problem With Hisuian Braviary’s Typing

Most would not expect Normal-typing to be better than Psychic-typing in many cases. However, this is true for Pokémon that are part Flying-type. A regular Braviary (Normal and Flying-type) is weak to 3 types, resistant to 2, and immune to another 2. However, Hisuian Braviary (Psychic and Flying-type) is weak to 5 types, resistant to 3, and immune to only 1.

While Psychic and Flying-type together aren’t a bad pairing, it is when compared to Normal and Flying-type together. The main weakness of Normal-types (Fighting-type moves) gets negated by being part Flying-type. On top of that, Ghost-type immunity can be handy, since plenty of Pokémon can learn Shadow Ball.

Even though Hisuian Braviary will be able to shrug off Fighting-type moves without any issues, it will take huge damage from Ghost-type moves as well as from 4 other types. One of these 4 other types is Ice, which is one of the more common types of moves that can be learned; lots of pocket monsters can learn Ice Fang, Ice Punch, Ice Beam, or other Ice-type coverage moves.

Sure, regular Braviary gets hit pretty hard by Ice-type attacks as well, but adding a weakness to Ghost and Dark-type moves compounds the issue with even more bad type match-ups. Put simply, Hisuian Braviary will have a hard time against any Pokémon with even semi-decent type coverage.

The Problem With Hisuian Braviary’s Stats

As opposed to regular Braviary, which has stats focused on HP, Attack, and somewhat on Speed, Hisuian Braviary is all about HP and Special Attack. While this is understandable given its Psychic-typing, what isn’t comprehensible is why its Speed stat got decreased so much.

When looking at Hisuian Braviary’s Speed base stat (around 65 at level 50 with minimum stat investment), you can see that it will get outsped by even Pokémon with base stat totals far lower than it.

Hisuian Braviary has a base stat total of 510. However, when observing others in a similar Speed stat bracket, you’ll be able to see that Pokémon like Mothim and Finneon (who have around 66 Speed at level 50 with minimum stat investment) will likely be able to move before Hisuian Braviary in battle.

That’s ridiculous when you note that Mothim has a base stat total of 424 and Finneon has a base stat total of only 330. These aren’t even species that are considered to be truly fast—they have slightly below-average Speed stats.

On top of the Speed issue, Hisuian Braviary has middling defensive stats. This means that it will not be likely to tank hits very well. The only thing that will potentially stop it from getting one-shot by a super effective move before it can make a move of its own is its higher-than-average HP stat. This is not something you should rely on for longer battles.

What’s more, Hisuian Braviary’s Special Attack stat isn’t that impressive when looking at other potential Psychic-type party options. At level 50, with minimum stat investment, Hisuian Braviary will have around 112 Special Attack. Compared with similar criteria to other Psychic-type Pokémon like Espeon (130 Special Attack) and Alakazam (135 Special Attack), this is almost a pitiful amount.

The Problem With Hisuian Braviary’s Move Pool

Hisuian Braviary’s Attack is much lower than its Special Attack. Therefore, you should focus on giving them special damage-dealing moves. However, there aren’t that many good ones that Hisuian Braviary can learn.

Through leveling up, they will only learn 3 decent special moves: Air Slash, Esper Wing, and Hurricane. Any of these can be decent Same Type Attack Bonus (STAB) moves. However, they are the highlight of Hisuian Braviary’s move pool.

Hisuian Braviary can learn some decent attacks from the move tutor. But most won’t be very useful as coverage moves. Psychic and Hyper Beam can be okay choices for hard-hitting moves. Although they will pale in damage compared to Hurricane.

Dazzling Gleam can be helpful in countering Dark-type threats, and Mystical Fire can be handy for general type coverage (such as against Steel-type foes). Although, all other move tutor moves will be too low in base power to be worth learning.

Hisuian Braviary can learn some solid physical moves. Though they do not have a high enough Attack stat to truly make proper use of them. Therefore, such moves should be ignored unless you’re heavily specializing your Hisuian Braviary into being Attack-oriented. Which you shouldn’t do, as it would be a waste of resources.