Key Takeaway
To evolve Budew into Roselia, you need to increase its friendship to 160. When Budew reaches this friendship threshold, the next time you level it up during the day, it will evolve into Roselia.
Unlike many other Grass-type pocket monsters in Pokémon Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl, you need to follow a couple of crucial steps to evolve Budew. Thankfully, these criteria are pretty easy to meet. You can reach them by using simple tricks.
Table Of Contents
What You Need to Do to Evolve Budew
Firstly, you need to increase Budew’s friendship to 160. Then, once this has been done, you need to level Budew up at least once during the day (both morning and midday count). After you do so, Budew will automatically evolve into Roselia.
How to Increase Friendship
A great way to increase passive friendship gain is by getting your Budew to hold a Soothe Bell. This held item doubles the rate at which friendship increases, which makes it one of the most useful tools for raising your most amiable allies. To get the Soothe Bell, you need to talk to a maid in the Pokémon Mansion on Route 212.
Keeping your Budew in the first slot of your party will help to increase friendship more quickly. The same goes for walking with them, so be sure to get Budew out of their Poké Ball often!
Pocket monsters, similar to real-life pets, love food. As such, feeding them the right kinds of berries and poffins can help to deepen your bond with Budew. Take a look at your Pokémon’s summary in the party menu to take note of what flavors they like the most. Feeding them berries and poffins that have this flavor will increase friendship faster than berries and poffins that possess other flavors.
On a related note, using vitamins on your Budew will also get them to become friendlier. In-game, these vitamins are:
- HP Up
- PP Up
- Protein
- Zinc
- Calcium
- Iron
- Carbos
Making sure your Pokémon is relaxed is another thing you can do to help speed up friendship increase. You can give your Budew a peaceful spa day by getting them a massage in Veilstone City. There is a female NPC who massages Pokémon in a house near the gym. After you defeat the Pokémon League, you can also get massages at the Ribbon Syndicate in the Resort Area.
Last, but not least, you can increase friendships by winning battles. However, only Pokémon in your party will be positively affected in this manner when you triumph over other trainers.
Things That Decrease Friendship
There are also some things that you should avoid when increasing friendships, as they will cause your Pokémon to dislike you. The biggest factors here are letting your Pokémon faint during battle and leaving them in PC storage for extended periods of time. Also, feeding your pocket monsters bitter items (like herbs) will decrease their friendship with you.
How to Check Friendships
To get a broad idea of where your friendship level is with a particular Pokémon, you can use the Pokétech App on your Pokétch. This application can be obtained by talking to a male NPC in the Eterna City Pokémon Center.
When you open the Pokétech App, it will show all of your party Pokémon on a green and black screen. Click on a pocket monster with the hand-shaped cursor to potentially see hearts emerge from a given Pokémon’s 2D model. The more hearts that emerge, the higher your friendship with that pocket monster. Sadly, there is no numerical readout that will tell you the exact level of friendship.
Another thing you can keep your eyes peeled for when gauging friendship is to note how your Pokémon act when they are sent into battle. When a Pokémon enters battle while below 179 friendship, it will act normally.
However, after reaching 180 friendship points, they will slightly move side to side when sent out. With that said, since friendship-based evolutions occur at 160 friendship points in BDSP, this latter method isn’t the quickest way to notice when your Budew is able to evolve.
How to Get Budew
There are a few above-ground locations where Budew spawns and some more in the Grand Underground. With a very high catch rate of 255 (the maximum value), Budew is a super-easy Pokémon to catch. Even if you don’t decrease their HP or inflict a status condition, there’s about a 44% chance to capture them in a regular ol’ Poké Ball.
Budew’s Above-Ground Locations
In these areas, Budew is found by walking through grass.
| Location | Level | Time of Day & Encounter Rate |
|---|---|---|
| Route 204 (South) | 4 to 5 | -25% during the morning -25% during midday -15% during the night |
| Route 204 (North) | 6 to 7 | -25% during the morning -25% during midday -15% during the night |
| Route 212 (North during clear weather) | 16 | -30% during all times of day |
| Eterna Forest 1 | 10 | -10% during the morning -10% during midday -does not appear at night |
| Eterna Forest 2 | 11 to 12 | -19% during all times of day |
| Great Marsh Areas 1 & 2 | 24 | -10% during the morning -10% during midday -does not appear at night |
| Great Marsh Areas 3 & 4 | 22 | -10% during the morning -10% during midday -does not appear at night |
| Great Marsh Area 5 & 6 | 20 | -10% during the morning -10% during midday -does not appear at night |
Budew’s Grand Underground Locations
There are five types of caves and caverns where Budew can spawn. If you don’t find one, exit the room and then re-enter it to reset the spawns.
- Spacious Cave (has purple ice with a crack for the room icon)
- Grassland Cave (has a small light green square for the room icon)
- Sunlit Cavern (has a large light green square for the room icon)
- Riverbank Cave (has a small half-light blue and half-light green square for the room icon)
- Still-Water Cavern (has a large half-light blue and half-light green square for the room icon)
How to Get Budew by Breeding
If you would rather breed and hatch your Budew from an egg, you have to pair up some parent Pokémon that have a Rose Incense as a held item. Only one of the parent Pokémon needs to be holding the Rose Incense. In breeding efforts that would normally give you a Roselia, you will get a Budew egg instead if one parent is holding a Rose Incense.
To breed a pair of Pokémon, you need to leave both of them at the Pokémon Nursery in Solaceon Town at the same time. Leave them there for a while and come back to find an egg—if the Pokémon you left there are compatible for breeding.
The egg will always hatch into the first stage of the female Pokémon’s family tree (unless you use a Ditto in place of a female Pokémon, in which case the egg will hatch into the first stage of the male Pokémon’s family tree).
You can find the Rose Incense west of the Pokémon Mansion on Route 212. You need to be able to use Surf in order to reach it.
