At first glance, Pokémon Scarlet & Violet’s gimmick of terastallizing looks similar to past game mechanics like mega evolutions and gigantamaxing, but it’s much more. Past gimmicks often felt like a tack-on that didn’t do much but power up your Pokémon and change them visually, but terastallizing changes gameplay quite a bit. Why does terastallizing your Pokémon even matter? Let’s take a look.
Related: All Shiny locked Pokemon in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet
Tera Types in Pokémon Scarlet and Violent explained
Terastallizing essentially changes the type of your Pokémon, switching up what they are strong and weak against both offensively and defensively. Pokémon do not have set tera-types and can switch into any 18 type variations. If you have a Charizard with a Dragon tera-type, it switches its type from Fire/Flying to Dragon, changing what it is strong and weak against. Charizard does not keep its original type, however. If you want to switch its tera-type, you can find tera-shards from doing raid battles, completing classes at the academy, and from the red crystals in the overworld.
Tera types also help you with STAB(same type attack bonus moves), though. If your water type uses a water-type move, then it gets a 50% attack bonus. Let’s say you terastallize your water type into the same type, it gives you a further 50% attack bonus for a total of 100%. A base 60 power attack with STAB and Tera-type STAB now makes 120 attack. Teralstallizing also rewards you for using your TMs wisely because now you can get STAB on types not native to your Pokémon’s type as long as your tera-type is the same as the moves you’re using.
There are multiple ways to get tera-type Pokémon in the wild. You can even happen upon them while exploring. Tera-types will give off a shine, which some players may confuse for shiny Pokemon, but shiny Pokémon will be a different color than their normal counterparts.
Similar to how Gigantimax raids worked in Sword and Shield, Pokémon dens all across the map light up when you can participate in Tera-battles. They will have different colored icons on the map, indicating what type of Pokémon the raid is. You may catch the Pokémon from these raid battles.
Tera-types may seem like a simple gimmick at first glance, but it adds a lot of strategy to basic Pokémon fights and players who are competitive. Being able to change your Pokémon type is huge, and hopefully, this mechanic will be improved upon in future games.
