In Pokemon Scarlet & Violet an assortment of items exists that have several purposes in training and strengthening the player’s Pokemon. Of these items, a category exists called Feathers.
These feathers are useful in large numbers, and are a good secondary source to assist the player in powering up their Pokemon to a level that can make them viable competitively, or simply to get them ready for the difficult 5 and 6 star Tera Raids that dot the Paldea Region in the late game. Here is how these feathers work and where to find them.
Feather Types
In Pokemon Scarlet & Violet, just like previous games in the series, there are 7 types of feathers to be found, with six of them corresponding with one of the stats used by Pokemon in battle. The 7th feather is the Pretty feather, and is only useful as a treasure to be sold for 500 Pokedollars at Poke Marts. Each of the six stat Feathers will raise a Pokemon’s base EV of the corresponding stat by 1 for every feather, as well as increasing the happiness of the receiving Pokemon. For instance, a Health Feather will raise the base EVs of a Pokemon's HP by 1 and make it happier as a bonus.
What are EVs?
For players that may be newer to the series, or perhaps long term fans that have not touched the competitive side of Pokemon until now, EVs, short for Effort Value, is Value present in the game that will inform the ending stat total of the Pokemon in the player’s party. Pokemon stats are largely influenced by its species, such as the Frigibax evolutionary line having a higher attack stat than any of its other stats. Using this example, this means that Frigibax is mainly designed as a physical attacker, alongside having a good HP stat and a decent defense stat, while being comparatively poor when it comes to special attacks. But players can influence these stats using the EV system present in the game.
Continuing to use Frigibax as an example, players could influence its stats by altering how many EVs that Frigibax has in order to customize its stats to the players liking. This works by altering the base stats of Pokemon based on how many EVs that Pokemon has. For every 4 EVs a Pokemon has in a given stat, its base stats will increase by one. Using Frigibax, if players gave a Frigibax 4 Attack Feathers, Frigibax’s base attack stat would increase by 1. However, players should be aware that they will not necessarily see all of these changes, as the numbers do not always show how many EVs a Pokemon has until it reaches level 100.
Pokemon have a maximum total of 510 EVs, and each stat can only have a maximum of 252 EVs due to how the math works in game. Pokemon gain EVs by fighting wild Pokemon, through vitamins given to them, and through feathers. All of this to say that it is possible to substantially increase the stats of a given Pokemon, and feathers are useful because of how they influence these stats. What this all means is that feathers can be used to increase the stats of Pokemon by small amounts, to whatever end players may have in mind. Feathers are not as effective as the various vitamins found and bought throughout the game, but they are significantly cheaper and can be found regularly through normal gameplay, meaning they are a good supplement to any player looking to optimize the stats of their Pokemon for battles.
Feather Locations
There are several locations that players can go to in order to find these items. The first is Casseroya Lake, just north of the Asado Desert. Once there, players will find these feathers floating around all over the surface of the lake. All players have to do is to start surfing on the back of Koraidon and Miraidon, once it possesses the ability to do so.
Players can then simply continue to wander around the lake, and they will see lots of sparkling items that are sitting on the water. Players can interact with these sparkles for a high chance of acquiring themselves a feather of a random type. These sparkles will often respawn, and so players can come gather more every day until they have as many as they wish.
Feathers are also a potential drop from Tera Raids. Players can gather feathers by finding and defeating the Tera Pokemon that exist in them, which can then drop numerous feathers.
Pokemon Scarlet & Violet are available now for Nintendo Switch.