How to Fight the Charizard Raid in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet

Earlier today, Pokemon Scarlet and Violet received an update, which reports indicate improved performance, and with it came the highly anticipated Unrivaled Charizard event. With so much anticipation, there are plenty of questions about the fight and how to find it, which is both simpler and harder than you might think.

How to Fight the Charizard Raid in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet

Set Up

There are two conditions to find the Unrivaled Charizard raid. The first is updating your data, with the second requiring access to six or higher star raids. To update your data, push X, select Poke Portal, go to Mystery Gift, and finally choose Check Poke Portal News. Doing this will update Pokemon Scarlet and Violet to include the latest event, which has Charizard, Florges, and Mimikyu.

While this gives you the event data, these battles only appear if you’ve gained access to these fights. To find a seven star raid battle, you need to finish the story, rechallenge every Gym leader, finish the Academy Ace Tournament, and complete multiple five star raids. If you’re having issues finding high ranking raids, look at the map for glowing icons, which should be either Florges, or Mimikyu at four or five stars. Once you complete the required tasks, you’ll receive a phone call telling you they can now be discovered.

If you have a powerful team, there are reports that joining a Tera battle online can circumvent these requirements as well.

Finding Charizard

Upon finishing all the requirements you should see multiple raid icons with a glow around them. While Florges, and Mimikyu can appear under any type, Charizard is limited to dragon raids.

Fighting Charizard

Despite fears Charizard would be an impossible foe, it actually isn’t too bad. While Charizard is level 100, according to Serebii it only has the following attacks:

Ability
Hidden Ability

Moves
Dragon Pulse
Fire Blast
Hurricane
Focus Blast

Additional Moves
Overheat
Tera Blast
Sunny Day
Inferno

Serebii

Due to the move list, Azumarill, Dachsbun or Flutter Mane are common choices. Some reports have indicated more success playing offline, though it shouldn’t be too difficult if you have any of the aforementioned Pokemon built and at the right level.

Players can only capture one Charizard from the event, and it is not possible to get a shiny. However, it is possible to breed the Charizard and obtain the shiny like that or previous forms.