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I know of a few way and I know that everyone who plays Heart-Gold or Soul-Silver feels as though Game Freak decided to screw. This usually happened about 2 1/2 hours after they bought the game on the release date. I now know what you feel like. There are few areas to level up in HG and SS after the Kanto league has been beaten. It is most frustrating and can make you feel like smacking your head on the wall, no lets say through the wall.

But is there even hope? I know peopl say that it just take a long time, but now I want to ask those people what their definition of time is, eternity? Does anyone ever even get Lv. 100s in this game? (or is that just for hackers) I am feeling weak. :'( What should I do? >_< I know of a few ways though. Might they be hope for me? I will list what I do know. Here they are

  1. Battle Wild Pokemon
    This is best done at either Cerulean Cave(Anything with either a ground weakness or no attacks that do mush damage to ground/rock) and Mt. Silver(for any thing with grass/water/ice moves that will not be OHKO by a ground move.

  2. Fight the E4
    This can be done by leveling up to Lv. 80 +.... hard thing to do. Ooooor you can buy a lot of stuff so you have no money and then just go fight them and lose every time to quickly level up.

  3. Use Rare Candies
    I know that there are like 15 or so rare candies sitting around. They can also be bought at the PokeAthlon for 2000 P on Mondays and Saturdays.

  4. Use the Day Care Services
    This can be very good when leveling up in the wild because your Pokemon slowly gains Experience and eventually can be a high level. But the down side is it takes the longest of any of these ways.

  5. Use an Exp. Share for low level Pokemon
    Like it says "Low level Pokemon"

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5 Answers

2 votes
 
Best answer

Level grinding in older Pokemon games is hard. There is no easy way out. However, the steps below will help you train as efficiently as possible in HG/SS.

This answer generally assumes you've completed the game including Kanto, and you have some Pokemon from your playthrough that can be used for switch training (roughly level 55+).

If you're mid-playthrough, make use of PokeGear rematches, areas you haven't cleared yet, and Exp. Share for Pokemon that can't fight on their own. Remember trainers give considerably more experience than wild Pokemon. Use fewer Pokemon on your team to spread experience more efficiently. If you must grind wild Pokemon, then this guide might help you find good spots.

0: Setup

Before starting, do the following changes to your in-game options to make the grind faster:

  1. Turn off "battle scene".
  2. Set text speed to fast.
  3. When switch training, choose the "switch" battle style instead of "set". This will let you swap back to the Pokemon you're training after every KO in a trainer battle.

After you reach the "solo training" phase below, turn the battle style back to "set", so you see less dialogue boxes.

1: Get a Lucky Egg

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Lucky Eggs are tricky to get in HG/SS, but necessary for anyone serious about training Pokemon beyond about level 50. They are available 5% of the time on wild Chansey, which itself only appears at a rate of 1% on Routes 13, 14 and 15. Here are ways to make the process easier:

  1. Chansey is one of the Pokemon that appears in daily swarms. During swarms, its encounter rate on Route 13 is boosted to 40%, so you can encounter a bunch and use Thief on them. You can also use Compoundeyes to boost the Lucky Egg chance to 20%. To cycle the current swarm, change the DS clock to 23:59 and allow the time to roll over to 00:00 while in-game.
  2. Learn RNG manipulation and hit a seed + frame that will spit out a Chansey with Lucky Egg. If you are serious about training teams in Gen 4, you will need to learn RNG manipulation anyway.

If you're only interested in training to level 50, then Exp. Share training is a viable alternative to Lucky Egg, so you can skip this step if you want.

2: Passive training

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Low-level Pokemon cannot take fights on their own, so they need to be trained using teammates. At this stage, there are two reasonable approaches: a) switch training with the Lucky Egg or b) using the Exp. Share. The Lucky Egg approach is slightly faster overall, but the Exp. Share approach requires less brain power. Suggestions for who to fight:

  1. The PokeGear lets you rematch overworld trainers with fully evolved Pokemon at fairly high levels. This page shows all the available fights. The best one is PokeManiac Brent on Route 43 on Monday mornings, who has fully-evolved Pokemon at level 58. To activate his rematch, change the DS clock to any time between 4:00 and 9:59 on a Monday. You can repeatedly call Brent and rematch him until 9:59.
  2. You can rematch Gym Leaders if you call their PokeGear number at the correct time. This page explains how to get the numbers and when to call. (Like with Brent, times can be cheated by changing the DS time according to the day of the week and morning-day-night cycle.) Pick a leader whose Pokemon won't 2HKO your damage dealers while switch training. Blue offers the most experience if your team can take him (six Pokemon around level 70), but the others may be faster since their teams have consistent weaknesses.
  3. The Pokemon League is a viable option if you already have high level Pokemon (i.e. level 75+) that can clear the battles efficiently. Unless your Pokemon are very high level, you'll need to use the Exp. Share instead of switch training.

Of these three options, pick the hardest that your team is capable of clearing efficiently. If you're only part way though the game, stick to PokeGear rematches (or just keep trying the fight/s you're losing).

Wherever possible, avoid training on wild Pokemon as they award less experience than trainer Pokemon and only go up to around level 50.

3: Solo training

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Once your Pokemon can hold its own in battles, you can let it solo entire fights and thus gain all the available experience. This is when the Lucky Egg truly becomes necessary to train with any efficiency. You should start solo training as soon as there are PokeGear battles your Pokemon is capable of clearing on its own.

When your Pokemon is level 50+, it should consistently clear all the regular PokeGear rematches alone -- at this point, you may graduate to the Gym Leader rematches. Pick one that your Pokemon matches favourably against, as this makes the grind faster and effective at earlier levels.

Offensively-inclined Pokemon have a much easier time with solo training, especially ones with setup moves like Swords Dance (which can be used at the start of the fight). If your Pokemon needs a boost, use X-items on it at the start of fights. When your Pokemon is around level 80+, it should be capable of beating the Pokemon League alone with reasonable efficiency, assuming it has boosts described above. If it's having trouble, go back to PokeGear fights.

If you have multiple Pokemon to train, give a second Pokemon the Exp. Share (while your main one holds Lucky Egg). This causes less experience to be handed out in total, but the difference is small enough to where switch training both Pokemon completely separately is slower.

4: Rare Candies (and other tricks)

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Use your Rare Candies at level 95+, when leveling up requires the most experience (except for Pokemon in the Erratic experience group). This video shows all the locations. (There are repeatable ways to get Rare Candies, but they are inefficient.)

TobyOrNotToby's answer has an interesting trick where you can level up your Pokemon overnight using the Day-Care. Actively grinding is faster, but this may be worthwhile if you're a bit desperate. You can also combine your level grinding with ShankzEEVEE's idea to get extra Rare Candies.

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Is there any way to quickly reset Brent to a higher level? Like setting the clock to 23:59 or something?
1 vote

Yeah, the best way to go in my opinion is:

hunt down a chansey with a lucky egg
and have an exp.share
give the exp.share to a Pokemon
put it first in your party
then rematch the gym leaders
and just switch him out with another Pokemon
then when he gets around lvl-35-40
take him to mt.silver and give him the lucky egg
when you get to about 55-60
rematch the gym leaders with the lucky egg

that's usually how I train mine

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But I do not wan to spend 20 hours trying to find a lucky egg.
1 vote

Well, let me just say, Mt. Silver is the one place in the game (HG/SS) with wild Pokemon around level 50.
If you have a low-level Pokemon, give it an Exp. Share and have him at the front of your party. Once a strong wild Pokemon, immediately switch out the weaker one for a stronger one and take down the foe. With a just-hatched Pokemon, for example, you could could see it go to level 9 after one battle in Mt. Silver easily.

From trainer battles, the best is still to line up a match with Gym Leaders or the Elite Four, or even Red.

If all else fails, there are Rare Candies. Just keep listening in on Buena's Password and she'll give you a Rare Candy every time you get 25 points on your Blue Card.

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1 vote

There's a ethical question to this but at the Ecruteak Gym there's a place where, if you hold down the up button, it's an endless loop of you falling and then reappearing at the beginning. What you can do is put your Pokémon in the daycare and then tape down the up button overnight. I did this at a lower level but I got my Drowzee from level 13 to 37 in about 6 hours. There's probably quicker methods if you really wanna go through the grind but if you just want to level up to beat Red or compete against a friend, in my case, this is a good way to do it

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0 votes

If you want to do the Rare Candy Route... You could catch some Teddiursa at Mt. Silver... They have a 50% chance of having the ability Pick Up and at Level 41+ they pick up Rare Candies every once in a while...

Have the Teddiursa(s) in your Party while battling Wild Pokemons and check after the Battle if they pick upped something... It's not that bothersome if you're using Sweet Scent to encounter Wild Pokemons...

Use the Rare Candies once you have enough to reach Level 100 as the latter Levels are the harder to gain Experience...

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