The Battle Villa is one of the best ways to earn gems to scout sync pairs in Pokémon Masters EX, and it’s the only way to earn lucky cookies to teach your sync pairs lucky skills. You can earn these great prizes by taking on a gauntlet of battles each day using nine sync pairs. A new Battle Villa challenge period occurs every two weeks, resetting your completion progress and allowing you to earn each reward all over again. The Battle Villa can be a struggle at first, but once your team becomes strong enough to clear it every challenge period, the rewards really start to pile up.
The Battle Villa is tough, so read on to get some tips on how best to prepare. With some clever decisions, you’ll be able to progress from the gates of the Battle Villa all the way to its final hall with time to spare each challenge period. Don’t worry if you haven’t already built up a huge roster of powerful sync pairs in Pokémon Masters EX. You can check the Boss Details section of the Area Details screen of each hall before you start battling to get an idea which sync pairs you’ll need to power up to meet the challenge. Plus, you’ll earn rewards for every hall you clear, whether you make it all the way to the end or not.
Earn Lucky Cookies to Learn Lucky Skills
Lucky skills—additional passive skills taught by lucky cookies—are both a unique reward of the Battle Villa and a huge help in its halls. You’ll first need to use lucky scrolls to unlock a sync pair’s lucky skill slot, then use a lucky cookie and hopefully receive a powerful lucky skill. If you want your favorite sync pairs to be as strong as possible, you’ll need to challenge the Battle Villa to help them learn lucky skills.
Both lucky cookies and lucky scrolls are earned by completing Battle Villa battles. You won’t know exactly what lucky skill you’ll get until you use a lucky cookie, but you can narrow things down a little by using the right kind of cookie.
There are four types of lucky cookies, each associated with different lucky skills. Crunchy Lucky Cookies teach lucky skills mostly related to attacking, Creamy Lucky Cookies teach skills that help guard against stat-lowering effects, Crispy Lucky Cookies teach skills that counter status conditions and certain other conditions, and Chewy Lucky Cookies teach skills that protect sync pairs against attacks of a certain type. Lucky cookies also have a rarity, with 3★ lucky cookies having a greater chance of teaching a higher-level skill.
To further increase the power of their strike sync pairs, many players use Crunchy Lucky Cookies to try to get skills like Critical Strike 2, which increases the damage of critical hits, and Power Flux 3, which increases the damage of moves based on how full the move gauge is. While tech and support sync pairs benefit from different lucky skills, it’s hard to go wrong using Creamy Lucky Cookies to teach them Vigilance, which prevents critical hits.
If you didn’t get the skill you wanted, you can use another lucky cookie and try again. You’ll then get to pick between the new skill and the old one. Keep challenging the Battle Villa and collecting lucky cookies, and you’ll be able to customize your sync pairs to take on anything.
Battle Villa Basics
The Battle Villa is a gauntlet-style challenge that takes multiple days to complete. The individual battles are still fought using Pokémon Masters EX’s standard 3-on-3 format, but any damage your sync pairs receive and any MP they consume to use Trainer moves carries over when you move on to the next hall. Each day, you choose a roster of nine sync pairs to use. You can keep swapping these sync pairs in and out of your team until they’ve all been knocked out, at which point you’ll have to wait until the next day to continue. To get as far as you can each day, you’ll need to be careful about which sync pairs you choose and when to use moves that cost MP.
The Battle Villa consists of many halls and typically only lasts for a two-week period, so you’ll need to be strategic to make your way to the end. In many of these halls, you’ll face three opponents that are all weak to the same type, but in certain halls you may face up to nine opponents that both are stronger and have a wider variety of type weaknesses. These tougher halls net the juicier milestone rewards, though, so it’s worth the extra effort to take them on. Also, like your sync pairs, your opponents’ remaining HP and battle status are carried over between battles.
If you’re just starting out, it could take you several days to beat some of the most difficult halls, so try to make the most of each day! Taking down a powerful opponent’s teammates and whittling away at their health can make your next battle much easier. Furthermore, at the start of each day, your roster of sync pairs is restored to full HP and MP, and you can also edit which sync pairs to include in your roster for the day.
MP Refresh, Passive Skills, and Battling for Endurance
Whether you’re just starting out and hoping you can clear the final hall before the next Battle Villa challenge period, or you’re a veteran trying to clear the Battle Villa in as few days as possible, you’ll get further in fewer days by focusing on endurance. With only nine sync pairs to use each day, you’ll quickly run out of MP-fueled skills if you use them recklessly. But many skills that cost MP also increase your sync pairs’ stats, and you’ll take a lot more damage if you don’t use them. So how do you balance both needs?
The most popular solution to this problem is to make heavy use of the MP Refresh skills that are available to sync pairs that have expanded sync grids. Skyla & Swanna have carried many teams on their wings with the help of Potion: MP Refresh 2 and Take Flight!: MP Refresh 3. These skills sometimes restore one MP of the respective move if the move is successful. The ability to use Potion repeatedly to restore HP is fantastic in an endurance challenge. Skyla & Swanna can also activate two separate sync grid tiles that teach the skill Master Healer 1, which increases the amount of HP restored by the user’s healing moves.
Another great method of gaining power across multiple battles in the Battle Villa is with passive skills and grid skills that activate when certain conditions are met. For instance, Sygna Suit Blue & Blastoise have both the Force Field 4 passive skill, which has a good chance of raising the Sp. Def of all allied sync pairs when using a sync move, and Team Shout 9, which raises the Attack or Sp. Atk—or both—of all allied sync pairs when hit by a move. Since none of these buffs cost MP, they can activate as many times as the conditions are met. Similarly, Professor Oak & Mew’s combination of grid skills First Aid 4, Shifty Striker 2, and Agile Entry 2 allow the sync pair to dominate battles early on in the Battle Villa by raising the sync pair’s evasiveness and healing them once each battle whenever they are in a pinch.
Building a Solid Battle Villa Team
It might be tempting to just load up your team with three sync pairs that can dish out a lot of damage against the type weakness of the hall you’re about to face, but you’ll perform much better if you exhibit a little more finesse. To make the most out of your limited roster of sync pairs each day, identify just one or two sync pairs that are great at dishing out damage of the type your opponents are weak to. For instance, if your next opponents are weak against Rock-type attacks, you might want to include Olivia & Lycanroc in your next team.
Instead of matching Olivia & Lycanroc with even more Rock-type strike sync pairs, support them with sync pairs that have higher defensive stats instead, ideally with moves that can help Olivia & Lycanroc perform even better. Take Drake & Salamence—you’ll probably never want to have them attack, but they can restore the Sp. Def that Olivia & Lycanroc lose from using Hard as Diamonds!, and they can also restore the move gauge, helping Lycanroc use the three-slot attack Stone Edge more frequently. Olivia & Lycanroc can already increase their own Attack, so instead of another supportive sync pair, consider finishing your team with a super-sturdy sync pair like Sygna Suit Elesa & Rotom or Sygna Suit Blue & Blastoise. You’ll deal far more damage this way than you would with three Rock-type sync pairs.
Some players even like to build their whole team around a single concept. For instance, Cynthia & Garchomp are most powerful when paired with a sync pair that can use Sandstorm, such as Acerola & Palossand. Add a sturdy sync pair to the team (Caitlin & Reuniclus is a popular choice, for they can learn the grid skill Sand Shelter), and you’ve got a devastating combination brewing.
When constructing your team, make sure to set the target order in the Tactics section of the Edit Team menu so that opposing sync pairs target your strike sync pair last. The role of your other sync pairs is mainly to support your attacker—you don’t want your attacker going down before it can knock out the center opponent on the enemy team!
Boss Battles Tips: Burn, Poison, and Trap
As you progress through the Battle Villa, you’ll quickly notice that some opponents—especially those guarding the milestone rewards every fifth hall—are much more powerful than others. These sync pairs have huge amounts of HP and powerful attacks, much like the sync pairs in Full-Force Battles. So how do you go about defeating them without burning days of attempts if your team isn’t strong enough to power through them?
If you aren’t making much progress through conventional means, try a different approach and stack status conditions instead. Very few sync pairs in the Battle Villa are immune to being poisoned, burned, or trapped by damaging effects from moves like Fire Spin and Infestation. These percentage-based effects do more damage against sync pairs with lots of HP, effectively using that strength against them. Sync pairs like Sygna Suit Leaf & Venusaur, Viola & Masquerain, and Koga & Crobat can be great choices for slowly wearing down powerful opponents.
You’ll still need your team to survive as long as possible to make the most of these effects—status conditions don’t carry over between bouts like missing HP does—but it’s not uncommon to see the continuous damage from these effects hit high-HP opponents just as hard as supereffective attacks. Try adding sync pairs to your team that can help restore HP, increase your sync pairs’ defensive stats, or reduce the opponent’s attack stats.
Getting an Extra Edge: Gear and Sync Orbs
While you won’t be able to continue battling after your sync pairs have been defeated for the day, one thing you can do is help your squad get more powerful for the next day.
You can get a little more “oomph” from your sync pairs by getting high-level gear from the co-op battles in the EX Plaza. A full set of Lv. 15 2★ gear will grant 50 HP, 40 Attack, and 40 Sp. Atk to sync pairs with matching types. Sometimes those additional stats are just enough of a boost to survive a powerful attack or to defeat a sync pair before they can launch a sync move. Try to start out by getting a full set of gear matching one of your favorite strike sync pairs.
A final, crucial way to power up is by collecting sync orbs to fill out the sync grids of sync pairs that have had their sync grids expanded. A full sync grid drastically empowers any sync pair, and that extra power is more impactful in the Battle Villa than anywhere else on Pasio. Many sync pairs gain HP-restoring or MP-restoring effects from their sync grids, which is perfect for this battle of endurance.
Be Victorious in the Battle Villa
Hopefully you’re feeling more prepared to tackle the Battle Villa now, so get out there and give it a shot! Whether you make it to the end or not each period, it’s fun to challenge yourself. Try it out every day, and you might be surprised how far you get.
If you’re looking to get as many lucky cookies as you can, don’t forget about the co-op Battle Villa battles. As you progress in the Battle Villa, you’ll unlock two co-op battles that can be completed once per day. These battles are challenging, but you’re guaranteed to get at least one lucky cookie for clearing them. You could even earn one of the rarer lucky cookies.
Show off your skills, earn some lucky cookies, and see how quickly your team of sync pairs can make it all the way to the end of the Battle Villa!
