So you’ve finally beat classic mode and are ready to start your endless mode adventure! Congrats champ, you’re in for a treat with Endless Mode unlocked. I have received a lot of questions about team composition, item prioritization, abilities and people just asking for general tips on how to set yourself up for a successful endless run. In this video we will dive into all the details and I will share several great strategies that can get you deep into endless mode. There are a couple requirements that have to be met to set yourself up for success, so it can take several runs before you actually make it far. Take it easy, sit back and relax as I will guide you on your way to become a competent PokeRogue Endless player.
The most important thing about Endless mode is your starting party. You want to set yourself up with as many of the right pokemons from the get-go, because pivoting into a different strategy can be a pain. Since you get 15 points in endless to build your team as opposed to the 10 in classic mode there is a lot more room to build your party, however it is impossible to bring the best in slot party straight from the starter select screen. Even with 15 points you are going to have to make choices, and you can’t fuse any of your pokemon without being in the actual game and obtaining the DNA splicer items. It is very possible to start with an un-optimized team and pivot into stronger pokemon fusions as you play. Fortunately the most important aspects and strategies are easily accessible and don’t rely on rare legendary pokemon or hard to find hidden abilities. However hidden abilities and egg moves can definitely help you with your runs! If you don’t have access to one of the requirements do not fear, try to implement as much of the strategy I am about to present to you as you can. I am sure you can make it to a point where capturing lots of pokemon becomes an easy feat. And after doing one or two endless runs you should be able to set yourself up to become a real Endless grinder and get into the mid/late game. Capturing pokemon is going to be a recurring theme. You want to capture everything! The motto of pokemon has not been more true for any other pokemon game out there. You truly gotta ‘catch em all’ in PokeRogue ^^
You want to start your party with at least a single pokemon that has pokerus, which is indicated by the purple square box around pokemons in the starter select screen. Pokerus gives us an extra 1.5x multiplier for all the experience gained and it will spread to your entire team in about 50 waves.
If it is a pokemon that also helps the team it’s a win win, but if it’s a pokemon that is not going to do anything or very little for us when it comes to beating the waves, you want the pokemon to be as low cost as possible as it will be dropped as soon when it spreads its pokerus to one of the main pokemon on your team. If you have access to a shiny version of a pokemon that fits the needs of the strategies explained going forward, you always want to prioritize it over a non shiny pokemon.
Shiny pokemon are your best friend as they add better luck to the item shop. A normal shiny pokemon gives 1 luck, a rare shiny gives 2 luck and an epic shiny gives 3 luck. You can also fuse shinies together to upgrade this luck even further for a total of 6 luck when fusing an epic shiny with an epic shiny. This luck caps out at 14 which gives you the SSS tier of luck shown at the top in the itemshop which appears after each non-boss wave.
It is important to know that the start of endless is by far the most difficult. A simple rule of thumb that applies to both classic and endless mode is that potions and other healing items are rather cheap at the start, so always make sure to heal up your entire party. It is very possible that RNG is simply not in your favour and that you will run into a wall at some early wave. This is completely fine, if this happens you just have to try again!
Endless mode has a boss wave every 50 waves and every 250 waves you will run into Eternatus. Up until wave 1000 Eternatus will be the exact same as in Normal mode, but it does not have the move flamethrower in Endless. After wave 250 you can get Fusion Tokens, which give a 1% chance per token to make your foe a fusion, this can also apply to boss-waves and Eternatus. Another thing to note is that every 1000 waves you run into Eternamax Eternatus who has the Black Hole item (just as in classic). Be sure to check your team’s items after this bossfight as it can steal essential items from your pokemons during the fight!
The token system in Endless is a very important factor and can make one run A LOT easier than the other. There are a grand total of 10 different tokens. As with anything in Endless mode these tokens add up exponentially as your run progresses. The tokens are as following: Damage, Endure, Full Heal, Protection, Recovery, Sleep, Poison, Paralyze, Freeze and Burn.
The worst one to deal with by far is the Recovery token. If those stack up too much it can be almost impossible to out damage a foe without proper strategy, but don’t worry about this for now as you will never have more than 5 until you are at wave 2000+
As said before these tokens will be different for everyone, however there are some static points in the run where everyone receives the same amount of a certain token, such as the fusion tokens after wave 1000. Fun fact: tokens have actually been nerfed in a recent patch. The endure token for example used to be 5% per token instead of the 2.5% chance it now.
The bread and butter of every PokeRogue endless run (and also for classic runs) is the ability Pickup. A pokemon with pickup is able to gather items from all the wild pokemon you encounter every wave. It only has to be alive and in your party for the ability to work. The most important items it will pick up are berries. Since berries stack and you can use an unlimited amount in a single battle they are the most important. Make sure to frequently check your pickup pokemon and transfer items to your carry.
Here is a list of all the pokemon the can have the ability pickup: Link
Except for zigazagoon/linoone you want to make sure that you NEVER EVOLVE your pickup pokemon as its ability will change. Spam b when they evolve and afterwards you can get the option on the pokemon to lock it from evolving. Other than berries Pick Up also gets you a ton of lucky eggs and golden eggs which increase the EXP of the pokemon that is holding them. You can have a total of 99 of these on your pokemon. And equally important are the damage boosting type items, such as Spell Tag. These items increase the damage by 20% for its respective type. You can have a maximum of 99 of these too. These really add up and boost your damage a lot!
Another accessible ability that can save your run is the ability Run Away. This allows you to be able to always run away from a non-boss wave. However take note that you DO NOT go to the item shop if you do run away. The run-away strategy is something that is essential for the mid and endgame of Endless Mode, but it can also save your run early on if you do happen to run into something nasty that counters your carry.
Here is a list of all pokemon that get the ability run-away: Link
A carry is a pokemon that you will be investing all your resources in and that is going to do almost all the work for you. Every endless run needs one and you can easily get to wave 2000+ with ANY pokemon that has decent base stats and preferably access to a move that can hit both opponents in double battle. Some examples of this are Sinistcha who learns the move 'Matcha Gatcha' very early on which heals you back to full HP every time if it hits both opponents (50% if it’s a single hit) and saves you on purchasing healing items.
Another very strong early carry is Gholdengo who gets the move 'Make it Rain' which hits both opposing pokemon and also earns you money every time you hit.
Similar to Gholdengo a very good early game carry that can help you out with your money is a Meowth with the ability Technician (60 power moves deal 50% more damage for 90 power). Meowth learns the move 'Pay Day' at level 12. Using pay day ensures you have a little bit of extra money after every wave. If you can’t think of or own a good pokemon that fits these requirements you can easily use Mudkip, Turtwig and or Fuecoco as a carry, which are starter pokemons that you have access to from the get go, however it is a bit harder to get through the early game of endless with those.
A list of pokemon moves that hits both opponents (there are a lot more, but this should help): Matcha Gatcha, Make it Rain, Acid, air cutter, blizzard, bubble, dark void, eruption, growl, heat wave, hyper voice, icy wind, leer, muddy water, powder snow, razor leaf, razor wind, rock slide, spikes, stealth rock, string shot, surf, sweet scent, swift, tail whip, toxic spikes, twister, heal block, water spout, snarl, glaciate, relic song, electroweb, struggle bug, incinerate, and rage powder.
If you have access to a legendary pokemon you like it is a fantastic idea to pick THAT as your carry! Almost all legendary pokemon will outperform non-legendary pokemon, even if they do not have access to a move that can hit both opponents, or don’t learn many useful moves in the lower levels. As long as you combine your carry with the strategies discussed in this guide. It does not matter what the type is. However the preference is Special Attackers over Physical Attackers, as physical attackers are more prone to getting decreased stats in battle and there are more pokemons with a high defense stat than a high special defense stat. My advice is to pick your favourite special attacker pokemon that you have access to, that also has good base stats and IVs. The main reason why we want to capture every pokemon that has good base stats or access to abilities is to further improve its IVs. In addition to unlocking the pokemon’s best in slot nature and abilities. If your pokemon of choice does not have a good nature, do not worry. It is very easy to change its nature using the nature mint items that can show up in the shop (they are ultra ball tier). If you start with a carry that does not have its best in slot nature available you want to prioritize getting the right nature over any other ultra ball tier item. When you start building your team you can toggle between its natures and ability in the starter select screen. This option becomes available when you have multiple unlocked show an example, be sure to take the best one of each for the pokemon you pick as your carry.
Now that you have decided who your carry is going to be, who your pickup pokemon is going to be and hopefully also your pokerus pokemon, you can fill up the rest of your party with shiny pokemon.
Item prioritization: There are a lot of items to pick from so it can be really difficult to figure out what the best order of picking items is. As a rule of thumb you always want to prioritize: Big Nuggets and Relic Gold in the beginning stages of the run, or even small nuggets if you’re really tight on money.
As you progress through the waves of endless you will get exponentially increasing amounts of money from these items. When you’re rich you’re winning, as it allows you to reroll to items that you’re looking for once you obtain the 'Lock Capsule'. Whenever you find this item PICK IT! Even if you have to choose between a 'Shiny Charm' and the capsule the capsule is more important! Once obtained and if you don’t mind resetting (even if you do mind, it is essential if you’re looking to get to the mid/end game of endless) you can reset your encounter by refreshing the page in the shop by pressing F5. Keep using different combinations of locking reroll to switch up the RNG and fish for items you need.
In the beginning of the guide I explained why pickup is so good. However there is an item in the game that is even better than the pickup ability. This is the 'Mini Black Hole', which steals one held item from the foe every single turn with 100% success. This can even steal vitamins unlike pickup, and thus it makes it easier to max out your carry with vitamins.
All you should care about in the early waves is experience. Be sure to ALWAYS grab exp charms and super exp charms and last but not least the Exp. Share all item. Rare and rarer candy is not going to do much for you until you have obtained a couple of Candy Jars. If these happen to be the best item choice and you do somehow manage to pick up a lot of Candy Jars very early on it can be an idea to pick some rare candies here and there. It is important to know that rare candy and rarer candy can level up your pokemon over the level cap. In the later stages of endless you are going to be waaaaay higher level than your foes.
The next layer of item acquisition are Grip Claw’s. You put these on your carry to add yet another 10% chance per attack to steal an item from your foe. You can have up to 5 Grip Claw’s for a total 50% chance. Grip Claw can be especially good on a carry that utilizes multi-hit moves. These are usually pokemon with the ability Skill-Link, which always make them hit the maximum possible amount of hits a move can do. More on this later as it is a potential late game strategy, but for now we focus on making it to wave 2000+
Almost equally important are 'Amulet Coins', a rogue tier item that increases your money rewards by 20%. You can have up to a maximum of 5 which increases all the money you gain by 100%.
A little less important but a certain priority for the early game is the 'Golden Punch' which you want to apply to your carry so it earns 50% of the damage it deals as money. You can have a total of 5 to get 250% of damage dealt in your bank account every time you hit! These are a lot easier to come by than the amulet coins as they are the ultra ball tier which is one item tier lower than the amulet coin.
If a master ball presents itself and you have none of them yet it is always a good idea to pick up one as it will guarantee that you can capture a shiny or legendary pokemon once you run into one.
When you have all your finances in check and it becomes easy to reroll on every wave to fish for certain items it’s time to get the real goods.
If you feel like your carry is struggling (and even if you don’t you want to pick up these items regardless) you want to prioritize the following items in order: Berry Pouch: A 33% chance per berry pouch to keep your berry when its consumed (max 3 for a total of 99% chance to not consume berries, close enough to infinite) Focus Band: 10% chance to survive any hit that would kill you (max 5) Leftovers: which heals you every turn (max 4). Shell Bell: more self healing every turn (max 4) King’s Rock for 10% flinch chance (max 5). Wide Lens: increases move accuracy with 5% per stack (can stack up to however many makes it so all the moves on a mon are 100% accuracy). When you have a significant amount of the self healing items Healing Charm: 10% increased healing from any source becomes very good!
When you have the lock capsule you want to prioritize the following items in the following order: Shiny Charm (getting shinies is the bread and butter of PokeRogue remember?) > If you already have the best in slot nature for your carry pokemon take Soul Dew: Increases the effectiveness of your pokemons nature by 10% (max 10). If you do not have the best in slot nature for your carry pokemon it is essential to fish for Nature Mints (Ultra ball item that lets you change a pokemons nature) > Last but not least take the Hidden Ability charms (it is always nice to catch more pokemon with hidden abilities, however keep in mind that this also makes some of the battles more difficult!)
Other than the Lock Capsule and Amulet coins being a must pick whenever they appear, all the other important items are best picked up whenever they present themselves, you will not be able to just fish for one single item until you are very deep in endless and have a lot of money, every run is going to look completely different and the best you can do is balance it out and see what you need. The best this guide can do is form a baseline and make you understand why certain items are so important.
Remember how I told you not to take the Terra Orb. If you are on your way and cruising through the waves and are getting close to maxing out your carry with vitamins, you DO want to pick it up to thin the item pool. There are NO more items in the great ball tier that are going to help you (except for maybe a TM in a very specific situation). So you want to increase your odds of getting a good item from the ultra balls.
Items you NEVER want to pick are the EXP balance items. All it does is take away experience from your carry and makes it harder to keep your carry at the level cap. Terra Orb is also going to do nothing for you and it will make terra shards pop up in the shop, lowering your odds of getting valuable vitamins from the great ball tier. Last but not least I advice not to pick up ‘IV Scanner’ as it is a chore to have to press an extra two buttons every wave and you’re better of playing faster. If you don’t care about this and you find knowing the IV’s of your foe important, you could pick it up. Another positive thing about picking it up is that it removes the item from the item pool so it might show something more useful instead such as a 'Rarer Candy' or a 'Max Lure'.
Another item you should not sleep on is the Multi-Lens which can help you inflict multiple hits which combine really well with a move that can make the foe flinch for example. In an ideal scenario you have a mon with the ability: Skill-Link which makes multi-hit moves always hit their maximum amount of times. This pairs really well with Kings Rock.
When you are cruising on your way to wave 200 you are not going to reroll much for items as you do not have that much money, when you have made it to about wave 200+ and your carry is at the level cap you should be good to go for a long time.
At this point it becomes very important to pick up Candy Jars which increase the level rare candies and rarer candies give by 1 for each candy jar. At the maximum of 99 candy jars you will be able to gain 100 levels per candy. Investing candies in your carry and making sure you are well above the waves level cap will eventually get you to wave 2000-2500. Candy Jars are something you always want to pick up if you don’t have much money or the other options are the lesser ones.
When you have made it to wave 1250-1750 you should have been able to max out your shiny charms and have a carry that can seamlessly deal with everything that’s thrown at it. If this is the case it becomes very important to always stack up 4-5 'Max Lures' so you always run into double battles which essentially doubles the odds of finding shiny and legendary pokemon. In addition to that this is about the point in your run you want to also focus on stacking up master balls, so you can easily capture whatever you need.
After this point a lot of carry’s start to fall off and you need to change strategy. This is namely because as anything in endless mode, tokens also increase exponentially and at this point most foe’s will simply one-shot your carry with each and any move. There are certain fusions between two very strong legendary pokemon that can still hold up at this point, but its unlikely you have access to these. An example of this would be Zacian + Kartana. With a moveset of Night Slash, Sacred Sword, Behemoth Blade and Swords Dance. It is VERY IMPORANT to hold on to your original carry, as it will help you in double battles and you want to always prioritize rarer candies over normal rare candy, because having a backup carry can be essential in tough battles!
After wave 3000 it is very likely that your foe will also heal back to full HP if it endures your hit, so the only viable option to win the wave is to be able to one-shot your opponent. You do this by constantly taking damage using your berries to get to stat stage 6.
There are multiple strategies you can apply to make it to the 'endgame' of endless. However I will be teaching you the one I am using, as it is very accessible and very likely you are able to set it up during your run if you made it to wave 1000+. My strategy is a maxed out Garganacl fused with Archaludon.
It has the ability sturdy from Garganacl which makes it so it can always survive any damage as long as its HP is full. However do note that you can still die to multi-hit moves from foes. This is why its so important to max out those 5 focus bands on your carry, so you always have a 50% chance to survive a hit on 1 HP. When running into tough fights don’t give up if the foe has something that can kill your carry. Try different rotation’s of move’s and switching your teams pokemon’s. This will change up the RNG of the game (the same principle applies to item rerolling). Sometimes it can take a while to find the rotation that will win you the fight, just don’t give up too easily!
The steel type from Archaludon gives it access to the move 'Metal Burst'. Which will retaliate 150% of the damage it took from its foe. You can see how this works well with sturdy. As it will always retaliate the maximum amount of damage. With maxed out items you will always heal back to full from 1hp when being hit by a super effective move. If you are hit by a neutral or not very effective move you won’t heal back to full. To make sure we can always heal back to full so sturdy can proc we also have the move Protect in the move set.
Unfortunately neither Garganacl nor Archaludon learns protect naturally, so we will have to pick it up from the shop. It is a normal pokeball tier rarity, however there are a lot of TM’s available in the shop so it can take a while to find it. In addition to Metal Burst and Protection we use Garganacl Signature move 'Salt Cure' to help us outpace the healing of the foe. Use Memory Mushrooms to get Salt Cure and Metal Burst on your fusion. It is important to know that Metal Burst does not scale its damage with a pokemons attack stat, or any damage scaling items for that matter. The only thing Metal Burst cares about is a pokemons HP. The more HP the more damage potential Metal Burst has.
Note that you can use any steel type mon for this strategy, but the Garganacl is a requirement as it is the only pokemon that has access to the move Salt Cure. In fact it is actually a better idea to use a steel type that already has sturdy (note: Archaludon can also have sturdy as its ability). So you can unfuse it after you fused it with Garganacl and learned Salt Cure on it. Then you can fuse it again with a very bulky pokemon such as Blissey. A pokemon keeps its moveset and ability after unsplicing. You will always lose the second pokemon that was used in the fusion when unsplicing.
Now that your Archaludon or fusion of your own choice is ready to rock and roll make sure that it is maxed out on all the healing items, focus bands and soul dew. We want a nature on our fusion that has negative speed and positive anything (does not matter what it is). With 10 soul dew this will make it so the pokemon has a speed stat of 1. Which is exactly what we want because we want to ensure that Metal Burst acts last as often as possible, as the move will fail if you have not taken any damage. One more thing to boost your sturdy steel burst fusion with is PP max items. You want to max out the PP of your metal burst and protect, as its possible you run into an inescapable foe that has the ability: 'Unnerve'. Which makes it so you cannot eat any berries.
You might be wondering how do I fuse my pokemons exactly and what are the ins and outs of fusing pokemon. Check out the specifics.
Another pokemon that can help you a lot on your runs is a fairy type that has access to the move 'Misty Terrain'. As status conditions ramp up in the late game. For example a foggy terrain give your mons a massive accuracy decrease which is terrible and can be removed if you have Misty Terrain.
Similar and even better is having a fairy type with the ability 'Misty Surge'. This pokemon will set Misty Terrain the moment they enter the battlefield so it doesn’t have to outspeed the foe in order to work.
Another Pokémon that will help you massively in your Endless Run. And that is any good grass Pokémon that learns the move Leech Seed. Preferably also fused with a pokemon that can learn Soak. In tough battles you would open with your Leech Seed setter, by soaking the foe (turning it into a water-type) and then leech seeding. After that you switch into your Metal Burst fusion and use Salt Cure. Then it becomes a game of switching between Metal Burst and Protect. You can make your leech seed setter fusion even better by refusing it with a Shedninja to give it Wonder Guard (can only be hit by super effective moves). However Wonder Guard is not that good as most of the paradox pokemon you will run into every 50 waves usually have access to at least 3 different types. So make your choice. I would say Wonder Guard is only slightly better than having a sturdy leech seed setter.
Last but not least it can be helpful to have a strong and fast pokemon that has a move with an innate flinch chance. Such as Metagross with Zen Headbutt which has a 20% chance to flinch on hit.
Maxing out 3 Kings Rocks for an additional 30% chance to flinch on hit and combining this with 3 Multi Lenses makes it almost a 100% chance to flinch the foe on hit. This can help you out when trying to set up leech seed in double battles. Namely for the double paradox encounters which can be really tough in later stages of endless mode.
Having followed everything in the guide will set you up for success. However it is important to understand that PokeRogue is a game heavily influenced by RNG, and sometimes even the best strategy is going to make you run into a brick wall. Much luck on your runs and feel free to ask any questions if something in this guide is not clear to you or if you are not sure if you understand something correctly.
Now that you have learned how to build your party, how to prioritize items in the early and mid game, use and apply meta strategies and all the mechanics of endless there are only a couple of things left to talk about that are important to know. One of those is the preparation for bossfights.
An item you always want to have on your two carry pokemon is 'Reviver Seed' this gives your pokemon a second life as it will heal to 50% HP on death. It is very important to ALWAYS CHECK your pokemon’s items several waves before you have a paradox or eternatus encounter. This is also a great time to see if you can move some items around (such as damage boosting items and or berries). All these little things add up and they can decide the tide of battle for you!
Now last but not least you should know which pokemon’s pose the biggest threat to you and your team if you use the strategy discussed in this guide. Some encounters are an absolute pain or even impossible to win. This is where you should use your run-away pokemon to make a safe get away, or throw a masterball and straight up capture your threat. However you can’t do this in paradox and eternatus waves. These threats are: Multi Hit moves from the opponent (able to break through your sturdy). Fog setters (a very heavy accuracy decrease can be deadly). Pokemons that inflict damage on your turn rather than their turn. An example of this would be 'Future Sight' which deals damage two turns after its used. And in general any double battle can be a pain if both opposing pokemons target your sturdy metal burst fusion, two hits means you only survive if your focus bands proc. As mentioned earlier in the guide the ability 'Unnerve' can also be deadly as you are unable to eat any berries you can’t get to stat stage 6 nor can you heal your non-volatile status effects automatically with berries. This is why ideally you also have that Misty Terrain / Misty Surge pokemon ready, which removes the need to rely on the status healing berries.
Something we have not covered in the guide at all are pokemon passives. Which are unique to PokeRogue. They essentially are a second ability and if you have any of them unlocked for your starting party this is amazing! The passives are unlocked through pokemon candy. Candy is obtained by playing the game with your favourite pokemons in your party and this process can be sped up by taking the 'Soothing Bell' item. Feel free to figure out a good passive that would compliment any of the strategy discussed in this guide. Personally I did not have any passive available when starting my endless run that made it to 5850 (which is the final wave you can get to in Endless as the game crashes currently when you try to go to wave 5851). Endless is going to be updated and overhauled, but before this happens, this guide should serve as a great foundation of meta strategy.
Thank you for reading my guide, I wish you all the luck and fun in the world with your PokeRogue journey! If you have any questions or are not sure if you understand something correctly, please do not hesitate to ask!
