This painfully weak Pokémon can actually solo Incineroar Tera Raid—eventually

You love to see it.

Incineroar ready to fight in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet
Screenshot by Dot Esports

Unrivaled Incineroar Tera Raids are proving one of the more difficult seven-star raids in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, but one dedicated player managed to solo it with a much weaker cat.

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All seven-star Tera Raids are hard in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet if you don’t bring the right counters or a solid strategy, but the Incineroar Tera Raid event seems to be even more frustrating. For example, I had no luck with several different Pokémon before finding a solid counter and build to beat this cat. Even some fully evolved ‘mons I thought would be good ended up flopping.

Incineroar posing with a Litten in the background in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet.
Litten took down its own parent. Image via The Pokémon Company

Not everyone’s having so much trouble though, with one Scarlet and Violet player apparently able to solo the difficult raid using a tiny Litten—the first ‘mon in Incineroar’s evolution line. In the video posted on YouTube, the trainer showed how they managed to pull off the incredible victory after more than 70 attempts in over 10 hours.

As an unevolved Pokémon, Litten has naturally poor stats that aren’t ideal for seven-star raids. It also doesn’t have the type advantage against Unrivaled Incineroar’s Dark Tera Type. In other words, you’d have to work extra hard and pray for good RNG just to put it in a winning position.

To set up for success, the player had Litten hold the Eviolite item for extra bulk and relied on a specific set of NPCs with Staraptor, Arcanine, and Drifblim. Staraptor and Arcanine constantly lowered Incineroar’s Attack stat with Intimidate, while Drifblim reduced the cat’s attack by burning it with Will-O-Wisp. Litten also had to get lucky with Defense drops from Crunch.

For offense, Litten boosted Attack with Swords Dance and dealt super-effective damage with Leech Life. The tricky part about Leech Life is it’s a Bug-type attack, and boosting its damage with the Bug Tera Type is a double-edged sword. While it’s good offensively against Incineroar’s Dark Tera Type, it makes Litten extra vulnerable to the raid boss’ strongest attack, Flare Blitz. Thankfully, Litten managed to score two critical hits in a row with Leech Life to chomp away at the massive HP bar.

As you can imagine, good RNG needs to be on your side to solo the Incineroar raid with a weaker ‘mon like Litten. The trainer even admitted they “nearly gave up,” but it’s a good thing they kept going because it’s awesome to see the mighty Incineroar fall to its own child.

Author
Image of Karli Iwamasa
Karli Iwamasa
Karli is a freelance writer and editor for Dot Esports based in the Bay Area. She mostly writes about Pokémon with a focus on competitive VGC but also enjoys VALORANT.