Moves can sometimes be an afterthought when putting your team together in-game, but putting the wrong moves on your Pokémon can end up being a huge mistake. If you’re all set on what moves you want your Pokémon to learn, one of the first things you should be doing before building in-game is checking the Serebii.net Pokedex pages to determine how a Pokémon can learn each move. Later in the guide, we’ll demonstrate how to do this. 

There are several different ways your Pokémon can learn moves, most commonly through leveling up. But there are times in VGC when the moveset you want to run comprises moves obtained through entirely different methods. These methods include:

• TMs and TRs

• Move Tutors/Move Relearner

• Egg Moves

TMs and TRs are fairly self-explanatory, but it’s still important to check which of your Pokémon’s potential moves might need to be acquired through this procedure. TRs in particular can throw a wrench into in-game team building, as they bring back the pre-Generation 5 mechanic of a one-time use item. If you run out of a certain TR that you need for your team, you’ll have to find another one. 

Check out Serebii here to make sure you know where TMs can be found if you’re missing one. Serebii also has a list of TRs here, but these can be a bit trickier to find as they’re usually rewards for winning Max Raid battles. You can also purchase TRs from the Watts salespeople in the Wild Area and the Crown Tundra DLC, which rotate every day. You can also create TRs using the Cram-o-Matic on the Isle of Armor DLC, and a list of recipes can be found here.

If you’re in a pinch and need a TR, we recommend checking the Watts shops first, then seeing where you can win one in a Raid. If push comes to shove, the Cram-o-Matic method can work, but you’ll generally need more resources that you might not have. 

Move Tutors have been slimmed down from previous generations, but they still prove an important part of in-game team building. In the base Sword and Shield game, there are only four move tutors, two of whom teach moves that see prominent use in Generation 8 VGC formats. 

The first is the Tutor that teaches Draco Meteor. All Dragon-type Pokémon are eligible to learn this move, and you can find this Tutor on the left side of the hot springs in Circhester. Examples of Pokémon that frequently used Draco Meteor in VGC 2020 and 2021 are Duraludon, Kingdra, Regidrago and Kyurem-White. 

The second is the Tutor who teaches starter Pokémon their elemental Hyper Beams: Frenzy Plant, Hydro Cannon and Blast Burn. Starter Pokémon from all regions are able to learn these moves. With Generation 8 bringing Max Moves and G-Max forms for the Kanto starters, many players opt to use these moves when applicable. 

This rang particularly true for G-Max Charizard, when Aaron Traylor used Blast Burn to win the first Regional tournament of 2020. Hydro Cannon also saw lots of use on Primarina and G-Max Blastoise throughout the formats. You can find this Tutor in Wyndon, standing in the park on the east side of town leading up to the Stadium. 

There are also Move Tutors for the moves Steel Beam (which, similar to Draco Meteor, can only be learned by Steel-type Pokémon) and the elemental Pledge Moves that can be learned by the starters. These moves don’t see a lot of use in VGC, but if you’d like to use them their Tutors can be found in Motostoke and Hammerlocke, respectively. Check their locations at Serebii here.

The Isle of Armor, however, added a fifth Move Tutor with one new move for each of the 18 types. Some of these moves generally have not seen use in VGC — things like the Bug-type move Skitter Smack and the Dragon-type move Scale Shot. But others, like Grass-type Grassy Glide and Fire-type Burning Jealousy, have been used by many players, particularly on Rillaboom and Torkoal, respectively. 

This move Tutor requires you to spend five Armorite Ore every time you teach a Pokémon one of these moves. You can find the Tutor in the Dojo near the back door. 

If you ever want to reteach a move that a Pokémon had once forgotten, you can visit the Move Relearner in any Pokémon Center. This can prove particularly useful if you’ve brought up a Pokémon from an old game and needed to give it the Battle Ready mark, which erases its current moveset and replaces it with what it would be had it leveled up naturally in Sword and Shield. The Move Relearner is located on the left sides of Pokémon centers.

Egg Moves require the most effort of the bunch. Getting your Pokémon the right egg move can be a quick process if you already have the right parent, but if you don’t, you may find yourself at a loss. There will also likely be times where you’ve decided on your team, and decided on all your moves, but don’t realize until you start building in-game that one of the moves you really need is an Egg Move that’s difficult to obtain (I know I’ve done this!). 

The important thing to remember when breeding for Egg Moves is this: if you breed two different species of Pokémon, the resulting Egg will be the same species as the mother. So if you’re looking to pass down an Egg Move through multiple Pokémon and the Egg Groups don’t always match up, you’ll need a male Pokémon with the right Egg Move and a female in the correct Egg Group. 

First we’ll try a simple example. Let’s say I want to build a Rillaboom in-game and I know I want it to have Fake Out. I’m not sure how Rillaboom learns Fake Out, so I proceed to the Rillaboom Pokedex page on Serebii. I don’t see it scrolling through the Level Up moves or TMs/TRs, so I check the Egg Moves close to the bottom (you can also use the Control+F shortcut to search “Fake Out”). Lo and behold, there it is! 

But how would I get Fake Out onto my Rillaboom? The first thing I should do is click this “Details” button on the Serebii page to see what Pokémon can pass down Fake Out in the Day Care Center.

That will take me to a page where I can see which parents can pass down after learning Fake Out through Leveling Up, or after being bred Fake Out for itself. The easier method is to use one of the Pokémon in the top row here, if you have one. 

After checking this list, I’ll go to my box and look for a male Pokémon that learns Fake Out through Leveling Up and a female Grookey, Thwackey or Rillaboom. Luckily, I have a male Alolan-Persian in my box as well as a female Rillaboom. I can place these Pokémon together in the Day Care and receive a Grookey that knows Fake Out!

Next, in order to get Fake Out onto the Grookey I want, I’ll have to put the two Grookeys together in the Day Care. This is because Generation 8 added a new mechanic regarding Egg Moves that makes the whole process simpler: two Pokémon of the same species can pass Egg Moves to each other in the Day Care. These Pokémon can be different genders as well. 

If you have a Grookey with Fake Out, but the wrong IVs, Nature or Ability, you can simply put this Grookey in the Day Care with your competitively bred Grookey. The same is true for a competitively bred Rillaboom that doesn’t know Fake Out, and another Rillaboom that does. The easiest way to do this is at the Day Care on Route 5 — drop them off and ride your Bike one lap on the bridge to the east. That should be enough time to pass over Fake Out. 

There may be some instances where you want to get an Egg Move onto your Pokémon, but it won’t have any parents that learn the desired move through Leveling Up, only more breeding. In order to properly breed the move onto your Pokémon, you’ll need to do the above previous step through multiple evolution lines. Let’s take a look at an example. 

If, prior to the release of the Crown Tundra DLC, you wanted to run Ancient Power on your Charizard, you would have needed to perform this method. We can see that the only Charizard parents who learn Ancient Power through their natural movepool are the Tyrantrum and Aurorus lines, which were not introduced before the October 2020 DLC release. There are, however, some other Pokémon that could have learned it through breeding. 

Still pretending this is taking place before Crown Tundra, we’ll immediately cross the Mudkip line off the list. Next, we can check the Marowak, Lapras and Tyranitar lines to see which of their parents learn Ancient Power by Leveling Up. Here’s what we find.

Marowak:

Lapras:

Tyranitar:

Looking here, we’ll also be able to cross Marowak and Tyranitar off the lists, as their Ancient Power parents are the same as Charizards. But you’ll notice Lapras has a few parents able to pass down the move (pre-Crown Tundra) in G-Corsola, Cursola and Gastrodon. Now, we can come up with a plan. 

First, we’ll need to get Ancient Power onto the Lapras. Remember: the egg will be the same species as the female parent, so we’re going to need a male Gastrodon that knows Ancient Power and a female Lapras. Once we have these, we can breed Lapras Eggs until we get a male Lapras with Ancient Power. Then, we can breed that male Lapras with a female Charizard to get Ancient Power into the evolution line that we want.

And that’s it! You now have a Charmander that knows Ancient Power. If this Charmander is different from the one you want to use in competitive battles, toss both of them in the Day Care and ride around until the Egg Move has passed laterally. 

Let’s put everything together now. Say you want to use Rillaboom on your newest VGC team, and you know you want it to have the following moveset:

How might you go about building this? Check Serebii first! By looking at Rillaboom’s Pokedex page, I can see that Fake Out is an Egg Move, Grassy Glide is a Tutor move from the Isle of Armor, U-Turn is a TM and Wood Hammer is a Level Up move. 

To build this Rillaboom in-game, Fake Out should be the top priority — you don’t want to get everything right with your Rillaboom and then realize you missed the Egg Move. So, I can breed a Grookey using the illustrated method above, and then level it up until it evolves or learns Wood Hammer. Once I have these two moves, I can proceed to teaching it Grassy Glide at the Move Tutor and U-Turn with the TM.

You can do the following three in any order you want. But things will go faster if you’re feeding your baby Grookey lots of EXP. Candy at the beginning of the process rather than the end. 

One last VGC tip regarding moves: many players prefer to use PP Ups and PP Maxes to maximize the amount of PP they have for each move. This is because sometimes players will end up in prolonged matches that may take a while, and the longer they can stave off Struggle, the better. 

Using these items is not necessary and can sometimes drain in-game resources, but if you ever need PP Ups, you can buy them from the BP Shop in the central Hammerlocke Pokémon Center. You can also win PP Ups and PP Maxes with the lottery in any Pokémon Center.