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pokemon sword & shield, raihan

Pokemon Sword & Shield: How to Beat Raihan

This article is over 5 years old and may contain outdated information

Pokemon Sword & Shield are the two latest entries in Game Freak’s massively popular monster-catching series, and it largely follows the same story formula as in past games. Towards the end of the game, you’ll face off against Raihan, the final Gym leader. Here’s how to beat Raihan in Pokemon Sword & Shield.

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How to Beat Raihan in Pokemon Sword & Shield

Raihan primarily uses Dragon type Pokemon, but he has an affinity for the Rock and Ground types as well. This Gym battle is also a little different in that you’ll be participating in double matches, so you’ll need to be a little selective with which Pokemon you’re sending out.

Raihan’s lineup is as follows:

  • Flygon (level 47): Weak to Ice, Dragon, and Fairy
  • Gigalith (level 46): Weak to Water, Grass, Fighting, Ground, and Steel
  • Sandaconda (level 46): Weak to Water, Grass, and Ice
  • Duraludon (level 48): Weak to Fighting and Ground

If you picked Grookey as your starter, and have been leveling it to reach its final form as Rillaboom, you should have a pretty easy time with this fight as both Gigalith and Sandaconda are susceptible to Grass moves.

For this fight, we also had Gyarados and Sirfetch’d in our lineup, both of which were crucial in thinning out Raihan’s lineup. Being a Fighting type Pokemon, Sirfetch’d was also able to take down the Dynamaxed version of Duraludon pretty easily, while Gyarados has access to both Dragon and Water type moves to handle the other three Pokemon very handily as well.

It’s recommended that you try to reach the late 40s in terms of levels for your Pokemon so you can keep up with Raihan. But other than that, as long as you’re exploiting his type weaknesses, you should be able to clear this fight without too much trouble.

One other thing to note is that Raihan’s Pokemon have the ability to summon a sandstorm, which will cause your team to take a bit of damage each turn. It’s not a lot, but still worth making a mental note of in case you need to dole out some emergency healing.

That’s all you need to know about how to beat Raihan in Pokemon Sword & Shield. Be sure to check our guide wiki for more tips and information on the game.

Here are a few other guides to help you get started:


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Author
Image of Zhiqing Wan
Zhiqing Wan
Zhiqing is the Reviews Editor for Twinfinite, and a History graduate from Singapore. She's been in the games media industry for nine years, trawling through showfloors, conferences, and spending a ridiculous amount of time making in-depth spreadsheets for min-max-y RPGs. When she's not singing the praises of Amazon's Kindle as the greatest technological invention of the past two decades, you can probably find her in a FromSoft rabbit hole.