"Berries on a Budget" Guide

Welcome to Tali’s guide for finding and using berries on a budget! This is intended for players with physical copies of Ruby, Sapphire, or Emerald that have dead internal batteries, or early copies of Ruby or Sapphire that are affected by the gen 3 internal clock bug. Of course, there are ways of both replacing the internal battery and fixing this bug, but they may not be available to you. Fixing those problems will not be addressed here; instead we’re going to analyze how much you can get out of a single cartridge with a dead battery and one save file. For the purposes of this article, you do not have anyone in person to trade or blend berries with. (I may add tips for this later for the few people that still own link cables and/or wireless adapters and have friends.)

The main topic of this guide will be using berries to make Pokéblocks and evolve Feebas. I may expand on other uses of berries, such as maxing stats for Contests or performing glitches, in the future.

The information in this guide has been compiled using details scattered across Bulbapedia (a few of such pages including Flavor, Pokéblock, and many individual berry pages), as well as my own experimentation in Emerald and Sapphire Versions. Thanks to my pal Winter for help in organizing some of the math used in this guide!

Finding Berries

With a dead internal battery, clock-based events will no longer occur, which tragically makes it impossible to farm berries. This makes every berry harvested a precious and irreplaceable resource. Below are the berries found growing in Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald, how many are available, and their locations.

(One Leichi berry is also available on Mirage Island, but as that potentially appears via clock-based events, I’m not counting on anyone getting that one.)

A few berries are also available as gifts from NPCs. However, most of these are random, and can only be received once per day (or, in our case, once per save file), so don’t rely on these too much to get your berries. However, you can at least soft reset for what you want out of the random berries.

In Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald, there are no berries available via the Pickup ability. (Outside of the Battle Pyramid, but that’s not relevant, since you can’t take any items from the Battle Pyramid out with you.) This means after harvesting every plot and talking to every berry-giving NPC, the only way to find more berries is by catching wild pokémon with berries as held items. Available held item berries are as follows:

Tangentially, if you trade for the Seedot “Dots” in Emerald, it holds a Chesto berry.

Making Pokéblocks

Pokéblock Background

For people entirely new to Pokéblocks, each Pokéblock has three stats: Color, Level, and Feel.

Color corresponds to the Contest stat that the Pokéblock will raise: Blue for Beauty, Yellow for Toughness, Pink for Cuteness, and so on. These colors are determined by the flavor stat of the berries used in the blending game: Blue from Dry, Yellow from Sour, Green from Bitter, and so on. Certain colors like Indigo or Brown are created when a Pokéblock is made with berries of multiple different flavors.

A Pokéblock's level tells you how much the Contest stat (determined by the color) will be raised. For example, a Level 23 Blue Pokéblock would raise a pokémon's beauty stat by 23 points. It's a little trickier with the blocks that raise two stats (Indigo, Brown, LiteBlue, Purple, and Olive) because the level will only tell you how much the primary stat will increase by. So a Brown Pokéblock's level would correspond to how much the pokémon's Cuteness stat would increase, but you wouldn't know which other stat will increase or by how much unless you really paid attention to what berries went in at the time of blending and did the math (which will not be covered in this guide). Also of note, Gray Pokéblocks raise three stats and White Pokéblocks raise four, with no way to tell which stat is the primary one unless you kept track of what berries went into the blender. Gold Pokéblocks are similar in that you can't identify the primary flavor/stat afterwards, but these are special in that they're created when a Pokéblock with two flavors is created with a level over 50. You won't see these often.

The level of a Pokéblock depends on the species of berries used, as well as the maximum RPM acheived during the blending minigame. A pokémon can have a maximum of 255 points in each contest stat from Pokéblocks. Unfortunately, it's not a simple as feeding your star pokémon Pokéblocks until every stat is maxed out, because we still have to deal with the Feel stat.

Feel is the least intuitive of the Pokéblock stats. The amount of Feel will be added to the pokémon's sheen when it eats the Pokéblock. "Sheen" is actually a measure of fullness, as when you max out Sheen at 255, a pokémon will no longer eat Pokéblocks. Thus, "Feel" can be equated to how filling the Pokéblock is. The Feel stat is determined by both the Smoothness stat of the berries blended and the number of people/NPCs doing the blending. (I may use Feel, Sheen, Smoothness, and Fullness pretty interchangably throughout this guide.) You want to minimize the feel of Pokéblocks while maximizing their level for most effective results.

Pokéblock Making Tips

The most efficient way to make Pokéblocks is to wait until reaching the Lilycove Contest Hall, where you can blend berries with 3 NPCs. (If you are playing Emerald version, Lilycove is the only Contest Hall available.) Blending with more NPCs will marginally reduce the "Feel" stat of the Pokéblocks created, which allows you to feed more to your pokémon.

(Technically, waiting for the Blend Master to appear at the Contest Hall would allow you to create the most high-quality Pokéblocks, but 1. he is Emerald exclusive, and 2. his appearance is also determined by time-based RNG, which will not progress with a dead internal battery.)

Save your game before making any Pokéblocks. That way if you bomb the blending minigame, you can soft reset and try again for a better Pokéblock level. This minigame only affects Pokéblock level, not feel (which is only influenced by the type of berry used, and will be discussed later). Though the math for the minigame is the same for all berries, due to the way values are truncated/rounded, you may need different RPMs to reach the maximum Pokéblock level for different berries. I won’t get into all of that math in this guide - there's enough math later - but a reasonable RPM to aim for to maximize your Pokéblock level is 92 or higher. This guide will describe the stats of each Pokéblock you should be using, so if your Pokéblock turns out a lower level than what you read here, just soft reset and try again.

Evolving Feebas

To evolve into Milotic, Feebas needs a Beauty stat of 170. Contest stat increases are influenced by the pokémon’s nature, with natures that like the flavor receiving a 1.1x multiplier to the Pokéblock's level (truncated down) when eaten. Pokémon with natures that dislike a flavor will receive a 0.9x multiplier to the Pokéblock's level (truncated down) before the number is added to the contest stat. Because of this, it may be helpful to fish for multiple Feebas when you find the tile spot, until you catch one with a nature that prefers Dry Pokéblocks. (You can use the Feebas Tile Tracker tool on this site to keep track of where to return to fish, if you want.)

Natures that like Dry Pokéblocks are Modest, Quiet, Rash, and Mild. Natures that dislike Dry Pokéblocks are Adamant, Jolly, Careful, and Impish, so any of these four will be more difficult to evolve.

Luckily, all natures that prefer Dry Pokéblocks are natures that increase Special Attack, which is likely useful for any Milotic you might want to use at the Battle Tower or Frontier. I would recommend Modest, which decreases Attack, and avoid Rash, which would lower Milotic’s sizable Special Defense. Of course, if you want a different nature altogether—such as one that increases that Special Defense—you can still do this; it will just take slightly more Pokéblocks to reach that 170 Beauty stat.

At this point, you can skip down to the TLDR if you just want the shortened instructions on how to evolve Feebas, but I go into detail on how I came to these conclusions over the next few paragraphs.

The problem with Blue Pokéblocks

With three NPCs, the only berry guaranteed to make a Blue Pokéblock is Chesto. I was able to create a Blue Pokéblock with a level of 12 and a feel of 21 with a max RPM hit of 93.27. The feel stat is added to the Feebas’s sheen, which is actually a metric for “fullness” and maxes out at 255. After hitting 255, your pokémon will no longer be able to eat Pokéblocks. Note that you can have a sheen of 254, for example, and still feed it one more Pokéblock regardless of feel—the pokémon will only refuse to eat after hitting or surpassing 255. This means you can feed your Feebas 13 of these blue Pokéblocks for a beauty stat of 156 (if it has a neutral nature) or 169 (if it has a Dry-liking nature). This, evilly, is not enough to reach 170.

Even with fewer NPCs, the highest level Blue Pokéblock you can achieve is with one NPC and a Wiki berry, for a Pokéblock with a level of 25 and a feel of 23. However, there is only one Wiki berry available in the game, and it is gifted by the Beauty if you have a trainer ID ending in 1 or 6. If you do get this one, and give your Feebas twelve Pokéblocks made by Chesto berries and one made by the Wiki berry, that adds up exactly to a Beauty stat of 184 with a Dry-liking nature, which is barely enough to evolve! However, if the Feebas does not have a Dry-liking nature, the most it can reach is 169.

The Solution of Indigo Pokéblocks

Luckily, we still have the option of Indigo Pokéblocks. Indigo Pokéblocks raise both Beauty and another contest stat, depending on which berries were used in the blending. Just like Blue Pokéblocks, the level of the Indigo Pokéblock is still equal to the amount the Beauty stat will increase, regardless of the fact that another stat will increase as well.

The most useful berries for making Indigo Pokéblocks are the Kelpsy and Hondew berries, which create level 23 Pokéblocks with a feel of 19 when blended with 3 NPCs. You could technically feed twelve of either of these to your Feebas, but the Beauty stat will hit 253 after eleven Pokéblocks (neutral nature) or 250 after ten Pokéblocks (Dry-liking nature). Since the Beauty stat maxes out at 255, there’s not much point in feeding Feebas any more.

Of course, if you’re only interested in evolving Feebas and not sweeping any Beauty Contests, you really only need eight of these to reach 184 (neutral nature) or seven to reach 175 (Dry-liking nature). Since there are four Hondew and six Kelpsy berries growing in the game, for a total of ten possible Indigo Pokéblocks with these stats, you don’t have to rely on a random gift from an NPC for this method.

Don't forget you have to level up Feebas after reaching 170 Beauty points so it will evolve!

The Pamtre Berry

Now, I couldn’t write this section without mentioning the Pamtre berry. With 3 NPCs, the single possible Pamtre berry you can obtain will make a Pokéblock with a feel of 32 and a level of up to 51. This Pokéblock will be either Indigo or Gold, and it will give your pokémon up to 51 points to the Beauty stat. So if you give a neutral-natured Feebas one Gold Pokéblock created with a Pamtre berry, and six Indigo Pokéblocks with Kelpsy or Hondew, you can reach a Beauty stat of 189. That’s a bit overkill for evolving into Milotic. If you give a Dry-liking natured Feebas one Gold Pamtre Pokéblock and five Kelpsy or Hondew Indigo Pokéblocks, you can reach a Beauty stat of 181. This is one total Pokéblock fewer than the requirement using Kelpsy or Hondew blocks alone. If that matters to you, using your one potential Pamtre berry may be useful here. (I mean, where else were you going to use it, anyway? Unless you just enjoy staring at the Berry Tag in the menu. But who would do that hahahaha) (Me)

Tell me more about math!

There's actually a pretty simple way to prove what types of Pokéblocks can or can't evolve Feebas. It all comes down to the ratio of Beauty stat to Sheen (smoothness or feel). For a goal of 170 Beauty and a maximum of 255 Sheen: 170/255=0.666. Any ratio lower than this will not allow a neutral-natured Feebas to evolve. So, using a neutral-natured Feebas and our earlier Kelpsy and Chesto Pokéblocks as an example:

Kelpsy (3 NPCs): Level 23 / Feel 29 = 1.21 > 0.66. Great! You can feed your Feebas plenty of Kelpsy Pokéblocks and it will get beautiful faster than it gets full.

Chesto (3 NPCs): Level 12 / Feel 21 = 0.57 < 0.66. Not great. Your Feebas will be content but ugly forever. So sad.

This is a bit rough of a rule of thumb, since it doesn't account for natures, nor for the fact that you can feed a Feebas a block with any Feel as long as it hasn't surpassed 254 Sheen yet. Also, it doesn't account for different combinations of Pokéblocks. For that we need a bit more involved math. The general formula to use would be:

Where "A" is your block with the highest feel. (You subtract one from the # of A blocks in the second equation because you can always use one additional Pokéblock until you hit or surpass 255 smoothness given.)

Nature multiplier = 1 for neutral natures, 1.1 for Dry-liking natures, and 0.9 for Dry-disliking natures.

Be sure to round the calculated level x nature value for each block to the nearest whole number before multiplying by the number of blocks, or your results will be skewed.

I'll give an example of this with Bluk berries, since we haven't talked about them and you can find 6 in the game that allow you to blend Pokéblocks with a level of 12 and a feel of 19. The ratio here comes out to 0.63, but what if we calculate using a Dry-liking nature?

It is possible for A to be more than 13.08 and less than 14.37 - A can be 14, and thus 14 Pokéblocks made from Bluk berries should be sufficient to evolve Feebas. However, with a dead internal battery, this is still physically impossible with the maximum of seven Bluk berries available in game.

You can add more than two different Pokéblock variables with this basic formula pattern, but hopefully this gives the gist. Math is not my strongest suit so I typically plug in different Pokéblock stats rather than solving this series of inequalities for an actual value, especially since the truncating means the numbers don't simplify down like a normal equation would.

If don't like math too much, don't worry; we have more scenarios pre-calculated to determine exactly which blocks to feed your Feebas. However, I will use the basic >0.666 ratio later in this guide to explain why certain scenarios won't work out for you.

How early in the game can I evolve Feebas?

If you read closely earlier, you may have realized that you can’t get the Pamtre Berry until defeating the Champion, and you can’t even get the Hondew berries you would need to make seven or more Indigo Pokéblocks until you’ve beaten the 7^th gym. So is there any way to evolve Feebas before then?

Luckily, there is! You can get the six Kelpsy berries before getting Waterfall. This is enough to get Feebas to a Beauty stat of 138 (neutral nature) or 150 (dry-liking nature) and a sheen of 114. At this point, the sheen is low enough that we can feed it Blue Pokéblocks from Chesto berries to reach 170 Beauty. It will require 3 of these for a neutral nature or 2 of these for a dry-liking nature. Using this strategy, you can evolve your Feebas as early as Lilycove City.

But those calculations were all using Lilycove’s 3-NPC blending. What if I’m playing Ruby or Sapphire, where I could travel back to Slateport or Verdanturf or Fallarbor to make Pokéblocks as soon as I’ve caught Feebas on Route 119?

Well, you’re in luck! The number of NPCs only affects the feel on each of these Pokéblocks by adding one point each. With this method, you have enough sheen to spare that your Feebas can happily eat six Kelspy and two (Dry-liking nature) or three (neutral nature) Chesto Pokéblocks blended with 2 NPCs without getting full. Note that the Kelpsy Pokéblocks created this way will be Gray instead of Indigo, as they have 10 each in Sourness and Bitterness stats in addition to their 23 Dryness, but they will work exactly the same.

What are the lowest-quality berries I can use and still evolve Feebas?

While testing the above scenario, I kept accidentally feeding the wrong Feebas, so I can also verify that five Kelpsy Pokéblocks (level 23) and four Chesto Pokéblocks (levels 11-12) were enough to evolve my Quiet-Natured Feebas. (Adamant did not appreciate accidentally being fed Dry food. Sorry king.) This led me to check how few Kelpsy (and/or Hondew) berries you can get away with using and still evolve your Feebas. For a neutral-natured fish, you're looking at a minimum of four Kepsy/Hondew berries and eight Chesto berries. For a Dry-liking natured fish, you can get away with three Kelpsy/Hondew and eight Chesto. With this setup, you could evolve three Feebas just using these two berry types.

What if I've already used all my berries?

So, one last scenario: you’ve used up every berry in your save file, and already fed all those Pokéblocks you had to your pokémon. Can you still evolve Feebas when relying only on berries obtainable via wild pokémon held items?

Unfortunately, no. Chesto berry and Oran berry are the only two available in this way that make Blue or Indigo Pokéblocks. Remember that math section? Oran berries have a max level:feel of 12:20 (0.6) with 1 NPC, 10:20 (0.5) with 2 NPCs, and 10:19 (0.52) with 3 NPCs. Chesto berries have max level:feel of 12:23 (0.52) with 1 NPC, 12:22 (0.55) with 2 NPCs, and 12:21 (0.57) with 3 NPCs. If you skipped over the math section, just know that a ratio less than 0.666 will be too low to evolve Feebas.

When it comes to scenarios that will make a Pokéblock with Dry as its secondary flavor, such as blending a Lum berry with 3 NPCs, there aren't any better results, either. There is no situation in which you can reach 170 Beauty with these stats without hitting the max sheen of 255 first, even with a Dry-liking nature.

Thanks for reading this far, and good luck in all your berry adventures!