Held Items: Berries, Orbs, Belts and Incense, What Matters

An empty slot, and the battle is often lost before it starts. The held item line is the quietest one on a Pokémon's summary screen, and it is often the one that decides everything: one sixteenth of your HP back every turn, thirty percent more power in exchange for ten percent less health, a deliberate burn to double the strength of an attack. Since the second generation, held items have been a discipline of their own, with its immovable classics, its traps and its items nobody ever uses. Let's sort them out.

Contents

• How a held item works
• Leftovers: the default item, and why
• Orbs: raw power and calculated self-harm
• The Choice trio: fifty percent in exchange for your freedom
• Berries: the only item you can eat
• Plates, Gems and transformation items
• Incenses: two jobs in a single item
• Evolution items: the ones you have to hold to change
• Items that aren't meant for battle
• So, what do you actually put on your team?
• Held items in fifteen key points
• Frequently Asked Questions

How a held item works

The mechanic was born with the second generation: a Pokémon can hold an item, and that item acts on its own, without the Trainer having to step in. A historical curiosity: a first-generation Pokémon traded into a second-generation game could sometimes arrive already holding an item, a relic of a time when the feature did not exist yet.

Three games are the exception: Pokémon: Let's Go, Pikachu!, Let's Go, Eevee! and Pokémon Legends: Arceus, where Pokémon simply cannot hold anything at all. None of the strategy described here applies there.

A logical limit applies to everything else: a Pokémon can hold a Potion or an Antidote, but it will never use it, because those are items made by humans. Wild Pokémon, on the other hand, often hold something themselves, usually a Berry, sometimes an evolution item such as the King’s Rock, which has made many a patient player's fortune.

Leftovers: the default item, and why

If you had to remember only one item, this would be it. Leftovers restore one sixteenth of maximum HP at the end of every turn, indefinitely, with no condition attached and without ever being used up. Over a battle that lasts ten turns, that is more than half a health bar recovered for free.

That is what makes them, quite literally, the default pick on competitive teams: when you do not know what to give a Pokémon, you give it Leftovers. They turn a bulky Pokémon into an almost impassable wall, and force the opponent to hit harder than the recovery, or never make any progress at all.

Their only flaw is how slow they are: against an opponent who can end the battle in two or three turns, six percent per turn counts for nothing, and that is when you would rather run a healing Berry, or an outright aggressive item. Choosing Leftovers is therefore less a reflex than a bet on the length of the battle.

🍱 Six percent a turn won't turn around a quick battle; it wins the ones that drag on, and that's the whole job of Leftovers. Our Pokémon snack boxes play the same role in your bag, for days that stretch into the evening.

Orbs: raw power and calculated self-harm

The Life Orb is the most widely used offensive item in the series: it raises the power of moves by 30%, but its holder loses 10% of its maximum HP every time it hits the opponent with a damaging move. Three nuances are worth knowing: fixed-damage moves are not boosted, nor is recoil damage, and a status move costs no HP at all.

The other two orbs follow a completely different logic: they deliberately hurt their own holder. The Flame Orb inflicts a burn and the Toxic Orb inflicts bad poison, as early as the end of the first turn. An idea that looks absurd on paper, and is fearsome in practice.

That deliberate status condition feeds a whole family of strategies. The move Facade sees its power jump from 70 to 140 as soon as its user is burned, poisoned or paralyzed. You can also palm the orb off on the opponent with Switcheroo or Trick, or hand over the condition you caught with Psycho Shift. A bad status becomes a resource.

The Choice trio: fifty percent in exchange for your freedom

Three items share the same brutal contract. The Choice Band raises Attack by 50%, the Choice Specs raise Special Attack by 50%, and the Choice Scarf raises Speed by 50%. In exchange, the holder can only use a single move — the first one it picks — until it leaves the field.

The trap is a nasty one and it catches every beginner: if the locked move runs out of PP, the Pokémon automatically uses Struggle, even if its other three moves still have PP. In other words, one bad first choice can doom a Pokémon for the entire battle.

These items have defined whole archetypes of competitive play, and it is worth knowing that they switch off during a Dynamax: the boost disappears and every move becomes available again, before the lock snaps shut at the end of the transformation. A detail you can read in full in our guide to Dynamax and Gigantamax.

Alongside this trio, the Expert Belt offers the opposite deal: no restriction at all, but a conditional 20% boost applied only to attacks that are super effective. It is the item for the player who knows the type chart by heart, and who accepts gaining nothing when they aim at the wrong target.

Berries: the only item you can eat

Berries appear in the second generation and take their current form in the third. They are used up when they take effect, which makes them unpredictable for the opponent, who never knows whether the Pokémon across the field is holding one until it triggers.

The most widely used one is the Sitrus Berry, which restores a quarter of maximum HP as soon as it drops below half, a flat 30-point heal in the third generation, before being recalibrated as a proportion. Next comes the Lum Berry, which cures every status condition at once: burn, poison, paralysis, sleep, freeze.

One whole family is less well known and yet formidable: the Berries that halve the damage of a super effective attack of a given type. The Occa Berry does it for the Fire type, and each of its cousins covers another type. They exist to survive a hit you should not survive, and to turn a battle around in a single turn.

Plates, Gems and transformation items

The oldest category is also the simplest: the type-boosting items raise the power of moves of the matching type by 20% — it was only 10% before the fourth generation. Charcoal strengthens the Fire type, the Black Belt the Fighting type, the Metal Coat the Steel type.

The fourth generation adds the Plates, sixteen of them at first, one per type except the Normal type. There are nineteen today: the Pixie Plate arrived with the Fairy type, then the Blank Plate and the Legend Plate with Legends: Arceus. Their role goes well beyond a power boost: held by Arceus, they change its form, its type, and even the type of its signature move Judgment.

The fifth generation completes the picture with the Gems, seventeen of them, which grant a boost that works only once. Powerful but fleeting, they embody a philosophy that would come back later with the Z-Crystals: concentrating an item's entire value into a single well-chosen turn.

💎 Seventeen Gems, powerful but short-lived: they power up a move for a single turn, and then nothing is left of them. Our Pokémon earrings make the opposite bet on your ears, where the sparkle doesn't wear off with use.

Some items do not change numbers: they change the very nature of the battle. The Mega Stone, held by a Pokémon of the right species, allows Mega Evolution, with its overhauled stats and sometimes a change of type or Ability. One reassuring detail: a Mega Stone that is being held cannot be lost in battle, whether to an Ability or a move.

The Z-Crystal of the seventh generation follows a different logic: it converts a move into an overpowered version, usable only once per battle. Some crystals are exclusive to one species and unlock a signature Z-Move. Every generation has looked for its own spectacular moment and handed it to a held item, a lineage that our Mega Evolution guide traces from Kalos onward.

Incenses: two jobs in a single item

This is the most misunderstood category, because every Incense does two unrelated things. Held by the right parent at the Day Care, it makes a baby Pokémon hatch instead of the base stage; held in battle, it produces a completely different effect. A Marill with a Sea Incense gives an Azurill, but that same Sea Incense also boosts Water-type moves by 20%.

The other battle effects are worth a look. The Lax Incense lowers the opponent's accuracy by 10%, the Pure Incense cuts the wild Pokémon encounter rate by a third when its holder leads the party, and the Full Incense forces its holder to act last among moves of the same priority, whatever its Speed.

That last point is not a penalty: it is a tool. Acting last is valuable for certain strategies, and the item keeps that behavior even under Trick Room. The breeding side of these items is covered in detail in our guide to breeding and Eggs.

Evolution items: the ones you have to hold to change

One whole family of items is useless in battle, and essential for the Pokédex. When held, they trigger an evolution as soon as another event occurs, most often a trade. The Metal Coat, for instance, turns Scyther into Scizor, and the Dragon Scale turns Seadra into Kingdra.

The fourth generation multiplied these items in order to give evolutions to older Kanto Pokémon: the Electirizer for Electabuzz, the Magmarizer for Magmar, the Protector for Rhydon. All of them had to be held and traded, which long left solo players in despair.

Good news: Pokémon Legends: Arceus did away with that double constraint by letting you use these items directly on the Pokémon. At the other extreme, the Everstone does exactly the opposite and blocks any evolution, with one amusing exception: it no longer works on Kadabra since the fourth generation. The details of all these mechanics can be found in our guide to Pokémon evolution.

Items that aren't meant for battle

A handful of held items work outside battle, and they are often the most rewarding ones. The Soothe Bell increases every friendship gain by 50%, speeding up the evolutions that depend on it. The Cleanse Tag, carried by the first Pokémon in the party, reduces encounters with lower-level wild Pokémon, without ever removing them completely.

🔔 The Soothe Bell needs no handling at all: when held, it boosts every friendship gain by 50% and speeds up the evolutions that depend on it. The rearview mirror charms fall into the same category of item: you hang one above the dashboard once, and it does its job on every drive.

The Destiny Knot leads a double life: in battle it shares infatuation with the opponent, in breeding it passes down five IVs from the parents instead of three. And the Lucky Egg, despite its name, does nothing more than raise the experience earned at the end of a battle by 50%.

That leaves the species-specific items, often forgotten and yet excellent. The Leek, held by Farfetch’d, its Galarian counterpart or Sirfetch’d, raises the critical-hit ratio of its moves by two stages . An item that looks ridiculous on paper, and is devastating in practice.

So, what do you actually put on your team?

The rule of thumb fits in three lines. On a defensive Pokémon that has to last, you run Leftovers. On an attacker that has to hit before it falls, you run a Life Orb or a Choice item. On a fragile but decisive Pokémon, you run a Berry that will help it survive the killing blow.

The real advice lies elsewhere: never leave the slot empty. A badly chosen item is almost always better than no item at all, and it is by watching what a Pokémon is short of — health, speed, power or time — that you find the right one. To keep the passion going off-screen, our Pokémon keychains and our figures do a great job of filling the empty slot on your desk.

Held items in fifteen key points

Frequently Asked Questions

• What is the best held item in Pokémon?
  There is no single best item, but Leftovers are considered the default choice on competitive teams: they restore one sixteenth of maximum hit points at the end of every turn, with no condition and without being used up. For an offensive Pokémon, the Life Orb is generally preferred, with 30% more power at the cost of 10% of maximum hit points with every hit landed.
• What exactly do Choice items do?
  The Choice Band increases Attack by 50%, the Choice Specs increase Special Attack by 50%, and the Choice Scarf increases Speed by 50%. In return, the holder can only use the first move it picks, until it leaves the field. If that move runs out of PP, it automatically uses Struggle, even if the others still have some.
• Why give a Flame Orb or a Toxic Orb to your own Pokémon?
  Because the status condition becomes a resource. The Flame Orb burns its holder and the Toxic Orb badly poisons it from the end of the first turn, which doubles the power of the move Facade, taking it from 70 to 140. You can also pass the orb on to your opponent with Switcheroo or Trick, or hand over the status condition with Psycho Shift.
• Can Pokémon hold items in every game?
  No. In Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee!, as well as in Pokémon Legends: Arceus, Pokémon cannot hold items. In every other main series game since the second generation, the held item slot is available.
• What is Incense used for in Pokémon?
  Every Incense has two unrelated effects. Held by the right parent at the Day Care, it makes a baby Pokémon hatch instead of the base stage: a Marill with a Sea Incense gives an Azurill. In battle, that same Sea Incense increases the power of Water-type moves by 20%. The Lax Incense lowers the opponent's accuracy by 10%, the Pure Incense cuts the wild encounter rate by a third, and the Full Incense forces its holder to move last.
• Do you still have to trade a Pokémon to use an evolution item?
  In most games, yes: the Metal Coat, the Dragon Scale, the Electirizer, the Magmarizer, the Protector or the King’s Rock have to be held, and then the Pokémon has to be traded. Pokémon Legends: Arceus is the exception and lets you use these items directly on the Pokémon, with no trade at all.
• How many Plates are there and what are they for?There are nineteen Plates: sixteen when they came out in the fourth generation, one per type except Normal, the Pixie Plate added along with the Fairy type, then the Blank Plate and the Legend Plate in Pokémon Legends: Arceus. Like the other type-boosting items, they increase the power of moves of the type concerned by 20%. Held by Arceus, they also change its form, its type, and the type of its move Judgment.

In short

One sixteenth of health per turn, fifty percent more Attack in exchange for a single move, a burn you inflict on yourself on purpose: held items are proof that Pokémon has never been a simple game, only a game that forces nobody to look under the hood. The day you fill all six slots on purpose, a different game begins.