Z-A's DLC Problem

We should have known this DLC was going to be especially painful when it was announced before the game was even released.

I know I'm not the only one tired of the grinding in this game. Sure, the base game had plenty of grinding (and even more grinding in the post-game), but at that point the grinding culture was a part of the gameplay loop:

1. The player fought in the Z-A Royale and earned x number of Royale Points by either:
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• Defeating opponents normally
• Defeating opponents under additional, special conditions for bonus points (and anyone who grinded the Infinite Z-A Royale for Mabel's missions or for side quests will know that taking the time to farm those special conditions is ultimately slower than just completing the battles)
2. The player would turn in their Royale Points and complete either a scripted trainer battle or one-to-three boss fights around the city
3. When complete, loop back to Step One.

The grind culture in the DLC, however, is zero steps forward and three steps back. In the DLC, the new gameplay loop is as follows:

1. The player acquires berries to acces DLC-exclusive areas ¹
2. The player spend berries to access DLC-exclusive areas ²
3. The player uses a limited amount of time that is dependent on the rarity of the DLC area, the size, and the berries used to complete missions for points. Said missions will not add up to how many points are needed for the overall story quests on their own.
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• If completing the missions earns you enough points, return to step one and spend berries to fight a boss.
• If completing the missions does not earn you enough points, return to step one and spend berries to access more missions to earn more points.
• If you have already completed the main story for the DLC and the post-game for the DLC, return to step one and spend berries for a random chance to either (you cannot influence this RNG decision in any way whatsoever)
• Access a special "magical version" of the Z-A Infinite Royale maps.
• Access a special spawn area with rare Pokémon. These Pokémon can be exclusive to the post-post-DLC, but there is no guarantee and you can't influence which Pokémon will spawn.
• Access a special spawn area with rare Pokémon and a Legendary/Mythical Pokémon. You can't influence which Legendary or Mythical you will encounter.³

¹ The berries you can buy in the main game provide almost no time in these DLC areas, so meaningful time spent in the DLC areas will require further grinding of the berries.

² Bonuses tied to these berries are RNG-based and intended to not be resettable. Unless you use the back-up save feature, you're stuck with awful combinations of effects most of the time, rendering the point of farming good berries rather moot.

³ If you don't like whichever one you get, either complete it and regrind the needed points to spawn a new one or grind the points to spawn a new one and waste the last 25,000 points you just spent to get this one.

You see the frustration yet?

It's perfectly doable to maximize this grind, but even once you pass the tedium of the post-DLC grind (who in their right mind signed off on needing one-hundred thousand points at one step???), it's pure tedium. The absolute fastest way to grind these points in the post-post-DLC is to get a max-rarity distortion for either a spawn area or a battle area (I still think the battle ones take forever), complete its missions for 15,000 points, then complete a random boss fight for an additional 10,000 points. That will take you about fifteen minutes max if you have bad luck?

Honestly, if any one of those major issues were tweaked even slightly, it would not have taken nearly as long to find a Baxcalibur spawn. I didn't even want to get a Shiny Alpha Baxcalibur like most players would have. I was fine with anything spawning.

So that's what I'm going to do. Just to drive the point home of how awful the grind mechanics in the DLC are, I'm going to talk about how I personally would improve those three systems separately.

1. Point Farming

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For the fourth ranked season in Z-A, I decided I wanted to build my team around Baxcalibur since that was the Mega Stone we would earn that season. The season lasted three weeks and started after the DLC dropped, so it should have been easy to get one, right?

Well, including the time spent once the DLC was released to actually complete the DLC and the post-DLC to access the post-post-DLC (that phrase deserves its own blog post), I finally unlocked the five star distortions that had a chance to spawn the exclusive-to-five-star-distortions Baxcalibur line. I did not get a Baxcalibur distortion until 01 January 2026.

The DLC dropped 10 December 2025.

Granted, that's me complaining about all of the grinding I've done this entire DLC when complaining about a post-post-DLC event, but it's still worth discussing how many points in the exact same system were grinding. I didn't get to maximize how many runs were needed to farm points until I even reached the post-post-DLC and could fight Rogue Mega Evolutions for points.

Here's how many points you need to complete each mission. Note that these numbers are truncated; if you earn more points than are needed, then any extra points are erased as well when the boss fight is completed and you start a new mission.

I don't have time to discuss the scale of the points here, but to quickly summarize, you get three random challenges inside every hyperspace distortion that is rolled when you spawn into the distortion. That list of challenges is determined by the rarity of the distortion, the type of distortion, and the Pokémon available. The better missions are locked behind RNG, which are locked behind the effects of the donuts used to access the distortion, which are determined through RNG by the berries used to make the donut (which will be discussed in the next section).

And now that you're done with the DLC and post-DLC, you can now access the highest level surveys and highest level of distortions. These surveys require 25,000 points and spawn any one random five-star distortion, as seen in the very convoluted flow chart posted at the top of this post. At least at this point you can guarantee needing two or three distortion trips depending on if you can farm 15,000 points with a really high level berry in a five-star disortion and a guaranteed 10,000 point quest with a Rogue Mega battle.

I think the easiest fix would be to either cut the number of points needed in half (so you're less likely to need a large number of distortions farmed completely between missions) or to not truncate any extra points earned so they can carry over into the next mission as well. As far as I'm aware, the amount of points needed for each mission is arbitrary beyond increasing as the story progresses. There's no reason to think those numbers themselves have to be at that exact value. Allowing the points to carry over would probably take a bit more code, so I can half-understand why that isn't an option, but the number of survey points needed baffles me.

2. Expensive Berry Farming

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To access each distortion, you need to spend berries to make donuts with Ansha in Hotel Z. The amount of time given in a distortion is tied directly to which berries you used, and the specific distortion you are using the berry on. The higher quality each berry, the more calories available in that donut. The higher quality distortion, the more calories that are burned per second. Sound simple enough, right?

Unfortunately, the berries you can find or purchase in the base game do not provide many calories. They're fine for starting off the DLC, but are quickly outpaced a few missions in once you start finding better distortions. Luckily, farming in Hyperspace gives us access to Hyperspace Berries, which are significantly more powerful and give us access to more flavor and bonus effects.

Now, how do you farm hyperspace berries? Well, that's simple. Spend berries to go into Hyperspace, then destroy floating Pokéballs that have a chance to drop berries at different rarities. You can just take whatever items you get and hope you get enough rare berries to make up for the cost of the donut, or you can spend specific rare donuts for a chance at higher berry drop rates (at the cost of not being able to get other items at the same time). Getting these bonuses, as well as any bonuses, are another factor of RNG. Luckily, you can reroll berries by using the game's back-up save feature, but the game saves normally upon making a berry; without this back-up feature, the game's intention is to not let you reroll donuts for better effects. More on the RNG aspect of the donuts later, but my point here is that you're not even intended to be able to farm the berries consistently.

And even if you get the bonus for farming berries, there's no guarantee the bonus berry drops will be the berries that let you farm berries in the future. There are five different flavors berries can provide, and only one has that chance to increase item drops. You need to balance these expensive berries among five different flavors and budget depending on your goals in each distortion.

Did I mention some side quests are built into hyperspace distortions and the only things available in these distortions are sidequests? You still have to spend berries on these, and I sure hope you give yourself enough time with these berries to complete these side missions. It would be a shame if you had to, for example, fight two Alpha Pokémon at once that are easily capable of wiping out an entire team if you're not already prepared with their exact counter going in.

I think the simplist solution to the berry solution would be to either remove the calorie system that puts a timer on your experience in distortions or let you pick the effects you want based on the number of flavors. You only need 400 points in a given flavor to get its max effects, which takes about four of the eight berry slots; you can either use the donut as is with the four berries and a low timer or use berries in a flavor you don't need just to increase the timer. It's easy to save the game inside of a distortion and reload it if you run out of time, anyway, making the timer moot unless you happen to find something valuable when the timer is low.

3. Abhorrent RNG Systems

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Here is a quick reminder of how many RNG systems are built directly into the gameplay loop of the DLC:

• Distortion spawns are guaranteed but which distortions and where are random (and DLC progress dependent)
• The effects of the berries used to make the donuts are dependent on the flavor of berries but are RNG depending on how many points you have in each flavor
• The higher effect berries are locked behind farming inside hyperspace and you cannot directly control which items you find, just further increase the odds of getting the berries you want (not to mention RNG for getting special rare items that are either significantly more common in or outright exclusive to inside hyperspace distortions)
• The missions inside of hyperspace are randomized based on the type of distortion and Pokémon available
• The type of distortion is random and you cannot guarantee you'll find, say, a Dark-type distortion even after spending an hour moving the in-game clock a day forward to reroll the distortions and find the one you're looking for
• When you finally unlock Five Star Distortions, those are hardlocked behind RNG and cannot be manipulated by any means

Do we need this many mandatory events locked behind RNG systems? It's not like the game doesn't want to give you items to help guarantee certain actions, either. Time was spent to hard-code in special donuts that are designed to guarantee you access certain fights (the Groudon, Kyogre, and Rayquaza fights).

The Pokémon Company already had a template for pre-written recipes that guaranteed certain effects in Scarlet & Violet's sandwich system. If they wanted this DLC to be so donut focused then why not focus more time on creating recipes for special donuts that always guarantee higher berry odds, or higher Pokéball odds, or higher odds of a tiny Pokémon spawning? If anything, locking these donuts behind specific effects would incentivize players to still run through lower rarity distortions that they would not farm otherwise because they need a few Hyper Shuca Berries for the Level 3 Alpha Spawn donut they've been looking for.