Pokemon Scarlet and Violet Legendaries | How to find and unlock Legendary Pokemon

Legendaries are a mainstay of any game in the Pokemon series, but the Pokemon Scarlet and Violet legendary Pokemon are particularly tricky, and time consuming to get. With our handy guide, however, we’ll talk you through the steps you need to take in order to find them, unlock them, and eventually catch the Pokemon Scarlet and Violet Legendaries, so your team can be ready to take on all-comers when it comes to the online multiplayer.

First things first, it’s work saying that there will be spoilers in our Pokemon Scarlet and Violet legendaries guide, so if you’ve just started the game or don’t like to know about some of the bigger, deeper secrets of the ninth generation of Pokemon games, turn away now. For everyone else, let’s get started.

First steps: preparation

While we don’t think it’s essential to finish the main story of Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, it’s probably best to at least get to the end of the main three story paths. At the very least you’ll need to have finished The Path of Legends, because this will unlock all of the traversal for your legendary Pokemon mount, making getting around the large open world much easier, and quicker.

To unlock the Pokemon Scarlet and Violet legendaries you will have to do a lot of exploration and running around. So get facing off against those massive Pokemon, defeat them, and get started with your legendary hunts. Finishing Victory Road and Starfall Street will also help because you’ll end up a higher level, able to brush off any Pokemon battles and, ultimately, make the fights against the legendaries themselves,  much easier.

Scarlet and Violet Legendary Pokemon: where to start?

It may not seem obvious, but the first place you’ll need to go is back to school. You’re told very early on in your adventure that you can take classes, and at some point you’ll even get a little “ping” message to tell you “new classes are available”. These are vital to the end-game of Pokemon Scarlet and Violet. They not only give you major information about the legendary Pokemon for the game, but will give you presents and rewards that you won’t want to miss.

School: take lessons from Raifort

Each teacher at school has a purpose, but the one we want is Raifort. Take their history classes over and over, until there are no more left to experience. Then, look around the school for them and have a chat. Here, they will reveal the shrines and their locations throughout Paldea. Each of these shrines houses one of the four legendary Pokemon, but crucially, they will reveal how to actually unlock access.

While it’s potentially possible to skip this and get lucky, Raifort marks your map with the four shrines as well, and given that there’s no way to manually make a waypoint on your map for a random spot, this is a far easier way to make sure they are always visible.

How to access the shrines

This is the part you’re not going to like, we fear. Each shrine has eight (8) stakes hidden throughout the relevant region. For every two you find, you will break one of the chains. Four chains = eight stakes. These are often hidden in the mountains or off the beaten path, and we also had luck finding them near ruins.

You can see what the stakes look like in the image above. They change colour depending on the type of shrine you’re trying to unlock, and which region you’re searching in. They are visible from a decent distance, but it’s easy to confuse them with the glowing like from a Terastalized cave, or sometimes even an item or TM on the floor. Sadly you will have to search for them by scaling mountains, exploring nooks and crannies, but it’s well worth it!

Catch ’em all!

Once you’ve found all the stakes and unlocked the shrine, you can battle the Pokemon hiding inside of it. Defeat and capture them in the usual way, and you can add a brand new, ultra rare Pokemon that you can genuinely say you have earned the right to use in battle.