Battle Agency Guide

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DragonWhale

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Approved by TDP and Jelli. This is a repost of the thread I posted in the USUM forum.

What is Battle Agency?

Battle Agency is a battle mode that is accessible by going inside the castle in Festival Plaza. In the Battle Agency, you're allowed to borrow one of the three random Pokemon shown in the monitor behind the receptionist, and recruit two other players in your Festival Plaza to form a team of three Pokemon. You then use the three Pokemon in a Single Battle.

Choosing your Team

First you will be asked to pick from three random Pokemon displayed on the monitor behind the receptionist. You will be able to check each of their stats before making your decision. The three Pokemon available will change after each round and at midnight every day, but you can keep the Pokemon you chose until you rank up.

After choosing your Pokemon, you then need to select two people you want to recruit for your team from your guest and VIP lists. If you are going to work with other people, it is strongly recommended you make them VIPs in your plaza as it allows you to still recruit them even when you're both offline. The Pokemon that you see next to them are the Pokemon that they selected in their game, and the rank indicates the level that the Pokemon will be. The rank and Pokemon of VIPs get updated when both the player and the VIP are online simultaneously. Every day at midnight or when you rank up, you will be asked to reselect your two partners. VIPs that aren't updated within the past three days are greyed out and become unselectable, so make sure you update each other consistently.

It is important to note that while you are recruiting other players' Pokemon into your team, all three Pokemon will follow your orders and will not be controlled by an AI like Battle Tree Multi Battles

Ranking Up

Every player is assigned a rank, starting at 0, which increases as the player progresses through the Agency. When a player ranks up, the rental Pokemon, as well as all the opponent Pokemon, will have their levels increased by 1. At rank 0 the Pokemon will be at Level 50.

One very important thing to note is that the level increase only applies to the one Pokemon that the player borrows, not the two other Pokemon belonging to the people you recruit. The two other Pokemons' levels are dependent on the rank of the player who rented them. This means if you have a high rank but your friends are still at rank 0, you will be facing higher levelled Pokemon with Level 50 Pokemon in your party, giving you a significant disadvantage. On the other hand, you can have people with higher ranks help you out by giving you Pokemon that are higher levelled than the opponent.

In order to go up a rank, the player needs to complete a certain number of rounds. Each round is three battles, and the round is complete when you win the three battles consecutively. Rank 0-9 requires 1 round, 10-19 requires 2, 20-29 requires 3, and so on.

When you rank up you will be rewarded Rare Candies. If you win against the boss that appears at the very last battle before reaching a rank multiple of 10 (i.e. third battle for rank 9), you will get a Gold Bottle Cap instead. You also get a ton of Festival Coins from participating in the Battle Agency, and the amount you receive incrementally increases as your rank increases.

Special Conditions

Once you reach rank 11, you will be notified of special conditions that are going to occur in your battles. One of these conditions are applied for the entire day and changes at midnight. All special conditions are weather or terrain effects and last for 8 turns from the start of the battle. It is therefore very important to keep these conditions in mind when choosing Pokemon for your team.

Rank 11+: Sun, Rain
Rank 16+: Hail, Sand
Rank 21+: Electric Terrain, Misty Terrain
Rank 31+: Grassy Terrain, Psychic Terrain
Rank 41+: Desolate Land, Primordial Sea, Delta Stream

TIPS!

The Battle Agency will slowly start to become nearly impossible to do on your own. You will eventually be at a high enough rank where only your own Pokemon can hold its own against the opponent, and the other two Level 50 Pokemon are not able to keep up, creating a 3v1 situation. It is strongly recommended to do this with other people. If you are having trouble looking for partners to help you, there are a lot of people that are climbing the Agency rankings in the Smogon Discord so join the fun!

In order for the VIP to update, both the player and VIP need to be online at the same time. If you look at it another way, the VIP will not update if one of you is offline. You can abuse this by going offline if you want to keep strong VIP Pokemon before the VIP changes Pokemon, or going offline before losing your good Pokemon so that your friends who have you as a VIP will be able to keep the strong Pokemon. This is important because there are only a handful of viable sets that consistently win battles, and so using this tactic helps keep the strong Pokemon in your party and ranks you up faster. If you want to share strong Pokemon make sure you don't rank up with them or else you will lose the Pokemon before you can share it. Do note that no matter how strong the base Pokemon is, its level will stay the same so it will slowly start to lose its effectiveness as you rank up.

Did you get three terrible Pokemon as your options? Don’t worry, there is a plaza shop that can help. The Switcheroo shop allows you to reroll the three Pokemon you choose from for 10 FC, a certain number of times a day. Don't forget your three choices also change at midnight.

You only need to win three battles consecutively. This is not the Battle Tree where using a 95% accurate move is suicide, nevermind 70%. Don't worry about using slightly riskier moves if you need to. The opponent Pokemon stay the same for that round for the entire day, so if you get haxed you will be able to try again very soon (unless you were insanely lucky to get to that point).

As stated above, the opponents are static until the next day, so you will be able to plan your games accordingly. Did an opponent use an unexpected Z-move that caused you to lose? Switch your strategy for it next time. You can also switch your own Pokemon mid-round by exiting and reselecting a new Pokemon, which allows you to counterpick your opponents to gain a favorable matchup.

The Battle Agency battles are like puzzles; the goal is to figure out a way to flowchart your battles. The AI are for the most part constant, so you can find a sequence of plays you can do to win consistently unless you are severely underlevelled or have a very bad matchup. If you are able to flowchart your first two battles in the round, you will have plenty of opportunities to hax your way through a difficult third opponent.
 
Rank 11+: Sun, Rain
Rank 16+: Hail, Sand
Rank 21+: Electric Terrain, Misty Terrain
Rank 31+: Grassy Terrain, Psychic Terrain
Rank 41+: Desolate Land, Primordial Sea, Delta Stream
There's one thing that I have not seen mentioned on any website: It is also possible to have "no battle setting". I think it just happens after the end of the rotation. I've had it at rank 26 the day after Misty Terrain and at rank 34 the day after Psychic Terrain. We'd need someone at 41+ to confirm that it's still there after Delta Stream (and not just a placeholder for conditions that you haven't unlocked yet), but it probably is.

nobattlesetting.png

Also worth noting that the conditions do cycle daily in the order that they're written here (implied but not stated in your paragraph).
 
I would mention that the Agency sets are identical (in fact, it's also the same trainers) to the ones found on Battle Tree, both the ones proposed to the player and the ones used against him, and in same fashion the ability of the Pokemon is random. IVs seem to be fixed at 31x6 though.
Thus it is possible to know in advance what sets each AI trainer has by just looking at each trainer's name, and even calculate damage reliably if you factor in the possible level differences.
The type of sets proposed to the player do not seem to have a link with the rank though and seem completely random so far.
The ground / weather is also not permanent on its own, will disappear after 5 (or 8? didn't verify) turns or if replaced by abilities or moves.
The AI also starts by being (possibly purposely) bad, but once you reach battle 10 it starts to actually follow same principles of Battle Tree Singles AI (so will go for guaranteed 1hkos, setuppers will setup / status hax, etc) making it "predictable" in similar fashion as the Tree one.
With the addition of Giovanni and Sophocles as bosses instead of Red/Blue (which unfortunately do not appear on tree, which is a big shame imo).
 

NoCheese

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haven't been able to figure out who can provide a last couple eyes on this hence the delay so just gonna tag the tree crew: Level 51 NoCheese turskain Worldie HeadsILoseTailsYouWin GG Unit if anyone's played this and is willing to read over it then please do
I can certainly take a look, but since I'm still playing through the main storyline of Ultra Sun I haven't actually played the battle agency myself, which makes me suboptimal on the qc side at this moment.
 

NoCheese

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Post-read: Yes, do be sure to mention that the sets are identical to the Battle Tree, perhaps with a link to the Tree Pokemon and AI trainers lists, since knowing your opponent's possible sets really does help. I've been told daily special weather clears after 8 rounds, as if a weather item were in play but again, someone should probably test this to be absolutely sure. In general, this is good though. I especially like the reminder that one need not be as much of a perfectionist as in the Tree, because you are going for a series of 3 win streaks rather than one massive streak.
 
I've been told daily special weather clears after 8 rounds, as if a weather item were in play but again, someone should probably test this to be absolutely sure.
Can confirm this (it's also in the first post already).

I just hit grade 50, and they said that every 5 rounds from now on will give me a reward and a boss fight. So it looks like grade 50 behaves the same as previous rounds, just obviously with no higher grades to reach at the end. I'm on Psychic Terrain today so I can check the "no battle setting" in a few days also.

Edit: Either there's some randomness in the conditions that no one has noticed until now, or (much more likely) there's an error on the list of conditions. Mine went in order from Misty Terrain -> Psychic Terrain -> Grassy Terrain. If I'm not mistaken, the first person to post the full list of conditions was Serebii, so it's possible that he flipped Psychic and Grassy Terrain and everyone else has recycled the same information.

Edit2: -The prize for beating Giovanni after a new round at rank 50 is a Gold Bottle Cap and a Rare Candy.
-I can (re)confirm that No Battle Setting is part of the rotation the day after Delta Stream (mysterious strong winds or whatever they call it ingame)
-Suggestion for the guide, add a line mentioning that the FC rewards are affected by the "luck in Festival Plaza" bonuses from Fortune Tents
 
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Lumari

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staff of this forum had fallen asleep and so had this forum but that ends now, DragonWhale feel free to move this to GP if you've implemented the checks and are happy with it
 
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