Pokemon Farming: Berries
June 14, 2007
No, today’s farming article is not designed to get you those rare Pokemon you need. Nope, todays article is all about the art of berry farming.
Berries were first introduced in the Gold/Silver/Crystal games. You could not farm them as they grew on bushes in set areas of the world. When the Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald games came out berry farming became all the rage. Leaf Green/Fire Red did use berries but there was no way to farm them, you had to trade them over one-by-one. Yeah, most folks didn’t care for that option.
With the new Pokemon games, Diamond and Pearl, Nintendo has upped the bar on berry farming. They have added in some new berries and made berry farming better and easier.
Why farm berries?
Some players like to explore every aspect of a game while others do not. Berry farming does take time, a lot of time! Some bushes will not produce berries until 96 real hours have passed. That’s four days for those of you who are math challenged.
Generally, the lower the number of the berry the faster it will grow into a berry producing plant. The number of berries you can get off of a plant does vary by berry.
Berries have three main uses:
- Hold item in battle
- Cook into poffins
- Plant to grow more berries
Those are the three most common uses you will encounter for berries. There is one other use that I will cover later on in this article.
Hold Items
Using a berry as a hold item during battle is a very good use of a berry. Beware though, in single player mode a held berry that is used by your Pokemon is gone. When battling over Wi-Fi or in the Battle Tower those berries magically reappear after battle. I don’t want to think about where that berry came from but in game terms they are not used up.
The first berries you will encounter in the game are useful for healing and removing status conditions. You can use them from your bag on a Pokemon but, if a Pokemon holds the berry they can use it themselves at the end of the round. This saves you a lost turn during battle.
Not all berries are useful as a held item which leads us to:
Cook into poffins
There is a house in Hearthome City, The Poffin House, where you can turn your berries into poffins, a tasty treat for your Pokemon.
Poffins are the Diamond and Pearl version of Pokeblock. Depending on the characteristics of the berry (and your cooking skills) these treats can be used to up your chances of winning a Pokemon contest. Like the Pokeblocks that came before them, a Pokemon can only eat so many of these treats before they can no longer benefit from them.
This is not the place to go into the fine art of Poffin making, I’ll save that for a later piece.
Plant to grow more berries
Berries grow in soft loamy soil. When you pick a berry it is a good practice to plant one in the same spot. Unless you have not completed the game.
Berry farming is a task best left until after you beat the Elite Four, or at least after you acquire the HM Fly. Berry farming is hard work and you need to be able to get to all of your berry patches several times a day. I suggest you just clear cut the berries in the early part of the game and keep one on hand (at least) to use when you start your farming career.
The first item you will need to begin your farming career is the Sprayduck. It is a watering can shaped like a Psyduck. With this item you can water the berry patches to avoid having them dry out. You can acquire this item from the flower shop in Floaroma Town. This same shop will also trade you stuff for your berries. Once you have the Sprayduck you can begin your farming career.
Depending on the climate in which the berry patch is located you may need to water the patch more (or less) often than other patches. The Sprayduck is what allows you to water those patches.
Each patch goes through three stages of wetness:
- Dark brown - Fresh soil ready for planting
- Medium brown - Still good soil but it is starting to dry out
- Light brown - Dry soil, get that plant some water!
I have found, through extensive research, that you will get the biggest berry harvest if you can keep your berry patches dark brown. I have managed to pull 15 berries off of a single bush by keeping the soil dark brown through the entire growing proccess. This is hard to do for berries that take 96 hours to mature.
Berry Watering Tip: Soil dries out faster in the daytime than at night. Always water your patches right before you go to bed at night and every few hours during the day.
There are some places in the world where you can plant four berries side-by-side. These are the best patches but they are not always in the best places. I have found that if a patch is too far out of the way I just leave it empty. If I’m planting 30 berries and watering them every few hours I can burn 20 minutes just getting all of the easy to reach patches!
Have any Pokemon Berry Farming questions? Ask them in the comments.
Image used under CC license from flickr user Dano
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The most I have pulled off was 5 berries.
So kudos on 15!
It is also worthy to note that you should harvest the berries ASAP, or else they start falling down the trees and effort has gone to waste!!
Something I’ve been trying to figure out, and I was wondering if you’d noticed it as well, is whether or not it matters how long you wait before you pick the berries. It seems like (but I’m not positive) that if you pick the berries shortly after the plant matures, you’ll only get 2 berries or so, whereas if you wait some time after maturation you’ll get 5 or more berries, up to 15. I’ve been using a lot of Stable Mulch on my berries for that reason, and at times it does seem to make a difference, but I was also unaware that some plants take up to 96 hours, which explains why some of the plants I’ only getting 2 berries regardless - I’m not waiting anywhere NEAR enough time!!! Long story short, any thoughts on that?
Also, and I apologize if I’m out of line here, but I was going through some of your old posts, and I came across a comment you left on one, stating that you had the promo disc for Pokemon Colosseum….I don’t suppose there’s any way we can work out a trade for a Jirachi, is there? Like I said, if I’m out of line I apologize, it was just a thought. I’ve been trying to get any of the rare legendaries for a looooooong time now, and I thought I’d ask…
What berries do you need? I don’t have all of them yet, but I have been working on getting as many as possible, mainly between myself and my best friend, who has a copy of Pearl. Let me know what berries you need or want, and I’ll see if I can help at all. I figure doing it that way will be a lot easier than me naming all the berries that I have. I hope I can help you out somehow, you’ve helped me out a lot already, for which I humbly thank you!
i need some apicot berries, i hope thats how you spell them. Someone told me those are the most dry, to evolve feebas. would you happen to have any?
Whoops….Level 37 Poffins, not berries…..
Alright, so far I found this out:
1. There is a minimum amount of berries you can get for each berry (usually 1 for the common, 2 for the uncommon and 3 for the rare)
2. You don’t get more berries for picking them later. You have to water them atleast once in EACH stage. (Bud, Sprout, Bloom). From what I’ve gathered, you get higher berry yields if you water them more.
That’s pretty much it. Hope this helps.
http://www.serebii.net/berrydex-dp/
For those who haven’t ventured onto this above site,
That page should help out everyone on Berries, somewhat.
Although techincally, it is only slightly relevant to what we’re talking about since we are discussing about the fine art of the FARMING the berries itself.
But anyhow, the website is great for Pokemon in general as well.
Man, I find Berry farming tedious after the first 200 Leppa or Lum Berries. If only Game Freak would program an actual self-running Berry Farm run by the player. Maybe that’ll cut down the time needed to tend the berries dramatically. I can imagine it, using one’s own monsters for “slave” labor.
LOL suwoodo the the berry picking tree LOL
[...] in about Eight hours. If you have not already done so I highly suggest you read our article on berry farming. If you follow those instructions you should be able to farm bumper crops of 10 - 20 berries at a [...]
how can you pull 15 berries in one patch? thats kinda hard berry trees only produce two berries so how do you do that?
If you are careful and keep the patch well-watered you can pull up to 15 berries per bush.
If anybody knows how many berries at max. you can get from every berry type they should post it somewhere. For example, I water very carefully and get 8-10 berries from some types, but the Colbur for example, and Lum berries never seem to produce more than two, which seems tedious.
I KNEW it! I KNEW time of day mattered! Sonuva…
Do you happen to know the intricate specifics of the inner workings of mulch? Heh. Take for example Growth Mulch. At first I thought it cut time in half. Then I read it cut time down to 3/4ths. But I have berries that are normally 15 hrs between stages, and with Growth Mulch, it was down to five hours. Do you know EXACTLY, with no uncertainties, how it works? I’m going nutso.
Thanks.
By the way, where do you buy mulch???
Yeah - so, I stopped playing PKMN: Pearl for a while and knew that when I came back I would have no more berry bushes. What should I do? I’ve got a bunch still on me, but I’m missing a couple berries that probably grew at a certain spot but don’t anymore because I haven’t bothered to check on them.
I like farming berries, its my favorite. I will plant berries all over the map, and than spend all day takeing care of them by foot. I have been trying to get a feebas, but i can’t catch it. I can use my dry berries to make it evolve in to the Cute and beautiful Milotic. But, i cant seem to catch it, “snivel”. o well though. Speaking of berries, i should go water mine right now.
i don’t know about you but i don’t have time to water each stage. i play like 1 a day too bad i need berries….
um…anybody knows a site where I could get a map of all the locations where you can plant berries, like berry patch locations.
It isn’t that much work finding them. Just wonder around and plant oran berries, or berries you have alot of (I have 432), then check your Poke Ap to find the spots. With this info you can plan your berry routes. Happy planting!
Berry farming is really fun. It is much better than in GBA games where the clocks are waaaaaaay off, and predicting when the berries need water, and when to pick them is way more difficult. Here’s a tip. Try wondering in the Amity Forest for a while to find some rare berries. You aren’t going to find Watermel Berries or anything quite like that ,but you will find some Corn berries (Messed name huh?). Also, the areas right by the biking road are good, quick places to find and plant beries, as they are easy to get to, especially if your Pokemon haven’t learned Fly yet. Have fun picking them berriees!