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How to Negate Affection Bonuses in Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl

There is such a thing as being too helpful.

The Sinnoh remakes have brought a ton of added features, from a separate Hidden Moves Pokétch app to party-wide experience share. It also has one function present in all modern Pokémon games: the affection bonuses. These are extra actions your Pokémon will take, such as dodging moves and landing critical hits, because of high friendship for their trainer.

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However, affection bonuses aren’t always so great. Your Pokémon can accidentally land a critical hit on a legendary you’re trying to capture, for example, and defeat it. Many trainers have also complained about how dodging moves made the game too easy. If you want to play Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl with affection bonuses out of the way, you can do a couple of things.

1. Feed them herbs

The only way to negate affection bonuses in Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl is to lower your Pokémon’s friendship level. The fastest way to do this is to feed them many herbs. These items heal your Pokémon but cause them to be less friendly. You can purchase herbs from the Herb Shop in Eterna City.

Related: How to check friendship level in Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl

2. Let them faint in battle

Another easy way to make your Pokémon hate you is to let them faint in battle. If the opposing Pokémon is 30 levels higher than yours, it’ll lose affection faster.

3. Keep them in your box

Did you know that simply walking with your Pokémon raises their affection for you? If you don’t want that to happen, rotate your party so that your Pokémon are often in the box. This will allow you to distribute the EXP you gain throughout Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl as well, making battles much more challenging,

For more help with Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, we at Pro Game Guides have you covered.


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Author
Image of Bianca Versoza
Bianca Versoza
Bianca has over three years of experience in gaming journalism, specializing in anything remotely turn-based and strategic, like Pokémon, Final Fantasy, and Honkai: Star Rail. She's a huge fan of Square Enix, RPGs, party games, and visual novels, but will play anything with a banger OST. She's a proud early bird.