The Cinderace Tera Raid event for Pokemon Scarlet and Violet is finally here. We recently made a guide on the raid, and while the information there is correct, the builds you’ll find there aren’t perfect for soloing Cinderace. You’ll either need a good team of AI Pokemon or get lucky during the fight in order to take the fire bunny down. Fortunately, there’s a build that makes the Cinderace raid trivial, and it features none other than good ol’ Slowbro. Slowbro isn’t known for being a hard-hitting attacker, but with the right moves and stats, you can actually one-shot Cinderace before it even puts up its shield.

How to Solo the Cinderace Tera Raid

Slowbro Build

Nature: Modest

EVs: 252 Sp Atk / 252 Def / 4 HP (you can swap Def and HP if preferred)

Item: Life Orb / Twisted Spoon / Wise Glasses

Moveset:

• Stored Power
• Iron Defense
• Nasty Plot
• Slack Off

For this particular Slowbro build, you’ll first need it to be level 100 with a Modest nature (if it isn’t Modest, give it a Modest Mint). You’ll also want 252 Sp Atk EVs for maximum damage. For your defensive stat, you can choose between HP and Defense. Defense is the better of the two stats against Cinderace, but if you’d rather build your Slowbro for future raids, HP is better to keep you bulky against special attackers. You’ll take a little more damage with max HP EVs compared to max Defense EVs, but it shouldn’t matter too much. Slowbro’s Ability doesn’t really matter for this particular raid so you don’t have to worry about using Ability Patches or Capsules.

As for your item, anything that boosts your damage output will do, as you’ll only be damaging Cinderace once to take it down immediately. Life Orb is the best choice since it boosts your damage by 30%, whereas Twisted Spoon and Wise Glasses only boost your output by 20% and 10% respectively. Any three should work, though, and it’s even possible to take Cinderace down without any of these items. Still, having the extra damage will ensure you K.O. Cinderace, so it never hurts to have one on Slowbro.

We’ll go over the moves in the next section, but I’d like to point out Slack Off here since it isn’t necessary for the combo. In the event that Cinderace somehow does too much damage to you (either via a mistake you made or a lucky crit from Cinderace) you may need to restore some HP. Slack Off is there for insurance, though if you follow the strategy, you probably won’t need it most of the time.

Move Order/Strategy

Turn 1-3: Iron Defense
Turn 4-6: Nasty Plot
Turn 7: Attack Cheer
Turn 8: Stored Power

The crux of this build lies in Stored Power, a Psychic-type Special Attack. It only has 20 base power but gains 20 power for every increased stat stage that your Pokemon has. So, for example, if you raised your Defense to a maximum of six stages, you’re looking at a 140-power attack. With Iron Defense to raise your Defense and Nasty Plot to raise your Special Attack by two stages each, your Stored Power will have a whopping 260 power, and that’s on top of your maxed Special Attack. Thanks to the three Iron Defenses you use during your first three turns, you’ll be bulky enough to use three Nasty Plots without fainting. Throw in an Attack cheer after the Nasty Plots and finish off with your Stored Power to take down Cinderace in one fell swoop.

Despite this strategy being fairly consistent, there are situations where you won’t be able to take down Cinderace right away. If the AI Pokemon you get on your team do too much damage, Cinderace may raise its shield before you can finish setting up. That’s why we save the Attack cheer until right before Stored Power, as the cheer boosts your whole team’s damage, not just your own. If this does happen, you can always restart the raid. Look out for Pokemon that can do supereffective damage against Cinderace, such as Sylveon, Staraptor, and Gardevoir.

Can You Solo With Armarouge?

We mentioned that Armarouge was arguably one of the best Pokemon to bring to the Cinderace raid, and while that’s still the case, it’s not the best for soloing. Armarouge doesn’t gain access to good bulk without sacrificing setup or damage output. It is possible to solo Cinderace with Armarouge (my first solo clear was with Armarouge) but it’s not as consistent or as easy to pull off as with the Slowbro build.

If you really want to run Armarouge, you’ll need some way of mitigating Cinderace’s damage as you won’t be as bulky as Slowbro. Luckily, Armarouge has a few options, with Reflect and Will-O-Wisp both being handy. You can also use Clear Smog if you don’t like Cinderace using Bulk Up too often. I still highly recommend using Slowbro if you want to solo, though, so you’re better off using Armarouge when raiding with others.

And that’s about it for the mini-guide! The Cinderace raid will run all weekend, ending on January 1 or January 2 depending on what timezone you live in:

• PT: January 1 at 3:59 PM
• ET: January 1 at 6:59 PM
• UTC: January 1 at 11:59 PM
• HKT: January 2 at 7:59 AM

Good luck defeating Cinderace!