How To Find And Use Bottle Caps In Pokemon Scarlet And Violet
"Pokémon Scarlet" and "Pokémon Violet" changed the game in some ways. The overworld and raids have made it easier than ever to find the Pokémon a player wants, and tailoring Pokémon to meet specific team needs is also pretty easy to do. While there are overpowered Pokémon and strongest/weakest Pokémon, many of the creatures can be used competitively regardless of the meta. In part, items help players craft these "perfect" Pokémon.
One such item is the Bottle Cap, which can be used on a Pokémon to increase an IV by one. These aren't special to "Scarlet" and "Violet," but they're a bit easier to find than in previous games. With the right amount of strategy — and farming — players can take advantage of bottle caps to create the team of their dreams, even if it includes Pokémon that are considered "great" by regular standards. This can even keep opponents off guard if using a Pokémon in an unexpected way.
Once you have the Bottle Caps, you can then "hyper train" your Pokémon near the Pokémon center in Montenevera to increase their IVs.
Bottle Caps are more common than you think
Despite the hefty price tag on them, Bottle Caps can be somewhat easy to find. According to Serebii, there are five Bottle Caps that exist in each game: Mesagoza, the Academy, North Province Area Two, Porto Marinada, and West Paldean Sea.
Players can also find Bottle Caps in five- and six-star raids. After completing a qualifying raid, there's a chance that a Bottle Cap will be given as a reward. These raids aren't always easy to do, so bring Pokémon that can counter the Tera type of the raid in question.
There are also a limited number of raids available per day. Luckily, players can combat this in two different ways. Changing the date on the Nintendo Switch is always an easy workaround for time-gated content. Additionally, players can join raids in other players' games by looking at what's available to join in the Poké Portal. This can be a bit rough because raids tend to fill up pretty quickly, but even joining friends' worlds or finding a raid group on sites like Reddit can solve this problem.