Shadow, Purified or Regular? How to Decide

A Shadow Pokemon fights with its Attack multiplied by 1.2 and its Defense multiplied by 0.8333 (five sixths). That holds in raids, gyms, Team GO Rocket battles and GO Battle League alike. In plain terms it deals 20% more damage and takes 20% more. Nothing else changes: base stats, moves, typing and even the CP number are the same as the regular form, because the bonus is applied in battle and never shows on the summary screen.

Twenty percent is large. Five trainers attacking with Shadows put out, on paper, the damage of six trainers using the same species without the bonus (5 × 1.2 = 6). In a raid the timer is what beats you, not your HP bar, so extra damage is worth more than extra survival almost every time.

The price is paid three times

• Durability. Taking 20% more damage means fainting sooner. In raids that costs seconds in the lobby swap; in PvP it can flip a matchup you would otherwise win.
• Resources. Every power-up and the second charged move cost 1.2 times the Stardust and Candy of a regular Pokemon.
• Flexibility. A Shadow cannot be traded, cannot Mega Evolve and cannot be Hyper Trained. It is allowed in GO Battle League.

Purifying costs Stardust and Candy of the same species. Going by community guides, the price runs from about 1,000 Stardust and 1 Candy for common species up to 20,000 and 20 for legendaries, with steps in between; the exact figure is on the Purify button, and each Pokemon page in the Pokedex lists it under How to get. In return you receive:

• +2 to every IV, capped at 15.
• Level 25 if it was below that (your Trainer level can limit this). A Team GO Rocket rescue arrives at level 8, or 13 when weather boosted, so purifying skips a long run of power-ups.
• Return instead of Frustration. Return is a Normal-type charged move that a regular Charged TM can replace on any day of the year.
• Permanent discounts: power-ups cost 0.9 times the regular price and the second charged move 0.8 times.

What it destroys is the 1.2 Attack multiplier, for good. There is no way to turn a purified Pokemon back into a Shadow, and no TM, Elite included, can teach Frustration or Return again once they have been replaced.

The purified hundo

Because each IV gains 2 with a ceiling of 15, any Shadow that is 13/13/13 or better becomes a 15/15/15. A 13/14/15 qualifies. A 12/15/15 does not: it ends up 14/15/15. Read the IVs with the IV checker before you decide, because the appraisal bars do not show numbers.

Work down this list and stop at the first line that describes your Pokemon.

1. It is, or evolves into, a raid attacker: keep it Shadow

This is the case that matters most, and the answer barely depends on IVs. Damage scales with Attack. A regular Pokemon with a perfect Attack IV fights with base Attack + 15; a Shadow with an Attack IV of 0 fights with base Attack × 1.2. The Shadow is ahead whenever 1.2 × base is more than base + 15, which is whenever base Attack is above 75. For a species with 250 base Attack that is 300 against 265. No IV roll closes that gap.

To see whether your species is a raid attacker at all, open best attackers by type: Shadow forms are listed as their own entries with their own DPS, and where both forms are ranked, the Shadow page in the Pokedex sets its raid DPS beside the regular one. If the Shadow is on a list you care about, do not purify it.

2. It is for GO Battle League: check before you touch it

The same multipliers apply in PvP, where the extra damage taken hurts more because battles are decided by who is still standing. Some species are better as Shadows and some are worse, and that moves with every rebalance, so look it up rather than guessing: the Great, Ultra and Master League tier lists rank Shadow entries separately from regular ones.

Two side effects of purifying matter here. It adds 2 to the Attack IV as well, which is the opposite of what Great and Ultra League want (see PvP IVs explained). And it lifts the Pokemon to level 25, which for many species is already above 1,500 CP. Check the CP by level table on the Pokemon's page first, or you may purify your way out of the league you were building for.

3. You want to Mega Evolve it: you have to purify

A Shadow cannot Mega Evolve. If the plan is a Mega, purify, and be glad of the cheaper power-ups. If you have several Shadows of the species, purify the one with the best IVs after the +2 and keep another as a Shadow attacker.

4. It is 13/13/13 or better and you collect perfect Pokemon: purify if you like

This is a collection decision, not a strength one. For raid damage the 13/13/13 Shadow you started with is still stronger than the 15/15/15 it becomes. Only do it for species that fail test 1.

5. None of the above: leave it alone

Purifying a Pokemon you will never use spends Stardust to change a label. If storage is the problem, transferring is free; the storage clean-up routine has the search strings for it.

The arithmetic is plain multiplication: 225,000 × 1.2 = 270,000 and 225,000 × 0.9 = 202,500 Stardust; 248 × 1.2 = 297.6 and 248 × 0.9 = 223.2 Candy. Costs are rounded on each power-up rather than on the total, which is why the Candy XL bill is usually quoted as about 360 and 272 instead of the straight 355 and 266. Starters, their evolutions and baby Pokemon pay the cheapest second-move tier whatever their buddy distance.

The number to remember is the Shadow surcharge from level 20 to 50: 570,000 − 475,000 = 95,000 Stardust per Pokemon. A full team of six costs 6 × 95,000 = 570,000 more than the same six regulars, which is the price of one more level-50 Shadow. That is a real cost, and it is still the right trade for anything you raid with. Where Stardust is short, take Shadows to level 40 and stop; the level 40 to 50 guide does the maths on the last ten levels, and where to spend Stardust puts this next to your other options.

One comparison cuts the other way. A Shadow can never be Lucky, because it cannot be traded. A Lucky regular pays half the Stardust: 237,500 for level 20 to 50 against 570,000 for the Shadow. If Stardust is your bottleneck and a friend can trade you the species, a Lucky trade gets you a usable attacker for well under half the price.

Every Shadow arrives knowing Frustration as its charged move, and Frustration is not a move you want to fight with. It can only be removed with a regular Charged TM, and only while a Team GO Rocket Takeover event is running. In 2026 there have been three so far: 23–25 January, 30 April–4 May and 25–29 June. Outside those windows nothing works, and that includes the Elite Charged TM.

Three habits follow from that:

• Keep a stock of Charged TMs. A Takeover lasts three to five days, so there is no time to farm TMs once it starts. Watch the events page.
• Tag what still needs it. Give every Shadow worth keeping a tag such as Frustration, then search for the tag when the event starts. Searching shadow alone returns everything, cleaned or not.
• During the window, clean every Shadow you might ever use, not only the ones you are building this month. The first TM removes Frustration and gives a random move from the regular pool; rerolling that into the move you actually want can be done on any later day.

The Community Day trap

A Pokemon that still knows Frustration does not learn the Community Day exclusive move when you evolve it. For a Shadow Beldum, Gible or Larvitar the order therefore has to be: Takeover first, to clear Frustration, and then evolve during a Community Day window (14:00 to 21:00 local time on the day). If the Community Day arrives first, do not evolve the Shadow that day. Evolve it later and accept that the legacy move will take an Elite TM; the Elite TM guide covers when that is worth it.

Purifying is the other way out, available on any day, since it swaps Frustration for Return on the spot. It also throws away the reason you wanted a Shadow.

Grunts are the everyday source. Leaders need a Rocket Radar, built from six Mysterious Components that Grunts drop, and Giovanni needs a Super Rocket Radar. The Grunt IV floor in the table comes from community research, not from Niantic. Reports about Leader rescues disagree with each other, so assume nothing until you have read the IVs.

A floor of zero means most Grunt rescues are mediocre. For a raid attacker that matters little, as section 3 showed. For the purified hundo it matters completely, which is why 13/13/13 Shadows are rare. Shadow pages in the Pokedex list the CP a 15/15/15 shows at level 8 and at level 13, so a perfect one can be spotted on the catch screen.

Shinies: since 3 March 2026 any rescued Shadow can be shiny if the shiny of that species is released. Niantic publishes no odds. Community tracking suggests about 1 in 256 from Grunts and about 1 in 64 from Leaders and Giovanni; treat both as estimates.

Shadow Raids come in one, three and five stars, and since 13 May 2025 they can be joined with a Remote Raid Pass. The catch afterwards is a Shadow at level 20 (25 when weather boosted) with a 6/6/6 floor, so it is both higher level and better on average than anything a Grunt gives you.

In three and five star Shadow Raids the boss becomes enraged when its HP falls to 60% and stays that way until 15%. Purified Gems subdue it: the lobby has to use eight between them, and one trainer can use at most five, so it takes at least two people carrying gems. A gem is made from four Shadow Shards. A Rocket Leader drops three shards and Giovanni four, so one gem costs a little more than one Leader battle. If you plan to do five star Shadow Raids on a weekend, build the gems during the week.

Group size is estimated like any other raid. How many trainers a raid needs explains the estimate, and the raid boss list has the counters for whatever is in rotation.