Gym Skills (Also referred to as extra-skills) are a new change introducing a rather difficult optional challenge to current gyms. Previously, in order to fight a Gym Leader, a player had to fight all of the Gym's trainers. This was a relatively uninteresting challenge. So now, a player can go up to the Gym Leader and ask for a battle directly - but because you haven;t proved yourself in the Gym, the Gym Leader will proc multiple Gym Skills that put you at a significant disadvantage, in order to test your abilities further and make you work for your badge.
Each Gym trainer is now associated with a single Gym Skill and will use it in their battle, giving you a hint in their pre-battle dialogue as to what it is. Once you've defeated a Gym Trainer, their Gym Skill will be removed from the fight with the Leader, so if you defeat all the trainers, you can get a straightforward fight with the Gym Leader, just like now. You can also choose to decline a battle with a Gym trainer after talking to them in order to get to the leader faster, but you'd better be prepared.
The balancing is intended to prevent brain-dead strategies from being able to defeat any Gym Leader with all their Gym Skills active. If you find a strategy that lets you cheese a Gym Leader with all of their skills active, please let us know. We're breaking exciting new ground here by making Gym fights actually mean something and you'd be helping if you did.
Minimum-battle-run challengers, we're sorry. Buy you've gotta admit, this is going to be hilarious.
List of Gym Skills with their associated hints:
| Hint | Gym Skill |
|---|---|
| Roxanne always told me that the best way to defend is to start out with a solid foundation and then slowly get tougher. | +4 defense on entry for the lead & +1 defense every turn. |
| When doing a trek, watch out for rock, uneven ground. You don't want to get hurt, or even worse, cut yourself on sharp stones! | Stealth Rocks & Last two pokemon in the party bleed. |
| They say that when under immense pressure, even coal becomes diamonds. Once I'm backed into a corner, that's when my true power starts to shine! | Last pokemon gets a +2 omniboost on switch-in. |
Roxanne always told me that the best way to defend is to start out with a solid foundation and then slowly get tougher. +4 defense on entry for the lead & +1 defense every turn.
When doing a trek, watch out for rock, uneven ground. You don't want to get hurt, or even worse, cut yourself on sharp stones! Stealth Rocks & Last two pokemon in the party bleed.
They say that when under immense pressure, even coal becomes diamonds. Once I'm backed into a corner, that's when my true power starts to shine! Last pokemon gets a +2 omniboost on switch-in.