Pokémon Legends: Arceus is a mysterious game. Despite turning the traditional Pokémon formula on its head, grabbing it by the feet, and sending it soaring into the stratosphere, this is a game that largely forgets to explain a surprising amount of its new and overhauled systems. Perhaps the most important example of this — at least in our experience so far — is how valuable it is to mass release your unwanted Pokémon.

This system isn’t just poorly explained — there are several layers of it that  go completely unexplained in general. As you’ll have likely noticed by now, Legends: Arceus tasks you with catching an inordinate amount of Pokémon, which means that your boxes (called Pastures in Arceus) are going to fill up fairly sharpish. We’re here to tell you that delaying your spring cleaning is a very bad idea.

When you visit the Pastures in Jubilife Village, you can switch your party Pokémon with any of the ones you have in storage. As with all mainline Pokémon games, you can also release any unwanted ‘mons taking up room in your boxes. We’re not sure about you, but this is something we’ve never really bothered to do in the past on account of the fact it’s kind of pointless. Fortunately, that’s been changed in Legends: Arceus, where it’s anything but that.

As you’re perusing the Pokémon in your Pastures, you’ll notice that pressing the X button will allow you to mass release Pokémon, which makes clearing out your boxes a whole lot faster. The thing is, you’ll actually get a reward for every single Pokémon you release.

Infernape in Pokémon Legends: Arceus

When Pokémon leave the Pastures, they leave behind a little present for you: Grit items. These include Grit Dust, Grit Gravel, Grit Pebbles, and Grit Rocks. While it’s easy to dismiss these new items as rubbish, all of them are extremely valuable in that they allow you to increase the effort values (EVs) of your Pokémon, making them far fiercer and more formidable in battle.

Basically, Grit Dust allows you to raise any EV from zero to three. Gravel covers three to six, Pebbles can be used for six to nine, and Rocks max out an EV at ten. The difference in an Attack stat with an EV value of zero and an Attack stat with an EV value of ten is extraordinary — without gaining any levels at all, your Pokémon will be noticeably stronger.

Why does this matter? Well, given that Legends: Arceus doesn’t have online battles, most of your match-ups in Hisui will be against NPCs. Because player-versus-environment runs tend to be a lot easier than facing off against other people, you can experiment with teams made up of your favourites, as opposed to solely focusing on meta ‘mons.

Grit items make this even more viable in that your favourites — even the little cute ones who unfortunately pay for that cuteness with weakness — can learn to pack a punch. Once you start grinding Grit, you’ll never go back to cluttered and overflowing boxes again.

So yeah — make sure you remember to mass release all those unwanted Pokémon who are taking up space in the Pastures, alright? It’s one of the most valuable bits of hidden knowledge in the game right now.

Written by Cian Maher on behalf of GLHF.