Farming Rare Candy

Diamond/Pearl

Pickup Method

There aren't many options when it comes to farming Rare Candy in Diamond and Pearl, and the easiest of the two is definitely the Pickup Method.

Pickup is an ability where, after a battle, the Pokemon has a 10% chance to "pickup" an item from a set table based on their level. When the Pokemon are level 41+, there is a 10% chance for this item to be a Rare Candy. This means with a team of 6 pickup Pokemon meeting two 10% checks back to back gives us a roughly 6% chance per battle to find a rare candy.

There isn't much to this method, as all you have to do is WIN a battle (this means you cannot simply run from wild Pokemon). The pickup Pokemon doesn't even need to battle, as long as it is in your party the ability can still proc. The hardest part of this method, especially early on, is building up a team of 6 Lvl. 41+ Pokemon with Pickup. I've put together this info on where to find the highest level Pickup Pokemon to streamline this process.

Overall, your best bets are:

Battle Tower

I think this is ridiculous to even bring up, as it is nowhere near as easy nor time efficient as Pickup, but you're able to buy Rare Candies with your (very) hard earned BP from the battle tower, at a rate of 48BP per candy. I don't recommend this in the slightest, but if you happen to have a lot of BP leftover and you're not sure what to do with it, you can grab a couple Rare Candies for your troubles.

Platinum

5-Maid Knockout Exact-Turn Attack Challenge

Within the Pokemon Mansion in Route 212 there is a daily event where you are challenged with beating 5 Maids, armed with their trusty Clefairy, in a certain amount of turns, ranging from 5 to 9. If you beat these Maids within the right amount of turns, you will have the chance to verse a 6th Trainer, which has a Blissey that is holding a Rare Candy. If you can use Thief before the Blissey uses Fling, you'll net yourself a free Rare Candy.

However, these Clefairy are hand-crafted to make this a difficult task. The Clefairy you will face have these movesets, in order:

While simply outspeeding the Clefairy will deal with their exclusive moves, the main issue holding us back is Endure. It will take priority over any attacking move, meaning if they use it we are guaranteed to waste a turn. Luckily there are two neat methods to getting around this: one of which is completely fool-proof and guarantees you win the challenge every single time, and another build, which is somewhat easier to obtain, and will win you 99% of the battles (this is the build I personally use).

Here's the method:

• 1. Ensure Smeargle is not holding an item.
• 2. Start the challenge, and note the number of turns.
• 3. On the FIRST Clefairy, if needed, use Lock-On to stall for the right amount of turns. (i.e If you were assigned 6 turns, you will stall for 1, if you were assigned 8, stall for 3, etc.)
• 4. To beat the rest of the Clefairy, always use U-Turn. If the Clefairy uses Endure, you'll get it down to 1HP, in which you'll swap into Abomasnow or Hippowdon, and the weather will chip the last HP down. If the Clefairy uses any other move, you'll simply 1HKO it.
• 5. You'll eventually get to battle the trainer with the Blissey, where you'll use Thief to steal the Rare Candy.
• 6. After the battle, head into the room above you, remove the Rare Candy from Smeargle, heal your Pokemon in the bed, and save the game.
• 7. Reset your system, and go into system settings.
• 8. Set the time to 23:59, then re-enter the game.
• 9. Using the clock on your Poketch, wait until midnight (00:00). When the clock strikes 12, exit the room, and you can take the challenge again. Rinse and repeat.

If you don't have a Smeargle, or don't feel like going through the trouble of Sketching all of the moves you need, there's a simpler build that will work on multiple Pokemon, at the risk of having to reset your game in the event of U-Turn missing.

The method is largely the same, trading the downside of potentially missing U-Turn on the first Clefairy with the upside of it being much more easily attained on a Pokemon you probably already have lying around.

The best way of going about the challenge with this build is stalling on the first Clefairy. If you happen to miss U-Turn (which hasn't happened very often to me) you simply soft reset the game, set the clock back to 23:59, and wait until midnight again.

Pickup Method

See above.

HeartGold/SoulSilver

Pokewalker Routes

This is my favorite method in Gen 4 and probably the best overall. There are two Pokewalker Routes in the game that have Rare Candy as an item you can get with the radar. They appear as 10% items at 5000+ Steps, however, if you match your Pokemon's type with the Route, it will bring this down to 3750 Steps.

There are two routes in the game you can use:

For this method:

• 1. Walk 5000+ Steps
• 2. Collect 3 Rare Candies using the Radar
• 3. Send your items back to your HG/SS Copy
• 4. Rinse and Repeat

Even if you get a minimum of 3 Rare Candies a day, this is a great way to passively collect them for when you need them. If you're an active walker, this is a great way to snag as many Rare Candies as you can bear walking for.

Pickup Method

See above.