Can You Battle Instead of Catching During Mass Outbreaks in Pokemon Legends Arceus? – Answered

Pokémon Legends: Arceus was released last month after much fanfare and hype. It is the latest instalment in the Pokémon series and takes a much different turn than its predecessors do in terms of storytelling and game mechanics.

The game takes place in the ancient Hisui region, which would become modern-day Sinnoh eventually. Fighting and capturing Pokémon is drastically different with battles taking place on the overworld instead of turn-based instance battles as was the staple of the series thus far.

Mass Outbreaks are a new fan-favorite feature of the game that have been keeping a lot of trainers and collectors busy.

Mass Outbreaks

Mass Outbreaks are seemingly random events in Pokémon Legends: Arceus that cause a few types of Pokémon to spawn in mass numbers in a small area. Generally, over 10 Pokémon can spawn at a time and each area can have only one Mass Outbreak happening at any time.

A Mass Outbreak notification appears when the player is leaving Jubilife Village. Opening the map will indicate where the Mass Outbreak is currently happening. Unless the player walks to the area and starts interacting with the Pokémon in the outbreak, it will not despawn, there is no need to rush.

Can you battle Pokémon in Mass Outbreaks?

So far, what we know is that Mass Outbreaks are a great place to capture Pokémon to complete research tasks and have more Shiny encounters, but can you also battle them instead of only capturing them?

The short answer is yes. In fact, once the Mass Outbreak spawns, there are two ways of ending the event. One of them is to capture all of the Pokémon that spawn and the other one is defeating them. Even if the player chooses not to capture any of them, defeating enough of them is still enough to end the outbreak!