Pokerus Guide: What Does Pokerus Do In Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl?

The Pokerus is a very rare virus that can infect your Pokemon randomly throughout your journey. Don’t be afraid though, it’s not a harmful virus; in fact, you should be celebrating if your Pokemon ever catch the Pokerus, as it is astronomically rare to get, and is very useful to your Pokemon.

If your Pokemon are infected with the Pokerus, their EV growth gets doubled for the duration that they are infected. The Pokerus is highly desired when EV training one’s Pokemon.

EVs, or Effort Values, are hidden values for your Pokemon’s stats (such as Attack and Defense), which increase with every battle with a Pokemon. Defeating different Pokemon will reward your Pokemon with EVs for different stats, and if your Pokemon is infected with the Pokerus, this EV reward after defeating any Pokemon is doubled.

How to Get the Pokerus in Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl?

There is only one original way to have your Pokemon infected with the Pokerus: through wild battles. However, the chances of your Pokemon getting infected with the Pokerus are extremely low. How low, you ask? Well, the odds are 1 in 21,845 to catch the Pokerus from a wild battle.

But since people are playing Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl globally, someone is bound to have gotten their Pokemon infected. So, your best bet of getting your Pokemon infected with the Pokerus is to trade for Pokemon online.

Once you’ve gotten an infected Pokemon in the trade, just let it sit in your party with 5 other Pokemon that you want infected. Since it is a virus, it will quickly spread from the infected Pokemon to the rest of your party, and now you can quite easily EV train your Pokemon with the doubled EV gain rate.

How Long Does the Pokerus Last?

If you want to know for how long you will be able to gain double the EVs with your infected Pokemon, you should know that the Pokerus will only last for a period of 4 days after getting infected. So make sure you get to grinding up those EVs as soon as your Pokemon has caught the elusive Pokerus!