Pokémon Trainer Changes (v1.4.1)

General Changes and Information

Trainer rosters in every area have been modified. Important trainers have their roster listed below including species, levels, items, moves. Indeed, trainers have been made more difficult across the board, compared to the base game. Compared to Vanilla Black and White 2, you will see a much greater variety in team composition, as is standard in these projects.

Pokémon Black and White 2 both have inbuilt difficulty modes, which Redux takes full advantage of.

• Easy mode and Normal Mode both share Trainer teams. Where applicable, trainers have a unique Challenge Mode team.
• Easy mode differs from Normal mode only by subtracting levels, equal to what they are raised by in Challenge mode. This is also noted.

Compared to the other modes, Challenge Mode increases the levels of trainers and important trainers have separate, Challenge Mode only teams.

• Where a trainer shares a team between all three difficulty modes, this increase in levels is separately noted.
• Where a trainer on Challenge mode has a unique team, the trainer's levels are as stated.
• For example, you'll need to subtract 1 level from Cheren's Normal mode team if you're playing on Easy mode, but if you're playing on Challenge mode, the levels are as stated.

It is currently impossible to set Trainer Pokémon's Natures and EVs in Gen V.

• This also the case by default in all games, up until Gen VII, however in Gen III, very talented people have managed to implement trainer EVs into their games.
• This hasn't been cracked yet for Gen V, so all Trainer Pokémon have random Nature's and no EV's.
• Stronger Trainers have their Pokémon's IV's set to 30/31 across the board, however.

A '*' denotes a 'Complete' version of Redux only ability. To determine the 'Classic' equivalent, match the 'Classic' version ability slot in the "Pokémon Changes" document.

Reminder

This guide is written assuming you're playing the Complete mode...

Note

Please note that this document may not always be correct. Feel free to report any incorrect information!

Level

Special thanks to gippal#3903 for the original documentation framework!

EV and Level Trainers' Information

Like in Renegade Platinum, Redux features a handy EV and Level Trainer (Split into two NPCs this time!). They are both found together in the PWT.

Here's a quick list of requirements to unlock the different training levels:

• These are based on the Challenge mode level curve, but hold for all difficulties.
• That is, the following information is correct regardless of the difficulty played on.

Training Level	Requirement
Lv. 10	1st badge
Lv. 20	2nd badge
Lv. 30	4th badge
Lv. 40	5th badge
Lv. 50	6th badge
Lv. 60	7th badge
Lv. 70	8th badge
Lv. 80	Start the Postgame
Lv. 90	Complete the Postgame Looker Questline

Level Cap and Guide (Spoiler Free!)

Many players enjoy sticking to the 'level caps' of important trainers. Below is information on the Redux level curves. You are of course free to ignore this though, if it's not your thing :).

It is currently impossible to achieve inbuilt level caps in Gen V projects, like those seen in Radical Red et al.

• These are born of the pokeemerald-expansion and the Complete FireRed Upgrade available for Gen III titles, no such equivalent exists yet for Gen V.
• Thus, the player will need to manually ensure they don't over-level, if such a player decides they want to play with level caps.

Now that the game has been out a little while, these caps include caps for all boss trainers and new important battles in Redux.

• These are the recommended caps for playing challenge runs, but you are of course free to play as you see fit :).

Normal Mode

Battle	Level Cap
Cheren	Lv. 13
Roxie	Lv. 20
Burgh	Lv. 27
Elesa	Lv. 36
Clay	Lv. 43
Skyla	Lv. 52
Drayden	Lv. 60
Marlon	Lv. 64
Ghetsis	Lv. 68
Elite Four et al	Lv. 74
Iris	Lv. 75

Challenge Mode

Battle	Level Cap
Cheren	Lv. 14
Roxie	Lv. 21
New to Redux	Lv. 23
Burgh	Lv. 29
New to Redux	Lv. 33
Subway Masters	Lv. 36
Elesa	Lv. 38
Charles	Lv. 39
Rood	Lv. 41
Clay	Lv. 45
New to Redux	Lv. 53
Skyla	Lv. 55
New to Redux	Lv. 56
Hugh	Lv. 58
New to Redux	Lv. 62
Drayden	Lv. 64
Marlon	Lv. 68
Ghetsis	Lv. 72
New to Redux	Lv. 76
Elite Four et al	Lv. 78
Iris	Lv. 79

Full Level Cap and Guide for Challenge mode (Spoilers!)

Note

Spoilers ahead! You have been warned!

This is a more comprehensive guide to the levels of all important Challenge mode trainers.

Legend
	A mandatory trainer which needs to be fought in order to complete the game.
	A trainer which does not need to be fought in order to complete the game.
	Double Battle
	Triple Battle
	Rotation Battle
	Tag Battles
	Highlights trainers that commonly constitute a level-cap, for greater visibility when scrolling though this document.

	Level Cap	Battle
	11	Hugh
	13	Roxanne
	14	Cheren
	20	Brawly
	21	Roxie
	23	Brycen
	29	Wattson
	29	Burgh
	30	Colress
	33	Lenora and Hawes
	36	Subway Bosses
	37	Flannery
	38	Elesa
	39	Charles
	41	Rood
	44	Norman
	45	Clay
	47	Hugh
	53	Colress
	54	Juan
	55	Skyla
	56	Bianca
	58	Hugh
	60	Zinzolin
	62	Benga
	63	Winona
	64	Drayden
	64	Zinzolin
	67	Tate and Liza
	68	Marlon
	68	Zinzolin
	70	Zinzolin
	70	Colress
	72	Ghetsis
	76	Lance
	77	Hugh
	78	The Pokémon League

Challenge Mode Level Bug - Important info for Challenge Runs!

There exists a bug in all copies of Black 2 and White 2 (vanilla or modified!), for which the level shown for each trainer's Pokémon is not the real one, stat-wise.

• This effects Easy and Challenge mode, but not Normal mode and is a Gamefreak bug in the damage calculation which currently can't ben fixed in Redux, just worked around sometimes.

For instance, Cheren's Challenge mode Munchlax is level 14. However, it actually has the stats of a level 13 Munchlax!

• The root of the issue is that the game doesn't properly add the extra difficulty levels (these levels "Levels -1 on Easy mode, +1 on Challenge mode." etc).

Another common examples of the bug looks like this:

• Challenging Ghetsis at the E4 level cap effectively puts the player 10 levels above his Pokémon! (+6 from overleveling, +4 from the bug)

The damage formula takes into account the level to calculate the outgoing damage of a Pokémon. For this reason, two Pokémon with identical stats but different levels will do different damage by using the same move.

• For example: an imaginary level 50 Rattata with 100 base attack will do less damage than a level 60 rattata with 100 attack, by using the same move.
• For this reason if you wanna level cap by using the "unbugged level", it would be better to use a level in between the bugged one and the unbugged one (otherwise you'll play in disadvantage because you'll take more damage than you're supposed to).

Generally, the bug will behave something like this:

• The player has a +1 level advantage up until Roxie.
• The player a +2 level advantage up until Elesa.
• The player a +3 level advantage up until Skyla.
• The player a +4 level advantage for the rest of the game past Skyla.

This is flipped in Easy mode to a level disadvantage, which ironically makes Easy mode tougher to complete than Normal mode!

All instances in this document where you see the line "No level shift based on difficulty, levels are as stated.", the trainers in that area do not suffer from the Challenge mode level bug.

That might seem pretty confusing - and it is! How this got past Gamefreak developers is beyond me, although in a casual setting you probably won't notice the difference.

• There are community guides you can seek out to find 'unbugged' level guides, if you want to try to minimise the advantage the bug gives the player as much as possible

To recap, if you've ever felt that Black 2 and White 2 get easier as the game progresses, this is why!