Iron Leaves, a Paradox form of Virizion, is one of the two new Legendary Pokémon added to Pokémon Scarlet and Violet. Iron Leaves does appear to be a version-exclusive for Pokémon Violet, but Scarlet players can still participate and catch this Pokémon if they join a Violet player’s raid.
Since it’s a five-star raid target, it isn’t particularly difficult — at least not nearly as hard as the event seven-star raids we get from time to time. This one, however, is a bit harder than its counterpart, Walking Wake.
Iron Leaves is only in raids until March 12 at 6:59 p.m. EST, so make sure to grab it while you can. You can only catch one Iron Leaves.
For beating Iron Leaves, you’ll get standard drops like Exp. Candy, Tera Shards, Bottle Caps, and treasure items to sell for money. Serebii.net has a complete drop table. Iron Leaves raids do not drop Herba Mystica.
Iron Leaves Tera Raid best counters
Iron Leaves is at level 75 with a psychic Tera Type. It knows Psyblade, Leaf Blade, Megahorn, and Swords Dance. It’ll start the battle off with Electric Terrain, making it activate its ability, Quark Drive, which increases its most proficient stat in electric terrain.
Iron Leaves is weak against the usual psychic-type counters: bug-, dark-, and ghost-type moves. Its bug-type move, Megahorn, will be super effective against dark-type Pokémon, so be careful if you use them.
Iron Leaves hits like a truck and it loves to use Swords Dance, making it hit even harder. We recommend running a Pokémon with Clear Smog or Chilling Water to debuff it back to doing normal damage.
You do not necessarily need a maxed out, fully trained Pokémon to beat Iron Leaves, as long as you can either tank a few hits or you can debuff it. We used a Skeledirge to beat it, as its ghost- and fire-typing made it resistant to a plethora of Iron Leaves’ moves. We also saw fellow players using Ceruledge (another fire- and ghost-type Pokémon) and Gholdengo (a steel- and ghost-type Pokémon that is resistant to all of Iron Leaves’ moves) to successfully take it on.
Don’t forget to use cheers to heal and increase your defenses as well.