Rain in Pokemon Legends: Z-A is one of the few weather effects that really matter. It gates a key evolution line, affects where certain Pokémon appear, and has become an unexpected bottleneck for Pokédex completion.
The catch: you cannot directly toggle the weather to rain. You can only force the game to re-roll the current weather over and over until you get the drizzle you need.
How rain works in Pokemon Legends: Z-A
Lumiose City cycles through several weather types. Unlike most of them, rain has concrete gameplay effects:
| Weather | Where it matters | Key impact |
|---|---|---|
| Clear / Cloudy | Most of Lumiose City | Primarily visual, no major special spawns or evolutions tied to it. |
| Rain | City streets and rooftops | Required to evolve Sliggoo into Goodra; enables Goomy city spawns in specific sectors. |
Rain can start during the day or at night and can fade out again on the next time change. There is no menu option, held item, or move that permanently flips the weather to rain across the city.
How to trigger rain more often
You cannot push a “make it rain” button, but you can force the world to advance time, which re-rolls the weather. The two reliable ways to do that are benches around the city and your bed in Hotel AZ.
| Method | Where | What it does | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bench resting | Benches in Lumiose City (including outside every Pokémon Center) | Skips from current time to day or night and re-rolls weather | Fastest loop; can be repeated many times to fish for rain. |
| Sleeping in Hotel AZ | Your room in Hotel AZ | Advances time in the same way as benches | Useful if you are nearby; functionally similar to benches. |
To use a bench:
- Walk up to the bench and interact with it.
- Choose
Kill some time here. - Confirm when the game asks if you want to stay until daytime or nightfall.
Every time you do this, the game moves from day to night or night to day, runs the battle zone cutscene, and rolls a new weather state for the city. Players report anything from a single skip to dozens before rain appears, so expect to sit through a batch of transitions.
Side missions and forced rain
There is at least one side mission that interacts with rain: Side Mission 64, “Let it Rain, Let it Pour.” This request sits on the northern bank of the west-side canal and involves fighting a trainer when it is raining.
Two important constraints:
- You must already have rain to start this mission. The game will not begin the battle until the weather condition is met.
- Rain linked to the battle does not persist in a reliable way afterward. For many players, it stops as soon as the battle ends, which makes it a poor solution if you are trying to evolve Sliggoo.
Treat this mission as something that consumes a rain window rather than a tool to create one.
How to evolve Sliggoo into Goodra
Goodra is one of the few Pokémon in Legends: Z-A that is hard-locked behind weather. Its evolution requirements are strict but straightforward once you line them up.
| Step | Requirement | Details |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Level threshold | Raise Sliggoo to at least level 50. |
| 2 | Party slot | Place Sliggoo in your active party, not in storage. |
| 3 | Weather | Wait until it is raining somewhere in Lumiose City. |
| 4 | Manual evolve | Open the menu with X, select Sliggoo, then choose “Evolve.” |
Level and party position do nothing on their own; Sliggoo simply sits at level 50+ until the weather flag is active. Once the game detects rain, Sliggoo becomes eligible, and the evolve prompt appears when you highlight it in the party menu.
Where to find Goomy and Goodra during rain
Rain also opens up specific encounters tied to the Goomy line.
| Pokémon | Location | Weather requirement | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Goomy | Vert Sector 9, just east of the Stone Emporium on Vernal Avenue | Raining in the city | Rare city spawn; appears in puddles when rain is active. |
| Goomy (alternative) | Westernmost dead-end room of the Lumiose Sewers | None (no rain needed) | Unlocked after starting Side Mission 57, “The Camerupt Entrepreneur,” which appears after completing Main Mission 19. |
| Goodra (Alpha) | Wild Zone 20, beneath the tower in the middle of the zone | None for spawning; rain only needed if you bring Sliggoo to evolve | Appears as one of two rotating Alpha spawns that change with every bench reset in the zone. |
For Goomy, city rain gives one route through Vert Sector 9, but the sewer room is often more practical because it ignores weather entirely once unlocked. For post-game players, Wild Zone 20 offers a way to skip evolution altogether by catching an Alpha Goodra.
Bench-reset strategy for rain and Alpha Goodra
If you want to both chase rain and hunt Alpha Goodra, Wild Zone 20 is an efficient hub once it is unlocked after the main story.
A typical loop looks like this:
- Fly or travel to Wild Zone 20 and sit on the bench facing the tower.
- Choose to pass time to the opposite phase (day or night).
- When you regain control, quickly check:
- Is it raining? If yes, and Sliggoo is in your party at level 50+, open the menu and evolve immediately.
- Which Alpha Pokémon are under the tower? If Goodra is present, save your game before engaging to secure the spawn.
- If it is not raining and Goodra is not present, repeat the bench sit.
One player timing this loop reported around 20 minutes of resets before their first Alpha Goodra, estimating roughly a one percent spawn chance based on a small sample. That is not a firm rate, but it gives a rough sense of how long the grind can run.
Important: saving directly in front of an Alpha before battling is useful insurance. If you fail to catch Goodra or accidentally knock it out, you can close the game and reload to retry the encounter with the same spawn.
Why rain feels so rare
Complaints about rain are common: players describe sitting on benches for 30–60 minutes, watching the transition screen show rain, and then discovering a dry city once the area actually loads. Others report streaks of constant rain that linger for long sessions.
There are a few reasons it feels inconsistent:
- Weather is fully random on each time change, with no apparent pity system for rain.
- The city preview and the fully loaded city state can briefly disagree, creating the impression that rain is being taken away.
- Rain windows can be short; if you spend them in menus or cutscenes, you may miss the chance to evolve or catch what you need.
There is also player folklore building up around how the system behaves. One of the more striking anecdotes involves removing Sliggoo from the party while bench-resetting, with multiple people reporting that rain appeared within a few cycles after doing so. There is no confirmed mechanic that ties party composition to weather, so this should be treated as a coincidence rather than a reliable method, but it speaks to how desperate the search for rain can get.
In practice, the most dependable way to get what you need out of the rain is to prepare everything else first. Level Sliggoo to 50, move it into your party, map a path to either Vert Sector 9 or the sewers for Goomy, and unlock Wild Zone 20 if you care about Alpha Goodra. After that, the job is simple but tedious: sit on a bench, flip time, and keep an eye on the sky — and on your party screen — until the clouds finally open up.
