Scarlet/Violet's 7-Star Annihilape Raid Needs This Two-Pokemon Combo
The current 7-Star Annihilape Tera Raid event in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet is one of the most brutal the game has shipped, and the culprit is a single move. Rage Fist gains 50 base power every time Annihilape takes damage, and with up to four CPU teammates attacking each turn, that number compounds into Z-Move-shattering damage before you’ve fired off your first boosted Hex. Nintendo Everything’s guide lands on a two-Pokémon counter — Hisuian Zoroark with Stellar Tera type, backed by a Wigglytuff support — and it’s a good build. But the part handheld players need to internalize is the dirty secret buried halfway down: the CPUs you get matched with can make the raid unwinnable, and the guide’s advice is to quit and reroll until you get lucky.
That limitation cuts harder in portable mode than it does docked. Scarlet and Violet’s appeal on Switch has always been the drop-in rhythm — yank the console out of sleep, run one raid on the commute, suspend again. The Annihilape event inverts that loop. It demands a hyper-trained Level 100 Zoroark, a properly built support ‘mon, and either a patient friend or a lucky CPU roll. This isn’t commute filler; it’s a scheduled raid night that happens to run on a handheld.
CPU Roulette: Why This Raid Punishes Solo Handheld Play
Here’s where the guide earns its “extremely difficult” verdict. Annihilape’s Defiant doesn’t just punish your own stat drops — it punishes Intimidate, and Scarlet and Violet’s raid AI loves fielding Tauros and Arcanine, both of which carry the ability. Every Intimidate trigger hands Annihilape +1 Attack, and the buff re-fires every time the CPU faints and re-enters. That isn’t an edge case; it’s a soft-lock. The guide’s solution — quit and re-queue until you roll a clean CPU set — works at a desk with unlimited time. On a handheld, with a time-limited event and a thin 2026 matchmaking pool, it’s a lottery you pay for in minutes, and random online teammates are even harder to coordinate with than the AI.
This is the same structural weakness Scarlet and Violet players have been living with since launch, and it’s worth naming: solo and portable play are treated as second-class citizens next to coordinated online groups. Game Freak’s raid design scales around four players, and the AI fill-ins range from useless to actively harmful — in this fight, harmful is literal. The honest takeaway for handheld players is the guide’s own: treat the 7-Star Annihilape as a two-player co-op boss. Grab one friend running Wigglytuff, and it becomes a clean, repeatable farm you can run from anywhere. Solo on the couch with random CPUs? You’re gambling with the event clock either way.