How to Evolve Taillow

Taillow evolves into Swellow automatically upon reaching level 22. No special items, friendship levels, or specific times of day are required. You simply need to earn enough experience points through battling, catching other Pokémon, or using items like Rare Candies to hit the level 22 threshold.

In Pokémon Legends: Z-A, the evolution process shifts away from automatic post-battle screens. Reaching level 22 does not force the evolution sequence. Instead, the game notifies you that Taillow is ready to evolve via a subtle UI prompt on the side of your screen.

You must manually trigger the transformation. Follow these exact steps to evolve your bird within the Lumiose City environment:

1. Earn experience until Taillow reaches level 22 by catching Pokémon or completing urban research tasks.
2. Open your satchel and navigate to your current party screen.
3. Highlight Taillow. The Poké Ball icon next to its name will glow yellow.
4. Select the Pokémon and press Evolve from the dropdown menu.

This manual system prevents accidental evolutions while navigating dangerous areas. It also allows you to delay the evolution without needing a held item. Using Exp. Candies earned from trainer battles or raids will also push Taillow to the required threshold instantly.

Players often attempt to transfer older Pokémon into the newest Generation 9 titles. Currently, Taillow and Swellow are not programmed into Pokémon Scarlet and Violet. They do not appear in the base Paldea Pokédex, the Teal Mask DLC, or the Indigo Disk DLC.

You can store Taillow in Pokémon HOME. However, the application will display a red restriction icon if you attempt to move it into a Scarlet or Violet save file. The Pokémon must remain in HOME or be transferred back to a compatible game like Brilliant Diamond or Shining Pearl.

Avoid wasting time searching for outbreak locations in Paldea. Until a future patch or title update explicitly adds the Taillow line to Generation 9, evolution must take place in older titles or Pokémon GO.

In Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, the modern Exp. Share is permanently active. This makes leveling Taillow to 22 incredibly efficient, even if it never enters battle directly. Keep Taillow in your party while your stronger Pokémon handle the combat.

To accelerate the process, utilize the Grand Underground. Pokémon found in these subterranean biomes scale with your badge progress. Defeating higher-level spawns here yields massive experience points.

1. Place Taillow in your active party.
2. Drop into the Grand Underground using the Explorer Kit.
3. Engage and defeat evolved Pokémon in the spacious caves.
4. Watch the post-battle screen as Taillow hits level 22 and triggers the evolution animation.

Alternatively, use the Vs. Seeker on Route 214 or Route 210. Rematching trainers with full teams provides consistent, safe experience yields without relying on wild encounter RNG.

Evolving Taillow in the mobile environment removes levels entirely. Pokémon GO relies on a candy-based economy. You need exactly 50 Taillow Candies to trigger the evolution into Swellow.

Gathering these candies requires catching multiple Taillow. Each catch grants three candies. You can optimize this grind by playing during specific weather conditions. Normal and Flying types receive a spawn rate increase during Partly Cloudy or Windy weather.

1. Locate a wild Taillow and feed it a Pinap Berry before throwing your Poké Ball.
2. Successfully catch the Pokémon to receive six candies instead of three.
3. Transfer excess Taillow to Professor Willow for one additional candy per transfer.
4. Once you reach 50 candies, open Taillow's summary screen and tap the Evolve button.

If spawns are rare in your area, set Taillow as your Buddy Pokémon. It requires only 1 kilometer of walking to generate a single candy, making it one of the fastest buddy distances in the game.

Even with simple level requirements, players occasionally encounter roadblocks. If your Taillow surpasses level 22 without evolving, check for these common mechanical interruptions.

The Everstone Problem: Check Taillow's held item. If it is holding an Everstone, the evolution sequence is completely blocked. Remove the item and level up one more time to trigger the evolution.

Accidental Button Presses: In traditional mainline games, pressing the B button during the evolution animation cancels the process. The game registers this as a deliberate choice to keep the Pokémon in its base form. Simply gain another level and let the animation play out without touching the controller.

Legends Menu Oversight: As mentioned, games utilizing the Legends engine do not force evolutions. If you are waiting for a post-battle screen in Pokémon Legends: Z-A, you will wait forever. You must open the menu and initiate it manually.

Swellow holds no viability in modern competitive Smogon tiers. Its base stats are too low to handle optimized competitive threats. However, for a standard story playthrough, Swellow is an aggressive, high-speed asset.

Its primary value comes from the Guts ability. When afflicted by a status condition like burn or poison, Guts ignores the attack drop from burns and boosts Swellow's physical attack by 50%. Pre-poisoning Swellow before a gym battle turns it into a devastating physical sweeper.

• Strengths: Exceptional base 125 Speed outpaces nearly all story opponents. Normal/Flying STAB (Same Type Attack Bonus) with Facade hits incredibly hard under a status condition.
• Weaknesses: Terrible defensive bulk. Swellow cannot take repeated hits and struggles against Rock and Steel types due to a shallow movepool.

Pairing Guts with the move Facade creates a massive damage multiplier. Facade doubles in power when the user is statused, stacking with the Guts boost. Combine this with Brave Bird for secondary STAB and U-turn to pivot out of unfavorable matchups. While it lacks the raw power of pseudo-legendaries, Swellow remains a top-tier early-game bird for clearing story content quickly.