Do Legendary Pokémon respawn if you KO them in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet The Indigo Disk?

Typically when you knock out a Pokémon, especially a Legendary Pokémon, you can’t naturally encounter it again on your save file. Pokémon Scarlet and Violet The Indigo Disk has slightly changed this to ensure players can find failed Legendary encounters in the postgame—with a twist. 

There is a method in place for Legendary Pokémon to “respawn” if you KO them, but it only works for specific encounters. So if you did fail to catch one of the returning Legendaries in The Indigo Disk, don’t panic if you didn’t save beforehand. 

How to respawn Legendary Pokémon in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet The Indigo Disk

Once you complete Pokémon Scarlet and Violet The Indigo Disk’s main story you can complete Blueberry Quests (BBQs) to unlock static encounters with 25 different Legendary Pokémon. All of this is tied to an NPC named Snacksworth, who gives you special Pokémon Treats to attract those rare Pokémon.

The Legendary Pokémon will spawn in specific areas of the main Paldea map, with Snacksworth giving you hints at where to find them. These are static encounters, so the Pokémon is just sitting in the overworld when you get the coinciding Key Item, letting you save in front of them before a battle begins. 

With so many different rare Pokémon, you might forget to save once before trying to catch them, leaving you in trouble should they get knocked out. Thankfully, SV has an internal method to keep you from losing out on those encounters that just require a bit of knowledge or patience.

If you accidentally KO a Legendary Pokémon, don’t worry; the Pokémon Treat for that Legendary will only be used up if you catch the Pokémon, meaning it is still in your Key Item pocket and can spawn that Pokémon again. You just need to give it a bit of time—or manipulate your Switch’s settings to skip forward to the next day.

• Save your game in an area away from where the Legendary Pokémon was located and close the software. 
• Open the System Settings and scroll down to the System tab.
• Click on Date and Time. 
• Turn off “Synchronize Clock via Internet” in the menu. 
• Set the date one day forward and hit OK. 

Once you have done this, you should be able to travel back to where the Legendary Pokémon was located and see it sitting there again. This is not a limited thing, so if it happens again, you can do the same process.

Based on other testing, it seems like you can also just wait around an hour if you leave the area for the Legendary Pokémon to respawn. This is how the bonus encounter with the second Koraidon and Miraidon work at the bottom of Area Zero in the base game, so it stands to reason the same mechanic applies to the returning Legendaries. Just don’t expect to find a Shiny.