Scarlet and Violet players are intentionally harming their own Pokémon for the ‘gram

Outside of battling and catching Pokémon, one of the coolest activities you can do in Scarlet and Violet is take photos with your favorite Pokémon friends. The Teal Mask DLC gave us a bunch of quality-of-life updates for the photography feature, but players have also found their own painful and slightly questionable way to spice up their photos.

In a Sept. 26 Reddit thread, one player shared a collection of photos of their beloved Pokémon with a common theme among them—they all had status conditions. Breloom was poisoned, Lurantis was burned, Arboliva was sleeping, Iron Leaves was paralyzed, and poor Ogerpon was frozen solid while still smiling.

That’s right. Players are intentionally inflicting their Pokémon with status conditions to serve as special effects in photos, and they’re turning out pretty well.

The funny thing is that it may take a little bit of work and luck to get certain status conditions on your Pokémon. Thankfully, the original poster provided some tips on how to achieve these otherwise undesirable status conditions for your next photoshoot.

The easiest status conditions to get are burns and poison thanks to two held items: the Flame Orb and Toxic Orb. Normally, these two items are used with specific Abilities like Ursaluna’s Guts or Gliscor’s Poison Heal, but here, it’s all about the ‘gram. By simply letting your Pokémon hold one of these Orbs in battle, you’ll either end up with a ‘mon on fire or one oozing in poison. As brutal as it sounds, the pictures do end up looking nice.

Meanwhile, it’s pretty difficult to freeze your Pokémon since there’s only a 10-percent chance to get the freeze with certain Ice-type moves. It’s recommended to head to Glaseado Mountain and fight wild Cryogonal that can potentially freeze your Pokémon with Freeze Dry. Maybe your Pokémon will end up smiling while frozen in a block of ice like Ogerpon.

Naturally, a lot of players had hilarious responses to this unconventional photography technique.

“Not me purposely poisoning my Pokémon just so it looks cool in a photo,” one player joked.

Another silly comment was, “You’re taking selfies. Breloom is dying and you’re taking selfies.” Let’s just hope that poisoned Breloom had Poison Heal as its Ability. That would be one of the rare cases where a Pokémon would be benefitting from this kind of photoshoot instead of slowly withering away in pain.