If you’re playing Pokémon Legends: Z‑A and want to add the majestic Slowking to your team, you’re in the right place. This guide walks you through exactly how to acquire Slowking in accessible steps, in plain English and at a grade-12 readability level. No source citations here, just clear actionable advice.
Before you hunt down Slowking, it’s important to know how it fits into the evolution chain:
- First, you catch or obtain a Slowpoke, which is the basic form.
- From Slowpoke, you can evolve into Slowbro under certain conditions.
- But to get Slowking, the evolution requires a special item and a trade. In short: you’ll evolve Slowpoke while it holds a specific item, and then trade it to get Slowking.
Knowing this helps you recognise what you must do from start to finish.
Where to find Slowpoke
To begin, you’ll need a Slowpoke in the wild. Here’s how:
- Explore Wild Zone 10 and Wild Zone 11 in the game. Slowpoke appear in these zones.
- They tend to show up at a decent level, so they’re viable for evolution later.
- Because they’re calm by nature, catching them is fairly straightforward (you don’t need ultra-advanced tactics at this stage).
Once you have your Slowpoke, you’re ready for the key steps.
Obtaining the special evolution item
To evolve Slowpoke into Slowking, the item called the King’s Rock is required (or in some special cases another item, but the core guide uses King’s Rock). Here’s how to get it:
- Complete Side Mission 084: “Strike First to Make ’em Flinch”. This side mission is located south of the “Quasartico Inc.” area, in the Magenta Sector of Lumiose City.
- After you win that mission, you’ll receive the King’s Rock as a reward.
- Alternatively, after finishing major portions of the story, you may purchase the King’s Rock from an NPC in “Racine Construction”, for a set amount of in-game currency.
- Make sure you have the King’s Rock in your bag and then give it to your Slowpoke to hold.
Without this item, the evolution into Slowking is impossible.
How to evolve into Slowking
Now that you have both your Slowpoke and the King’s Rock, here is how to get Slowking step by step:
- Equip your Slowpoke with the King’s Rock item (i.e., have Slowpoke hold it).
- Initiate a Link Trade with another player via the “Link Trade” menu in the Main Menu.
- Use the trade code (for example: 0137-0137 or similar codes used for trade evolutions) to find a matching partner.
- Trade your Slowpoke (holding the King’s Rock) with that player.
- Immediately upon successful trade, Slowpoke evolves into Slowking.
- The newly evolved Slowking now belongs to you. If needed you can trade again to bring it back.
Important: Double check the Slowpoke is indeed holding the King’s Rock before trading. If it does not hold the item the evolution fails and you’ll lose the opportunity until you redo the steps.
Tips to make the process smoother
- Before trading, make sure your trade partner knows exactly what to expect: they should be ready, and you should confirm the item is equipped.
- If you don’t have a friend online, search for “Faraway Players” in the Link Trade menu to match randomly.
- Ensure your Slowpoke is at a solid level so that once it evolves into Slowking it can already be useful in battles.
- Choose a good nature for Slowking: since it has strong special-defense and special-attack stats, a nature that boosts those makes it more effective.
- After you’ve obtained Slowking, spend time teaching it moves that maximise its strengths (like psychic-type and water-type moves).
