The Lonely nature in Pokémon raises Attack by 10% and lowers Defense by 10%. This makes your Pokémon hit harder with physical moves but take more damage from physical hits in return.
How Lonely Nature Affects Stats
Every Pokémon nature adjusts two stats by 10% each, one up and one down. Lonely boosts Attack at the cost of Defense. The effect scales as your Pokémon levels up and reaches the full 10% difference by level 100. In practice, this means a Lonely Pokémon deals noticeably more damage with physical moves like Close Combat or Earthquake, but folds faster when hit by physical attacks.
Five natures boost Attack, and the one you pick depends on which stat you’re willing to sacrifice. Here’s how they compare:
- Lonely: +Attack, -Defense
- Adamant: +Attack, -Special Attack
- Brave: +Attack, -Speed
- Naughty: +Attack, -Special Defense
- Hardy: No change to any stat
Why Lonely Is Rarely the Best Choice
For most physical attackers, Adamant is the stronger option. Adamant lowers Special Attack, which a pure physical attacker doesn’t use anyway. You get the same Attack boost with no real downside. Lonely, by contrast, cuts into your Defense, making your Pokémon more vulnerable to one of the most common damage types in the game.
The narrow case where Lonely makes sense is on a mixed attacker: a Pokémon that runs both physical and special moves. If you need higher Attack but can’t afford to lose Special Attack, Lonely is one of the few natures that fits. Pokémon like Lucario or Infernape occasionally ran Lonely sets in older competitive formats, since both use physical and special moves in the same set. Even then, it’s a niche pick. Most competitive players consider Lonely one of the least useful natures because the Defense drop is a steep price.
Berry and Flavor Preferences
Natures also determine which berry flavors a Pokémon likes and dislikes. A Lonely Pokémon prefers Spicy flavors and dislikes Sour ones. This matters most with certain berries that restore HP but cause confusion if the Pokémon dislikes the flavor. Specifically, the Iapapa Berry (a Sour berry) will confuse a Lonely Pokémon after it eats one. If you’re giving your Pokémon an HP-restoring berry to hold, avoid Iapapa on anything with a Lonely nature.
How to Get or Change a Lonely Nature
When you catch or hatch a Pokémon, its nature is randomly selected from 25 possibilities. You can influence this during breeding by giving the parent Pokémon an Everstone, which passes its nature down to the egg. If you already have a Pokémon with the wrong nature, most modern games (Sword and Shield onward) let you use Mints to override the stat effects. A Lonely Mint applies the +Attack/-Defense adjustment regardless of the Pokémon’s original nature. The mint changes the stat math but not the flavor preference or the nature label on the summary screen.