Pokémon Legends Arceus: How to Get More Money from Survey Reports

Here’re the criteria that your surveys are judged against to decide how much money you get in Pokémon Legends: Arceus.

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Published on: Jan 31, 2022 | Updated on: Mar 4, 2023

Your main source of income in Pokémon Legends: Arceus comes via completing Survey Reports. Whenever you want to leave an area, you report back to Professor Laventon with your catches, getting more money based on your efforts.

The game doesn’t directly outline all of the criteria by which you can earn more money, let alone how you can get the most money in Legends Arceus. So below, you’ll find each of the Survey Report criteria by which you can get additional money for ticking off.

What criteria reward more money in Survey Reports?

You can trigger up to seven criteria to increase the monetary rewards on your Survey Reports. It’s difficult to calculate how much each criterion rewards exactly: it seems to be influenced by individual Pokémon caught. Regardless, these are the achievements that you should aim to meet on each survey to get more money overall.

Total Pokémon Caught
Ten, 20, or 30 or more Pokémon in one report
Different Pokémon species caught
Pokémon caught for the first time
Pokémon caught using a back strike
Pokémon caught in Space-Time Distortions
Alpha Pokémon caught

Unlocking as many of these achievements as possible during each expedition is the best way to go about getting more money from each Survey Report. After all, most Pokémon caught that apply to the lower criteria above also add more money to those that are higher.

All but one of these criteria can be built up by completing it several times over in the Survey Report. Listed above as the second criteria, you can either catch between ten and 19, 20 and 29, or 30 or more to trigger its reward. Catching over 100 Pokémon for one Survey Report will only tick the ’30 or more Pokémon in one report’ achievement.

Furthermore, there are only so many Pokémon in Legends Arceus – 242 entries in the Hisuian Pokédex – so the ‘Pokémon caught for the first time’ can only pay out a limited number of times. As your Rank influences how much money you get per Survey Report, to get more money, it may be wise to leave some Pokémon for later, when you’re hoping to buy more expensive goods and items.

How to get more money from Survey Reports in Legends Arceus

Each of the achievements, as listed above, rewards more money for the number of Pokémon caught that apply to its criteria. This is apart from the one that goes up to ’30 or more Pokémon in one report,’ which has three tiers that can be achieved.

The second key factor that influences how rewards are calculated for Survey Reports is your Rank. Each time that you earn enough experience to rank up, you need to go to Captain Cyllene to earn your new Rank. With a higher rank, you’ll be rewarded more money for submitting a Survey Report.

As such, the best way to get the most money in Pokémon Legends: Arceus is to increase your Rank to the maximum and be sure to catch several Pokémon that tick each of the criteria for a Survey Report. This includes catching several Pokémon within Space-Time Distortions as well as numerous Alpha Pokémon.

To make the most of these two big-hitters, and couple them with the ‘Pokémon caught for the first time’ achievement, try to avoid evolving too many Pokémon outside of your team. Most of the strongest and highest evolutions are wandering around as Alphas, and many appear in Space-Time Distortions.

So, wait until you’re strong enough to take on either of these phenomenons – at which point, you’ll likely be of a high Rank – and then be sure to catch at least one applicable Pokémon for each of your Survey Reports.

You’ll always want to hit at least 30 catches in a run to trigger the maximum money reward from that Survey Report achievement. With that, try to catch as many as you can by throwing a Poké, Great, or Ultra Ball onto an unaware or fleeing Pokémon’s back to register a back strike.

This will increase the chance of the catch attempt being successful as well as reward more money in the Survey Report. You’ll also hear a different noise when you land a back strike, confirming that you’ll get more money in your final Survey Report for that expedition.

So, if you want to get more money from Survey Reports in Pokémon Legends: Arceus, try to achieve as many of the criteria as possible in your outing, particularly focussing on back strikes, Alphas, and catching Pokémon in Space-Time Distortions.

For more Pokémon content, check out our Slumbering Lord of Tundra Puzzle guide and more.

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