Pokémon Sun and Moon Bottle Caps and Hyper Training - the best Gold and Silver Bottle Cap farming methods in Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon explained

Pokémon Ultra Sun and Moon Bottle Caps are pretty revolutionary. Newly introduced this generation, their main function, of course, is Hyper Training, the practice of artifically boosting your Pokémon's stats to the maximum level, equal to that of a perfectly-bred, 6IV Pokémon.

Here on this page, we'll be quickly explaining how Hyper Training and the new Silver and Gold Bottle Caps work as a mechanic, before diving into how you can find them and, best of all, what we've found to be the best way to farm them - a method that lets you purchase a potentially infinite number of Bottle Caps for just 200 Fesitval Coins each.

For more on competitive Pokémon meanwhile, head back to our main Sun and Moon competitive training guide, or take a look at our pages on IVs and base stats explained, Breeding and how to pass on Egg Moves, IVs, Abilities, Natures, and Poké Balls, and our explainer onSun and Moon EVs and the best EV training locations.

Note that, as of Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon's release, we're still updating this page to double check all of the below methods work. In theory though they're all the same - so don't expect many changes!

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Pokémon Sun and Moon Bottle Caps and Hyper Training explained

At this point, before we dive in any further, it's worth noting that you'll need a decent grasp on the meaning of Individual Values, which you can find in our guide to Pokémon Sun and Moon's IVs. Plus a working knowledge of EV training in Pokémon Sun and Moon is worthwhile, too!

Assuming you're all up to speed on those points then, let's dive in!

Hyper Training is Pokémon Sun and Moon's way of making the somewhat cumbersome practice of IV breeding just a little bit more accessible to the every day player, allowing you to skip breeding all together in some cases, and bump your Pokémon's stats straight to their maximum, pre-EV-trained potential.

It's the first time these factors have really been properly acknowledged in the mainline Pokémon games, and certainly the first time it's been possible to influence and measure IVs outside of extensively breeding for the perfect Pokémon.

Hyper Training itself is done by spending Bottle Caps with a particular man in the Shopping Centre part of Hau'oli City on Melemele Island. Bottle Caps, meanwhile, as you'll have guessed by now, come in two forms:

• Silver Bottle Caps - Raises one of a Pokémon's stats' Individual Values to maximum, when spent
• Gold Bottle Caps - Raises all six of a Pokémon's stats' Individual Values to maximum, when spent

Take your Bottle Caps to the elderly man in the red shirt, called Mr. Hyper, at the blue shop in the Hau'oli shopping centre and he'll then hyper train the Pokémon's stat (or stats) of choice.

Pokémon Sun and Moon Bottle Cap locations - how to get Bottle Caps and where to find them

There are three main ways to get your hands on Bottle Caps in Sun and Moon. None of them are especially quick or easy on the surface, but as we mention in the next section, there is at least a cheeky way to speed things up significantly, if you know what you're doing.

How to get bottle caps

• Fishing - The simplest method, and also the slowest, for finding Bottle Caps is fishing. Cast a line over clusters of bubbling underwater rocks and, pretty rarely, you'll hook up a Bottle Cap instead of a wild Pokémon. We don't recommend this as a means of farming Bottle Caps, but if you've a penchant for the sea, by all means give it a shot...
• Poké Pelago - Poké Pelago, the strange, semi-real world where your boxed Pokémon can go to play and perform tasks, houses two diffenet ways to farm Bottle Caps. First, you can send Pokémon on Shard-hunting missions, and then trade in 30 Shards of the same colour for a single Bottle Cap from the old man in the Festival Plaza's main castle. This is painfully slow though - it'll take several days to get 30 Shards, and they'll be all different colours - so you're better off with the second option, which is sending Pokémon on the Rare-Treasure Hunting mission on Isle Aphun. That takes a day, or 12 hours if you drop Poké Beans in the box, and turns out Gold or Silver Bottle Caps on a semi-regular basis, but it's still slow going, even if it's low on effort required from yourself.
• Festival Plaza Lottery - The best of the standard ways to farm Bottle Caps is by filling your Festival Plaza with max-level Treasure Hunt Lottery shops, displayed as Treasure Hunt ***** (five stars). This can be done by either ranking your Festival Plaza up to a high enough level (some people in the community suggest as high as level 80-90), at which point Sophocles will start offering you random Five Star facilities as level-up rewards; or, you could purchase the Treasure Hunt facility from another player found in the Festival Plaza for 1500 Festival Coins, but more on that particular method, and a much more efficient variation, just below!

As we mentioned just above, all of these are legitimate methods for getting Bottle Caps, but they sure are slow - and pretty boring, too.

Fortunately, a new method of farming them has been discovered, and it's a huge upgrade on the vanilla methods listed above.

For more on Pokémon Ultra Sun and Moon, head to our main Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon walkthrough and guide hub, which includes guides to new Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon Pokémon and Pokédex changes, the Festival Plaza, a list of Global Missions and rewards, an explainer on Pokémon Bank, a dedicated page on Pokémon Competitive Training, including IV Training, EVs and hidden stats, Breeding 6IV Pokémon explained and how to farm Bottle Caps fast for Hyper Training. What's more, we have pages on the Rockruff event for getting Dusk Form Lycanroc and, last but not least, a full Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon QR codes list for adding all Pokémon to your Pokédex.

Pokémon Sun and Moon Bottle Cap farming - the best, fastest way to farm Bottle Caps quickly

This method comes courtesy of Redditor Amoxity, who first wrote up the steps in full. In brief, by following the simple steps below you can exploit the free Silver Bottle Cap prize you get from adding the Treasure Hunt** facility for the first time, and in turn bag an inifnite source of Silver Bottle Caps for just 200 Festival Coins each - or even less if you want to add a slight increase in time intensity - and at a rate of about one Bottle Cap per minute.

The best way to farm Bottle Caps

1. Level up your Festival Plaza to level 8 - this grants you the ability to add a visiting player's (be they friend or just random passer-by) facility to your own Plaza. Level up by earning Festival Coins, which is first done by talking to visitors and performing missions, and done in much greater quantity by completing Global Missions and linking your game to the Pokémon Global Link.
2. Find someone with the Treasure Hunt ** (two stars) facility - the first facility in your Festival Plaza (the one just to the right of the castle bridge, seen as you enter the Plaza) can be added by anyone with a level 8 Plaza of their own. Keep talking to your Plaza visitors until you find one with the Treasure Hunt ** as their first facility, soft resetting your console to refresh visitors.
3. Add that player to your VIP list - don't worry, they won't need to accept or even get notified, so you don't need to know the player personally. Add them by talking to their character in the Plaza.
4. Add the Treasure Hunt ** facility - talk to that person, and pay for the facility to be added to the first slot in your own Plaza.
5. Go to the new Treasure Hunt ** right away - the Treasure Hunt ** and above grants you a free Silver Bottle Cap every time it's added. Claim your free Bottle Cap then as soon as the first one is added.
6. Head to the castle and page the VIP player you added - do so by talking to the attendant in the middle left of the castle. This will summon the player to your castle and let you speak to them again on demand.
7. Add the Treasure Hunt ** again - this costs 200 Festival Coins. It'll cost more if you have other Treasure Hunt facilities in your plaza, so remove all of them and make sure this is the only one, to keep costs down. Be sure to replace the original Treasure Hunt ** with this new one, in the first slot again.
8. Go to the new Treasure Hunt ** and claim the prize - If you've followed the steps above, you'll get another free Silver Bottle Cap.
9. Repeat steps 6 -8 - repeatedly paging your VIP and adding their Treasure Hunt ** over and over again will mean you get a free Silver Bottle Cap for every 200 Festival Coins you have. Job done!

It's a remarkably simple method, and a huge upgrade in terms of time investment, too. A couple of other notes to make things as easy as possible though:

Firstly, if you have a fellow Sun and Moon-playing friend, it's best to add them to your Bottle Cap faming scheme so that you can both put the Treasure Hunt ** facility in your first Festival Plaza slot. That way you don't run the risk of the random player you found swapping that facility for something else, and in turn stopping you from adding it repeatedly.

Second, this can actually be done for 150 Festival Coins instead of 200, if you have a means of replacing the Treasure Hunt ** facility with a Treasure Hunt *. The one-star Treasure Hunt costs 50FC when replacing the two-star, and then it only costs 100FC to upgrade from one-star to two-star. You also get a Max Elixir as the reward from the Treasure Hunt *, but note that this does slow the process down a little - so it depends one whether time, or Festival Coins, is your primary limiting factor.

Finally, remember that the best way to farm Festival Coins is by completing Global Missions - whilst regular Missions that you can host yourself might earn you 30-50 Festival Coins on completion, the regular Global Missions, when you're all synced up to the Pokémon Global Link, will frequently reward you with up to 4,000 Fesitval Coins, meaning a near-lifetime supply of Bottle Caps if you've been doing them consistently from the start!