Prior to Starting Member Card Mystery Gift
To do this Mystery Gift one needs to have become the Pokémon League Champion and obtained the national Pokédex.
Get the Marking Map Pokétch app from the Pokétch Company President.
Make sure you have plenty of Revives, Full Restores/Max Potions, and Poké Balls.
Update your copy of Pokémon Brilliant Diamond or Shining Pearl to receive the Mystery Gift.
Get the Member Card from Mystery Gift in-game via internet.
Cresselia and Darkrai can both be shiny. However, getting shiny Cresselia is more complicated than normal shiny hunting, which is explained in more detail below.
How to Catch Cresselia
Cresselia is encountered at level 50 and knows Slash, Psycho Cut, Moonlight, and Safeguard. It becomes a Roaming Pokémon after Fullmoon Island. That means you will need to track it with the Marking Map Pokétch App. The biggest difficulty in catching Roaming Pokémon is that they try to flee when encountered, so you’ll need a strategy to work around that. That’s the most tedious thing covered in this guide.
Using the move Mean Look will prevent Cresselia from fleeing, but the user must remain in the battle for the effect to last. So, keep healing the Pokémon that knows Mean Look.
Wobbuffet using Shadow Tag to keep Cresselia from fleeing.
Starting a Pokémon with the Shadow Tag ability will keep Cresselia from fleeing. However, the only two Pokémon available in BDSP that can have it are Wynaut and Wobbuffet. Those are both hard to obtain. Moreover, they can only cause damage with Mirror Coat and Counter, which rely on correctly predicting the opponent’s moves. That will also make it difficult to control the amount of damage caused to the Cresselia. The effect of Shadow Tag will wear off if the bearer is switched out or knocked out, so you’d be stuck with those drawbacks of Wobbuffet and Wynaut using this strategy. Hence, it’s faster to use Mean Look.
The very similar Arena Trap ability won’t work on Cresselia. Very few sources mention that Flying Types and Levitating Pokémon are immune to Arena Trap, which includes Cresselia.
If Cresselia does manage to flee, then as Dawn would say, “no need to worry.” So long as you don’t accidently knock Cresselia out, it can be tracked and encountered again. Also, HP and Status Conditions will remain the same for the next encounter. Put simply, it doesn’t heal between encounters.
Encountering Cresselia outside of Jubilife City.
Finding Cresselia
Head to Canalave City and enter Sailor Eldritch’s House in the bottom left corner of town. Speak with the woman and the sleeping child inside then exit. Talk to Sailor Eldritch near the boat outside and he will take you to Fullmoon Island. Once there follow the path into the forest. Cresselia waits in the middle of the clearing.
If you wish to shiny hunt Cresselia then turn autosave off and save in front of Cresselia. The sprite that is encountered later is determined upon activating Cresselia on Fullmoon Island. So unfortunately, if the one encountered after following the next few steps isn’t shiny, then you’ll have to soft reset and start over from this save on Fullmoon Island. This makes shiny hunting Cresselia very time consuming, so very few players choose to do so.
Now activate Cresselia and it will vanish. Pick up the Lunar Wing that Cresselia leaves behind. Then Exit the clearing and fly to Jubilife City because that’s the best place to corner Roaming Pokémon.
Tracking Cresselia with the Marking Map.
Make sure you have the Marking Map open. The blinking face is Cresselia. Use the north, east, and south exits to go in and out of the city. This will make Cresselia move. Keep doing that until you manage to get Cresselia on the same route as you.
If you’re not shiny hunting then turn autosave off and save your game here. This is in case you accidently knock Cresselia out. If you do, simply soft reset.
Now run around in the grass until you encounter Cresselia. Make sure your strategy to keep it from fleeing is ready to go.
If you are shiny hunting Cresselia and the sprite you encounter here isn’t shiny then soft reset. As said before, unfortunately you will have to start again from Fullmoon Island.
Darkrai taking a False Swipe attack.
How to Catch Darkrai
Darkrai is encountered at level 50 and knows Double Team, Foul Play, Sucker Punch, and Hypnosis. Fortunately, it won’t attempt to flee like Cresselia. I highly recommend using a much higher level Pokémon that knows the move False Swipe to lower Darkrai’s HP to 1 on the first move. That’s because Double Team and Hypnosis will gradually make it harder to land hits, so it saves time to make the first turn count.
Finding Darkrai
Once you have the Pokémon you want to use against Darkrai ready, bring the Lunar Wing you found on Fullmoon Island to the sleeping boy in Sailor Eldritch’s House. Then enter the building located in the top right corner of Canalave City. After a brief scene you will wake up on Newmoon Island. Follow the path into the forest to find Darkrai in the clearing. Turn autosave off and save in front of Darkrai.
Finding Darkrai on Newmoon Island.
If you’re shiny hunting then activate Darkrai, if it’s not shiny then soft reset, and repeat until it’s shiny.
Still turn autosave off if you’re not shiny hunting, so that you can try again in case of an accidental knock out.
That concludes this guide of how to catch Darkrai and Cresselia in Pokémon BDSP while completing the Member Card Mystery Gift. If this isn’t the last Mystery gift then a reprisal of the Pikachu Colored Pichu event could be next.
Video by (aDrive).
