Arven Guide: Every Battle From Skwovet to the Level 58-63 Finale, Mabosstiff’s Injury Story, and the 5-Titan Herba Mystica Order That Keeps Path of Legends on Pace

Arven’s final Path of Legends team opens at Level 58 and closes with a Level 63 Mabosstiff, but the titan you just beat to trigger that fight only reaches Level 55 [1]. That seven-level jump is why so many trainers get swept on their first try — the story never flags that the finale is a genuine spike, not a continuation of the pace you’ve been fighting at. This guide lines up every battle Arven fights, from the Level 5 Skwovet he leads with on Poco Path through that finale, the real reason his Mabosstiff always goes last, and the titan order that keeps your own team from falling behind his.

Quick Start: What to Do Before You Fight Arven

• Check your team’s average level against 58-63, not against the Level 55 titan you just beat [1] — that gap is the single biggest reason first attempts fail.
• Fight the five titans in ascending level order — Klawf (16) → Bombirdier (19) → Orthworm (28) → Great Tusk/Iron Treads (44) → Dondozo & Tatsugiri (55). Titan levels are fixed no matter what order you tackle them in, so this order keeps your grind matched to the fight in front of you instead of over- or under-shooting it [4].
• Bring at least one Fighting-type move — it’s super effective against four of Arven’s six Pokemon [6].
• Pack a Flying-type or a Levitate user to shrug off Garganacl’s Earthquake and Toedscruel’s Earth Power, both of which hit your whole grounded team [6].
• Save your own Tera Orb for last — Arven Terastallizes Mabosstiff into a pure Dark-type on his final turn, and going in with a Fighting, Bug, or Fairy Tera type guarantees a hard-hitting answer [2][6].
• Stock Max Potions, Revives, and Full Heals. This is a six-Pokemon gauntlet, not a single boss fight.

Every Pokemon Arven Uses, Battle by Battle

The finale gets all the attention, but Arven actually fights you seven separate times across the story, and the level curve across those fights tells you exactly how far behind you can afford to fall.

Line the two tables up and a pattern falls out that no single wiki page states outright: every mid-game sparring Pokemon is the pre-evolved form of a member of his finale team, leveling up in step with the story rather than getting swapped out. Shellder becomes the Cloyster you fight at the titan gate; Nacli becomes Garganacl; Toedscool becomes Toedscruel. Scovillain and Greedent are already in their current forms by the time you meet them, so they just level up in place [1][5]. That means the finale isn’t six new threats — it’s six Pokemon you’ve already scouted the type and ability of, just hitting harder.

The finale’s exact movesets, for reference: Greedent (Body Slam, Earthquake, Bullet Seed, Psychic Fangs), Cloyster (Light Screen, Icicle Spear, Rock Blast, Liquidation), Scovillain (Fire Blast, Crunch, Energy Ball, Zen Headbutt), Toedscruel (Spore, Sludge Bomb, Earth Power, Power Whip), Garganacl (Earthquake, Stone Edge, Stealth Rock, Body Press), and Mabosstiff (Crunch, Fire Fang, Play Rough, Psychic Fangs) [5].

Mabosstiff’s Story: Why He’s Always Sent Out Last

Mabosstiff isn’t just Arven’s ace — he’s the reason the entire Path of Legends quest exists. Arven raised him from a Maschiff back at the Poco Path lighthouse while his parent (Professor Sada or Turo, depending on version) spent years buried in research on Area Zero, largely absent from his life [1][2]. During a past expedition into Area Zero, Mabosstiff was attacked and left with wounds that ordinary healing couldn’t touch. Arven found a reference to the Herba Mystica in his parent’s research notes and built his entire Titan-hunting quest around one goal: cure his best friend [1].

That’s also why the story keeps Mabosstiff benched until he’s fully healed, and why Arven Terastallizes him specifically in every single battle once he’s back — he’s not just a strong closer, he’s the emotional center of the fight. As Arven puts it, part of him grew to resent the legendary Pokemon at the heart of his parent’s research for pulling his family apart, which is a heavier thread than most Pokemon rival arcs bother with. Mabosstiff’s fixed moveset — Crunch, Psychic Fangs, Fire Fang, Play Rough — never changes across any of his appearances, Terastallizing to a pure Dark-type and running Intimidate to soften your lead’s Attack the instant he’s out [2].

The mechanism behind why it takes five separate titan fights to heal one dog is worth spelling out, because it explains the pacing: Herba Mystica are described as an extremely rare, unusually potent grade of the same ingredients used in ordinary Sandwich-making, strong enough that a single one changes what the finished sandwich can do [3]. Arven can’t just buy or find these — each titan is effectively guarding the only known source of its flavor, which is why the questline is structured as five discrete errands instead of one grind. Every sandwich you help him make throughout Path of Legends is framed as healing both his legendary partner’s stolen ride power and Mabosstiff’s wounds at the same time — the mechanical grind and the emotional arc resolve on the same five-step schedule, and neither finishes without the other.

The 5-Titan Herba Mystica Order That Keeps the Grind on Pace

You can legally fight the five titans in any order — nothing locks you out. But each titan spawns at a fixed level regardless of when you show up, so tackling them out of order means either steamrolling a Level 16 Klawf with a Level 40 team or walking into a Level 55 Dondozo & Tatsugiri fight badly underleveled [4]. Ascending order keeps every fight roughly matched to where your own team naturally sits if you’re exploring Paldea’s open zones as you go.

Each flavor comes from feeding your legendary partner a Herba Mystica sandwich Arven makes right after that titan falls, and the ride ability it unlocks is what actually opens the next zone [3][8]. That’s the real reason the ascending order works better than it looks on paper: Sprint gets you around the early zones faster, Aquatic opens water crossings toward the mid-level areas, and Glide and Climb are what let you reach Great Tusk/Iron Treads and the False Dragon titan’s zones at all. Skipping ahead to a high-level titan before you’ve earned its access route usually means a long walk or a lot of wild-Pokemon encounters you didn’t sign up for.

Worth stating plainly since it trips people up: the titans themselves don’t scale to your level at all — Klawf is Level 16 whether you fight him first or dead last [4]. That’s a deliberate design choice, not a bug, and it’s exactly why the order matters more here than in most open-world level curves. Fight out of sequence and you’re not being punished by the game; you’re just choosing to either steamroll a fight that was never a threat or walk into one that was always going to hit at full strength.

If you’re the type who wants to see everything before finishing the main story: the order still doesn’t change, but you can detour into each newly-unlocked zone’s side content (Team Star bases, Tera Raids) before moving to the next titan instead of rushing straight through — the fixed titan levels mean that detouring never puts you behind schedule for the finale.

Beating Arven’s Final Team

Four of Arven’s six Pokemon share a Fighting-type weakness, which is the single most useful piece of type coverage you can carry into this fight: Greedent (Normal), Cloyster (Water/Ice, neutral to resisted depending on the move), Garganacl (Rock), and Tera Dark Mabosstiff all take extra damage from a Close Combat, Aura Sphere, or Cross Chop [6].

Garganacl and Toedscruel both carry Earthquake-family moves, so a Flying-type or a Levitate holder that never touches the ground removes an entire category of damage from this fight rather than just resisting one hit. Going in with your own Tera Orb saved for Mabosstiff is worth more here than using it early: a Fighting, Bug, or Fairy Tera type on your closer turns a merely-effective attack into a guaranteed heavy hit against the Pokemon Arven built his whole team around protecting [2][6].

Already mid-fight and underleveled? Don’t reset immediately — a six-Pokemon battle gives you room to recover. Pull back your lead the moment Intimidate drops its Attack rather than trading hits into a weakened stat, and burn a Full Heal on the first Spore or status move Toedscruel lands instead of eating a full turn asleep. If you’re losing Pokemon before you even reach Mabosstiff, that’s the real signal to retreat and grind rather than push through on Revives — the level gap compounds once his team is down to two or three Pokemon left, not before.

After the Story: The Academy Ace Tournament Rematch

Beating the story doesn’t retire Arven’s team — it levels it up again. In the postgame Academy Ace Tournament, he shows up with the same six Pokemon at Level 67, with Mabosstiff at Level 68 and still Terastallizing to Dark [7]. Arven is guaranteed to be your Round 1 opponent the first time you enter the tournament, then appears as a random Round 1-3 opponent in later runs. Your team gets fully healed and your Tera Orb recharges between every round, so there’s no reason to hold back Terastallizing early against a different opponent if it wins that match [7].

The counters you built for the story finale still apply almost unchanged — the same Fighting-type coverage and the same Flying-or-Levitate answer to his Ground moves work here, just against a team that’s five to six levels stronger across the board. The one thing that does change is your own Tera strategy: since the tournament fully recharges your Tera Orb every round, there’s no penalty for Terastallizing against an earlier opponent and still walking into the Arven rematch with a fresh option, which isn’t true during the one-shot story finale.

FAQ

Does fighting the titans out of order make the game harder or easier?
Neither, technically — titan levels never change based on order [4]. But going out of order usually means you’re missing the ride ability the next zone assumes you have, which turns a five-minute walk into a much longer one. Ascending order is faster in practice even though it’s not mechanically required.

Is Arven’s Mabosstiff optional, or does he always show up?
He always shows up in every battle from the finale onward, and he’s always the last Pokemon sent out and the only one Terastallized [2]. Skipping a Fighting, Bug, or Fairy-type counter for him specifically is the most common reason a well-prepared team still loses on the final Pokemon.

I searched for Arven and got results for a different Pokemon app — is this the same character?
No. This guide covers Arven from the mainline Pokemon Scarlet and Violet story; he doesn’t appear in the separate mobile spinoff Pokemon Champions. If that’s what you were actually looking for, our Pokemon Champions beginner’s guide and Pokemon Champions tier list cover that game’s own roster and team-building instead. And if you’re comparing Scarlet and Violet’s creature-collecting loop against a different genre entirely, see our breakdown of Palworld vs Pokemon.

Verified Against

Battle teams, levels, and moves in this guide are current for the base Pokemon Scarlet and Violet story as of publication — Arven’s Path of Legends and Academy Ace Tournament teams are fixed story encounters and haven’t changed across patches. Titan levels and Herba Mystica flavor assignments are version-locked (Scarlet uses Great Tusk, Violet uses Iron Treads) rather than patch-dependent.

Sources

• Bulbapedia — Arven
• Bulbapedia — Arven’s Mabosstiff
• Bulbapedia — Herba Mystica
• Game8 — Path of Legends Walkthrough: Titan Order and Levels
• Marriland — Path of Legends Finale Walkthrough
• Game8 — How to Beat Arven: Best Team and Strategy
• Dexerto — Academy Ace Tournament Guide: All Trainers and Teams
• Game8 — All Koraidon and Miraidon Ride Upgrades and How to Unlock

Michael R.

I've been playing video games for over 20 years, spanning everything from early PC titles to modern open-world games. I started Switchblade Gaming to publish the kind of accurate, well-researched guides I always wanted to find — built on primary sources, tested in-game, and kept up to date after patches. I currently focus on Minecraft and Pokémon GO.