Every “where to catch Beldum” search this week points readers toward one of Lumiose City’s Wild Zones. That’s the wrong building. Beldum doesn’t spawn in any Wild Zone in Pokemon Legends Z-A — it’s locked behind a story mission, inside a facility most players walk straight past. Once you’re standing in the right room, the harder problem starts: Beldum shares its catch rate with Legendary Pokemon, tied for the lowest value in the entire game.
This guide covers where Beldum actually spawns, why it’s so brutal to catch and what actually helps, the Level 20 and Level 45 evolution timeline that makes Metagross the fastest-evolving line of its kind, and how — and whether — Mega Metagross made it into this game. Verified against the early Legends Z-A patch cycle; Mega Shard costs and catch mechanics are the kind of thing Game Freak tends to touch in balance updates, so treat exact numbers as current-patch, not permanent.
Quick Start: What You Need Before You Go
- Reach Rank A and start the mission prep for the fight against Grisham — this unlocks Main Mission 35
- Fast-travel to Lysandre Cafe (next to Wild Zone 7), then walk into Lysandre Labs from there
- Pick up Key Card B to open the purple sector of the facility
- Head to the westernmost room in that sector — that’s the Beldum spawn point
- Bring at least 15–20 Ultra Balls or Heavy Balls, and save your game before you start throwing
- Don’t plan on a one-trip catch — budget for a second visit if the RNG doesn’t cooperate
Already past Mission 35 and don’t remember seeing this place? If you rushed through your Rank A promotion cutscenes and never actually walked into Lysandre Cafe, backtrack now — Lysandre Labs doesn’t close behind you once it unlocks, so there’s no window you can permanently miss. If you’re not at Rank A yet, don’t try to force it early; the mission simply won’t trigger, and grinding Rank without following the story chain wastes time you could spend elsewhere.
Where Beldum Actually Spawns: Lysandre Labs, Not a Wild Zone
Beldum lives in Lysandre Labs, a hidden area tucked inside Lumiose City rather than one of the game’s numbered Wild Zones. It opens up during Main Mission 35, as part of the prep work for your Rank A promotion fight against Grisham [1]. Inside, you need Key Card B to unlock the purple-coded sector, and Beldum’s specific spawn is in the westernmost room of that sector — a spot with two to three overworld encounter slots that produce Beldum most of the time, with Metang showing up occasionally as a rarer alternate spawn in the same room [1][2].
The mix-up with Wild Zones makes sense once you know the geography: the fast-travel point for this whole trip is Lysandre Cafe, which sits right next to Wild Zone 7 [1]. Guides that skim the location data end up filing Beldum under “Wild Zone 7” by proximity. It isn’t. That distinction matters mechanically, not just for directions — Wild Zones cycle their wild population on weather and time-of-day rotations, so players farm them in loops. Lysandre Labs’ spawn room doesn’t work that way; it’s a fixed, story-gated encounter point, so repeatedly fast-traveling in and out on a timer like you would for a Wild Zone grind just wastes trips. The room itself is small, too — walking in expecting the kind of open patrol ground you get in a Wild Zone, I found maybe ten square meters of usable floor with two spawn points on it. Don’t waste time exploring the rest of the sector looking for more; the encounter is exactly where the mission marker says it is.
Why Beldum Is the Hardest Non-Legendary Catch in the Building
Beldum’s catch rate value is 3 — the lowest number in the game, a figure otherwise reserved for Legendary Pokemon [3][4]. Under the classic capture formula that number works out to roughly a 0.4% base chance with a plain Poke Ball at full HP [4]. Legends Z-A runs a new floating-point version of that formula instead of the old integer math, and the game no longer floors the result until the very last step of the calculation [5] — in practice that means bonuses stack more precisely than they used to, but the rock-bottom base modifier tied to that catch-rate-3 value is still doing most of the work under the hood, so the fight for a good throw doesn’t get meaningfully easier just because the maths changed.
| Approach | What sources say | When to use it |
|---|---|---|
| Ultra Ball | Insider Gaming’s location guide treats it as the baseline — stock up before you go in [1] | Safe default if you don’t know Beldum’s exact weight class in this save |
| Heavy Ball | GameRant specifically recommends it, citing Beldum’s weight [2] | If you’ve got a stock built up already — the weight bonus stacks on top of a low base rate instead of fighting it |
Stack the mechanics on top of ball choice. If Beldum hasn’t noticed you, you get a 1.5x unaware bonus on the throw — but you can’t land a status condition like paralysis while it’s unaware [5]. Sneak in from behind for an extra 2x back-strike multiplier before it turns around, and that first throw is your best shot of the whole encounter [5]. If it whiffs, pull Beldum into battle instead: you lose the unaware bonus, but you can chip its HP and land a status effect, and the game’s stun mechanic means a fainted-looking, star-circling Beldum still gives you one guaranteed throw rather than ending the encounter outright [5]. Quick Balls are weaker in Legends Z-A than in past games — reduced to a 3x bonus instead of the usual 5x — so they’re not the automatic pick they used to be for a first-turn catch [5].
If you want to see how Beldum’s odds stack up against the other hardest-to-catch Pokemon in the game, we ranked all 11 Ultra Beasts by catch difficulty separately — Beldum’s rate would land near the top of that list too, despite not being a Beast at all.
If You’re New / If You’re Optimizing
| Player type | Priority |
|---|---|
| New player | Don’t rush your mission order trying to reach Lysandre Labs early — let Rank A happen naturally, then bring whatever balls you’ve accumulated. A slower, well-stocked trip beats a rushed one. |
| Casual player | Buy 15+ Ultra Balls before you go, use battle catching instead of chasing the stealth bonus, and accept a few misses as normal rather than expected bad luck. |
| Hardcore / optimizer | Approach from directly behind for the stacked unaware + back-strike bonus on throw one, hold Heavy Balls in reserve for the follow-up, and skip Quick Balls entirely now that they’re down to 3x. |
| Completionist | Plan a return trip specifically for Metang — since it only shows up as a rare alternate spawn in this same room, expect several visits before you see one instead of a Beldum. |
The Level 45 Metagross Timeline
Beldum evolves into Metang at Level 20, where it learns Confusion and Metal Claw, then into Metagross at Level 45 [2]. That’s the earliest full evolution of any pseudo-legendary base form in this game — Beldum reaches its final form well before comparable lines close out theirs, which changes how you should plan around it. You don’t need to babysit Beldum through a long, awkward mid-game stretch the way you would with a slower-evolving pseudo-legendary; it’s combat-ready in its final form relatively early.
That speed comes with a trade-off worth knowing before you commit training resources: Beldum is the only pseudo-legendary base form that learns just a single move by leveling up [3]. Its base stats lean hard into Defense (80) over offense, so expect it to stall rather than fight in its early stages, and lean on its evolutions — not Beldum itself — for anything resembling a real battle contribution. For the full picture of how this line’s speed and payoff compares against the other ten pseudo-legendary families, see our ranked breakdown of every pseudo-legendary Pokemon.
Getting Mega Metagross Back
Mega Metagross is in this game. The Metagrossite unlocks after you complete Main Mission 30, and you buy it at Quasartico Inc. in the Magenta District for 360 Mega Shards [2][7] — shards you collect by destroying shard clusters scattered around Lumiose City [7]. This is the only way to get it, and your save file can only hold one Metagrossite at a time; you also can’t trade away a Pokemon while it’s holding one [7].
Mega Evolving pushes Metagross from a 600 base stat total to 700, with Speed jumping from 70 to a genuinely fast 110 and Attack climbing from 135 to 145 [6]. The bigger change is the ability swap: standard Metagross runs Clear Body (or the rarer Light Metal), but Mega Metagross gets Tough Claws instead, adding a flat 30% power boost to any contact move [6]. That matters directly for the moveset below, because almost everything worth running on this Pokemon makes physical contact.
Best Metagross Build (Standard and Mega)
Guides don’t fully agree on the ideal fourth move slot here, so treat this as a build framework rather than one locked answer. The overlap across sources is solid: Bullet Punch for priority Steel-type damage, and Zen Headbutt as the reliable Psychic-type STAB attack Metagross learns naturally by leveling up [2]. Bullet Punch matters more than its raw power suggests — Metagross’s base Speed (70) isn’t fast enough to reliably move first, so a priority move covers for that gap against anything it would otherwise lose the speed race to.
From there, sources split. One breakdown built around Metagross’s evolution pairs Thunder Punch and Iron Head alongside Bullet Punch and Zen Headbutt for broad coverage [2]. Once you’ve got the Metagrossite, Heavy Slam becomes worth the swap: Mega Metagross’s weight climbs to 942.9 kg, and Heavy Slam’s power scales with weight, so it becomes the strongest Steel-type option available and gets the full 30% Tough Claws bump on top since it’s a contact move [6]. Knock Off is worth a slot too — it’s a Dark-type answer to Ghost-types that would otherwise wall Metagross, and it strips held items on the way in. Adamant nature (+Attack) is the standard recommendation if you’re building around raw damage; go Careful (+Special Defense) instead if you need Metagross to soak special hits in a specific fight rather than just deal them. Either way, prioritize Attack and Speed over Special Attack — Metagross’s Special Attack (95) looks respectable on paper, but nothing in the moveset above uses it, so investment there is wasted relative to closing the Speed gap that made Bullet Punch necessary in the first place.
Skip the Grind: Catching a Wild Metagross After the Story
There’s a shortcut most Beldum guides skip entirely. Post-game, a wild Alpha Metagross spawns directly in Wild Zone 20, beneath the Prism Tower ruins [1] — no evolving required. Alpha spawns get a 3x stun-catch bonus once you knock them into the stagger state, well above the 1.2x you get from stunning a regular wild Pokemon [5], which can make this Metagross a genuinely easier catch than fighting Beldum’s rock-bottom base rate from scratch. The catch: Alpha Pokemon run higher level than a freshly-evolved Metagross would, and Legends Z-A penalizes catch attempts against Pokemon well above your current Rank, down to a 0.1x multiplier at the widest gaps [5] — so this route rewards players who’ve already built up their Rank, not a first-time visitor still working through the main story.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Beldum worth catching this early, or should I just wait for the post-game Alpha Metagross?
Catch Beldum during the story if you’re planning to use it in your current playthrough — the post-game Alpha is a strong option for a second copy or a NPC-trade-proof backup, but it won’t help you through any fights before you reach that point, and its higher level makes it a worse catch for a Trainer who hasn’t ranked up yet.
Why do my throws keep missing even with an Ultra Ball?
Almost always because Beldum is aware of you when you throw. The 1.5x unaware bonus and 2x back-strike bonus only apply before it notices you [5] — if you approach head-on or too loudly, you’re throwing at the base catch rate with none of the multipliers stacked on, and a 3-value catch rate with no bonuses is close to the worst throw you can make in this game.
Can I get a second Metagrossite if I want to Mega Evolve more than one Metagross?
No — the game caps you at one Metagrossite per save file [7], consistent with how recent Pokemon titles handle Mega Stones generally. Whichever Metagross you equip it to is the one that gets to Mega Evolve; there’s no farming your way to a second copy.
Does Metang spawn anywhere outside Lysandre Labs?
Not according to current location data — Metang shows up only as the rarer alternate spawn in the same Lysandre Labs room that produces Beldum [1]. If you specifically want a wild Metang rather than an evolved one, that room is currently your only option.
Key Takeaways
Stop checking Wild Zones — Beldum is a Lysandre Labs exclusive, gated behind Main Mission 35 and Key Card B, and no amount of Wild Zone farming will turn one up. Go in stocked on Ultra or Heavy Balls, use a back-strike approach for the best first throw, and don’t be surprised if it takes more than one trip against a catch rate this low. Once you’ve got it, the Level 20 and 45 evolution timeline moves fast by pseudo-legendary standards, and Mega Metagross is fully obtainable post-Mission 30 if you’re willing to farm 360 Mega Shards around the city. Keep an eye on patch notes going forward — Mega Shard costs and catch-rate tuning are exactly the kind of numbers Game Freak revisits in balance updates.
Sources
- Insider Gaming — How to Get Beldum in Pokémon Legends: Z-A
- GameRant — Catch & Evolve Beldum into Mega Metagross
- Bulbapedia — Beldum (Pokémon)
- Pokemon Database — Beldum Pokédex
- RotomLabs — Catch Mechanics Explanation in Pokémon Legends: Z-A
- Bulbapedia — Metagross (Pokémon)
- Game8 — How to Get Metagrossite Mega Stone
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.