Scyther doesn’t have one evolution — it has two, and they don’t agree with each other. Hold a Metal Coat and trade it away, and you get Scizor. Use a Black Augurite on it instead, and you get Kleavor. No game lets you do both to the same Scyther, and depending on which game you’re playing, one of those two paths might not even be available.
Quick Start: Do This Before You Touch Your Scyther
- Decide which evolution you actually want — Scizor (Bug/Steel) trades four of Scyther’s weaknesses for one huge one; Kleavor (Bug/Rock) trades them for three smaller ones. See the breakdown below before you commit an item.
- Catch or obtain a Scyther in your current game (skip this if you already have one).
- Going for Scizor: get a Metal Coat, hold it on Scyther, then trade — except in Legends: Arceus, where you use the item directly with no trade at all.
- Going for Kleavor: get a Black Augurite and use it directly on Scyther. No trade is required for this one in any game where you can get the item.
- Check which game you’re playing against the table below — Scarlet/Violet and Pokémon GO both block one of the two paths outright.
- Playing Legends: Arceus? Skip trading altogether — it’s the only game where both evolutions are fully solo.
- Playing Legends: Z-A? Budget for an actual trade partner (local or online) for Scizor specifically — there’s no solo workaround here.
- Playing Pokémon GO? Forget Black Augurite exists. GO uses 50 Candy and a Metal Coat for Scizor, and that’s the only evolution GO offers.
What Actually Changes When Scyther Evolves
Scyther is Bug/Flying, and that typing is fragile: it’s 4x weak to Rock and 2x weak to Fire, Electric, Ice, and Flying — five weaknesses on a Pokémon that otherwise has strong Attack and Speed [1]. Neither evolution just adds power. Both evolutions rewrite that weakness list, and they rewrite it in opposite directions.
Scizor becomes Bug/Steel. Steel resists Bug and Rock, so Scyther’s old 4x Rock weakness disappears entirely, and Steel picks up an immunity to Poison and a resistance to Ice along the way. The catch: Steel is 2x weak to Fire, stacking on Bug’s own 2x Fire weakness, so Scizor ends up with exactly one weakness — Fire — quadrupled [3].
Kleavor becomes Bug/Rock — and it’s genuinely rare among evolutions for a Pokémon to lose a type on evolving instead of gaining one, since Scyther drops Flying entirely [4]. That erases the Fire, Electric, Ice, and Flying weaknesses outright and halves the old Rock weakness from 4x down to 2x. In exchange, Kleavor is newly 2x weak to Water and Steel — two types that never touched Scyther at all.
| Form | Typing | Weaknesses | Notable resistances/immunities |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scyther | Bug/Flying | 4x Rock; 2x Fire, Electric, Ice, Flying | Immune to Ground |
| Scizor | Bug/Steel | 4x Fire (only weakness) | Immune to Poison; resists Ice, Rock, Flying, Bug, Psychic |
| Kleavor | Bug/Rock | 2x Water, Steel, Rock | Resists Normal, Poison; no immunities |
Abilities shift along with the typing. Scizor keeps Scyther’s Swarm (a power boost to Bug moves once HP drops low) and adds Technician, which doubles the power of any move at 60 base power or under — the reason a plain Bullet Punch or U-turn hits harder on Scizor than the raw numbers suggest. Kleavor also keeps Swarm, but its second ability is Sheer Force, which strips secondary effects like flinches and stat drops from a move in exchange for roughly 30% more damage, and its hidden ability, Sharpness, boosts every slicing move it knows, including its own signature Stone Axe [3] [4].
Getting Scizor: Trade While Holding a Metal Coat
The core rule hasn’t changed since Generation II: hold a Metal Coat on Scyther, trade it to anyone, and it evolves into Scizor the moment the trade completes. The trade partner hands the same Scyther straight back, and you keep the Scizor. That’s the whole mechanic — the friction is entirely in how each game makes you find a Metal Coat and a trading partner.
| Game | Trade required? | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Sword/Shield, Scarlet/Violet, most mainline games | Yes | Standard Metal Coat + link trade (local wireless or online via Nintendo Switch Online) [1] |
| Legends: Arceus | No | Buy a Metal Coat at the Jubilife Village Trading Post for 1,000 Merit Points, then use it directly on Scyther — no partner needed [15] |
| Legends: Z-A | Yes, and there’s no way around it | Metal Coat unlocks around Main Mission 35; Scizorite (Mega Stone) is sold immediately at the Stone Emporium, but the Pokémon itself still needs a real trade partner [11] |
Legends: Arceus is the outlier because of how it handles trade evolutions generally. The Linking Cord item lets you fake a trade for Pokémon that evolve by trading with no item involved, like Kadabra or Graveler — but Scyther doesn’t need the Linking Cord at all. Held-item trade evolutions in Legends: Arceus skip the trade requirement completely and evolve the instant you use the item, the same way Black Augurite works [6]. Legends: Z-A didn’t bring that shortcut back, which is exactly why a Scizorite can be sitting in your bag for hours before you’ve actually got a Scizor to hold it.
Getting Kleavor: Black Augurite, No Trade Required
Black Augurite skips the whole trade problem by design — you use it directly on Scyther from your bag or satchel, and it evolves on the spot, in every game where the item exists. The obstacle isn’t a trade partner, it’s finding the item at all.
| Game | How to get Black Augurite |
|---|---|
| Legends: Arceus | Reward for Request 68 (“A Nosepass to Guide the Way”); a 5% chance as a wild Graveler’s held item; sold occasionally by the Ginkgo Guild’s Ginter (listed as “Jet-Black Rock”); rare Space-Time Distortion pickup [5] |
| Legends: Z-A | Drops from destroying floating Poké Balls inside 4-star and 5-star Hyperspace Wild Zones; Sour donuts with 400+ Flavor Score (Item Power: Special) improve the odds [7] |
| Scarlet/Violet (incl. Indigo Disk DLC) | Not obtainable at all — the item exists only as scenery in the Terarium’s Canyon Biome. Transfer your Scyther to Pokémon HOME, move it into Legends: Arceus, evolve it there, then send Kleavor back [8] |
If you’re playing Scarlet/Violet and don’t want to deal with the HOME round-trip, you don’t need to evolve anything — Kleavor itself spawns as a wild encounter atop the mountain in the Canyon Biome, and also shows up as a level-75 6-star Tera Raid boss in the same DLC area [8]. That gets you a Kleavor without ever touching a Scyther.
Pokémon GO Works Completely Differently
Pokémon GO doesn’t run on trades or held-item evolutions the way the main series does — it substitutes items plus a candy cost, and that changes what’s possible here in an important way. If you’ve read our trading guide, you already know GO’s Trainer trading system exists for swapping ownership of a Pokémon — it has nothing to do with evolving one. To get Scizor, spend 50 Scyther Candy and one Metal Coat, tap Evolve, and it happens instantly [12].
Kleavor is the one that trips people up. There is no Black Augurite in Pokémon GO, and Scyther cannot evolve into Kleavor here at all. Kleavor exists in GO purely as a raid boss — it debuted May 6, 2023 during a dedicated Kleavor Raid Day and has returned periodically as a Tier 3 raid encounter since, shiny included [14]. If a Scyther-heavy Community Day has you sitting on a pile of Candy hoping to unlock Kleavor the way you’d unlock other evolution-item Pokémon (our special evolutions guide covers that whole category), stop — it isn’t coming from Scyther. Catch it in a raid or don’t get it at all.
Scizor or Kleavor: Match the Evolution to How You Play
| Player type | Pick this | Why |
|---|---|---|
| New/casual player | Whichever item you find first | Both are viable all-rounders; don’t burn hours hunting a specific item when the other one works fine |
| Competitive/PvP-focused | Scizor, generally | One clean weakness (Fire) is easier to build a team around than three; Pokémon GO’s Scizor also has usable PvP tiering in Great and Ultra League [12] |
| Playing Legends: Z-A specifically | Kleavor first, Scizor if you have a trade partner lined up | Kleavor only needs a Hyperspace Wild Zone run; Scizor is stuck behind Main Mission 35 and a real trade partner, with no solo fallback |
| Wants a Mega Evolution | Scizor | Scizorite is purchasable for ₽50,000 in Legends: Z-A’s Stone Emporium [16], and Mega Scizor exists in Pokémon GO (200 Mega Energy first time, 40 after); Kleavor has no Mega form in any game [10] |
FAQ
Can I get both Scizor and Kleavor from the same Scyther?
No — evolution is permanent, so one Scyther becomes one or the other. If you want both, you need two Scyther. They’re common enough in most games that this isn’t a real obstacle, just something people don’t expect going in.
Which evolution is actually better?
For most teams, Scizor’s single Fire weakness is easier to play around than Kleavor’s spread of Water/Steel/Rock, and it comes with a Mega Evolution in more games. Kleavor wins if your team already has Fire covered and struggles against Ground- or Fighting-types instead, since Kleavor stays neutral to both where Scizor doesn’t gain anything extra there either — the real deciding factor is what your team is already missing, not which Pokémon is “stronger” on paper.
Do I need Nintendo Switch Online to evolve Scyther into Scizor?
Only for an online trade with someone else’s Switch. A local wireless trade with a second Switch console in the same room — your own or a friend’s — doesn’t require a subscription at all, and it’s the cheaper fix if you own two consoles.
Why does Kleavor lose a type instead of gaining one?
Most evolutions add a second type or keep the same one; Kleavor is one of the rare cases where the Pokémon Company designed an evolution to shed a type entirely. It’s a direct trade: Scyther gives up Flying (and the Ground immunity that came with it) to pick up Rock’s resistances and its own new weaknesses instead.
Sources
- Bulbapedia — Scyther (Pokémon) [1]
- Bulbapedia — Kleavor (Pokémon) [2]
- Pokemon Database — Scizor Pokédex [3]
- Pokemon Database — Kleavor Pokédex [4]
- Bulbapedia — Black Augurite [5]
- Bulbapedia — Linking Cord [6]
- Game8 — How to Get Black Augurite (Legends: Z-A) [7]
- Game8 — Kleavor Location, Evolution, and Learnset (Scarlet/Violet) [8]
- Serebii — Kleavor Pokédex (Scarlet/Violet) [9]
- Serebii — Legends: Z-A New Mega Evolutions [10]
- GameRant — Metal Coat and Mega Steelix/Scizor availability (Legends: Z-A) [11]
- Pokémon GO Hub — Scizor [12]
- Pokémon GO Hub — Scyther [13]
- Pokémon GO (official) — Kleavor Raid Day announcement [14]
- Game8 — How to Evolve Scyther, Location and Research Tasks (Legends: Arceus) [15]
- Game8 — How to Get Mega Scizor (Legends: Z-A) [16]
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.