One new addition to Pokemon Sword and Shield through the Isle of Armor DLC is Max Soup and its main ingredient, Max Mushrooms. Though they both sound like the kind of grub you’d whip up in the Pokemon Camp like a nice plate of curry, Max Soup is an item you can get a buff man to whip up in a flash at the Master Dojo as you progress through the Isle of Armor DLC storyline.
What is Max Soup?
Max Soup is a simple concoction that allows a Pokemon that chows down on it to Gigantamax, assuming their species can Gigantamax at all. For most Pokemon Sword & Shield players, it’s how you unlock the new starter Gigantamax forms and the Gigantamax Venusaur and Blastoise available with the launch of the DLC.
But Max Soup will work on any species typically capable of Gigantamaxing, meaning it can be used to make something like Coalossal or Machamp reach their Gigatamax forms without requiring the luck needed to find a Gigantamax raid, defeat the difficult beasts, and catch them.
How to Make Max Soup
You’ll get within inches of crafting your very own bowl of Max Soup fairly early on in the Isle of Armor story. You’re sent on a mission to find three lots of Max Mushrooms, but even though Klara or Avery bring theirs back, as your own hard-earned shrooms are about to go into the pot, sympathy and something called “sharing success” knocks the wind out of your sails. Ew.
So your mushrooms go unused. For now. From that point on, a guy will be posted by the pot in the Max Dojo kitchen where he’ll be ready and willing to whip up Max Soup whenever you bring him three Max Mushrooms. Though you won’t be able to use the feature on your new Urshifu until a little later.
How to Use Max Soup
Once you have three Max Mushrooms, all you need to do is take them back to the Max Dojo and have the kitchen jock toss them into the pot. Max Soup will be added to your inventory where you’ll be able to use it on any Pokemon capable of Gigantamaxing to unlock said ability.
Where to Find Max Mushrooms
You might have seen Max Mushrooms on your trip around the island already. They stand out with this swirly top design. You can’t pick them until the relevant quest, but you’ll certainly remember seeing them.
The first clump of Max Mushrooms you spot will be a batch of three; exactly the amount needed to craft your first pot of Max Soup. But after that, you’ll only find Max Mushrooms sporadically and in single doses, making subsequent Max Soup crafts relatively time-consuming.
Max Mushrooms don’t spawn on their own or naturally over time. Instead, they’re “encouraged” through Max Raid Battles. According to someone at the Max Dojo, anyway. That means spamming Max Raid battles and searching high and low around the Isle of Armor’s many caves and forests.
According to community findings, it takes around three Max Raid battles for one Max Mushroom to appear somewhere in the world, meaning you’ll have to do around nine Max Raid battles to create a single Max Soup.
Here are some of the known locations you’ll want to check after a Max Raid battle to find Max Mushrooms:
- Warm-Up Tunnel
- Forest of Focus
Other areas, like the Brawlers’ Cave, sound like the type of dark, wet place the in-game NPCs say are likely to host Max Mushrooms, but there’s no evidence to support them spawning there just yet. For now, it appears only one cave and one forest can grow these rare fungi.
