Escalation Battle

Escalation Battles (Japanese: レベルアップバトル Level-Up Battle) are a unique Special Stage type in Pokémon Shuffle

Description
Escalation Battles often feature and Mythical Pokémon. The cost per play is 1 Heart. Each Escalation Battle has a Stage Level that starts at 1 and increases every time the stage is cleared. As the Stage Level increases, the target Pokémon's base catch rate will also increase; however, the stage will gradually become more difficult as well. There is no capture bonus for any remaining moves (or seconds) in these stages. All items are available when they are applicable.

Additionally, various rewards are given once certain Stage Level milestones have been cleared, encouraging the player to continue even after they have caught the Pokémon featured in the stage. The specific milestones and rewards differ with each Escalation Battle. More valuable rewards are typically guarded by a 'boss' stage, which is usually much more difficult than the stages immediately before or after it.

Seventeen Pokémon have been released through Escalation Battle events, with the dates they've appeared, stage data, and rewards across all versions listed in the tables below. Altered Forme was the first Escalation Battle for both versions, being available from June 8 to 22, 2015 on the 3DS version, and from September 28 to October 12, 2015 on the Mobile version. was previously available as a Commemorative Event from September 14-28, 2015, making it one of the few Pokémon to be available through several different kinds of Special Stages.

From version 1.3 (3DS)/1.6 (Mobile) onwards, the "angry" feature was introduced to all Escalation Battles. With this feature, when an Escalation Battle stage is cleared, the featured Pokémon has a chance to become angry, temporarily increasing the stage level by 3-5 (later, 3-15 for ) for ten minutes. If the stage is started within this timeframe and cleared, the anger will subside and the Stage Level will increase to the new value, skipping several levels. However, if the timer runs out before starting the stage or the stage is failed, the anger will subside and the Stage Level reverts back to what its value would be without the anger bonus. If a reward stage would be skipped due to this, the reward will still be given if the later stage is cleared. However, certain stages may be designated as impossible to skip, usually including boss or Coin stages.

In the 3DS version, the first run of 50% Forme was the first Escalation Battle to include the "angry" feature. In the Mobile version, the Giratina Altered Forme repeat on May 31, 2016 was the first Escalation Battle with this feature.

Giratina (Altered Forme)
There were seven types of stages confirmed in the initial run of the Giratina event, while there were eleven types of stages during the repeat of the event.

June 2015 (3DS):

The rewards available for defeating certain landmark stage levels was as follows. Note that some rewards in the first column were only available during the October 2015 run of this event.

Cresselia
There were thirteen types of stages confirmed in the Cresselia event.

July-August 2015 (3DS):

During its first run, this was the first time an Escalation Battle's reward list went up to Stage Level 200. The available rewards were:

Darkrai
The reward milestones were as follows:

Latias
During the first run of this Escalation Battle, it was the first time that HP varied significantly between non-boss levels. For example, Latias had less HP at Stage Level 161 (10,752) than it did at Stage Level 61 (12,936). Previously, HP had gradually increased even when the individual stage types, disruptions, etc. had changed.

The stage data is as follows:

September-October 2015 (3DS):

The rewards for the Latias event expanded further, and even included Latiasite.

Delibird
Unlike the other Escalation Battles, Delibird's event was not titled "Escalation Battle", but its format was identical to them. Like in other Escalation Battles, items were rewarded to the player when they cleared certain level milestones; in contrast with other Escalation Battles, however, the stages in this event were generally rather easy. The stage was titled Incredible Item Stage (Japanese: アイテムゲットステージ Item GET Stage), "Rake In Some Items!". Despite Delibird being in a main stage, it was able to be caught during this stage, with the same catch rates as other Escalation Battle Pokémon.

The stage data for the event is as follows:

The rewards were as follows:

Level MAX Challenge
Level MAX Challenge is Special Stage that can be considered a variation of Escalation Battle, in which the goal is to increase the level of a skill on the featured Pokémon to max. Similar to Escalation Battles, Level MAX Challenge increases its Stage Level each time the stage is cleared and gives rewards for reaching milestone Stage Levels. Additionally, each level of the stage will drop a predetermined amount of Personalized Skill Boosters for the featured Pokémon, rather than dropping them at random. The total amount of Personalized Skill Boosters dropped is exactly enough to max the level of the featured skill once the final reward milestone is cleared. If the featured Pokémon's skill level has not yet been maxed after clearing the final milestone, or if the featured Pokémon's skill is swapped to a non-maxed one, then the stage can continue to be cleared for additional non-random Personalized Skill Boosters.