How To Get Mental Herbs in Pokémon FireRed & LeafGreen

by ReOcelot

Mental Herb
#	Location	Repeatable?
1	Trade—Must be traded into FRLG from a copy of Ruby, Sapphire, or Emerald.	Yes

To get Mental Herbs in Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen, they must be traded over from a copy of Pokémon Ruby, Sapphire, or Emerald.

The Pokémon RSE player must equip the Mental Herbs to a Pokémon and then trade that Pokémon to the FRLG player using the Link Center on the top floor of the Pokémon Center.

There is no other way to get Mental Herbs in Pokémon FireRed/LeafGreen without trading. A physical Link Cable or Wireless Adapter is also required to trade between the games.

How To Get Mental Herbs

Prerequisites

The prerequisites for obtaining the Mental Herbs in Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen mostly revolve around the physical hardware required. You’ll need:

A copy of Pokémon Ruby, Sapphire, or Emerald and a second console to trade with
A Wireless Adapter (only works with Emerald) or a Link Cable (works with Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald)
A Pokémon holding Mental Herbs that you can trade from Pokémon RSE to Pokémon FRLG

Once you have the physical hardware necessary (games, consoles, adapters), all you need to do is get the Mental Herbs and trade them over.

Trading

To start trading, the first thing you need to do is head to the Pokémon Center (in both games).

Once you’re there, you need to head to the trading club. In Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen, this means heading upstairs via the escalators.

Going upstairs in the Pokémon Center to start a trade

There are three attendants upstairs.

Talking to the attendant in the middle will let you trade via Wireless Communications. This requires the wireless adapter and also requires trading with Pokémon Emerald since the Wireless Adapter doesn’t work with Ruby and Sapphire.

If you don’t have your wireless adapter in, you will receive an error.

Talking to the Wireless Club attendant without a Wireless Adapter

The attendant on the right will let you trade with Pokémon Ruby, Sapphire, or Emerald as long as you have a Link Cable.

Talking to the Link Club Attendant on the top floor of the Pokémon Center

Once you agree to trade, the attendant will have you save your game, and then you’ll enter the Link Room.

Here you can to sit down at the machine in the middle to get started.

Sitting at the trade machine in the Link Room

You should do this in the copy of Pokémon RSE as well (make sure you have a Pokémon in your party that is holding the Mental Herbs and that you are ready to trade.)

After you sit down, communications will begin.

Communications after sitting in the trade room

Once the RSE player sits down with you, trading will begin and you will be able to trade the Mental Herbs over by trading the Pokémon holding the item.

What Are Mental Herbs?

The Mental Herbs’ description

Moves like Attract cause infatuation, which is a status condition that causes the Pokémon to be immobilized. Think of it as a cuter version of being Paralysis. Basically, there’s a chance your turn will be wasted if your Pokémon is infatuated.

The Mental Herb is a held item that will prevent infatuation one time during battle.

So if a Pokémon uses a move like Attract on your Pokémon and it becomes infatuated, they can use their held Mental Herb item to cure the status.

Are Mental Herbs Worth Trading?

Mental Herbs are not really worth the trade for three reasons.

Infatuation doesn’t happen all that often.
You can get rid of infatuation simply by swapping out Pokémon in middle, which is much easier.
And finally, the Mental Herb is consumed after it’s used (like a Berry). So you would need to trade another herb over if you want to have a consistent defense against Infatuation.

Mental Herbs are mostly a held item for competitive play when players know their opponents are likely to use a move that causes infatuation.

But for a typical single-player playthrough of FireRed and LeafGreen, there really aren’t many NPCs, Gym Leaders, or trainers to worry about when it comes to infatuation.

So the Mental Herbs aren’t going to be too helpful or worthwhile – especially considering the effort that goes into trading them over.

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ReOcelot

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A jack of all trades when it comes to gaming. I can sit down for hours in a casual playthrough of Pokémon, or I can spend months trying to hit Diamond in League of Legends. I love and appreciate everything about games, and love sharing that passion with my readers.

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