How To Beat Clair in Pokémon HG/SS (Blackthorn Gym Guide)

You can easily defeat Clair with a Feraligatr if you teach it TM02 Dragon Claw. Its Water-typing, decent bulk, and access to the move Rage will be enough to turn the tide in your favor.

If you chose Chikorita or Cyndaquil as your starter, the best way to defeat Clair is by running a Haunter on your team and using Curse against her Kingdra. Curse deals percentage damage consistently every turn, and is also one of the few status ailments that cannot be cured by Full Restores.

Avoid inflicting status ailments against her two Dragonair because they have the Shed Skin Ability which gives them a chance to automatically cure status conditions.

Tip: You can obtain TM02 Dragon Claw from the Goldenrod Department Store Lottery every Sunday, at a 10% chance per draw.

Haunter evolves from Gastly starting at Level 25. You can find Gastly within Sprout Tower, in Violet City at night (from 6:00PM to 3:59AM in-game).

How To Defeat Clair (Quick Guide)

Here is a step-by-step overview of our recommended strategy:

1. Lead the party with your strongest Pokémon.
2. Defeat Clair’s Gyarados and Dragonairs via type-advantage moves.
3. Swap to Haunter against Kingdra and use Curse.
4. Survive until Kingdra faints from Curse’s effect.

Clair’s Team

SCROLL

Pokémon	Level	Type	Ability	Held Item	Moveset
Gyarados (♀)	Lv. 38	Water/Flying	Intimidate Lowers the foe’s Attack stat.	–	Bite Twister Dragon Rage Dragon Pulse
Dragonair (♀)	Lv. 38	Dragon	Shed Skin The Pokémon may heal its own status problems.	–	Thunder Wave Slam Aqua Tail Dragon Pulse
Dragonair (♀)	Lv. 38	Dragon	Shed Skin The Pokémon may heal its own status problems.	–	Thunder Wave Slam Fire Blast Dragon Pulse
Kingdra (♀)	Lv. 41	Water/Dragon	Sniper Powers up moves if they become critical hits.	Sitrus Berry	Hydro Pump SmokeScreen Hyper Beam Dragon Pulse

Clair is the last and hardest Gym Leader in Johto, due to the oppressive strength of Dragon-types. Her Kingdra is especially dangerous because of its strong defenses and only a single weakness to Dragon-type moves.

Gyarados is the only non-Dragon Pokémon that Clair runs. It is not as threatening as her other Pokémon because its mostly Special move pool is significantly hindered by its poor Special Attack stat.

Both of her Dragonair have the move Thunder Wave, which they will always attempt to use if your Pokémon are vulnerable to being paralyzed.

Kingdra, her strongest Pokémon, combines bulkiness with very powerful attacks.

And if that wasn’t enough, it will also spam SmokeScreen to prevent you from getting any hits at all.

Preparing Your Party

Here is a list of Pokémon that we suggest you put in your party, in order of importance.

Essential Pokémon, Abilities, and Moves are in bold text.

Note: We have only listed locations that are accessible at this point in the game.

Feraligatr is very special because it is the only Pokémon that can learn TM02 Dragon Claw at this stage in the game.

However, not everyone will have chosen Totodile as their starter.

So here’s a quick overview of various strategies you might use in this fight:

• Totodile as your starter, evolved into Feraligatr with Dragon Claw. Additionally its Water-typing helps it resist most of her Pokémon’s offensive moves.
• Using Curse + Haunter to whittle down Kingdra’s health. We used something similar in our Whitney and Chuck battle guides.
  • Clair uses Full Restores to heal her Pokémon, making status conditions like Burn and Poison difficult to keep on. The Curse debuff is not curable by Full Restore, so it is the ideal status effect to inflict against Kingdra.
• Having a Lapras on your team to use Perish Song against Kingdra. Running a Lapras is nice because it doubles as our tank.
  • Unfortunately, Perish Song will not be effective if Clair sends out her Kingdra early, as Clair’s AI knows to switch before Perish Song activates. So this only works if Kingdra is her last usable Pokémon.

For this guide, we will be using Haunter + Curse to counter Kingdra.

However, Clair’s other Pokémon will still need to be dealt with, and Haunter is not the best for sustained battling.

Good Typings for Your Party

We will need defensive Pokémon that can withstand Kingdra’s attacks while waiting for the Curse to complete. Type advantages are difficult to achieve against Dragon-types because it’s only resisted by Steel.

Magneton and Foretress are the only easily accessible Steel-types that do not involve Trade Evolutions. Magneton is the stronger of the two since it only receives 1/4th damage against Water, and has better Special Defense than Foretress.

The next best types to use will be:

• Water
• Electric
• Grass

These types usually have decent bulk and good special defenses, making them ideal candidates for tanking Clair’s damage.

Some Water-type Pokémon have the Ability Water Absorb, which gives them immunity to Kingdra’s STAB Hydro Pump. In addition, Water-types often have access to Ice-type moves like Blizzard, which hit Dragon-types for super effective damage.

Note: Kingdra is Water/Dragon, so it will only receive neutral damage from Ice-type attacks.

For water-types, here’s a small list of great choices:

• Lapras
• Quagsire
• Vaporeon
• Poliwrath

Both Electric and Grass are not as good compared to Water, but they do have their upsides.

Grass-types resist Water-type moves and are great for stalling, but are susceptible to Dragonair’s Fire Blast, so use them with caution during this fight. Examples of Grass-type Pokémon you might want to consider using are:

• Exeggutor
• Jumpluff
• Tangrowth

Electric-type Pokémon are damaged normally by Water but are immune to Thunder Wave, making them ideal matchups against Clair’s Dragonair. Pokémon like Ampharos and Lanturn are great Electric-types to use.

Our Team Comp

The team we used for this guide is as follows:

Magneton, Seadra, and Haunter will all have important roles in our strategy.

Getting TM02 (Optional)

If you’ve chosen Totodile as your starter, you don’t really need to add more Pokémon to your team just for Clair. All you need is to teach your Feraligatr Dragon Claw.

TM02 Dragon Claw can be obtained from the Daily Drawing Corner section of the Goldenrod Department Store every Sunday as the First Prize.

Each draw costs 300 PokéDollars, and you have a 10% chance of getting the First Prize for every draw. That means on average, it’ll cost you 3000 PokéDollars for each TM.

You’re able to play in the Drawing Corner as many times as you want, so just keep playing until you get the First Prize.

Here are all the prizes you can get from the Daily Drawing Corner:

Clair’s Gym Puzzle Guide

The Blackthorn City Gym has a unique set of puzzles that you need to solve to proceed. It involves moving and rotating platforms around to reach the next areas.

Each platform has three buttons in total:

• x2 directional buttons
• x1 button for rotating the platform clockwise

First Platform

The solution for the first part is relatively simple, as it teaches the basic mechanics. You’ll move in this order:

1. Left
2. Rotate
3. Rotate
4. Right

Note: Whenever you need to hit the same button twice in a row, you can just step off the button and then step back on it to trigger it again.

Once you get to the first island, there will be two unskippable trainers waiting to battle.

Second Platform

The second puzzle solution is slightly more complicated, but here’s the order to follow:

1. Up
2. Rotate
3. Right
4. Rotate
5. Rotate
6. Right

The second island has three trainers, and you can only skip one of them.

Third Platform

The solution for the third platform puzzle is much longer, as it moves across a large gap.

Here’s the exact order to follow:

1. Left
2. Rotate
3. Rotate
4. Right
5. Rotate
6. Up
7. Up
8. Up
9. Rotate
10. Right
11. Rotate
12. Up
13. Up

Clair will be waiting for you on the last island after you finish the third platform puzzle.

Battling Clair

Clair will begin the battle with Gyarados.

We will lead our party with our strongest Pokémon against it. In our case, that would be Magneton.

It’s unlikely for Magneton to outspeed Gyarados, but that’s okay since we’ll be resisting all its attacks.

Tank the attack and use Discharge to eliminate Gyarados.

Tip: You may also choose to use Light Screen first before attacking Gyarados to increase your team’s Special Defense.

Clair will likely switch to her Dragonair with Fire Blast.

• If she does swap to Dragonair then we will swap to Seadra
• If you aren’t using Seadra, you can swap to your Ice-type user instead

Seadra’s Dragon Pulse should be able to dispatch both Dragonair with ease. If you find that your Pokémon cannot OHKO Dragonair, feel free to use Focus Energy or pop an X Special Attack to increase your stats.

When she sends out Kingdra, we’ll send out Haunter & immediately use Curse afterwards.

Haunter will likely not survive any attack from Kingdra after halving its HP, so we will just sacrifice it and switch to our other Pokémon after it gets KO’d.

All we need to do now is to survive until Kingdra falls.

Clair will try to use Full Restores to keep Kingdra alive, so be sure to use recovery items as well if necessary.

Tip: You could teach some of your Pokémon TM17 Protect so you can stall for more time while waiting for the curse to set.

Eventually, Clair will run out of recovery items, and you will win the battle.

Getting the Rising Badge in the Dragon’s Den

Clair will not immediately award you with a badge after you beat her.

Instead, she will direct you to go to the Dragon’s Den to take on the Dragon-master challenge.

The Dragon’s Den is located directly behind the Gym, with the entrance surrounded by water.

You will need Pokémon that know Surf and Whirlpool in your party to access the shrine in the Dragon’s Den & claim your badge.

So when you’re ready & after you’ve defeated Clair, enter the cave behind the gym and descend the ladder.

To get to the shrine, walk south towards the broken bridge, then Surf left and then down.

You should eventually see a whirlpool, much like what you’d find in the Whirl Islands. Use Whirlpool to cross it.

Continue heading down past the whirlpool, then turn right and you will reach the entrance to the shrine.

Inside the shrine you can speak with the Master. He will ask you a few questions about your experience as a Pokémon trainer.

Your answers will not matter much if you only care about getting the badge. But if you avoid specific “incorrect” answers, the Master will give you a Dratini with ExtremeSpeed later.

ExtremeSpeed is a very strong move that Dratini normally doesn’t learn. So if you want to obtain the Dratini with ExtremeSpeed, refer to the table below for the correct answers to the quiz.

After the test, Clair will enter the shrine and will get upset that you passed.

She will then get reprimanded by the Master for her arrogance, forcing her to award you with the Rising Badge. Upon receiving the badge, you will be able to use HM07 Waterfall outside of battle.

On your way to the exit of the Dragon’s Den, Clair will bump into you again and give you TM59 Dragon Pulse.

Note: If you use Dig, Teleport, or an Escape Rope to leave the Dragon’s Den before getting TM59, you will need to return to the Blackthorn Gym to collect the TM.

And after all that, you’ve finally completed the Blackthorn City Gym & should have all 8 Johto badges.

BACK TO THE MAIN GAME Pokémon HGSS Full Strategy Guide

Guide Navigation

• Pokémon HGSS
  • How To Beat Clair in Pokémon HG/SS (Blackthorn Gym Guide)

Crumble Thorn

20 articles

Game Developer, Digital Artist, and Lifelong Pokémon enthusiast. Writes about pretty much anything Pokémon-related, and also covers other games that they happen to hyperfixate in.

View Writer's Posts →

Related Posts:

How To Beat Chuck in Pokémon HG/SS Complete Pokéathlon Guide for Pokémon HGSS (Prizes, Stats & Mechanics) How To Beat Morty in Pokémon HGSS Pokémon HGSS: Berry Jugglers Guide + Locations How To Get the ExtremeSpeed Dratini in Pokémon HGSS (Answer Table) Pokémon HGSS: All In-Game Trades + Locations How To Beat Whitney in Pokémon HGSS How To Beat Jasmine in Pokémon HG/SS