Where To Get Leftovers in Pokémon HGSS

There are three methods of obtaining Leftovers in Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver, but only two methods are really reliable:

You can obtain Leftovers from Wild Snorlax by catching them or using an Item-stealing Move.
You can repeatedly steal Leftovers from Koga’s Swalot during an Indigo Plateau Rematch by taking advantage of game mechanics that allow you to bypass Swalot’s Sticky Hold Ability.

As for the third option:

You have a 1% chance of getting Leftovers from any Lv81+ Pokémon with the Pickup Ability, if it activates after a battle. However, this method is generally not recommended due to the extremely low probability of getting the item.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Obtaining Leftovers
How Do Leftovers Work?

Obtaining Leftovers

Method 1: Taking From Wild Snorlax

Wild Snorlax are guaranteed to have Leftovers as their Held Item in Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver. However, there’s only one Snorlax available per playthrough, and it’s only accessible after beating the game.

After beating the Elite Four for the first time, you will be given the SS Ticket which will allow you to board the S.S. Aqua in Olivine City. Boarding the ship will take you to Vermillion City in the Kanto region.

Upon reaching Vermillion City, you can find the Snorlax immediately east of the docks, blocking the way to Route 11 and Diglett’s Cave.

Snorlax blocking the way to Route 11.

Like in the older games, you will need to wake the Snorlax up first. However, the Poké Flute item is replaced with a radio station on the Pokégear.

To access the Poké Flute channel on the radio, you must first repair the Kanto Power Plant Generator first.

Once that’s done, you can activate the Poké Flute music opening your Pokégear and navigating to the Radio section. Then tune to the Poké Flute channel, which can be found somewhere in the upper region of the “tuning orb”.

The Location of the Poké Flute channel in the tuner.

Once you’ve tuned to the proper channel, you should be able to hear the radio music playing while in the overworld.

When you interact with the Snorlax while the Poké Flute music is playing, it will wake up and attack.

The Snorlax being woken up by the Poké Flute music.

Once you’re in battle with the Snorlax, you have two options.

You can use an Item-stealing move and steal the Leftovers
Or you can may just catch the Snorlax directly

Ledian using Thief to steal Snorlax’s Leftovers.

Tip: If you fail to catch the Snorlax at Route 11, it will respawn on Route 12 after beating the Elite Four again.

Method 2: Taking From Koga’s Swalot

The second way of obtaining Leftovers involves taking them from Koga’s Swalot during the Indigo Plateau Rematch. You can do this after completing all the Kanto Region Gym challenges.

This method requires a little bit of setup, but unlike the first method, this one is repeatable.

That said, this is only available much later into the post-game.

The general step-by-step technique is as follows:

Enter the battle with a Pokémon who knows Skill Swap*, Worry Seed, or Gastro Acid
Use Skill Swap*, Worry Seed, or Gastro Acid against the opponent
Use Thief, Trick, or Switcheroo to steal the opponent’s item.

*Not applicable if your Pokémon has the Ability Sticky Hold

If your Pokémon has the Ability Mold Breaker, you can skip the first two steps and immediately use the Item-stealing Move.

Koga’s Rematch Team

Koga will have a different team for his rematch, but he will still specialize in Poison-type Pokémon.

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Pokémon	Level	Type/s	Ability	Held Item	Moveset
Skuntank (♂)	Lv. 61	Poison Dark	Aftermath Damages the foe landing the finishing hit.	–	Toxic Dig Sucker Punch Explosion
Venomoth (♂)	Lv. 63	Bug Poison	Tinted Lens Doubles the power of this Pokémon’s “not very effective” attacks.	–	Baton Pass Double Team Silver Wind Psychic
Toxicroak (♂)	Lv. 60	Poison Fighting	Dry Skin Reduces HP if it is hot. Water restores HP.	–	Swagger X-Scissor Cross Chop Gunk Shot
Swalot (♂)	Lv. 62	Poison	Sticky Hold Protects the Pokémon from item theft.	Leftovers	Sludge Bomb Amnesia Pain Split Yawn
Crobat (♂)	Lv. 64	Poison Flying	Inner Focus The Pokémon is protected from flinching.	–	Fly Cross Poison Mean Look Toxic
Muk (♂)	Lv. 62	Poison	Sticky Hold Protects the Pokémon from item theft.	Black Sludge	Minimize Screech Swagger Toxic

You may notice that Swalot has the Sticky Hold Ability, which will prevent you from taking their Held Item.

We’ll take advantage of some game mechanics to allow us to bypass that problem.

How To Disable Sticky Hold

There are a couple of Moves that either replace or suppress the opponent’s Ability. These are Skill Swap, Worry Seed, and Gastro Acid.

1. Skill Swap causes the user to swap Abilities with the target. It’s not learned naturally by any Pokémon, and must be taught via TM. TM48 Skill Swap can be obtained by defeating Sabrina, the Gym Leader of Fuschia City. Note that you can only get one copy of TM48 per playthrough, so make sure not to waste it!

2. Worry Seed replaces the Ability of the target with Insomnia, which prevents it from being able to sleep.

3. Gastro Acid nullifies the target’s Ability until it is switched out.

Parasect using Worry Seed.

Some Pokémon learn Worry Seed and Gastro Acid normally, but you can also have your Pokémon learn these moves from the Move Tutors in the Battle Frontier.

We have listed all the Moves that allow you to replace or disable Sticky Hold, as well as the Pokémon we recommend you use against Koga below.

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Move	Type	Effect	Suggested Pokémon
Skill Swap	Psychic	Swaps Abilities with the target.	Banette, Bronzong, Chimecho, Claydol(HG), Dusclops, Espeon, Exeggutor, Gardevoir, Grumpig, Haunter, Hypno, Jynx, Kadabra, Mismagius, Mr. Mime, Slowbro, Venomoth, Xatu
Worry Seed	Psychic	Replaces the target’s Ability with Insomnia.	Exeggutor
Gastro Acid	Dark	Suppresses the Ability of the target while it is in battle.	Arbok, Victreebel

Note: We have only listed Pokémon that are obtainable without trading from other games. Pokémon labeled as (HG) are only available in HeartGold.

Alternate Technique: Mold Breaker

Mold Breaker is an Ability that allows you to ignore the opponent’s Abilities, including Sticky Hold. This allows you to skip disabling the Ability to begin with.

There are only two Pokémon that have this Ability: Pinsir and Rampardos.

Only Pinsir is available in HeartGold/SoulSilver, so that’s what we’d have to use. You can catch Pinsir at the National Park during Bug-Catching Contests.

Tip: These methods of bypassing Abilities will also work on Koga’s Muk if you want to steal their Black Sludge too! We recommend picking a Poison-type Pokémon to do so.

Other Ways To Take Items in Battle

Using the Move Thief is not the only way of taking items from opposing Pokémon. You can also use Trick or Switcheroo as well.

Parasect stealing Swalot’s Leftovers after using Thief.

Trick and Switcheroo are essentially the same Move. Both of them cause you to swap Held Items with your target.

If you use Trick or Switcheroo without holding an Item, you will just end up stealing the target’s item instead.

Below we have listed all the Item-stealing Moves that you can use, as well as the Pokémon we recommend you use against Koga below.

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Move	Type	Effect	Suggested Pokémon
Thief	Dark	Attacks and steals the opponent’s Item if user has no Held Item.	Arbok, Banette, Butterfree, Carnivine, Dusclops, Exeggutor, Gardevoir, Grumpig, Haunter, Hypno, Jynx, Kadabra, Mismagius, Mr. Mime, Pinsir, Venomoth, Victreebel, Xatu
Trick	Psychic	Swaps Held Items with the opponent.	Banette, Bronzong, Chimecho, Claydol(HG), Dusclops, Espeon, Gardevoir, Grumpig, Haunter, Hypno, Jynx, Kadabra, Mismagius, Mr. Mime, Slowbro, Xatu
Switcheroo	Dark	Swaps Held Items with the opponent.	Arbok, Hypno

Note: We have only listed Pokémon that are obtainable without trading from other games. Pokémon marked as (HG) are only available in HeartGold.

We have carefully chosen the Pokémon in this list so that they can have both the Ability-suppressing move and Item-stealing Move together. This will allow you to have 5 other Pokémon to battle with instead of just 4.

Stealing from Koga

Once you’ve decided on your Pokémon and Move combination, you can proceed to challenge the Elite four.

Once you’ve reached Koga, continue battling as normal until he switches to Swalot. Once he does, swap to your chosen Pokémon.

If you decide to bring a Mold Breaker Pinsir, you can immediately use the Item-stealing move. Otherwise, use your Ability-suppressing move of choice to disable Sticky Hold. Afterwards, you should be free to take the Leftovers.

Method 3: Pickup

A Zigzagoon with the Pickup Ability.

The Pickup Ability gives a Pokémon a 10% chance to generate an item as their Held Item after every battle.

Pickup’s item pool changes every 10 levels. And at Lv. 81 and above, Pickup has a 1% chance to give you Leftovers whenever it activates.

This means you have a 0.1% chance of obtaining Leftovers after every battle.

Note: This method is the only way to get Leftovers before the first Elite Four match. But it would require grinding a Pickup Pokémon up above level 80, then continually grinding battles until that Pokémon picks up a Leftovers held item.

And as mentioned earlier in this guide, we do not recommend using this method for farming Leftovers because of the abysmal probabilities.

With that said, if you absolutely want some Leftovers before Kanto, then using Pickup is your only option (aside from trading).

How Do Leftovers Work?

The Leftovers is an item that, when held, restores 1/16 of the Pokémon’s max HP after every turn.

Virtually any Pokémon can benefit from holding Leftovers. But the best Pokémon to have Leftovers with are those with high HP, Defense, and Special Defense stats.

Leftovers are often used on stall Pokémon in tandem with an Invulnerability move such as Protect or Detect to take advantage of the free healing after every turn.

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Crumble Thorn

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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.

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