How to Beat Maylene: Veilstone City Gym Guide

This guide covers everything you need to know to beat the Veilstone City Gym Leader, Maylene, in Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, a Pokemon remake for the Nintendo Switch. Read on to learn about Maylene's Pokemon team, Maylene's type specialty, recommended Pokemon to use against Maylene, and how to beat the Veilstone City Gym.

Maylene's Pokemon Team and Types

Type and Suggested Level

Type Specialty
Suggested Level	Lv. 33 ~ Lv. 36

Maylene's Pokemon

Pokemon	Type	Ability / Item	Moves
Meditite (Lvl. 27)		Pure Power Light Clay	・Drain Punch ・Light Screen ・Flash ・Bulk Up
Machoke (Lvl. 27)		Guts Expert Belt	・Low Sweep ・Knock Off ・Rock Tomb ・Bulldoze
Lucario (Lvl. 30)		Steadfast Big Root	・Drain Punch ・Screech ・Metal Claw ・Bulk Up

Maylene's Veilstone Gym Puzzle

The Veilstone City Gym features several boxing rings that the player has to navigate around as they make their way to Maylene. Push the partition walls in the right way to create a path straight to this gym's Fighting Type Leader.

Gym Puzzle Solution Video

Veilstone City Gym Puzzle Solution

How to Beat Maylene

Don't Let Meditite Set Up Light Screens

Since Fighting types usually have a lower Special Defense, it's in your best interest to stop Meditite from settng up a Light Screen. Maylene's Meditite has Light Clay, allowing it to keep up a Light Screen for a longer amount of turns. Killing off Medititie before it can set up a this defensive strategy will help you out in the long run.

Alternatively you can use Brick Break to destroy the Light Screen without waiting for it to fade. However, thanks to Meditite's Psychic type, this will only deal neutral damage. It might get even tougher once it earns a few Bulk Ups under its belt making it harder to take down with Physical Moves.

It might even use Flash to lower your accuracy if the battle plays out for too long making it even more of a nuisance to take down. Overall the best strategy is to eliminate Meditite as fast as possible.

Bring Flying, Ghost, or Psychic Type Pokemon

It will be pretty hard to go toe-to-toe with the Fighting-type's offensive capabilities. Bringing Pokemon with key resistances will be just as useful as bringing a Pokemon that can deal super-effective damage.

Notable suggestions include Gyarados/Staraptor who offer the added benefit of Intimidate, Golbat/Crobat with the 4x resistance thanks to their unique typing, and Haunter/Drifblim who are flat-out immune to Maylene's fighting-type moves.

Best Team to Beat Maylene

When Starting with Turtwig

Best Team to Beat Maylene When Starting With Turtwig
Staraptor	Gyarados	Torterra

Sending out Staraptor first gives you a fast and strong way to deal with Meditite. Access to Aerial Ace will also allow you to bypass the accuracy drops that you may receive because of Flash.

You may even use this chance to stack up Double Teams to raise your evasiveness to better prepare yourself for the upcoming powerhouses. Just don't stall for too long and don't let Meditite build up it's phyiscal stats with Bulk Up.

Gyarados is a great partner for Staraptor for this battle to take on Lucario. Gyarados will have natural resistances against both of Lucario's moves, while also having Intimidate to cripple Lucario's offense. You can continuously switch between Staraptor and Gyarados to severely lower Lucario's Attack as well. Hopefully, you'll have kept Brine as one of its moves just in case it's physical bulk becomes too much to handle.

When Starting with Chimchar

Best Team to Beat Maylene When Starting With Chimchar
Haunter	Gyarados	Infernape

Haunter's Special Attack is almost as high as Kadabra's while also giving it an immunity against Maylene's Fighting types.

It also offers a type-advantage over Meditite and is likely to kill it in one hit with Hex. Trainers may have to be wary of Machoke's Knock Off,

When push comes to shove, Haunter may afflict the biggest threat, Lucario, with a Curse that will take away a quarter of its health every turn. This will likely come at the expense of Haunter's life but back-up members of the team such as Gyarados, with its key resistances to Lucario's moves will be able to whittle down the enemy and secure the victory.

When Starting with Piplup

Best Team to Beat Maylene When Starting With Piplup
Crobat	Mew	Empoleon

One of the fastest Pokemon available in the game, Crobat offers a 4x resistance to Maylene's Fighting-type Pokemon, while also sporting Pluck as a strong physical Flying-move and Air-Cutter - a Special move with a high Critical Hit ratio you can rely on when the opponents have bulked up their defenses.

Players will have to be wary not to afflict poison (or any status for that matter) against Machoke at the risk of activating it's Guts ability which will make it a larger threat. Focus on dealing damage and healing up when things start to look dicey.

Mew can also serve as a back-up option thanks to it's TM versatility and natural resistance to fighting types. Helpful TMs available at this stage of the game include Taunt and Double Team; the former allows you to prevent Lucario from setting up Bulk Ups and Screeches, while the latter gives you a chance to evade Lucario's attacking moves. The TM for Pluck should be available as well to give you a reliable move against these fighting-types.

All Maylene Battles

Previous and Next Gym Leaders

Pokemon BDSP Related Links

Related Story Pages

Complete Story Walkthrough

Gym Leaders

All Gym Leader Types and Pokemon

Gym Leader Rematches

All Gym Leader Rematch Teams