>>56064709For berry specialists it tends to not matter so much, but the penalty is very much real in that an already evolved Pokémon cannot match the full potential of a base-stage Pokémon. For things like skill levels and carry capacity, this matters a ton to skill specialists and ingredient specialists.
The added effort needed to befriend an evolved Pokémon often doesn't justify it, and although you do get it at a higher level.
The benefits of befriending an evolved can include:
>Avoiding running baby Pokémon for any period of time (as they contribute very little at this stage).>Avoiding difficult or expensive evolution requirements (e.g. 150 hrs sleep, gender restrictions, items that cost sleep points, level+candy costs)>Receiving high level PokémonThis is why I aimed to befriend a Sylveon rather than evolve one. I won't need it as a healer as my Wiggly fulfil that role perfectly.
It turned out this Sylveon actually has a lot of potential with a great subskill spread, but of course it only has main skill level 1 so would need a lot of main skill seed investment which isn't worth it.
Those seeds cost 1800 sleep points each and you can only get one a month on a premium plan. That is a lot to save through doing one evolution.
I will mention that I'm actually running a Victreebel that was befriended as a Weepinbell.
It was hungry so I just went with it, and it turned out to have a great ingredient and subskill spread with Ingredient Finder M, BFS, and later on skill level and trigger S to compensate for the evolution it missed out on.
There would also be my BFS Raichu, which was befriended as a Pikachu. This doesn't matter too much since carry capacity and skill level really don't matter to a Raichu. Befriending a Pikachu costs a little more than a Pichu, but you skip time-gated evolution in doing so.
Befriending a Raichu would also save you a thunderstone, which you might need for an Eevee.
