Playing the POCKET MYTH early game with pressure

Introduction

This game's Pokémon re-create childhood memories very faithfully. If you want nostalgia, play free-to-play; if you want to shorten the development time, buy the monthly card. Apart from the speed at which you sweep wild Pokémon for Mushrooms, this guide is the same for free-to-play and light spenders.

Starting on a New Server

This game opens a new server every day, and entering a new server on the weekend gives double experience and Shiny Coin drop bonuses, so I suggest starting on a weekend morning.

Initial Choices

You start in Pallet Town. For your starter, pick the Grass type that can put opponents to sleep, such as Bulbasaur; that saves you the trouble of catching the starter trio later. Follow the story. After you throw your first Poké Ball you can activate the monthly card; if you are going to activate it, do it now, because early returns are the biggest. The main benefits are fast Fatigue clearing and a 10% experience bonus, which is essential for level racing. Starting on a weekend with the monthly card, you can reach level 50 in 2 days and beat Professor Oak that same night, earning the UR held item Leftovers, a half-complete held item for the early, mid and late game. While doing the story you can use auto-pathing. When experience stalls at a level, walk the old story route again: pick up all the Poké Balls, beat all the wild trainers, and finish the side quests that give experience and held items (some have story battles). All of this is experience and is the key to reaching 50 in 2 days. Follow the story for trainer dungeons and keep natural recovery running as much as possible; that is more than 200 Stamina a day, and with the monthly card, double that becomes 500 experience. On the first day you must reach the daily bounties: clearing them all is more than 2000 experience, and note that the deadline is 11 PM. Buy all the diamond Stamina: 10 purchases with the monthly card, 6 as free-to-play.

Your First Map Pusher

Mt. Moon

Save around a hundred Fatigue here and catch a Drilbur on Mt. Moon. It is Ground/Steel with high Attack and high HP and needs to be two stars, and it is there to handle the Zapdos that walls you at the Power Plant: Ground does not take Electric moves, Flying deals half damage to Steel, and it learns Rock moves for four-times damage against Electric/Flying.

Your First Special Wall

This is where you get Clodsire, a graduation-grade special wall. This thing is thoroughly obnoxious: Unaware, built with HP and Special Defense, holding an Ability Shield and Tera Ghost, special attackers at the same investment basically cannot break through its defense. Tera into any defensive type you like and even Gen 4-9 legendary special attackers can only stare at it. One Toxic can ruin an opponent's whole day, it learns Amnesia on its own to stack even more Special Defense on top of an already huge number, and if you cannot kill it, it may as well be the face of the game.

Story Choke Points

Because you bring Pikachu, the Water Gym will not wall you, and because you bring Excadrill, Zapdos will not wall you. Every story fight along the way can be cleared with a little investment. Speaking of investment, let me explain Pokémon star-up: apart from Pikachu and Eevee (the others are rarely used), you always raise the target's juvenile form to the highest star level of its low stage before evolving it. For example, an SSR juvenile raised to two stars before evolving dismantles into 25 shards, and a UR juvenile raised to three stars before evolving gives 50 shards, which greatly lowers the cost of raising it. The rest is Gym mazes. In the Poison Gym, walk in and follow the right-hand wall all the way around until you reach the left side of the boss, and you can walk straight up to the boss. In the Psychic Gym, step on the first switch and then go up and down through 3 rooms on the right; after that, keep walking diagonally.

About the Gacha

Your First Offensive Support

Toedscruel, whose graduation held item, the Binding Belt, we just covered, is now the flagship Pokémon of binding teams. You can catch it after clearing the Psychic Gym. Its Special Defense is outstanding, arguably top five among SSRs; its Speed is not slow at 100; it learns a 100% accuracy Spore, and it learns binding moves that stop the opponent from escaping. This game's rule is that only one of the four major status conditions (sleep, paralysis, poison or badly poisoned, and freeze) can be present at the same time, so you cannot put the opponent to sleep and poison them to death, but binding damage over time can coexist with sleep. That gives you a sleep-plus-binding control system, and the Binding Belt increases binding damage: at six stars it is 30% per turn, unaffected by any attack, defense or HP stat. In other words, in player battles, even if my level 1 binds your level 100, without any recovery you die in exactly 4 turns. So the plan writes itself: as long as I am faster than you, I put you to sleep, bind you, and four turns later you die in your sleep while I am untouched. Be bolder: my Special Defense is also high, so after Speed I put points into Special Defense. Even if you are Grass and immune to my Spore, I simply bind you and nearly a third of your HP per turn is more than you can take. If you want to hit me, my Special Defense is even higher than my Speed; without setup you can do nothing to me, and by the time you finish setting up your HP has drained away. What would you hit me with? The whole thing is unsolvable. It clears most stages outside Ghost types, including the Trial Grounds. Many players online say they cannot beat it; with Toedscruel it is just slower, and most of it falls. For what cannot be bound, put it to sleep and switch in Pikachu to set up. Back to Professor Oak: he is a level 100 boss unlocked by finishing the story at level 50, a side quest that gives the UR held item Leftovers, and an early nightmare. But once you switch to the Binding Belt and raise Toedscruel to roughly a 400-plus Speed stat, you gamble on Oak's lead Venusaur using Tera Poison, take one hit and put it to sleep. Then drink three Speed +2 diamond potions, 90 diamonds in total, to be faster than every Pokémon Oak has, and you can take down all six of Professor Oak's Pokémon in one run with the sleep-and-bind combo without ever losing.

What to Spend Diamonds On

Diamonds are saved up bit by bit, and many players do not know the best use. The answer is the Pokémon Wish Pool. Because Awakening exists, the Pokémon from the wish pool can be used for Awakening while also giving a large number of shards, coins and IV medicines, so diamonds get reused and one investment returns many times over. Which Pokémon should you take? Kyogre, the free-to-play god of war, because its signature item boosts Water, and the signature item's 80% boost, Choice Specs' 75% and Water Gem's 65% are all options depending on your budget. Kyogre is also flexible: it can run a special-attack team sweeper, and with the five Water boosts of rain, Tera Water, same-type bonus, Water move and Water held item, it needs no setup at all and instantly blows away unboosted non-special-walls on the other side; or it can run a bulky Sheer Cold build with HP and Special Defense, holding a Shed Shell to be immune to binding pressure while adding even more bulk, and it cannot be trapped by Shadow Tag, so it does not fear Perish Song. After Mega, the heavy rain weather turns Fire off and Unaware Skeledirge falls silent. Clodsire is the physical-side wall and physical attackers struggle to break it, but Kyogre can: whether it stays in or switches out, it eats a Sheer Cold, and a hit is a kill regardless of level, Clodsire included, and it would love nothing more than for Clodsire to stay in. When HP gets low, Rest to heal. The whole plan is to fish for the kill and break through. I can make many mistakes; one hit is all I need.

Where the Resources Go

Do all of the above and a monthly-card player can reach level 44 on day one, then clear all wild Pokémon and Poké Balls on day two to reach level 50, or reach 50 in the small hours of day three. Free-to-play players lag a little but still reach level 40-plus; what they mainly lack is effort Mushrooms. A monthly-card player can then make a three-star Toedscruel and Clodsire, or a four-star Toedscruel, with close to 200 Berries converted from effort, so early map pushing is pressure-free. Save your diamonds and, when the Kyogre wish pool arrives, go all in: at least four laps, which is four Kyogres. Keep the bodies for Awakening, eat the shards, unlock the ability, and you end up with a high-star Kyogre plus nearly 20 million coins, more than 1500 IV medicines and several Master Balls. At that point Kyogre can have its IVs filled in for as many Vs as possible, Tera Water, rain up, holding Choice Specs or a Water Gem, with 100 points in Special Attack and HP EVs, knowing Thunderbolt: open with rain plus Tera plus Origin Pulse, with no setup, and it can blast five of the opponent's Pokémon. Apart from effort Mushrooms, everything above is free in principle. Within 30 days, raise Toedscruel and Clodsire to 5 stars, put 100 points into their Special Defense, HP and Speed EVs, and 25 into their IVs. With an account like that your level is very high: Toedscruel leads, anything Toedscruel cannot handle goes to Clodsire as a pivot (holding an Eject Button) and then into Kyogre, and anything that counters Kyogre pivots back into Toedscruel, and you can beat 95% of the players on your server. If you want to crush people with money, without pulling Y Mewtwo at the start there is simply no answer. If Clodsire ever gets a recovery move, swap the Eject Button for an Ability Shield or Leftovers, and even the early bully Gholdengo will not work: not that it cannot win, but that it cannot kill, and it will run out of PP without killing.

Dynamax

Dynamax is an important mode and it is very tough if you play it normally, but there is a trick, and there is really only one. Early on your resources are limited, so you have to use a Quick Claw to gamble on Trick Room (Porygon-Z learns it natively) and then use Trick (Banette learns it natively) to swap the opponent's Apple onto yourself; after that, bring three candle Pokémon with Pain Split, which can take away seven-eighths of the boss's HP, and fight the rest out. Mid-game, if you can afford M Balls, buy the Banette Mega Stone first, which removes the gambling part: use Trick to swap a Full Incense onto the opponent in place of their Leftovers, while also guaranteeing that the opponent moves last. Late game, if you pull the Life Orb held item, bring two Banettes: the first swaps away the Leftovers, and after three Pain Splits the second uses the Life Orb to swap away the Full Incense, so the boss loses 10% of its HP with every attack. Throw in a tank to hold out for about 3 turns and the opponent simply dies on its own.

Postscript

A team like this has no story choke points in the early, mid or late game. Before you have Kyogre, a four-star Raichu flattens everything, and anything it cannot push, Toedscruel grinds down, so both PvP and PvE feel good.