Discover Expert Pokérogue Tips

Hello everyone. I wanted to put together some tips for people starting out in the game.

This will include basic mechanics as well as some other gameplay tips. For this guide, I'm assuming you understand the key Pokemon mechanics.

Stage and Battle Mechanics

• Pokerogue is composed of many stages, each of which is either a wild battle, a trainer battle, or a boss battle.

• Wild battles are the most common, but trainer battles can happen at almost any stage.

• Boss battles can only happen at the end of a biome and when encountering legendaries.

• Before each wild battle, you can switch which Pokemon you send out to best match the situation. However, there is a MAJOR reason NOT to switch out later on: stat changes last between wild battles.

• You cannot switch out Pokemon before trainer battles. Also, stat changes are reset.

Rival

• Every so often, you will face your rival (whose name and face I forget). This happens on stages 8, 25, 55, 95, 145, and 195

• You will first face your rival around stage 8. When you beat him, he will give you an EXP Charm and an EXP ALL, which gives all your party Pokemon EXP equal to 20% of what your battling Pokemon receives.

• Every time you beat him, he will give you another EXP Charm.

• Later in the game, he will have multiple boss Pokemon, a random dragon-type, and a Mega-Rayquaza.

Items (WIP)

• You should generally take Key Items and permanent held items over everything else

• At the end of every stage, you can move items among your Pokemon with the "Transfer" option in the bottom-right. You can do this as many times as you want. This can be very useful for certain held items like Grip Claw and Golden Punch.

• A nice strategy for early stages is to pack your team with Pokemon with the Pickup ability. You can then transfer items from them to your main attackers.

Gameplay tips

• Early on, catch every decent pokemon you see. The catch rates are more generous than the official games

• Prioritize fighting with and leveling two-to-three Pokemon. You can always fill out your team with higher level Pokemon early on.

• Prioritize getting items that provide permanent boosts like EXP charms and stat boosts.

• Try to have a Pokemon with a stat-boosting attack act as your "main" later in your playthrough. The best are ones with moves that both damage and boost stats like Ancient Power.

• Tanky Pokemon with good typings are the best. No matter what you do, your Pokemon will take hits.

• If you want an easier experience, you can enable retries in the settings menu or just reload the page if a fight goes poorly for you.

• Later on, you can Mega-Evolve and G-Max certain Pokemon with the right items. Try to have at least one Pokemon that can do one of the two. I think you can only have one each, but I am not sure.

• The final stage is 200 . Before you get there, you have to beat the Elite Four and a champion. The Elite Four will all be from the same region, in the same order they appear in the original games. The champion may be from a region other than that of the Elite Four. These are at stages 182, 184, 186, 188, and 190.

  • At stage 195, you face your rival one last time. This is the hardest fight in the game. Pay attention to type match-ups and switch-outs. He has multiple boss Pokemon, so be prepared to take hits. He will always have a Rayquaza (with multiple health bars) and a dragon.. Your priority should be killing the Rayquaza. The best way is to bait the switch-in and hit with something super-effective. Then, switch to something that can tank Dragon and Flying-types. (He will always switch out on a Fairy.) It will use Fly a lot, so you can safely use a stat-boost in anticipation.

  • At stage 200, you will face Eternatus. It will heal and G-Max at low health. This will also make it a double-battle, which works to your advantage. It will also occasionally steal items. The cheap way to win is to use accuracy-lowering moves a bunch, so it can't hit you. You could also have one Pokemon use Protect every other turn in the double-battle section.

SPOILERS AHEAD FOR ONCE YOU BEAT CLASSIC MODE:

Endless Mode

• In endless mode, you fight waves of wild Pokemon. Every few stages, biomes switch. All stat changes reset on biomes switches. Endless is the best mode for grinding shinies and legendaries

• Every 50 stages, you face a Paradox Pokemon. Every 250 stages, Eternatus appears. (These count as biome changes for the purposes of stat resets.) You still cannot catch these Pokemon, but you will get Egg Vouchers for defeating them. Eternatus seems to be immune from flinching.

• After each Eternatus encounter, there will be increasing global buffs for enemy Pokemon. The first buff will be a chance to survive hits, which is a pain. Later buffs include damage/health buffs, a chance to inflict status moves, and a chance to recover from status effects.

• Over time, more and more boss Pokemon appear in battles on every stage, including double battles. Which is actually a good thing, because boss encounters are more likely to be rarer Pokemon. Master Balls can catch bosses with full HP, which is very helpful.

• The name of the game is item stacking. Focus on only one Pokemon (and an alternate for double battles). Prioritize Multi-Lens, King's Rock, Golden Punch, and Grip Claw. Once you get all of these, your main will attack 4 times (at least) a turn. All damaging moves will have a chance to steal items and flinch.

• Stack your team with shinies to improve item acquisition speed and something with Pokerus for experience gain. You should have the points to do so.

• Once you get Golden Punches and Amulet Coins, you will start accumulating money rather quickly. Use these to reroll for good items. If you fail to find one in the first few rolls, you can recover your losses with a Big Nugget.

• Once you are fully equipped and have Item Lock, start rerolling for Shiny Charms, Master Balls, and Egg Vouchers.

• Currently, the best Pokemon for endless seems to be Cloyster with Skill Link as its ability and the egg move Water Shuriken. It is a near-guaranteed crit every turn. The one problem is it may be slower than some enemies if you don't pick up enough Carboses.

• Another option in the same vein is Cinccino with the Hidden Ability Skill Link. Three of its four egg moves (Bone Rush, Icicle Spear, and Population Bomb) are multi-hit moves. I personally have not had a chance to see how well this works in action.

• Eternatus only has Poison and Dragon attacking moves. It can be stalled out with a Fairy/Steel type or a fused Shedinja. For this strat, make sure you have enough PP on random moves on the Pokemon and no berries on it for Eternatus to steal with Mini Black Hole. On PC, just hold the spacebar on a move until it runs out of PP, then move onto the next one. Eventually, Eternatus will start using Struggle and quickly kill itself.