Frequently asked questions

PokeTactics is a free Pokémon manager roguelike you play in the browser. You don't control a trainer — you manage one: you build the roster, raise facilities, look after your team's spirits, choose the route across a condensed Kanto and prepare every fight. The battles themselves play out automatically, following the plan you set. No two runs are alike.

Cross the whole map: a run spans 25 zones of a condensed Kanto, with eight gyms and their badges along the way and the Elite Four waiting at the end. Beat them and the run is won. If your entire team falls before that, the run is over — you start the next one from scratch, but never from nothing: your account progress stays.

Everything that decides it. Your job happens before the fight: who is on the team, what each Pokémon carries, which moves it uses and in what order, when to switch, when to drink a potion, how to spend your gold, which route to take and which risks are worth it. When the battle starts, your team executes your plan on its own and obeys it exactly — so what you decided in the prep panel is precisely what you'll see on the field.

It's not a guess. Before each fight, the game actually plays that battle many times — against the real rival, with your real team, items and tactical plan — and measures how many of those times you win. That measurement is the number you see. Every change you make in the prep panel recalculates it instantly, so you can experiment and keep what raises it. When you decide to fight, one real resolution of that same battle plays out.

It is a fan project, unofficial and not affiliated with, licensed, sponsored or endorsed by Nintendo, Game Freak, Creatures or The Pokémon Company. Pokémon and all related names, characters, types and trademarks belong to their owners; they appear here referentially, with no intent to infringe any right nor to replace or imitate an official product.

The game is free from start to finish in the browser: not a single zone, Pokémon, difficulty or ending is locked behind a payment, and there is no pay-to-win. The only things sold are cosmetics and conveniences.

No, because there is nothing to buy with money. PokeTactics is 100% free and 100% completable for free: no subscription, no paid currency, no loot boxes. Everything that decides a run — your roster, your tactics, your route, your gold, your relics — is earned by playing.

The only currency is Tokens, and they are earned by playing, always. They are spent in the Store:

• Cosmetics — frames, backgrounds, avatars and effects. Pure style.
• Eggs and vitamins — starting options and variety, not raw power.
• A few comfort advantages for free runs, such as more Backpack room or a starter kit.

Those advantages do not count in the Daily Run or the Weekly Challenge, which are what feed the leaderboards: there everyone plays the same seed under the same rules.

No. Your run is saved as you play, so you can close the game and pick it up later right where you left it, as many times as you like. How long it takes is up to you: how much you stop to prepare each fight, and the path you choose across the map.

It's the screen you see before every fight, and it's where the game is really played. On one side, the win forecast; on the other, tabs that shape your plan: Matchups (who opens and who comes out against each rival), Moves (each Pokémon's attack sequence), Tactics (your standing plan of rules), Item (what each member carries and which relics are active) and Settings. From here you can also Scout the rival for gold, save and apply tactic Templates, and check the real stats this battle will be played with. Every change recalculates the forecast instantly. When you're satisfied, you launch the fight and watch your plan play out.

The needle follows a real measurement: the game plays the battle many times with everything you configured and counts your wins. The word in the middle gives you the band without faking precision it doesn't have: Reckless, Risky, Even, Edge and Favourable. An arrow also tells you whether your last change improved or worsened it. Use it as your laboratory: swap a Pokémon, an item, a rule — the forecast reacts point by point. The tension of the game is deciding how much risk you accept, because a good number is never a guarantee and a bad one is never a sentence.

It's the Pokémon you open the fight with, chosen on the Matchups tab. It takes the field on turn 1 and is the one that spends the opening energy from the reserve, so it shapes the first attacks and the first type matchup. If your pick is fainted, the first member still standing opens instead. On top of that, the "Save for key" item rule reserves potions for the lead specifically, so this choice also decides who the team heals when things go wrong.

It holds what changes from fight to fight: which Pokémon opens the battle and which of yours comes out against each specific rival on the enemy team. It's a reactive answer: when that rival takes the field, your team spends a turn making the switch, and during that turn you eat its attack. The sword and shield icons on each candidate tell you how hard it hits and how hard it gets hit. With nothing assigned, your active Pokémon holds and only rotates via the Health and Type rules. Assignments here override your general rules for those rivals — this is the tab for tailoring the plan to the exact team in front of you.

On Matchups, besides assigning who comes out against each rival, you can set for that specific rival what your team looks for when attacking it: the same five Objective options — damage, secure KO, status, boost or recovery — but applied to that rival alone.

Global is the default and means "no preference of its own": against that rival the team uses the Objective rule you set in Tactics.

It's for pointed cases: put secure KO on the fragile rival that kills you if it survives one more turn, save status for the wall you won't punch down, and keep the rest of the fight on raw damage.

Build each Pokémon's attack sequence: which move to try first and when to move on to the next. Every entry carries its own rule — once, N times, until a buff is stacked, until its objective is met, or below an HP threshold — and the team walks the list top to bottom until it finds the first entry that is affordable and still live. An entry skips itself when it can't act: not enough energy, or the rival's type nullifies it entirely (Ground against a Flying type). With an empty sequence, your Objective rule chooses. Who wins when the sequence clashes with another rule is up to you in Tactics, by moving the "Moves" row up or down.

Every entry in the sequence carries a rule saying when the plan moves on to the next move:

• Always — used whenever its turn comes, no condition.
• Once — a single use in the whole fight, then on to the next.
• Repeat — up to N uses in the whole fight.
• Until it lands — repeats the move until its effect is on (rival asleep, poisoned, your buff up). The moment it is, the plan moves on — and if the effect drops or is cured, it goes back to it. For on-or-off effects.
• Until stacked — for effects that deepen: repeats until N stacks of the status are accumulated (or its own cap, whichever comes first), then moves on. "Dance twice, then attack."
• By HP — live only while your own HP is at X% or lower.

It's your standing plan, valid for every fight until you change it. It shows the whole plan as an ordered list of rules — Matchups, Items, Health, Moves, Rival type — and each turn the first rule that applies and can be carried out wins. You drag to reorder them and decide who overrules whom, set the team's stance, and choose the Objective rule: what your team looks for when attacking if no higher rule acted. It also lets you see at a glance the two rules edited on their own tabs, and flags a rule as inert when it can never fire (nobody assigned, no charges left, you chose never to rotate on type…).

Each turn holds one single action, and several rules can ask for it at once. The rule is one: the one highest in the list wins. The five rules are:

• Matchups — send in the Pokémon you assigned to the rival that just came out.
• Items — spend a charge from the medicine bag.
• Health — pull back the hurt active.
• Moves — play the live entry of its sequence.
• Rival type — rotate to a better matchup.

If the winning rule cannot be carried out — nobody to send, no charge left, no better matchup — the turn passes to the next one instead of being wasted. The last row, attacking by your Objective, doesn't move: it's what the team does when no other rule acted.

A standing risk setting applied every turn that costs no action at all:

• Balanced — no modifiers: damage dealt and taken are normal. The neutral option.
• Safe — you take 18% less damage in exchange for hitting 10% softer. Good for holding until a team-mate finishes the job, or surviving a faster rival.
• Aggressive — you hit 28% harder but take 20% more. Good when you can kill in one or two turns; dangerous if the rival endures.

It's the lever for tilting an even fight without touching anything else in the plan.

It decides when your active Pokémon retreats on its own because it's hurt. Once it drops below the threshold you set, the AI swaps it for a bench member. The options are Never switch (the default), at 25% HP, at 50% HP and at 75% HP.

The cost is real: retreating saves the Pokémon, but the switch spends the whole turn and the rival attacks for free. The higher the threshold, the more conservative and the slower the fight; at 25% you squeeze every point, but a crit can drop it before it pulls out.

Below the threshold you can tune two more things: who comes in (a specific team-mate, or the best available if you don't choose) and how many times at most the retreat may fire in one battle, so a high threshold doesn't rotate your whole team through one bad matchup.

It's what your team looks for when picking an attack, once no higher rule has acted:

• Prioritise damage — the hardest hit, counting STAB and effectiveness. The default and the most reliable.
• Prioritise secure KO — if some attack certainly faints the rival this turn, it uses it, and among the finishers picks the cheapest in energy; if none finishes, it leans on type weakness to get there sooner.
• Prioritise status — poison, sleep, paralysis, burn: hits softer now in exchange for grinding or disabling the rival all fight long.
• Prioritise boost — moves that raise your own stats. You lose the early turns to hit far harder later.
• Prioritise recovery — moves that heal the Pokémon itself. Stretches fights enormously.

You can override it rival by rival on Matchups.

It decides how your team reacts to the type matchup, and it only looks at types — HP is governed by Health:

• Always hold — never switches on type. It only rotates via Health or a Matchups assignment. The default.
• Switch on disadvantage — retreats only when the rival is super-effective against it. Reacts to clearly bad matchups and ignores the rest.
• Avoid unfavourable matchups — retreats from any net-unfavourable matchup, super-effective or not. The most cautious: avoids nearly all type damage, but spends many turns switching.
• Seek type advantage — on top of fleeing bad matchups, actively rotates to a clearly better Pokémon against the current rival. The most switch-happy.

Every switch costs a whole turn in which you eat an attack.

It decides what the potions in your Backpack get spent on — the medicine bag, not one charge more:

• Item at 25% HP — spends a charge restoring HP when the active drops below 25%. Squeezes every charge, but cuts it fine.
• Item at 50% HP — the same, at 50%. The usual balance: heals before real danger.
• Status items only — saves charges to clear poison, sleep, paralysis or burn the moment they appear, and never spends them on HP. Good against rivals that grind rather than hit.
• Save for key — only heals your lead. For runs where one Pokémon carries the team.
• No items — no automatic charge at all; no turn lost healing.

The two HP thresholds never touch status conditions, and drinking a potion consumes the whole turn.

Each team member can carry two kinds of item. The held item improves its stats for the whole battle and is never used up. The consumable (a potion from your Backpack) is drunk mid-fight according to your Items rule — to restore HP below the threshold you set, or to cure a status — and is gone forever once drunk; drinking it costs the turn. A potion assigned to a Pokémon is reserved for it; loose ones can be drunk by whoever is on the field. Below sit the team's relics, which you can add or remove from the Reserve before fighting.

You pay gold before the fight and the report reveals, for every Pokémon on the rival team, the moves it will fight with and the item it holds. Nothing else — not its hidden stats, not its plan.

It gives you no combat advantage: the rival would show all of it eventually anyway. What it gives you is planning on data instead of guesses: with the report in hand you assign on Matchups whoever resists its attacks and pin on Moves the one that finishes it.

The fee is not symbolic. It starts from a base and rises with the rival team's size and with how deep the run has gone, so mid-run it lands in the hundreds and against a boss's full roster in the thousands: that gold will not be going to the shop or the facilities. And the report is good for that fight only — the next round of a gym has to be paid for again.

Yes, with a Re-Adjust: you pause the fight and rewrite how your team acts from that turn on — tactics, move sequences, priorities, stance. What's no longer touchable is the team and the items: those were decided before the fight began.

You get a limited number per battle: 4, the same for everyone. That's a deliberate bound — the fight is meant to be won in preparation, and unlimited pause-and-rewrite would turn it into live steering, which is exactly what this game isn't.

A saved photograph of the tactics you currently have set up — stance, rules, thresholds, priority order, move sequences and matchups — which you can apply with one tap in any later fight, rename or overwrite. They only store what anyone can configure by hand in the panel, so they save time and never grant power. Every account can keep up to 3 saved templates.

The comfort options for the fight itself, such as battle playback speed. Nothing here changes the outcome — only how you watch it.

Combat is turn-based. Each turn, who acts first is decided by Speed and the move's priority — the HUD shows the turn order. On its turn, each side takes one action: attack following its plan, switch Pokémon, or drink a potion (which consumes the whole turn). Your side picks that action by walking your Tactics list: the first rule that applies and can be carried out wins; if none acts, your Objective rule chooses the attack. At the end of the turn the field acts on its own — weather, terrain or a gym's mechanic.

Energy is a single reserve the whole team shares during a fight: every move has a cost and it's paid from there. It does not recharge on its own each turn, so managing it is part of the plan — if you run dry, your Pokémon falls back on Struggle. Some healing moves return a little.

Whatever is left when the fight ends goes back into the run's reserve, which starts at 100 and grows with every gym badge. Pokémon Centers refill it completely, the Dorms recover some after each battle and raise its ceiling, and the Fear status blocks your most expensive attacks.

The 18 Pokémon types behave the way veterans expect: each attack's type is strong, weak or useless against the defender's types, and dual types combine their two halves. You don't have to memorise the chart: the game shows effectiveness right where you decide, the in-game glossary documents every type, and the win forecast already accounts for all of it. A move your rival is immune to even skips itself in your sequence.

Some fights are played on a field that acts on its own at the end of every turn: it can strike, inflict statuses or favour certain types. Weather ranges from rain, harsh sun, sandstorm, hail or fog to stranger skies like thunderstorms, auroras or an eclipse; terrains include electric, grassy, psychic and misty fields, caves, glaciers and more. Before every such fight, a field briefing explains exactly what it will do, so you can pick the team that survives it — not just the one that hits hardest.

Every stop on the route offers something:

• Wild Pokémon — a fight, and your chance to catch.
• Trainer — a harder fight for better rewards.
• Event — a narrative scene with choices and consequences.
• Shop — spend gold on items and potions.
• Pokémon Center — heals the team.
• Treasure — a find.
• Team Rocket — trouble.
• Gym — the leader, their badge and a relic.

The map is procedural: which nodes appear, and which path you take between them, changes every run.

Temporary conditions that change a Pokémon's performance: some damage it every turn, some steal its turn, some strengthen it. Each shows an icon with its remaining duration — some last a fixed number of turns, others until cured or until the fight ends. Several stack in stages, each stage deepening the effect up to a cap.

They come from moves, items, relics, the field and gym mechanics. There are type immunities: a Fire type can't be burned, an Ice type can't be frozen, Poison and Steel can't be poisoned, and Electric can't be paralysed. Piling up negative statuses also drains that Pokémon's morale.

Five statuses are primary (major): poison, burn, paralysis, sleep and freeze. As in the mainline games, a Pokémon can carry only one at a time: if one is already on, a second attempt simply doesn't land — worth remembering when you build a sequence of status moves.

None of them expires on a turn counter: they stay until something cures them, except sleep (1 to 3 turns) and freeze (which can break on its own). Every other status — confusion, silence, shields, buffs, stat rises and drops — is not primary and coexists fine with a primary and with each other.

Fourteen, each with its icon, duration and in-game description:

• Primary (one at a time): poison, burn, paralysis, sleep, freeze.
• Turn loss: confusion, flinch, recharge.
• Kit lockout: silence, fear.
• Attrition: curse, bleed, drain, vulnerability.

On top of those come the stat drops by stages. Each has its own detailed entry below with exact numbers; the in-game descriptions are always the authority.

Poisoned. It loses HP at the end of every turn: 6% of its max HP per stack. It's the only primary status that stacks, so a second poisoning doubles the drip, with no declared cap.

It doesn't expire on turns: it lasts until cured, so against a rival that endures it's a slow but certain sentence. Poison and Steel types are immune.

It's removed with an Antidote, a Full Heal, status-curing moves, a Pokémon Center or resting at the Dorms.

Burned. Two effects at once: it loses 4% of its max HP at the end of every turn and its physical damage drops by 30% (multiplied by 0.7).

Against a physical attacker it's one of the most profitable statuses in the game: it takes almost a third off the hit while grinding it down. Against a special attacker, though, it only does the residual damage.

It doesn't expire on turns — it stays until cured. Fire types are immune. Cured with a Burn Heal, a Full Heal, curing moves, a Pokémon Center or resting.

Paralysed. Two effects: a 25% chance of losing the turn each time it's due to act, and Speed halved (×0.5), which usually hands the rival the first hit every turn.

That halved Speed is what really decides fights: it rewrites the whole turn order, so it pairs beautifully with plans that depend on striking first.

It doesn't expire on turns. Electric types are immune. Cured with a Paralyze Heal, a Full Heal, curing moves, a Pokémon Center or resting.

Asleep. The Pokémon does not act at all while it lasts. The duration is rolled when applied: between 1 and 3 turns, never more. It's the only primary status with a clock of its own, and that 3-turn cap is a hard guarantee — not even field effects that stretch statuses can push past it.

Nobody is immune by type, which makes it the most universal status in the game. A good sleep is free time: two turns to raise your stats, heal, or bring in your ideal counter without paying for the switch.

It wakes on schedule, with an Awakening, a Full Heal or curing moves.

Frozen. The Pokémon does not act while it lasts, and there is no fixed term: each turn there is a 20% chance of thawing on its own. It can last one turn or the whole fight, and that uncertainty is its signature.

It also breaks instantly if hit by a Fire-type attack, so a mistimed fire move can free the very rival you just froze — mind your sequence.

Ice types are immune. Cured with an Ice Heal, a Full Heal, curing moves, a Pokémon Center or resting.

Confused. Lasts 3 turns. Each time it's due to act there is a 33% chance it hits itself instead of doing anything useful: it loses the action and 8% of its max HP.

It isn't a primary status, so it coexists with poison, burn or anything else — you can confuse an already-poisoned rival. Nobody is immune by type.

It's pure chaos: it guarantees nothing on a given turn, but across three turns it steals actions and HP in equal measure, and it's especially cruel to slow rivals that need every turn.

Two short statuses that cost a whole turn, with no luck roll involved:

• Flinched — lasts 1 turn: rocked by the hit, it loses that round's turn entirely. It comes from moves that startle, and it only bites if whoever causes it acts first, so Speed decides whether it works or is worth nothing.
• Recharge — lasts 1 turn: after a devastating move, the Pokémon must catch its breath and loses its next turn. It's the price of the most brutal attacks and must be counted when building the sequence — that recharge turn is a free turn for the rival.

Neither is primary.

The two statuses that lock your kit rather than your HP:

• Silenced — lasts 2 turns and blocks moves entirely; basic attacks still work. Against a team built around one key move, two turns of silence can decide the fight.
• Afraid (fear) — lasts 2 turns and blocks any move costing more than 6 energy. It doesn't gag you completely: it forces you to fight with the cheap stuff, which is usually the weak stuff. It's what hurts teams built on one expensive attack the most.

Neither is primary, so they stack on top of whatever is already on.

Two punishments a potion won't fix:

• Drained — every attack you make heals the rival for half the damage you deal. It cannot be cured at all: the only way out is taking that Pokémon off the field, by a voluntary switch or a knockout, because it's planted on whoever is standing there. If you don't switch, the harder you hit, the more you heal it.
• Cursed — loses 6% of its max HP at the end of every turn, but in exchange deals 25% more damage. It's a bargain, not just a punishment: a window of strength with a clock on it. It doesn't expire on turns.

Neither is primary.

Two short-lived forms of attrition:

• Bleeding — lasts 3 turns. It doesn't damage by the passage of time but by acting: each offensive action costs the Pokémon itself 3% of its max HP. It punishes exactly whoever attacks most, and barely touches a defender.
• Vulnerable — lasts 3 turns and makes it take 25% more damage from everything, of any type or class. It's the multiplier that turns a normal hit into a lethal one, so chaining it right before your biggest move is a classic play.

Neither is primary: they coexist with poison, burn or whatever is already on.

Nine, plus the stat rises. Each shows its icon and duration in battle:

• Shield — absorbs damage before HP is touched.
• Protection and Out of reach — fully nullify the next hit.
• Fortitude — reduces all damage taken.
• Regeneration — restores HP each turn.
• Focus — higher crit chance.
• Inspiration — more energy.
• Haste and Spark — you act earlier in the turn order.

They come from moves, items, relics and field effects, and they combine freely: there's no exclusivity rule like the one primary statuses have.

The game's three active defences:

• Shield — absorbs 14 flat points of damage per stack before HP is touched, and it stacks: several uses pile the barrier up. It doesn't expire on turns, it's spent by taking hits.
• Protection — completely nullifies the next attack received, along with all its effects.
• Out of reach — just as absolute: the Pokémon hides from the fight and the next hit it would take doesn't affect it.

Protection shares an anti-spam chain with Fortitude, as in the mainline games: land it on consecutive turns and the next attempt's chance is divided by 3 each time (1, 1/3, 1/9…). Missing an attempt, or skipping a turn without throwing it, resets the chain to its full chance.

• Fortitude — lasts 3 turns and cuts all damage taken by 25% (×0.75). Unlike Protection it doesn't nullify a hit: it shaves every hit in that window, which makes it better against rivals that strike many times or against field damage. It shares the anti-spam chain with Protection, so chaining it turn after turn gets less reliable each time.
• Regeneration — lasts 3 turns and restores 6% of max HP at the end of every turn. Added to a good wall, it wins attrition fights without spending a single potion — and unlike drinking one, it costs no turn.

The four boosters that aren't stat stages:

• Focus — 3 turns: +15% critical hit chance.
• Inspiration — 3 turns: gains 25% more energy, which is exactly what pays for expensive moves.
• Haste — 3 turns: multiplies Speed by 1.3, so it acts earlier in the turn order.
• Spark — 3 turns, and it's different and far more absolute: the Pokémon acts first regardless of the rival's speed, in the same priority bracket a Quick Claw grants. Against a far faster rival, it's the only thing that flips the order.

They combine freely with each other and with stat rises.

Six stats can move in stages during a fight, up to 4 stages in each direction, and they normally last until the battle ends:

• Attack — each rising stage gives +25% physical damage; each drop, −20%.
• Defense — each rise makes you take 20% less physical damage; each drop, 25% more.
• Special Attack and Special Defense — exactly the same, on special damage.
• Speed — ×1.3 per rising stage; ×0.8 per drop.
• Accuracy — ×1.15 rising; ×0.8 dropping. It affects your moves' accuracy, never the rival's evasion.

The rival's moves can push them the other way. Raising your stats — or sinking theirs — is a legitimate goal: there's an Objective rule built for it and a sequence rule ("Until stacked") to automate it.

Four ways:

• Status potions from the Backpack — Antidote, Burn Heal, Paralyze Heal, Awakening and Ice Heal each cure one; a Full Heal cures any. The "Status items only" rule spends them the moment the status appears. Drinking one costs the turn and the potion is gone forever.
• Curing moves from the Pokémon's own kit.
• Pokémon Centers on the route and resting at the Dorms, which leave the Pokémon clean and at 100% HP.
• Switching Pokémon — the only way out of Drain, which cannot be cured any other way.

Statuses with a term (sleep, confusion, silence, fear, bleed, vulnerability, flinch, recharge) also expire on their own.

Effort Points are the manual upgrade layer of your Pokémon, on top of the automatic level scaling. Every Pokémon earns its own EP budget as it levels and you decide which stat to invest them in: HP, Attack, Defense, Special Attack, Special Defense or Speed.

The investment is permanent within the run and stored per member, so two Pokémon of the same species can end up completely different — a caught Eevee shares no EPs with your starter Eevee.

Rivals train too: past a certain level they carry a budget of their own, poured into the stats the species is already strong in.

The budget is tiered: 2 EP per level for the first 10 levels and 1 EP per level after that, plus the bonus from Training events on the route and from Training Center sessions.

Each invested point yields +1.4 to HP and +0.7 to any of the other five, rounded. There is no per-stat cap: the only limit is the total budget, so you can fully specialise a Pokémon if you want.

The level 1 Training Center lets you buy up to 3 EP sessions per zone with gold, at rising cost (150, 250 and 400), and each session also raises that Pokémon's Affinity.

You choose who spends the points, and you can change it whenever you like — it only affects EPs you haven't spent yet:

• Manual — on level-up, the reward window lets you invest the new points stat by stat. Full control, but it needs doing every level.
• Semi — you set once what percentage goes to each stat (say 80% Attack / 20% HP) and the game applies those percentages on every later level. You decide the profile, the game does the arithmetic.
• Auto — the game splits the points evenly across the six stats and recalculates on its own. Nothing to touch, but no Pokémon ever specialises, so a thoughtful manual spread is always better.

Change it in Settings → Game. Your starter's first levels are always spent by you.

A shiny is a rare colour variant of a species: it is purely cosmetic, it doesn't hit harder and has no better stats. It's a trophy, not an advantage.

The base chance on a wild encounter is 0.78%, a little under 1 in 128. It is the same for everyone and in every mode: nothing improves it, and the Daily Run and the Weekly Challenge roll exactly the same odds for all, so their leaderboards stay fair.

A wild shiny is caught at 100% with any ball, so a rare colour never slips away for want of a better ball. Eggs can hatch shiny too, and your Pokédex keeps a permanent count with a golden badge.

It's the run's inventory: the potions, held items and Poké Balls you're carrying. It has 20 slots by default — some relics and the Store's Big backpack (paid in Tokens) widen it — and everything inside belongs to the run: it's lost when the run ends, like gold and relics.

You start every adventure with two potions and nothing restocks on its own: drink them and the adventure carries on without them until you buy more. Items come from rewards, treasures and events, and are bought and sold at Shop nodes.

A potion assigned to a specific Pokémon on the Item tab is reserved for it; any you leave loose can be drunk by whoever is on the field.

Each team member can carry both kinds at once:

• The held item is worn for the whole battle and never used up: it improves the carrier's stats or grants a passive effect (acting first, healing each turn, chipping whoever hits it). You change it whenever you like from the Item tab, and it stays on until you change it.
• The consumable is a potion from the Backpack, drunk mid-fight according to your Items rule, to restore HP or cure a status. Drinking it consumes the whole turn and the potion is gone forever.

Below, on the same tab, sit the team's active relics, which you can add or remove from the Reserve before fighting.

Gear that rewrites the rules of your run while you keep them active: each is a passive, permanent effect that defines what your build can do. There are over 120 in the catalogue, across rarities — common, uncommon, rare, epic and legendary — plus a category of their own, the cursed ones, which give a lot in exchange for something.

They come from clearing the last node of each map (gyms hand them over), from treasure nodes and battle rewards, and the level 3 Lab researches new ones at a rising price.

They're also proof of progress: upgrading a facility past level 1 requires owning relics (1 for Lv.2, 3 for Lv.3) — they're never spent.

They belong to the run; the Collection keeps the catalogue of every one you've ever discovered.

You start with 2 slots and every gym badge unlocks one more, up to a maximum of 10. Only relics sitting in a slot count: those are the ones that affect combat.

When you find a new one with your slots full, you choose which to keep. Whichever you set aside goes to the Reserve and is never lost: you can put it back on whenever you like, from the map's Relics panel or from the Item tab right before a fight.

Rotating your relic loadout between fights is part of the game: a relic that does nothing against a Water gym may be the key in the next one.

Bonuses that switch themselves on when your build fits. Every fight the game looks at things like how many Pokémon of a type you field, what types their moves are, which relics and held items you carry, the field's weather or terrain, and even which oaths you swore. When a synergy's conditions are met, its effect applies to the whole team.

Many have several tiers: meeting more conditions raises the tier and improves the effect. There are over 40 in the catalogue.

The Synergies panel shows which ones you have lit, what they give and what you're missing for the next tier, and the win forecast already accounts for them. Which combinations exist is yours to discover: the Collection keeps count.

Every synergy, its tiers and the Pokémon that activate it: team synergies.

Two independent gauges each Pokémon carries, visible on its card with a history explaining every change.

• Affinity is long-term trust in you. It moves in small steps — fighting together, training, evolving, winning badges — and its ranks grant growing bonuses.
• Morale is the mood of the moment. It swings with results: wins, knockouts and rest raise it; fainting, losing and piling up statuses sink it, and an unmotivated Pokémon performs worse.

Both reset with each run, and the win forecast already feels their effects. The Dorms and the Daycare are the facilities for restoring them.

The run is over. That's the roguelike bet: gold, relics, facilities and the team itself belong to the run and are lost with it. What never resets is your account: the Pokédex, the collection, achievements, trainer level, the season pass and your cosmetics all keep their progress. The next run starts from scratch — but never from nothing.

Yes — it happens by itself. The run is saved automatically as you play, so you can close the tab or the app and pick it up later exactly where you were. With a free account your progress also syncs across devices; as a guest it stays on the device you played on.

Shops appear as nodes on the route and sell for gold: potions for your Backpack, held items that improve the carrier's stats, and Poké Balls for catching. You can also sell what you don't need. Every run starts with two potions and nothing restocks on its own: drink both and the adventure carries on without them until you buy more. Deciding where the gold goes (items now, or saving for a facility) is one of the run's central dilemmas.

In a fight against a wild Pokémon you can throw a ball at any moment — the button shows your exact catch probability. The model is deliberately simple: any ordinary wild Pokémon is caught at 100% as long as you have a ball in the Backpack, and a shiny too, with whatever ball. The only thing genuinely gated is legendaries, and the only thing gating them is which ball you throw.

If you run out of balls, the shop sells more and the Lab upgrades the ones you have. Every catch records the species in your permanent Pokédex and pays trainer XP.

The only number that changes between balls is its chance against a legendary:

• Poké Ball — 1% (50 gold).
• Great Ball — 10% (120 gold).
• Ultra Ball — 20% (300 gold).
• Master Ball — 100%. Extremely rare, only in the late stages.

Against any other wild Pokémon — and against shinies — all four catch at 100%, so carrying Ultra Balls only matters when you're going after a legendary.

The Lab upgrades the ones you own: Lv.1 turns Poké Balls into Great Balls for 250 gold, Lv.2 turns Great Balls into Ultra Balls for 600.

The ladder is deliberately low: Kanto holds four legendary encounters, and at 30/50/70 a full bag collected them on the way past. At 1/10/20, a legendary is something you go after on purpose.

Voluntary sacrifices you swear before starting a run, in exchange for richer rewards. Each oath is a restriction that hardens the run in its own way — and the game pays you for the risk. Only swear the ones you dare keep: they apply to the whole run and can't be undone halfway. Some synergies trigger precisely because a specific oath is active.

Because the forecast is a measurement, not a formula. Every change — a different lead, an item, a reordered rule — alters how those simulated battles actually unfold, sometimes in ways that are hard to predict: a stronger attacker can lower your odds if it invites a bad matchup. That's expected behaviour. Use the panel to experiment: try it, watch the needle, keep what helps.

Gold is the run's currency: earned by winning fights and clearing nodes, and reset when the run ends — hoarding it to the finish line pays nothing. Everything competes for it: shop items and potions, catching gear, scouting the rival, building and upgrading facilities, training sessions, Lab research, resting at the Dorms. There is no single right answer; reading which investment this run needs most is the manager's craft. And it can't be bought with real money: gold is only ever earned by playing.

Four buildings you construct and level up during the run — they reset when it ends, like gold and relics. They aren't passive bonuses but tools: each opens an interactive panel whose capabilities grow with its level (three each). The four are the Training Center, the Daycare, the Lab and the Dorms. Gold never stretches to everything, so choosing this run's facility is a real decision: raising one means giving up another.

The ladder is deliberately steep, and identical for all four buildings: 1,500 gold for level 1, 5,000 for level 2 and 11,000 for level 3.

On top of that, levels 2 and 3 require owning relics — 1 and 3 respectively. They are not spent: they're proof you've cleared content, not a payment.

A whole region pays out roughly what it costs to max a single building, so "which facility is this run's?" is a real decision rather than a shopping list. Everything resets when the run ends.

The stat workshop.

• Lv.1 — trains a member's EPs for gold: up to 3 sessions per zone, at rising cost (150, 250 and 400), and each session also reinforces its Affinity.
• Lv.2 — learn early: pay to pull forward moves that Pokémon would learn in the coming levels, up to 5 levels ahead (250 gold plus 120 per level pulled forward).
• Lv.3 — teaches the exclusive TMs discovered at the Lab to compatible types, and training sessions start granting double Affinity.

Some route events also require the Center to be built before you can train at them.

The growth building.

• Lv.1 — buy stacking +1% EXP upgrades for the whole team, up to +4% total (400 gold for the first, +180 each after).
• Lv.2 — deposit a Pokémon for 1 to 3 zones (250 gold per zone): it leaves the team and, when collected, catches up on the levels it missed. It's the only way to gain experience without fighting. Rarer species must stay longer: two zones for rare and very rare, the full three for legendaries. The EXP cap rises to +7%.
• Lv.3 — Affinity sessions for 400 gold, protects the bond of benched Pokémon between fights, and the EXP cap rises to +10%.

The discovery building.

• Lv.1 — researches exclusive TMs (a catalogue of 19 covering all 18 types, later taught at the Training Center) for 800 gold plus 350 per one already discovered. It also turns Poké Balls into Great Balls for 250.
• Lv.2 — sells Professor Oak's eggs for 1,400 gold: they hatch after 3 zones into a surprise that is sometimes shiny. It also turns Great Balls into Ultra Balls for 600.
• Lv.3 — researches new relics for the run, for 1,600 gold plus 900 per one already researched, so it can't be spammed.

The recovery building.

• Lv.1 — rest for 350 gold: leaves a member at 100% HP, gives back morale and recovers the affinity lost to defeats. On top of that the energy reserve recovers +2 after every battle.
• Lv.2 — unlocks upgrading the trainer's base energy in buyable, cumulative steps (+5 for the first, +10 for the second, +15 for the third, up to +30), so the team can afford pricier moves. Recovery rises to +4 per battle.
• Lv.3 — +6 energy after each battle, +2 morale for the whole team, and consolation affinity after defeats.

The run is the bet; the account is the ledger. When a run ends — won or lost — the gold, relics, facilities and team go with it. What stays and grows: your Pokédex (every species you've caught), the Collection, achievements, trainer level, the Battle Pass and your cosmetics. Daily and weekly results also stay on their leaderboards. None of the permanent progress grants an advantage inside a run: it's record-keeping and personalisation.

It's your account's permanent progress, separate from runs. You earn trainer XP for catching (15), beating a gym leader (120), completing a run (40) or winning it (200), and for discovering new relics (10) and synergies (15). Each level costs 15% more than the last.

The level unlocks cosmetics in the Collection and nothing else: no stats, no gold, no items, no in-run advantage. Account progress here is recognition, not power — a level 1 player and a level 50 player start the same run on equal terms.

Once a day, every player in the world gets exactly the same run: same seed, same map, same enemies, same events, same rewards. The only difference is skill, and there's a global leaderboard to prove it.

Its seed can't be changed, and the Store's advantages do not count here: everyone starts equal. It comes with its own daily missions and a special Daily Boss available for 24 hours. A new one arrives every day.

Today's boss and missions are waiting on the daily challenge.

Every day, three missions identical for everyone, drawn from the date. Completing all three lets you claim the day's reward — Fichas and Battle Pass points — and keeps your streak of consecutive days going, which in turn unlocks cosmetics.

They're ordinary play objectives (catch, win fights, advance zones), so they're met by playing; there's no way to buy or skip them. The next day brings three new ones.

A special fight available that day only, played with an exhibition team drawn from your Pokédex: you don't need a run in progress and you risk nothing. You can attempt it as often as you like, but only one win a day counts, paying trainer XP and, on some dates, an exclusive cosmetic (legendary bosses have their own).

It's the mode for a five-minute nibble without committing to a 40-minute adventure.

A special run with unique rules that changes every week — a monotype week, for instance, restricts the whole run to a single Pokémon type (dual types count if either half matches). The rules bend everything: which starters you can pick, what you can catch, even what hatches onto the team.

The whole week shares one single seed for everyone. You can attempt it as often as you like: the leaderboard keeps your best score. Clearing it for the first time each week pays a reward. Like the daily, it ignores purchased boosts.

The Daily Run and the Weekly Challenge deal the same seed to everyone, so their leaderboards compare genuinely comparable performances: same map, same enemies, same rewards. On top of that, no Store advantage affects those modes: both start identically for everyone.

There are daily, weekly, monthly, all-time and completed-run boards (earliest finisher first). Play a run for fun or fight for the spot — the progress you keep is the same either way. Cheated scores are removed.

Your account's permanent album, in four tabs:

• Pokédex — every species caught, with capture counts and a golden badge for shinies; the ones you're missing show as silhouettes.
• Relics — the full catalogue, discovered and still to discover.
• Synergies — the same, with the conditions of the ones you know.
• Cosmetics — frames, backgrounds, avatars and effects, each with its source (achievement, trainer level, Ascension, Pass, Store…).

None of it is lost when a run is lost, and none of it grants a combat advantage: it's pure record-keeping and personalisation.

Tap any entry in the Pokédex tab — caught or not — to open its full sheet: base stats, passive, the moves it learns with their energy cost, and its evolution line, with the level or the item that triggers each evolution.

The difficulty ladder for players who want to keep climbing: 10 levels, each one hardening the whole run — higher-level rivals with better stats, less gold and fewer healing nodes along the way. Higher levels unlock by proving yourself on the ones below.

You pick the level when starting a run — combine it with oaths if you want the run to really bite. It's content open to everyone: no Ascension is reserved for paying accounts, and some Collection cosmetics are only earned here.

Your account's currency, and the only one. They are earned by playing, always: zones cleared (5 each), Runs won (40), Pokédex milestones, daily missions, the boss of the day, the weekly challenge and the Pass levels.

They are spent in the Store: eggs, vitamins, cosmetics and a couple of edges for your free Runs. They also pay to rescue a lost Run.

Gold, by contrast, belongs to the Run and is lost with it.

There is no other currency, and no way to buy Tokens with money: PokeTactics sells nothing.

Everything costs Tokens, the currency you earn by playing:

• Shiny Egg (2,500) — permanently unlocks a random shiny starter, usable forever. Colour, not stats.
• Johto starter Egg (3,000) — unlocks a random Johto starter as a starting option.
• Legendary Egg (2,000) — hatches a random legendary at the start of your next Run (1% shiny); consumed on use.
• Legendary Voucher (8,000) — the same for 5 Runs in a row.
• Vitamins for your Runs and cosmetics for your profile.

These are options and variety, not raw power: a legendary starter does not win a Run for you, and none of it touches the daily or the weekly.

Three small purchases, all in Tokens and all free Runs only:

• Big backpack (500) — +8 inventory slots, bought once and yours forever.
• Starter kit (120) — 5 Potions and 5 Poké Balls at the start, for 5 Runs.
• Gold charm (160) — +10% gold, for 5 Runs.

They never count in the daily Run or the weekly challenge, the two that feed the leaderboards: those start identically for everyone. And since they are paid for with Tokens, what they cost is earlier Runs.

Yes — once per Run, and only in free Runs. It costs 120 Tokens and brings you back exactly as you fell: same team healed, same bag, same gold, same bonds — nothing is lost.

If you are short of Tokens, the screen says so and that is that: what's missing is earned by playing. There is nothing to buy here.

The daily Run and the weekly challenge are never rescued: they share a seed and a leaderboard, so a second chance would make them incomparable.

A season with its own date window and a level track you climb by banking season points simply by playing: catching (2), beating a leader (20), completing a Run (10), winning one (30), claiming the day's missions (15).

Every level pays cosmetics or Tokens, and nothing else: no Pass reward gives stats, battle items or any kind of advantage. The whole Pass belongs to everyone — there is no paid lane and nothing to unlock: the only thing that opens a rung is reaching its points.

When the season ends, points reset and the next one begins; whatever you already claimed is yours forever.

No, because there is no way to pay. No subscription, no paid currency, no boxes: every account has exactly the same features.

• Unlimited free Runs, always.
• 3 concurrent saves and a 50-Run history.
• 4 Re-Adjusts per battle and up to 3 tactics Templates.
• Nicknames for your Pokémon, advanced statistics and the Run's full battle log.

And of course not one zone, Pokémon, relic, difficulty or ending is reserved for anybody.

The advertising banner in the footer is the same for everyone too: there is no version of the game without it, because there is nothing to buy.

No. PokeTactics is a fan project: unofficial, and with no affiliation to Nintendo, Game Freak, Creatures or The Pokémon Company. Pokémon and all associated names, characters, types and trademarks belong to their owners; this project uses them referentially, with no intent to infringe their rights or to represent them in any way.

Nothing is sold here either: no subscription and no purchases. The whole game is free: what pays for it is the advertising banner in the footer and whatever anyone chooses to leave on Ko-fi.

If you are a rights holder and want to reach us, the contact page is open.

No. You can play as a guest straight away — your progress stays on that device. A free account adds cloud saving and cross-device sync, so your Pokédex, collection and runs follow you, and raises the daily free-run allowance from 10 to 20. You can manage your password and connected devices from settings at any time.

All three. The game runs in any modern browser, on desktop or mobile. It's a PWA: the browser will offer to install it (or use the install / add-to-home-screen option in the browser menu), and from then on it opens like a native app, full screen. Once installed it also works offline — your run syncs when you're back online.

It's split into six blocks:

• Audio — master volume, music and sound effects separately, and a switch to mute only the effects and leave the soundtrack playing.
• Accessibility — dark mode, high contrast, reduced motion, text size, reduce flashing and a colour-blind-safe palette.
• Game — the EP allocation mode, whether the game offers to spend them on level-up, and replaying the tutorial from scratch.
• Privacy — your consent preferences.
• Language — English, Spanish, Portuguese or French.
• Account — password and connected devices.

Nothing here changes the difficulty or the outcome of a battle.

Six, all in Settings → Accessibility and all applied instantly:

• Dark mode — darkens panels, cards and borders, and swaps the background scene for its night version.
• High contrast — brightens secondary text against dark backgrounds.
• Reduced motion — turns off animations and transitions across the whole interface.
• Text size — scales the entire interface, not just the letters.
• Reduce flashing — softens the flashes from evolutions, gyms and zone effects. Recommended for photosensitive players.
• Colour-blind-safe palette — changes the HP bar from green/red to blue/orange, far easier to tell apart with red-green colour blindness.

On top of that, combat resolves itself: the game never demands reflexes, pointer precision or reacting in time.

The game is available in English, Spanish, Portuguese and French, and every part of it exists in all four. Use the site's language switcher, or the Language section in Settings; your choice is remembered on that device. The URL reflects it too: every language other than English lives under its own prefix (/es, /pt, /fr).

Every run already starts from zero — that reset is the genre. Account progress (Pokédex, collection, achievements) is designed only to grow, and there is no express delete button. If you want to correct or erase your account data, the privacy policy explains your rights and the contact page is the way to ask — data deletion requests are honoured.

Two doors, both open:

• The site's contact page goes straight to the team.
• The community Discord server has channels dedicated to bugs and ideas, and it's the fastest place to check whether something is already known.

A good report says what you did, what you expected and what happened instead — screenshots are worth their weight in gold.

A small team of fans makes it, for the love of it. There is no relationship with Nintendo, Game Freak, Creatures or The Pokémon Company: PokeTactics is not an official product, and it is not licensed, sponsored or endorsed by them.

Pokémon, the species names, the types and all related trademarks belong to their rightful owners and appear here referentially, within a fan project that does not aim to replace, imitate or compete with any official product. The game is free, and what is sold are cosmetics and conveniences of the project itself.

If you represent a rights holder and want to raise something with us, write from the contact page: we answer.