Guide

The GUIDE tab is there for the moments you'd normally open a walkthrough: you're stuck, you want to know what lives on this route, or you'd like to see the next gym leader's team before walking in. It reads your game as you play, so it knows where you are, what you've already picked up and which bosses you've beaten.

It's built to spoil as little as possible. Every entry starts as a title only. You decide how much you want to know.

#Hints first, answers second

The left column lists the pages. The right column shows the one you picked, split into sections.

• Tap an entry once to see its hint. The small grey word at the end of the row tells you what the next tap shows: HINT or ANSWER.

• Tap it again for the full answer.

• Tap a third time to close it.

Only one entry is open at a time. Opening another one closes the last, so you can't spoil a whole page by accident. Some entries have no hint, and the first tap goes straight to the answer.

The guide remembers which page you were on and where you'd scrolled, even when you switch to another tab and come back.

#HERE: the area you're in

HERE is about the place you're standing in right now, and it changes as you walk. A town counts with its houses and shops, a route with its gates. It can have these sections:

• TO DO: hand-written entries about this area (where to find something important here, how to get past a blocker).

• Wild Pokémon, one section per way of finding them: grass and caves, surfing, smashing rocks, each fishing rod and, in Polished Crystal, the trees you can shake Pokémon out of (the common list and the one rarer trees use). Every row shows the level range and the odds, like LV 3-5 20%. A Pokémon you haven't seen yet shows as ??? until you tap it, the same way your Pokédex hides it.

In Polished Crystal the grass list follows your game's clock (morning, day or night, and the evening uses the night's), and the line under GRASS / CAVE says which time it's for. Some of its side areas set their Pokémon's levels by how many badges you have, and HERE already shows the levels for yours.

In Lazarus many outdoor areas have different Pokémon by day and at night. Its night runs from 8 in the evening to 7 in the morning on your game's clock. HERE lists the ones out right now, says under GRASS / CAVE whether that's DAY or NIGHT, and adds an AT NIGHT (or BY DAY) section for the ones that only show up at the other time. The line at the top that counts how many you've caught here counts both.

• PEOPLE: anyone in the area who gives you an item, a Pokémon or an egg, and in-game trades (what they offer and what they want for it). Some of them want something done first.

• ITEMS: items lying on the ground and hidden ones. A hidden item shows as HIDDEN ITEM until you tap it: the hint says roughly where it's buried, the answer names it.

Anything your save already has (an item you picked up, a gift you got, a Pokémon you caught) gets a small ball icon next to it and moves to the bottom of its list. So HERE doubles as a checklist: if a row has no ball, you missed it.

#NEXT BOSS: the next gym leader

NEXT BOSS shows the first boss you haven't beaten yet, in the game's order, then the ones after it. Each section says where the fight is, how many Pokémon they use, the highest level among them and the level of your strongest Pokémon, so you can tell at a glance if you're ready.

Each of their Pokémon is its own entry, with its level showing:

1. The first tap gives its type.

2. The second tap names it, with its moves and its held item if it has one.

When every boss is beaten, the page says ALL DONE.

Some hacks give a boss more than one team, for example one per difficulty in Unbound. Those get a section for each team, so look at the one you're playing on. In Polished Crystal the Elite Four and the champion bring stronger teams once you hold all 16 badges, and NEXT BOSS lists that rematch after the Kanto gyms.

#EVOLUTIONS

EVOLUTIONS answers "how does this one evolve?" from the game's own data. Your party is listed first. Under it, SPECIAL EVOLUTIONS lists every Pokémon that evolves some way other than levelling up (an item, a trade, friendship and so on). The hint tells you the kind of evolution; the answer tells you what it becomes and exactly how.

For the whole family and every method, see a Pokémon's EVOLVE section in the Pokédex.

#TIPS, WHERE IS and STUCK?

These are hand-written pages:

• TIPS: things worth knowing about the game, like how its menus or special areas work.

• WHERE IS: where to get the important things: key items, the moves you need to get around, and gift Pokémon. Entries you already have get the ball icon.

• STUCK?: the classic "how do I get past this?" moments, sorted by how far into the game they are.

The original games have all three. The hacks have a few TIPS at most, and where a hack has no WHERE IS of its own, the app builds one from the game's maps.

#Which games have which pages

The pages a game gets depend on how much of it has been mapped. The supported games table shows it per game, and roughly:

The original games' hand-written pages follow the app's language when you play a French, German, Italian, Spanish or Japanese copy. Most hacks' pages are in English.

#The "may be wrong" notice

The first time you open the GUIDE in a game, a BEFORE YOU READ window comes up. The hand-written pages were written with the help of AI from the game's own data (its maps and scripts), in our own words, and they can still get a detail wrong or leave something out. Some games' guides haven't been checked in-game yet, and the notice says so.

HERE, NEXT BOSS and EVOLUTIONS are read straight from your game, so they match what's in your ROM. Tap I UNDERSTAND to carry on (it's only asked once per game) or GO BACK to return to the tab you came from.