Your biggest Pokémon Masters questions, answered

Pokémon Masters released and though the game seemed pretty simple and straight-forward from the trailers, it actually involves a lot of grinding and min-maxing in order to be the strongest master around.

We’ve answered some of the biggest questions regarding the game below.

How do you play?

Players duke it out in three-on-three Pokémon battles using trainers from past Pokémon games. Each trainer has a set Pokémon and can learn up to four other moves. Not all of the moves are traditional moves from mainline games — some of them are encouraging actions from the trainers to raise the stats of their Pokémon. After you do seven moves, you’ll be able to do a Sync Attack with one of your pairs.

Moves cost bars of the action gauge, a blue bar at the bottom of the screen that goes up over time.

How do I get more characters?

The character and Pokémon duos are called Sync Pairs. You get more Sync Pairs from completing the story as well as through the gacha scouting system. Scouting, in this and many other gatcha games, refers to the random pull you do, granting you a random character (or in this case, Sync Pair). Each scout for a Sync Pair costs 300 jewels, and while you can roll 10 at once, there’s no monetary benefit for doing this. The Sync Pair you get is random.

There’s also a daily scout for 100 jewels, but you can only do this with jewels you buy with real money.

How do I power up my Sync Pairs?

You can level them up using books. You can also raise their level cap by using cans and bottles of juice. You can also use megaphones to unlock more skills for them, as they only come with two. If you’re lucky enough to get any power-up cards, you can use these to increase your Sync Pairs’ star rating.

How do I get the materials to upgrade my Sync Pairs?

Books and juice can be obtained from specific training levels. Just spam these until you get what you need.

Power-up cards are rewarded when you get five or more duplicates of the same card from the Sync Pair scout. You can get five-star power-up cards from events.

What are the different types of Sync Pairs?

Sync Pairs are classified into three different types: strike, tech, and support. Strike Sync Pairs are offensive, tech are supporters that use status effects, and supports focus on stat-boosting abilities.

Which Sync Pairs should I upgrade?

Focus on any five-star Sync Pairs you have or any four-star strike duos. The game is fairly easy if you focus on having one attacker and two supports. As long as your main attacker is beefy, it should be a clean sweep. Certain types will inevitably be more useful than others during upcoming events, so it’s important to have a powered-up strike Sync Pair of each type.

Is there no stamina in this game?

Nope. You can play as much as you want!

What’s with the typing in this game?

All Pokémon are weak against one type, instead of the usual handful from the old games. Toss your old Pokémon knowledge aside and make sure to read what specific match-ups are weak against.

How do I evolve my Pokémon?

Not every Sync Pair has a Pokémon that evolves, but if you have one, then you can access their evolution story in Sync Pair Story section. You’ll need Evolution Shards or Crystals to evolve your ‘mon, and they can be bought from the in-game shop with coins. Pokémon will be able to evolve once at level 30, and another time level 45 if they have a second evolution.

How do I get more jewels?

Jewels are rewarded for completing quests for the first time. Various missions also reward jewels, as well as login bonuses. Events provide a good way to collect some jewels, as they provide more quests and missions to complete.

What are the strongest units I can get for free?

Rosa and Snivy are unlocked in chapter one, and they continue to be the best units in the game, as of writing this. They give a special attack boost to the entire team, and also have an ability where they can instantly fill up your action gauge.

Skyla and Swanna are unlocked in chapter five and one of their moves boost defense and speed, which increases how fast your action gauge goes up.

Hau and Alolan Raichu unlock in chapter 11 and they have an attack that hits all three enemy units.

Powering up these three can make it so you can breeze through the story.

I’m stuck and I can’t beat this part of the story! What do I do?

Level up your squad more and take some time to grind out the training rooms to get materials you need. You should also take advantage of the units above, if you have them unlocked.