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Pokémon Masters tips, tricks, and beginner's guide
Pokémon Masters (also known as Pokémon Masters EX) is the latest Pokémon mobile game, and it has you traveling around the Pasio region to become the champion of the Pokémon Masters League. But the journey to the top won’t be easy — even if you already consider yourself a hardcore Pokéfan.
To help, we’ve put together this list of Pokémon Masters tips and tricks to serve as a beginner’s guide for new players. It covers everything from basic stats to the best meta team compositions, so grab your Poryphone and let’s get to it!
For team building, weaknesses aren’t everything
Our first Pokémon Masters tip has to do with team building. When deciding on a team composition, it can be tempting to fill up the roster with sync pairs that match the weaknesses listed in the pre-battle screen. However, Pokémon Masters uses a completely different weakness system than most of the main series games.
Read more: Pokémon Masters tier list and best free Sync Pairs!
The vast majority of Pokémon have only one type and one weakness. This means that regardless of the canonical Pokémon rules, only the weakness listed matters. A water-type Pokémon, for example, may be weak to either grass or electric attacks, but not both.
This means that even though your attacks won’t be super effective, it can be more beneficial to use the same powerful Pokémon instead of switching them out constantly to match your opponents’ weaknesses. This way you can focus on a specific strategy using congruent abilities and level up a core team of Pokémon to take down your opponents. Once you have more sync pairs you can start building new compositions with new type-strengths.
How Pokémon Masters stats work
Stats in Pokémon Masters will feel similar to other games in the franchise, but the real-time combat system means a few things have changed. The main difference is the speed stat, which now effects how quickly the move gauge fills. Since this is a shared resource, it pools your three Pokémon’s speed stats together to determine the result, making full team speed buffs ideal. Below is a rundown of the core stats in Pokémon Masters.
Stats in Pokémon Masters:
- HP — How much damage a Pokémon can take.
- Attack — Improves damage dealt with physical moves (spiky border).
- Defense — Reduces damage from physical moves.
- Sp. Atk — Improves damage dealt with special moves (round border).
- Sp. Def — Reduces damage from special moves.
- Speed — Increases speed at which the move gauge fills up.
Best free Pokémon Masters team composition
While most gacha games have you pulling for months to get the most powerful characters, Pokémon Masters gives you everything you need in story mode. Early on you won’t have much choice, but as you complete chapters you’ll unlock new sync pairs that really get the job done.
The best Pokémon Masters team compositions typically have two supports and one striker (damage dealer). The first really strong sync pair you’ll unlock is Rosa and Snivy in chapter one. Combined with Skyla and Swanna from Chapter 5, you should have all the support power you need.
As for strikers, Korrina and Lucario from Chapter 6 are a great choice. Once you complete Chapter 11, you’ll get Hau and Alolan Raichu, which is considered one of the strongest offensive sync pairs in the game. Alolan Raichu’s AoE special attack Discharge works perfectly with Snivy’s X Spec. Attack All buff.
Don’t evolve your Pokémon at the minimum level
One of the most iconic parts of Pokémon is evolution, and Pokémon Masters introduces a new way of evolving Pokémon. You still need to reach a certain level requirement (30 and 45), but then you need to defeat a powerful enemy in one-on-one combat.
Read also: Pokémon Masters evolution guide: How to evolve your Pokémon and more tips!
These battles are tough, and if you try them right away you’re likely to fail. The good news is that evolution materials are only consumed if the attempt is successful, so you’re only losing time. If you are struggling, however, try leveling up your Pokémon a few times before trying again.
Evolving a Pokémon will slightly increase its stats, but the real benefit comes at the final evolution. Upon reaching a Pokémon’s most evolved form, its sync power will become significantly stronger.
How to get coins in Pokémon Masters
Collecting and exchanging coins is the only way to get certain items in Pokémon Masters, but getting them takes time. Each battle rewards a few hundred coins, but most of the shop items cost tens of thousands of coins or more.
Currently, the best way to get coins is completing Coin Supertraining Courses when they are available. Supertraining courses cycle daily and you can only do each level three times, but don’t miss out on the opportunity. Coin Supertraining Courses are the only way to farm Pearls and Big Pearls, which sell for 1000 and 3000 coins.
Save up coins to increase your move gauge
Once you’ve collected a decent amount of coins following the tip above, you might be wondering what the best purchases are. Early on the evolution packages are great ways to progress through the story, but before long what you really need are the two additional move gauge slots.
At 30,000 and 100,000 coins they are very expensive, but buying them is one of the biggest long-term goals in Pokémon Masters. Try to pick up at least the first extra move gauge slot as soon as possible, as it syncs well with Rosa and Snivy’s Time to Energize trainer skill.
How to get star power-ups to increase potential
Leveling your Pokémon is a great way to make them stronger, but the only way to increase their true potential is with star power-ups. You’ll need several of them to get to the next star rating, but doing so will increase your Pokémon’s stats.
So how do you get star power-ups in Pokémon Masters? The main way to get them is to pull a sync pair more than five times. On the sixth and beyond, the sync power is maxed and you will receive a three, four, or five-star power up instead.
This requires spending a lot of money on gems, so for the time being collecting star power-ups this way isn’t all that viable.
Another way is through story events which offer rare items like the five star power-up items for a limited time. Be on the lookout for power-up rewards during timed events!
Use AI targeting to your advantage
With three sync pairs on each side of the field, it can be hard to know which Pokémon will be attacked by the AI. Offense heavy Pokémon can’t take much heat, so you’ll want to keep them out of the line of fire.
The good news is that the AI in Pokémon Masters will always attack the most defensive Pokémon. The game calculates a hidden stat which is a combination of HP, defense, and special defense. All enemy Pokémon will attack the Pokémon with the highest value of this hidden stat until it faints, then move on to the next highest.
Use this to your advantage when building your team. Typically you’ll want to use one striker and two bulkier supports, but many team compositions can work depending on your preference.
Rerolling in Pokémon Masters
Rerolling, or starting the game over until you get the characters you want from randomized pulls, is common in many mobile gacha games. It can take many hours to get a lucky pull, but often starting with the right characters can make the entire game more enjoyable.
Rerolling in Pokémon Masters isn’t really necessary, since the sync pairs you unlock in story mode are strong enough to complete the game. Still, if getting one or more five-star sync pairs right away is your goal, rerolling is fairly easy and only takes about 20 minutes. At launch, any five-star sync pairs are great, but Karen and Phoebe are particularly desirable.
How to reroll in Pokémon Masters
- Play through until the end of Chapter 2.
- Collect your mission rewards.
- Link your Nintendo account by tapping the Poryphone in the bottom right, then Account.
- Do seven individual pulls. There is no advantage to 10 pulls in Pokémon Masters.
- To restart, navigate to where you linked your Nintendo Account before, then tap Delete Save Data below that. It will automatically unlink your Nintendo Account.
Don’t use auto battle mode
Our next Pokémon Masters tip also has to do with AI, but this time on your own team. Hidden in the menu at the top right of the screen is a toggle for auto-battling. In most gacha games, auto battling is a huge time saver when grinding out levels or items.
In Pokémon Masters, however, the auto-battling system doesn’t work very well. You’ll often find that it exclusively uses your highest cost move on a single Pokémon, ignoring trainer moves entirely. Only use auto-battle if your team is excessively overleveled.
That’s it for our Pokémon Masters tips, tricks, and beginner’s guide! Did we miss out on any hot tips? Let us know in the comments below!