How to read where you are, what the buttons on the map panel do, how to find a Pokémon, what Wild Mode shows, and how to share a view.
The chips at the top of the panel read from left to right: map, place, Pokémon. The last chip is what the panel is showing.
Tap the ▾ on a chip to pick another region, place or Pokémon. Everything else stays as it is.
Tap the ✕ on a chip to drop that step only. Clearing the place keeps your Pokémon, and clearing the Pokémon keeps the place.
Opens this help. Close it with the ✕ beside Help at the top; your answer comes back where you left it.
Chooses which markers and layers the map draws.
Shows or hides the wild Pokémon on the map. It draws them for the place you select.
On a computer, the arrow beside the panel folds it away. On a phone, drag the sheet down or tap its arrow; drag it up to read more.
Type a Pokémon in your own language, or a route, city, cave or map, in the search at the top of the page. Pick a result to open it.
Tap a route, town or cave on the map to list its wild Pokémon with method, levels and odds. Grass, water and cave floor are listed separately.
Every place it lives lights up on the map and is listed in the panel. Tap one of those places to fly there and read the details.
Gyms, shops, Poké Centers, gifts and trades have their own markers, placed where the game puts them. Tap one to see what it is.
Wild Mode draws the wild Pokémon of the place you selected onto the map, each in the grass, water or cave where you meet it.
It draws only for the selected place, so a map with nothing selected shows no wild Pokémon yet; hover its button to be reminded. Inside caves and buildings it has nothing to draw, and its button is hidden.
It starts on. Tap its button beside the panel, or at the top of the sheet on a phone: green is on, grey is off. The same switch is “Pokémon in the wild” in Map settings.
Turn families of markers on or off, or all of them at once to see the map bare. Some maps also offer the games’ own night and morning colours.
Draws the border of every route, town and area on the map, so you can see which places there are and where each one ends. It starts off.
Your choices are kept for that map the next time you open it. Reset returns the map to its defaults.
The URL holds the map, the place, the Pokémon and any open panel view. Send it and the other person sees the same thing.
On a computer, right-click the map to copy a link to that exact position.
In Johto the Pokégear radio has stations that change what lives in the grass around you. Tune it to Sinnoh Sound or Hoenn Sound and Pokémon from those regions turn up; with the radio off or on any other station you meet the normal residents.
Every tree you can headbutt holds one of three sets. Most trees give the common set. Which trees hold the rare and the special sets is decided by your Trainer ID, so it differs from save to save — the special ones are only two trees in the whole region.
Slather a Sinnoh tree with Honey, wait six hours, and something is shaking it. Each tree draws from three rarity groups: the common group is 70% of the time, the uncommon one 20%, the rare one the last 10%. On the one tree that can give Munchlax the first two swap round.
The Poké Radar makes patches of grass shake, and some Sinnoh Pokémon only ever appear in a shaking patch. Walking into ordinary grass will never find them.
A Nintendo DS or DS Lite has a second slot for Game Boy Advance cartridges. Leave a GBA Pokémon game in it and Sinnoh adds that region’s Pokémon to certain routes. A DSi or a 3DS has no such slot.
The National Park runs a bug contest on set days. During it the park holds a different, contest-only line-up — outside it you meet the park’s usual Pokémon instead.
The Great Marsh keeps a pool of Pokémon and swaps which of them are in the marsh every day. A row marked with the rotation is in the pool: it is there on some days and not on others, so come back tomorrow if it is missing.
Mr. Backlot in the Trophy Garden names a different Pokémon each day, and once he has named it that Pokémon joins his garden until the next day.
Some Pokémon only show up on particular days. The game reads your console’s clock, so it is the real weekday that counts.
Some encounters are locked behind a point in the story — the National Pokédex, the Hall of Fame, a particular rival battle. Before that point the Pokémon is simply not there.
The Game Corner sells Pokémon for coins you win at its slot machines. The number on the badge is the price, not a catch rate — nothing here is caught in the wild.
An NPC offers a swap: hand over the Pokémon named on the badge and they give you theirs. One trade, once per save.
A fossil, an orb, a keystone — the encounter only happens with that item in your bag, usually because someone revives it or it summons the Pokémon for you.
Diamond buries the Skull Fossil and Pearl the Armor Fossil, and Platinum picks one by your Trainer ID (the ID No. on your Trainer Card): odd for the Skull Fossil, even for the Armor Fossil. The other five fossils only turn up once you have the National Pokédex, and the Oreburgh Mining Museum revives them all.
A few encounters depend on the first Pokémon you chose, because the game balances the ones you did not take against it.
A handful of encounters ask for something specific and unrepeatable — a password, a particular Pokémon in your party, a person to talk to. The badge says which.
The Pokémon appears as part of a side mission. Take the mission on and it is placed in the world for you.
Inside a map, the help icon beside the panel opens this help in the panel, plus a legend of every icon the map draws.