To start, I am going to play Pokemon Champions with what is possible given just the basic free tools at our disposal. This includes Pokemon GO, free to play as I will never put money into it, and Pokemon HOME. You can pay for HOME, but for Champions purposes, just having the single box is likely sufficient. To keep the challenge fair (since I pay for HOME already), I will be limiting any Wonder Trade to three mons, all of which come from GO. I’ll also allow myself GTS trades. Three random pokemon each day will go out and we will see what we get. These will likely be our team members early on. Initially, I wasn’t even paying for the starter pack with the extra storage space and training tokens, but once I saw what a rough start it would be (entirely for storage space reasons) I had to allow myself that purchase. Still, I want to get a feel for how expensive this game will truly be in order to compete at a reasonable level. 

Once I hit a wall with the random pokemon and rentals I acquire in Champions, plus any GO and Home discoveries (hey, I got a Groudon this morning on wonder trade, so we could get lucky), then I’ll bring in my big guns. A lot of my best Pokemon were never fully trained, and with IVs and EVs replaced by a new 66 point training system, it’s entirely possible to very quickly forgo the headache of manual EV training and Hyper Training entirely.

Early Thoughts on Pokemon Champions Day Before Release

A few things I know going in. VP, which is the primary currency to train your Pokemon, is only able to be acquired through ranked battles. I do like this, as it greatly reduces the pay to win factor we see so often. There are also training tickets. I didn’t know how already-trained Pokemon will transfer. In that, what is worth doing outside of Champions to save on VP? (More on that later). Interestingly, you can’t train Pokemon during their trial period; as we find out, they will already be trained a particular way already unless you decide to permanently recruit them. I was thinking this means all your EV investments from outside Champions are nullified entirely. (Fortunately, that wouldn’t be the case. It means natures, abilities, and moves do matter, though. Once they hit Champions, they are frozen that way forever unless you go and train up a completely different Pokemon. I found that out very early on, as you’ll see.)

The other thing still to be seen is how mons from Pokemon home go back and forth. I noticed already that there’s an option to “visit” champions. This means there’s no permanent transfer of Pokemon outside of champions. That begs the question, when those Pokemon are no longer visiting, do you have to retrain their stats when they go back or is this data saved somehow? The answer here is yes; all that stuff stays behind on Champions. Even if you send the Pokemon back to another game to change its moves, nature, ability, etc, in Champions they will be whatever was the case when it first visited Champions. However, this means considering we are looking at about 330 VP per mon just for stat training, maybe that’s not so bad if you get the nature, ability, and moves sorted before. If you do end up visiting Champions with moves that are disallowed though, enjoy spending 250 VP a pop to make it legal or enjoy training up a brand new Pokemon in its place.

Also, I’m curious to see how limited storage space is on champions on free to play; the starter pack gives you an extra 50 storage slots. This will be interesting. We DO know that Pokemon acquired in champions can’t be transferred out. And I found out quickly, you only get 30, and this means you’ll have to start returning Pokemon you get in-game to the ranch for absolutely zilch. Kinda icky; the only thing about this game I don’t like so far. I think the 80 the Starter Pack permanently gives you is worth the seven-dollar expense.

What we do know is a training ticket is a free customization, and the starter pack gives you a ton of these. You can also get them from the Battle Pass, both free and premium. [The information I found about the VP costs for training on the day before release were entirely wrong, though, and I had to come back and update this. They are the correct values now.] The stat points (up to 66 total) are 5 VP per point, moves are 250 vp, nature is 500 vp, and ability is 500 vp. So I was right about wanting to have the best possible nature and ability straightaway. Moves are probably worth the investment.

I also learned there’s a gift Dragonite. You also get quick coupons which let you reroll the pokemon you get at the requirement ranch, spending one coupon per hour of cooldown. I’m going to see how far I can get with just the Ranch. Also, it will be extremely interesting to see the restrictions on what Pokemon will be allowed.

Basically, everything can be got with VP outside of some exclusive cosmetics and some items. The starter pack is usually 10 bucks, but can be gotten for 7 at release. I’d end up purchasing it on the first day after realizing how much they squeeze you on just 30 storage slots. So, unfortunately, there goes free-to-play, but I’d rather not freak out about which Pokemon I have to say goodbye to after just two weeks. With a few hours to go before April 8th on the east coast, everything is speculation based on the few people that got to preview the game. This is gonna be quite a wild ride these first few days. 

The Plan 

The first step is to see how far I can get on the ladder with only what you’re given for free. Once I hit a wall, I’ll start incorporating Pokemon I get from trading go mons on Home. This is something anyone can do for free and I even limited myself to three trades at a time to make it fair. After that, then I will bring in my big guns. I am going to make a huge effort to not spend a penny on the game. Until I feel it is absolutely necessary. 

To be continued…