Enemy Threat & Fainting
The enemy is not a standing punching bag: it hits back. Your lead takes damage, its defenses mitigate part of it, and if incoming damage outpaces your sustain the lead faints, resets to the region start and re-hunts. This "death loop" craters your hunt pace. This page shows where that threat comes from and what it costs.
Where enemy damage comes from
Enemy damage is derived from each region species' real move kit, scaled to match our HP scale. Per species, the game sums the damage of each damaging move, applying type effectiveness against your lead's types, and the region blends this weighted by how often each enemy appears. Bosses and legendaries without this data (like Mewtwo) use a flat per-level base, so they stay as dangerous as before.
The level curve: phase rules, not over-level
Incoming damage depends on the gap between your level and the phase (region) level. Each level below the region multiplies incoming damage by 1.28 (heavy punishment). Each level above the region multiplies damage by 0.80 (staying above the phase keeps you safer). At the right level, damage is already softened, more chip damage than lethal.
A Lv 28 lead stomps a Lv 8 zone with room to spare. Threat is defined by the phase, not inflated by you being above it.
Physical vs Special on the damage you TAKE
In the fight, the enemy uses real moves, and each of its moves has its own class, just like yours. An enemy physical move hits your Defense; a special move hits your Special Defense. Since enemies usually carry both kinds, both defenses matter.
The survival estimate you see on screen is simpler than that: it uses the region's type to guess how much damage comes from each side. Physical types: Normal, Fighting, Flying, Poison, Ground, Rock, Bug, Ghost, Steel. Everything else counts as special, and it is half and half when the region does not say. It is good for comparing regions at a glance, but the move the enemy actually used is what decides.
The damage you deal follows the same per move class logic. See Damage Formula.
Mitigation and regen
Mitigation has diminishing returns: the more Defense or Special Defense you have, the less each extra point reduces damage, and it never zeroes incoming damage. This scaling grows with the phase, so defense stays relevant late-game.
Regen: every lead self-heals 0.15% of max HP per second. On top of that baseline, the Regen talent is the part you invest in, and the part that actually moves the needle. Potions come in separately, and they only prevent the faint if the healing covers all the damage you are taking: covering only part of it, you last longer between faints, but you still faint. Higher Speed shortens the dead time between kills.
Checkpoints and end of the cycle: you get three free rests per cycle, and in all of them everyone still standing comes back to full HP with no potion spent. Two of them are the checkpoints, roughly a third and two thirds of the way to the boss. The third is the end of the cycle, when the phase boss goes down, every 30 kills. In areas with no phase boss the count is the same.
In practice that is a breather every 10 kills, not every 30. Between one rest and the next there is no free healing: the damage you took stays with you until the next mark. That is why the progress bar at the top of the scene matters. The two dashes on it are the checkpoints, and the end of the bar is the boss.
One falls vs everyone falls. These are two very different things, and the difference is worth knowing:
- One pokemon falls. The wave carries on with whoever is standing, and the fallen one returns to its spot in the formation. You keep the ground you covered.
- Everyone falls. The wave in progress is abandoned with no loot, and the lap restarts at the first wave of the cycle. The field stays empty until the first one is back. You lose the way to the boss and any checkpoints you had not reached yet.
Whoever returns from a full team wipe returns at full HP. That is deliberate: restarting the lap on half health meant dying again before the first checkpoint and never climbing out. When a single pokemon falls, it comes back with whatever HP its item gives it.
Damage exposure: fighting from afar means taking less, down to a 0.65x floor. But that now depends on the stance you picked, not on merely having a long move in the list. In melee it closes in and takes full damage; in ranged it holds back and gets the reduction, at the cost of using only its long moves.
The survival multiplier
The death loop becomes a multiplier on your hunt pace, depending on how much damage you take relative to your regen:
| State | What it means | Effect on pace |
|---|---|---|
| Safe | You take no net damage | Full pace, never faints |
| Wall | You faint before landing your first kill | Pace drops to zero |
| Friction | You faint from time to time | Pace is reduced; the faster you faint, the more it drops |
What the fall decides, the moment it happens: the game checks what you own, in this order, and settles everything right there.
| You have | What happens |
|---|---|
| An active blessing | No exp lost, no item spent. Back in 30 seconds. |
| An amulet | No exp lost, spends 1 amulet. Back in 30 seconds. |
| A Revive | Loses exp, spends 1 Revive at the moment of the fall. Back in 30 seconds. |
| Nothing | Loses exp and stays down. Only a Revive or the Pokemon Center gets it up. |
In the cradle phases (region level 9 or lower) the return is immediate: nobody waits at the start of the game. It is the same ladder that already gives the first phases fewer enemies per wave.
The Revive leaves your bag at the fall, not at the end of the wait. That way you know right away whether it is coming back, instead of finding out half a minute later.
The faint penalty (exp loss)
Fainting costs a slice of that pokemon's current level. The slice grows with the level, and it never reaches a whole level:
| Pokemon level | What a faint costs |
|---|---|
| Up to Lv 19 | nothing, fainting is free |
| Lv 20 | 12% of the current level |
| Lv 50 | 23% of the current level |
| Lv 80 | 33% of the current level |
| Lv 100 and up | 40% of the current level (the cap) |
| Floor | a run of faints can delevel you, but never below Lv 5's exp |
| With a Max Revive | half: the fall it covers charges half that slice |
The penalty is compounding: each faint charges on what is left. The total decays toward the floor and never hits zero.
In play time, one faint costs about 4 hours of hunting at Lv 50 and about a day and a quarter at Lv 100. The bigger your career, the more you lose, but never a whole level at once.
You can pay nothing at all
There is a VIP Shop item family that zeroes the cost of dying: the Blessed Amulet (one death, 2 Sapphires) and the Blessing Scrolls (6h or 12h of protected deaths). A covered death loses no exp and spends no Revive. The details, and the math on which one pays off, are in Blessings.
Revive strategy: your call
The Strategy window, next to potion healing, holds three settings:
- Auto-revive. On, every faint spends a Revive by itself and the hunt keeps going. Off, the first faint stops everything until you revive by hand.
- Spend first. Which of the two Revives leaves the bag first. It is a preference, not a lock: if the chosen one runs out, the other steps in and the hunt continues. Save your Max Revives for hard regions, where the 5% matters.
- Leave after N deaths. Pick 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10 or 15. On reaching that many deaths in the hunt, the team walks off the field standing and the hunt stops. This is your protection against a whole night in a heavy place: instead of dying in a row and losing levels, you come back to a full team waiting. Resuming is one click and costs no item. If you never touch this setting you are already covered: the default is leaving after 2 deaths. To hunt without that stop, pick no limit.
The count is of whole team deaths, not just your leader, and it covers the entire hunt, not each minute. The panel shows how many you have used. It resets when you resume or start a new hunt.
Whole team down with no Revive: the hunt truly stops
If your whole team goes down and you own no Revive, the hunt is halted. Nothing yields until you get your team up. This holds across the whole world: going back to the map and entering another region does not stand anyone up, and swapping your team does not either. The knockout follows you until you revive.
You have two paths:
- Revive: gets them up right away and costs 1 Revive, either through the button on the faint screen or automatically, with auto-revive on. It is the only path that keeps the hunt moving with the game closed.
- Pokémon Center: free, and charges 2 minutes with the hunt paused. No items spent.
With no gold and no Revive you are never stuck: the Center handles it, and the Daily reward always grants a few free Revives and Potions.