Bond

Bond is a bar from 0 to 100% that fills while you hunt with that pokemon on your team. It is not the level bar and has nothing to do with it: what fills Bond is time hunting together, and nothing else.

It starts at zero for every pokemon that reaches you, and it is always yours to earn. Caught at level 1 or bought at level 100, both fill the bar by hunting.

How Bond goes up

Source	Counts as Bond?
Hunting with it on the team (offline included)	Yes
Hunting while it sits on the bench, off the team	No
Leaving it in the box or the depot	No
Levels gained in School	No
Levels gained with Candy (Rare Candy, Exp Candy)	No
Experience received from an Inheritance Capsule	No

The rule is short: it rises for whoever is hunting with you. Bought experience raises the level, not the bond.

The Affinity talent fills the bar a bit faster. See Talents.

How long it takes

How it reached you	Hunting time to 100%	In practice
Caught by you (eggs and fossils included)	84 hours	about 1 week
Acquired ready-made (market, gift, raid, pass, Lucky One, chest, Lab)	252 hours	about 3 weeks

Hunting time counts while the game is closed too. The "in practice" column assumes someone who opens the game once a day and plays a little. Opening twice a day gets there in about 4 and 13 days; opening every other day, in 17 and 52.

A pokemon you caught fills the bar three times faster. That is the only difference between the two cases, and both of them finish.

The time is the same at any level. One hour of hunting with a level 1 is worth the same as one hour with a level 100 — the count is normalised by what that level usually earns, so levelling up makes Bond neither slower nor faster.

The bar fills by the hour, not by experience. Carrying a weak pokemon alongside two strong ones in a hard region levels it very fast, but Bond keeps moving at the pace of the clock. A bond costs time, and time cannot be bought.

The bar does not fill evenly, and the gap is wide: the bottom half costs a quarter of the way, and the top half costs three quarters. The first two milestones come fast; the last quarter alone is nearly half the effort.

When the pokemon outgrows the world

When a pokemon becomes stronger than the highest region in the game, its experience collapses — that is the normal rule, and it exists to discourage farming weak maps. Bond is not affected. It keeps filling at the normal pace, so you can finish the bar of a pokemon that no longer levels up at all.

The 4 milestones

Bond	Milestone	What it opens
25%	Trust	+1 held item slot
50%	Attunement	+1 seal socket on the main move
75%	Discipline	+3% stats
100%	Devotion	+3% stats (6% total), +1 held item slot and the Essence of its rarity

Every milestone costs more than the one before: 25% takes a tenth of the way, 50% another 15%, 75% another 30%, and 100% the remaining 45%.

In hunting hours, for a caught pokemon: Trust at ~8h, Attunement at ~21h, Discipline at ~46h and Devotion at ~84h.

The two item slots add to the rarity floor. A Common has no slot out of the box, but a Common with a full Bond ends with 2. A Divine reaches 6, which is the game's cap. See Held, gems and healing.

100% is also the Apex: it is what opens the seat in the Hall of Veterans.

The Essence

At the 100% milestone the pokemon gains a damage passive whose name and strength depend on its rarity. It is the big prize for taking a rare pokemon to the end of the bar: while rarity only gives bigger numbers, the Essence gives something no level can buy.

Bond delivers the Essence at half strength — half of the table's bonus, never half of the number.

Rarity	Essence	Damage from Bond	Full Essence number
Common	Stubbornness	×1.015	×1.03
Uncommon	Vigor	×1.025	×1.05
Rare	Instinct	×1.04	×1.08
Epic	Momentum	×1.06	×1.12
Prismatic	Prism	×1.09	×1.18
Mythic	Omen	×1.125	×1.25
Astral	Constellation	×1.175	×1.35
Divine	Divine Breath	×1.25	×1.50

Bond does not come with a purchase

When a pokemon changes owner, Bond resets to zero. This holds for the fixed-price market, for offers, for auctions and for player trades — and it holds even if you sell a pokemon and buy it back later.

What you buy	What stays with whoever raised it
Species, rarity, IVs, nature, gender, shiny, level, moves and items	The whole Bond
	The Essence (it wakes again once YOU fill the bar)
	The Apex and the seat in the Hall
	The right to the Ascension Altar, which refuses received pokemon
	The right to donate through an Inheritance Capsule

The market listing shows the current owner's Bond and makes it clear that it does not come along, before you pay.

Two rules slow down fast circulation between accounts: a freshly received pokemon only returns to the market after 48 hours, and to list a pokemon that already has Bond the account needs to be at least 48 hours old.

Evolving resets nothing

Evolving is the same pokemon in another form. Bond stays where it was.

Where to see Bond

On the pokemon sheet, in Team/Box. It shows the percentage, the four milestones, what each one opens, and whether you caught it or it came ready-made.