Loot and drops
Items no longer drop loose on the ground: everything arrives sealed inside chests. This is the player summary of how it works.
The chest drop
Every kill has a chance to drop a chest, about 0.66% per kill on a level 50 map.
| Quantity | Value |
|---|---|
| Base chance per kill | 0.66% (~1 chest every ~152 kills, on a level 50 map) |
| Region strength | stronger maps drop more chests and better ones |
| Monster strength | within a map, the weaker monster drops fewer |
Map strength rules the chest
Hunting deep pays off. The map you are on multiplies the chance of a chest dropping, and at the same time pushes its rarity up:
| Map level | 1 chest every | Legendary chance |
|---|---|---|
| 3 | ~345 kills | 0.6% |
| 25 | ~208 kills | 1.5% |
| 50 | ~152 kills | 3.3% |
| 75 | ~128 kills | 5.6% |
| 100 | ~112 kills | 8.6% |
| 155 or more | ~81 kills | 15.6% |
Frequency climbs from the first map to the last, and quality climbs faster still: from 100 to 155 the kills per chest fall from 112 to 81 and the Legendary chance nearly doubles.
Inside the same map there is still a difference per monster: the weaker ones in the group drop chests less often (down to ×0.6) and the stronger ones more often (up to ×1.4). In many maps the group is even and this barely changes anything.
Hunting below your level cuts the chest
On top of map strength, the gap between your level and the map's counts. The further below your level you hunt, the fewer chests drop:
| how far below you hunt | how much of the chest you keep |
|---|---|
| at your level (or above) | all of it |
| 5 levels below | 75% |
| 10 levels below | 57% |
| 15 levels below | 43% |
| 18 levels or more | 38% (the minimum) |
Hunting at your level or above is never penalised.
The chest's type is the element of the monster that dropped it (fire mon becomes a fire chest), which decides the type-themed items inside. Dual-type species have a 30% chance of theming the chest by their secondary type: hunting Ralts, for example, can yield a fairy chest.
Only evolution stones that some evolution actually consumes can drop: an unused stone never takes the chest's jackpot slot.
Each rarity has its own queue of 5 slots, so a flood of Commons can never push a Legendary out. A chest that drops while that rarity's queue is full is lost. When that happens, the drop line on the battle screen warns you in red.
Chest rarity
Four rarities. As a chest climbs in rarity, batches get bigger and the good prizes get more likely:
| Rarity | On a level 3 map | On a level 50 map | On a level 100 map | Count mult |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Common | ~84% | ~69% | ~54% | 1 |
| Rare | ~13% | ~20% | ~23% | 1.5 |
| Epic | ~2.8% | ~8.1% | ~14% | 2 |
| Legendary | ~0.6% | ~3.3% | ~8.6% | 3 |
The count multiplier is what fattens the batches: balls and revives come in bigger packs from better chests (tables below).
What comes out of each chest
Every chest yields one prize: on open, the game rolls which table line came out. The prize can be a single item (a stone, a TM) or a batch (balls, potions and revives come in packs). Each line's chance depends on the chest's rarity: a Common chest almost always turns into candy, balls, potions or revives; a Legendary competes between the jackpots.
| Prize | Common | Rare | Epic | Legendary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Exp candy | 51% | 25.2% | 10.2% | 2.5% |
| Poké Balls (batch) | 20% | 18% | 14% | 13% |
| Revives (batch) | 9% | 8% | 4.5% | 2.5% |
| Potions (batch) | 5.5% | 4.5% | 1.5% | 0.5% |
| Vitamin (+EVs) | 0% | 0% | 13% | 14% |
| Type evolution stone | 0% | 8% | 11% | 13% |
| Gem (temp damage buff) | 6% | 19% | 13.2% | 6.5% |
| Fusion Core | 0% | 2% | 6% | 8% |
| Held item (passive) | 0% | 3% | 4% | 7% |
| Fossil | 0% | 2% | 3.5% | 5% |
| Seal (move socket) | 0% | 0% | 4% | 6% |
| Rare Candy (10% of a level) | 0% | 0% | 3% | 5.5% |
| TM disc (type-themed) | 2.5% | 4.5% | 5% | 6% |
| Mega Stone Fragment | 0% | 0% | 1% | 3% |
| Essence of Life (breeding) | 0% | 0% | 0% | 1.5% |
| Arena Ticket (+1 PvP attack) | 0% | 0.8% | 1.8% | 3% |
Prize details:
- Exp candy: Common = 1 small; Rare = 60% (1–2 small) / 40% (1 medium); Epic = 1 medium; Legendary = 1 large.
- Revives: Common = 3 Revives; Rare = 4; Epic = 5; Legendary = 8 Revives or, half the time, 4 Max Revives (full-health revival).
- Potions: Common = 2 Potions; Rare = 3 Super Potions; Epic = 4 Hyper Potions; Legendary = 6 Hyper Potions or, half the time, 3 Full Restores.
- Held: on Legendary, 50% chance to be Choice Band / Leftovers / Lucky Egg (else the chest's type booster).
- Arena Ticket: grants +1 attack in the PvP Arena today (up to 3 a day). Chests are its only source.
- If the rolled line has no possible item for that chest (a stone for an element with no stone, for example), exp candy comes out instead. A chest never opens empty.
Balls sealed in the chest
When the ball line is rolled, balls come out in a batch, and both the batch size and the ball type climb with rarity:
| Rarity | Batch | Ball |
|---|---|---|
| Common | 10 | Poké Ball |
| Rare | 15 | Great Ball |
| Epic | 20 | 40% Ultra Ball, 60% Great Ball |
| Legendary | 30 | 40% Ultra Ball, 60% Great Ball |
Rare-ball details:
- The Master Ball is the rarest drop in the game. While hunting it exists only in Legendary chests: when a Legendary rolls balls, there is a 0.58% chance that 1 Master Ball comes out instead of the batch, which works out to 0.07% of Legendary chests. In kills that is on the order of 1 per 460,000 on the deepest map, and not even worth calculating on a starter map. The other chest that gives one is the Campeão (1%), the prize for finishing the Arena season in 1st. If you want a Master Ball predictably, the source is the Battle Pass: level 35 of the Gold Pass pays 1 guaranteed per season. On the free track, the level 14 Ball Chest can give one, but only in 5 of every 1,000 openings.
- The Astral Ball is an extra Legendary bonus: when the ball line comes out, there is a 12% chance 1 Astral comes along, without taking anything's place. It is the raid item.
Tiers that exist but don't drop from the wild
Some individual rarity tiers (not chest tiers) never appear from hunting:
- Divine: the top of the stat axis; weight 0 in the wild, only from the Lab fusion.
- Master Ball: as above, only from Legendary and Campeão chests.
The full individual-rarity scale is in Shiny.