The pokemon

Two Pidgey at the same level are almost never the same. This page gathers, in one place, everything that defines a pokemon as an individual and how much each layer really weighs. If you just want the short answer: rarity is the most important layer, and it never changes after the pokemon is born.

What makes an individual

Layer	Changes later?	What it decides
Species	Yes, on evolution	Base stats, types, which moves it is born with
Rarity	Never	Overall power, item slots, catch difficulty, move quality
Shiny	Never	Multiplies rarity and gives the biggest stat bonus in the game
IVs	Never	The "DNA": 0 to 31 in each of the 6 stats
Nature	Never	+10% to one stat, −10% to another
EVs	Yes, with Vitamins	Accumulated training, up to 252 per stat and 510 total
Level	Yes, by hunting	Scales everything else
Bond	Yes, by hunting with it	Item slots, seal socket, stats and the Essence of its rarity
Stars	Yes, at the Altar	+4% to every stat per Star, up to 5
Moves and items	Yes	Up to 4 moves and up to 6 held items

Each one in detail in Stats.

The 8 rarities

Every pokemon rolls a rarity when it is born. Any species can come out at any rarity: there is an Astral Rattata and there is a Common Dragonite.

Rarity	Base power	Chance in the wild
Common	1.00	77.25%
Uncommon	1.03	16.82%
Rare	1.06	4.55% (1 in 22)
Epic	1.10	0.82% (1 in 122)
Prismatic	1.15	0.38% (1 in 260)
Mythic	1.21	0.12% (1 in 810)
Astral	1.28	0.050% (1 in 1,989)
Divine	1.36	never appears while hunting

On top of the ladder there are three seals, and they multiply the rolled rarity instead of replacing it:

Seal	Base power	How it shows up
Founder	1.50	Founder companion
Shiny	1.45	1 in 28,800 encounters
Genesis	1.42	Genesis Pack companion

Since everything multiplies, an Astral shiny is worth 1.28 × 1.45 = ×1.86, and an Astral founder, 1.28 × 1.50 = ×1.92. At equal rarity the founder seal beats shiny, and shiny beats Genesis.

What rarity changes

Five things, and it pays to know all of them before choosing who to invest in.

1. Stats

Rarity multiplies the species' base stat before anything else. It is not a flat bonus glued on at the end: it grows along with level. A Prismatic at level 100 is much stronger than a Common at level 100 of the same species.

2. Held item slots

Common	Uncommon	Rare	Epic	Prismatic	Mythic	Astral	Divine
0	0	1	2	2	3	3	4

That table is the floor, and the first slot only opens at Rare. Shiny, founder and Genesis start with 4 regardless.

Bond adds on top: +1 slot at 25% Bond and +1 at 100%. There is no cap: a Divine with a full Bond reaches 6 slots, and a Common you take to 25% ends up with 1, which its rarity would never give. If you want a Choice Band and Lucky Egg carrier right now, pick by rarity; if you want the pokémon that holds the most items in the game, hunt with it. See Held, gems and healing.

3. Catch difficulty

The rarer it is, the harder it is to catch. The factor applied to the throw:

Common	Uncommon	Rare	Epic	Prismatic	Mythic	Astral	Divine
1	10	26	39	90	174	283	386

Notice the jump between Common (1) and Uncommon (10). That is where hunting stops being routine. Ball, type and cap details in Catching.

Putting appearance and catching together, on a median-difficulty species with an Ultra Ball and a team at level, one of each tier lands roughly like this: Uncommon in 30 minutes, Rare in 4 hours, Epic in 5 days, Prismatic in 15 days, Mythic in 2 months and Astral in 6 months. An easy species cuts that a lot; a hard one multiplies it.

4. Native move quality

The moves a pokemon is born with roll a tier, and its rarity tilts that roll. A native move never goes above Epic (past that it is TMs and seals).

Rarity	Common	Uncommon	Rare	Epic
Common	92%	6%	2%	0%
Uncommon	90%	7%	3%	0%
Rare	75%	13%	9%	3%
Epic	72%	14%	11%	3%
Prismatic	60%	18%	14%	8%
Mythic	55%	19%	16%	10%
Astral	50%	20%	18%	12%
Divine	45%	21%	20%	14%

See Tiers and seals.

5. Eggs and fusion

In breeding, the offspring's rarity starts from the better of the two parents, and hatch time grows with it, from 6 hours at Common up to 30 days at Astral. In the Laboratory, 9 identical pokemon become 1 of a better tier, and the chance to climb drops as the input tier rises (60% from Common, 20% from Astral). See Breeding and Fossils, Lab & Box.

What rarity does NOT change

Worth saying plainly, because it is easy to assume wrong:

Gold per kill: the same for everyone.
Experience per kill: the same for everyone.
Chest chance and chest quality: the same for everyone.
Market price: the seller sets it. There is no automatic price by rarity.

Rarity helps your farming indirectly: more stats means killing faster, and killing faster means more of everything.

Types

Each species has one or two types (329 of the 694 species are dual-type). Type decides the damage it deals and takes, gives a damage bonus on moves of the same type, and is also worth 1.6x ball power when the ball matches the target's type. Full table in Type chart.

Evolution

Evolving swaps the pokemon's species, and nothing else. Level, experience, rarity, IVs, EVs, nature, shiny, held items and moves: all preserved. There is no level reset.

There are three triggers: level, stone (which replaces the level gate) and branch, when a species can become more than one thing. Mega Evolution is a fourth path, permanent, that goes through fragments and forging. All the detail in Evolution.

Shiny

Shiny is the rarest find in the game: 1 in 28,800 encounters, far rarer than Astral. In return it gives +45% base stats on top of the monster's rarity, the full 4 item slots from rarity (plus whatever Bond adds) and a glow of its own. The price is the catch: the Master Ball fails against a shiny, and how hard it is depends on how hard that species is to catch. See Shiny.

Gender and egg groups

Every pokemon has a gender (male, female or genderless), set at birth by the species' ratio. The symbol shows next to the name on the pokemon's detail screen. To breed, both need to share an egg group and have opposite genders, or one of them needs to be a Ditto. There are 15 egg groups, and 600 of the 694 species can breed. See Breeding.

Team and box

Saved teams

You can store a whole line-up as a saved team and switch with one click. You get 1 slot for free, and Premium opens 2 more, for a total of 3. Each slot has its own nickname.

Your battle team has 3 slots. The lead can never be sent to the box, and you never end up with an empty team.

The box limit

The box has a limit, and it changes at launch. Until August 31, 2026 the limit is 15,000 pokemon. From September 1, when the game officially launches, it becomes 3,000. The switch happens on its own, at midnight Brasilia time.

The limit applies only to catching on the map. Eggs that hatch, Market buys, trades with other players, raid prizes and Lab fusions always come in, even with a full box.

And catching does not stop all at once. There are two steps:

Pokemon in the box	What happens on the hunt
Below the limit	Normal catching
From the limit to plus 1,000	Uncommon or better only. Common walks past and costs no ball
More than 1,000 over	Your trainer stops throwing balls

You never lose anything. If you are above the limit on switch day, you keep everything you have: the limit blocks the way in, it never releases a pokemon. Catching comes back as soon as the box drops below the step. To drop, release what you do not use and earn Dust.

The perfect pokemon

If you are building the definitive one, this is the priority order:

High rarity (or shiny), because it is the one layer you cannot fix later.
Good IVs, also permanent.
Nature that raises your main offensive stat.
A strong species, reached through evolution or Mega.
Concentrated EVs in two stats, using Vitamins.
High tier moves and seals, plus the held items your rarity unlocked.