In the world of Pokemon Let’s Go, there’s a lot of NPCs who will give you something or the other meaningful and useful—sometimes you may have to give them something, other times, it’s just a matter of getting something from them. In this guide, we look at all of these NPCs:

• NPC in Cerulean City gifts you a Lvl 12 Bulbasaur (you need to have caught 30 Pokemon)
• NPC north of Nugget Bridge gives you a Lvl 14 Charmander (you need to have caught 50 Pokemon)
• Officer Jenny in Vermillion City gives you a Lvl 16 Squirtle (you need to have caught 60 Pokemon)
• NPC in Silph Co. Building gives you Lapras
• NPC outside Silph Co.’s building will give you Porygon (you need to have beaten Team Rocket first)
• A Lvl 30 Hitmonchan or Hitmonlee can be obtained from the Fighting Dojo in Saffron City once you beat the Dojo Master

POKEFLUTE

The Pokeflute is necessary to awaken the sleeping Snorlax who block both possible routes to Fuschia City (one is west of Celadon City, next to Pokemon Road, while the other is east of Vermillion City and south of Lavender Town). Without waking them up, you can’t proceed to Fuschia City.

Thankfully, the Pokeflute is an item you get as a part of the story. Once you complete the Lavender Town Pokemon Tower quest (which involves you first clearing the Rocket Hideout in Celadon City and obtaining the Silph Scope to be able to unmask the ghosts in Pokemon Tower), Mr. Fuji will give you the Pokeflute.

Your Pokemon in Pokemon Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Eevee! have natures. Natures are, abstracted, a disposition they have—they can be cheery or gloomy, they can be irritable or friendly, and so on. However, the Nature of your Pokemon also has some very really considerations in terms of gameplay—you see, the Natures lead to tangible effects on your Pokemon’s Stat growth when they level up.

NATURES

There are over two dozen Natures in Pokemon Let’s Go. Below, find a list of each Nature, as well as the stat they increase by 10% (listed first), and the stat they decrease by 10% (listed second).

• Adamant: Attack, Special Attack
• Bashful: Neutral (no stats affected)
• Bold: Defense, Attack
• Brave: Attack, Speed
• Calm: Special Defense, Attack
• Careful: Special Defense, Special Attack
• Docile: Neutral (no stats affected)
• Gentle: Special Defense, Defense
• Hardy: Neutral (no stats affected)
• Hasty: Speed, Defense
• Impish: Defense, Special Attack
• Jolly: Speed, Special Attack
• Lax: Defense, Special Defense
• Lonely: Attack, Defense
• Mild: Special Attack, Defense
• Modest: Special Attack, Attack
• Naive: Speed Special, Defense
• Naughty: Attack, Special Defense
• Quiet: Special Attack, Speed
• Quirky: Neutral (no stats affected)
• Rash: Special Attack, Special Defense
• Relaxed: Defense, Speed
• Sassy: Special Defense, Speed
• Serious: Neutral (no stats affected)
• Timid: Speed, Attack

CHANGING NATURES

You can go to the Fortune Teller in Celadon City to have the Nature of a Pokemon changed to something more preferable for one day. She charges 10,000 Pokedollars, and the process is a bit convoluted, so let us walk you through it.

Essentially, what Nature the Pokemon will have comes down to what flower you water, and what flower you thin. Below, we have a list of what Natures you get for doing so. The first flower is water, the second is thin:

• Green, Pink: Sassy
• Pink, Yellow: Hasty
• Blue, Green: Rash
• Red, Pink: Brave
• Yellow, Blue: Impish
• Blue, Yellow: Mild
• Yellow, Pink: Relaxed
• Blue, Pink: Quiet
• Blue, Red: Modest
• Green, Red: Calm
• Red, Yellow: Lonely
• Pink, Green: Naive
• Pink, Blue: Jolly
• Blue, Blue: Bashful
• Green, Blue: Careful
• Red, Red: Hardy
• Yellow, Yellow: Docile
• Pink: Pink: Serious
• Pink, Red: Timid
• Red, Green: Naughty
• Yellow, Green: Lax
• Green, Yellow: Gentle
• Yellow, Red: Bold
• Green, Green: Quirky
• Red, Blue: Adamant

Some of the hardest challenges in Pokemon Let’s Go come from the Legendary Pokemon battles, as well as the Elite Four of the Pokemon League. The former are the hardest Pokemon in the game—hidden away in labyrinthine dungeons, and Pokemon you have to fight before you can even try to catch them. The latter are the hardest trainers you will run into over the course of the campaign.

This guide deals with mastering both.

LEGENDARY POKEMON

Much like in the original Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow, there are four Legendary Pokemon hidden throughout Kanto. These are the three Legendary Bird Mirages, as well as the strongest Pokemon in the world, Mewtwo. They are the hardest Wild Pokemon you can encounter in the game, and unlike other wild Pokemon, you need to battle them before attempting to catch them.

Before you even try to catch these Legendary Pokemon, there are some tips I highly recommend you keep in mind:

• Always save before initiating an encounter with a Legendary. This way, if you mess something up, you can reset and start over
• Take lots of Ultra Balls with you. Legendary Pokemon are notoriously hard to catch, and you’ll be throwing a lot of Pokeballs at them to try and catch them, which they will keep breaking out of. It’s best to be so well prepared that there’s no threat of you running out
• Save the Master Ball. Do not use it on any other Pokemon, except for Mewtwo. Mewtwo is incredibly hard to catch, and can border on being absolutely impossible without the Master Ball. Save it for him, and use Ultra Balls on the other Legendaries.

With that out of the way, here’s where you find the Legendary Pokemon:

• Articuno: Seafoam Islands
• Mewtwo: Cerulean Cave
• Zapdos: Power Plant
• Moltress: Victory Road

Bear in mind Mewtwo cannot be accessed until you beat the Pokemon League’s Elite Four.

ELITE FOUR

Once you beat the gym leaders, you get access to the Elite Four of the Pokemon League, west of Viridian City. The four trainers of the Elite Four are battled in succession, with no breaks. This means that you need to be stocked up on healing items before hand, because you are facing the four hardest trainers in the game without any chance to heal between the battles. So buy lots of Max Potions and Revives, and have your Ethers and Elixirs saved up to recharge your PP.

The four trainers of the Elite Four are:

Lorelei: Ice Type (weak to Fire, Rock, and Fighting types)

Additionally, two Pokemon of her have Water and Psychic as sub-types. Having a Dark Type Pokemon for the Psychic Type can be helpful, and Electric Pokemon for the Ice/Water types.

• Slowbro Lvl 51
• Lapras Lvl 52
• Dewgong Lvl 51
• Jynx Lvl 51
• Cloyster Lvl 51

Bruno: Fighting Type (weak to Flying and Psychic types)

Additionally, one of his Pokemon is Rock/Ground (weak to Water and Grass), and one of them has a Water sub-type (meaning it is weak to Electric and Grass types).

• Hitmonlee Lvl 52
• Onix Lvl 52
• Poliwrath Lvl 52
• Machamp Lvl 53
• Hitmonchan Lvl 52

Agatha: Ghost Type (weak to Dark type)

Additionally, since all of Agatha’s Ghost Types are Ghost/Poison Pokemon, they are weak to Psychic attacks too).

• Arbok Lvl 53
• Golbat Lvl 53
• Weezing Lvl 53
• Gengar Lvl 53
• Gengar Lvl 53

Lance: Dragon Type (weak to Dragon, and Ice types)

Gyarados is Water/Flying, meaning it is only weak to Electric (but four times weak to that); Charizard is Fire/Flying, meaning it is 4X Weak to Rock, 2X weak to electric, 2X weak to Water; Aerodactyl is Flying/Rock, so 2X weak to Water, Electric and Grass; finally, Seadra is pure Water, so zap it with Electric, or with Grass type moves.

• Seadra Lvl 54
• Charizard Lvl 54
• Aerodactyl Lvl 54
• Dragonite Lvl 55
• Gyarados Lvl 54

Pokemon Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Let’s Go, Eevee! place the emphasis on catching Pokemon. They trim the number of Pokemon down to just 151, which means catching them all is easier than it has been in two decades—but more of that 151 is comprised of Water type Pokemon than any other Pokemon type.

Which is to say—catching Water type Pokemon is important if you are going to be catching them all. Unlike previous games, you can’t fish for Water type Pokemon, because fishing is not a feature in these games. Instead, the only way to actually catch water Pokemon is by going into the water yourself.

In older games, this was managed by the HM Surf. However, mercifully, HMs have been cut out from Let’s Go. Instead we have Secret Techniques, field moves that your starter Pokemon can learn that perform the same functions as the old HMs did. In this case, Surf has been replaced by the Secret Technique Sea Skim.

To get Sea Skim, you first need to get to Fuschia City—which means you need to have woken up the Snorlax blocking either of the two possible routes to it. Put simply, you can’t do this until after you have cleared the Team Rocket Hideout in Celadon City, and completed the Pokemon Tower quest in Lavender Town.

Once done, head on down to Fuchsia City, and into the GO Park Complex with a lot of Pokemon hanging out. You’ll see a Lapras in a small pond, and a guy standing next to him. Speak to the guy, and he will wax eloquent about how him and Lapras used to surf the seas back in the day, and then teach your starter (Pikachu or Eevee) the technique.

Once you learn it, you can get into the water, and Water type Pokemon will begin spawning in water bodies as long as you are actually in them.

You’ll be catching a lot of Pokemon in Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee, but the thing is, you need to be good at it if you don’t want to burn through Pokeballs. You are also going to end up having to catch a lot of duplicates, since they are what will get you Candy from Professor Oak, which in turn helps with controlling stat growth for your Pokemon.

This guide deals with how to catch Pokemon effectively, and what to do with extras.

POKEBALL THROWING TIPS

Catching Pokemon in Let’s Go mimes the Pokemon catching minigame from Pokemon GO. It follows a lot of the same principles: you run into wild Pokemon, you throw Pokeballs at them, and you catch them. However, you’ll notice that sometimes when you throw a Pokeball, you get a rating for it—catching a Pokemon with these ratings gets you bonus experience for catching it.

There are three—Nice, Great, and Excellent. You trigger these by catching the Pokemon when the circle around it (this circle is coloured green, orange, or red, and gradually shrinks) is small, and you throw the ball right at its center. The smaller the circle is when you throw the ball, the higher the rating (so a very small circle when you threw the ball gets you an Excellent). Remember, however, that getting a Nice, Great, or Excellent isn’t a guarantee that you catch the Pokemon—it can still break out of an Excellent throw, for example.

• In general, I recommend playing in handheld mode. In handheld mode, the gyro is only used for broad aiming, and the actual throwing of the Pokeball is a button press. This means that your throws are more accurate and likelier to go where you want them to go, in handheld mode over console mode
• If the Pokemon is jumping around a lot, feed it a Nanab Berry. Nanab Berries make Pokemon calm down.
• Time the throw when the circle is getting small, and make sure you are aiming at the center—this way, your Pokeball should hit the center and catch the Pokemon when the circle is at its smallest possible, getting you an Excellent rating

TRANSFERRING EXTRA POKEMON

As mentioned in a previous guide, catching duplicate Pokemon is extremely helpful—it gets you Candies, and it makes it likelier for rare and Shiny Pokemon to spawn. However, it also means your Pokemon Box is now cluttered with five dozen Zubat, and no one likes having five dozen Zubat.

So, what do you do with all the extra, duplicate Pokemon? Well, transferring them is the solution. Which is a simple process—open up your bag, go to the Pokemon box, select a Pokemon, and select “Transfer to Professor”. The game will actually let you select multiple Pokemon to send to Professor Oak now, so select as many as you want, and then hit Y. The Pokemon will be gone from your Box right away, and you will get Candies from Professor Oak for your Pokemon.

Unlike future games in the series, Pokemon Red/Blue don’t have you taking down an existential threat. Which means that Let’s Go, as their remakes, don’t either. Instead, you take on Team Rocket, a criminal syndicate that uses Pokemon to do evil, whom you just happen to cross paths with.

This guide covers some Team Rocket encounters.

THE BLAST OFF OUTFIT

There are two Team Rocket outfits in the game—one of them is actually unavoidable, and you will get as part of the story. The other one, however, is the Blast Off Outfit, which lets you dress up as Jesse and James, the Team Rocket goons you keep running into through the game.

Once you have beaten all eight gym leaders, head to Route 17, or Pokemon Road. Here, you will eventually get accosted by Jesse and James, who challenge you to a battle. Once you beat them, they try to get you to join Team Rocket. At this point, no matter what you say, you’re obviously not joining them, but to get the Blast Off Outfit, you must say no. Saying no gets James to give you the Blast Off Outfit.

THE SILPH CO. INVASION

The climax of your run ins with Team Rocket occurs in Saffron City, where you arrive to find Team Rocket having taken over the whole damn place, in an attempt to get Silph Co., the corporation that makes all the items, including Pokeballs, you use in the game, to join forces with them.

Naturally, you are tasked with getting rid of them, but Silph Co.’s building is a nightmare! It’s a maze of teleportation tiles, and you have to make your way through multiple identical looking rooms to make your way to the top, where the boss, Giovanni, awaits.

On the whole, there are just two things you need to keep in mind, which will ensure you are on the right, critical path:

• On the fifth floor, you will fight the Rocket admin, Archer, as well as a Team Rocket Grunt, whom you face alongside your rival in a four way battle. Once you defeat Archer and the grunt, you get access to the card key. This card key is needed to open most of the doors in the building.
• Once you have the card key, go to the third floor and open the locked door. Take the first teleporter, and then keep opening doors, until you run into a Nurse. This is your clue you are on the right path. She will heal your Pokemon for you. Continue following this path, until you end up in a small room with your rival. Archer shows up to battle you again, but your rival decides to engage him so you can go on. Take the other teleporter and you will end up on the 11th floor, and Jesse and James will accost you.

Once you beat Jesse and James, you will fight Giovanni in the CEO’s office of Silph Co. He’s a harder fight than the last time you faced him, so make sure you healed up beforehand. Beating Giovanni causes Team Rocket to make a run for it, and for the CEO of Silph Co. to give you a Master Ball.

Pokemon Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Let’s Go, Eevee! represent the biggest departure from the series’ losing standing formula in over 20 years. The games, which go back to Kanto and are technically reimaginings of the beloved Yellow Version, have a lot of new stuff going on—for instance, you no longer battle wild Pokemon, you encounter them directly in the overworld, and then catch them Pokemon GO style. The game’s post-game has also been expanded immensely, now tasking you with finding and battling, and ultimately beating, 153 Master Trainers, one for each species of Pokemon that you can find in the game.

This guide focuses on those two things

MASTER TRAINERS

What are Master Trainers? Put simply, they are the ultimate trainer for a species of Pokemon. For instance, a Master Trainer for Pikachu is the ultimate Pikachu trainer in all of Kanto. Master Trainers are unlocked after you beat the Elite Four, and win the Pokemon League. There are 153 of them in the game (one each for the 151 Kanto Pokemon, plus one each for Meltan and its evolution). Beating them is ultimately the final way for you to prove that you are a Pokemon Master, with total and complete mastery over every species of Pokemon in the game.

But, like I said, there are 153 of them. How do you find them all? Where are they? The video below will help you find all of them. I will highly advise not watching it until you have beaten at least the Elite Four, just to avoid spoilers.

CATCH COMBOS

As mentioned previously, Let’s Go removes wild Pokemon battles. Instead, you encounter them in the overworld, and then catch them via a Pokemon GO style catching minigame. With this change comes a ripple effect of further changes to the game.

For instance, consider catch combos. These are simple—consecutively encountering and catching multiple Pokemon of the same species leads you into a catch combo. You only break the catch combo if you catch a different species of Pokemon—so, let’s assume you caught four Diglett, and then suddenly caught a Chansey. The Chansey breaks the catch combo you had going, and now you must start over. If the Pokemon runs away during the encounter, that also breaks the chain.

Catch combos have multiple benefits—you get EXP multipliers for catching Pokemon in a catch combo. Catch combos also increase your likelihood of finding a Pokemon with more perfect IVs (meaning higher stat totals), as well as the likelihood of you encountering a Shiny version of that species (meaning a rare, differently coloured variant).

Additionally, catch combos also mean you have more specimens of the same species in your Box- sending a lot of these to the Professor means you now get more stat boosting candies. Finally, having a catch combo chain going also means that rare Pokemon, such as Chansey, or the Kanto starters, are likelier to spawn.

Pokemon Let’s Go is a game that returns to the basics. This means that, unlike the Sun/Moon games, this one has you collecting eight gym badges from across the land, and then taking on the Pokemon League’s Elite Four.

Gym Leaders are tough battles—in fact, relative to the difficulty of the rest of the game, they might be tougher in Let’s Go than they have been in any recent Pokemon game. To take them on, you need to have the right Pokemon, and you need to make sure they’re prepared for the battle.

This guide deals with gym leaders, and making sure you are leveled enough to face them.

LEVELING UP QUICKER

Leveling in Let’s Go works a bit differently from previous games in the series. For starters, EXP All is enabled by default, and you cannot turn it off. This means that, unless they are fainted, every single Pokemon on your party will earn a share of the EXP from a battle or encounter, regardless of whether or not they actually participated. Additionally, you also get EXP from catching Pokemon, like in other recent games.

Let’s Go hands out enough EXP for simply progressing that you will never have to grind to level up, but there are certain ways of ensuring your EXP gain is maximized:

Catch combos. Catch combos are when you catch multiple Pokemon of the same species in a row, without a break. These end up stacking as multipliers for the EXP you get at the end of the encounter. If you want some quick “grinding” so to say, you should engage in catch combos. The easiest way to do this is to go to an area where only one or two species of Pokemon spawn (such as Diglett Cave), and start catching them.

Larger or Smaller Pokemon. When Pokemon show up on the overworld, you can see whether they are larger or smaller than the average size for their species by the red or blue stripes that show up around them (red means bigger, blue means smaller). Catching a larger or smaller Pokemon nets more EXP.

Bonus EXP. You get bonus EXP for how you catch a Pokemon, and what you caught. So, a Pokemon with higher CP means more EXP. A Pokemon caught with a Nice, Great, or Excellent throw means higher EXP. Use these multipliers, and stack them with the Catch Combos and Larger/Smaller Pokemon bonuses, for maximum EXP gain.

GYM LEADERS

There are eight gym leaders through Kanto:

• Pewter City: Rock Type (weak to Water, Grass, Ground, Steel, and Fighting types)
• Cerulean City: Water Type (Weak to Electric and Grass type)
• Vermillion City: Electric Type (Weak to Ground and Ice type)
• Celadon City: Grass Type (Weak to Fire, Flying, and Bug types)
• Fuschia City: Poison Type (Weak to Psychic and Ground types)
• Saffron City: Psychic Type (Weak to Ghost, Dark, and Fairy types)
• Cinnabar Island: Fire Type (Weak to Water, Rock, and Ground types)
• Viridian City: Ground Type (Weak To Water and Grass types)

Once you beat the gym leaders, you get access to the Elite Four of the Pokemon League, west of Viridian City. The four trainers of the Elite Four are:

• Lorelei: Ice Type (weak to Fire and Fighting types)
• Bruno: Fighting Type (weak to Flying and Psychic types)
• Agatha: Ghost Type (weak to Dark and Fairy types; additionally, since all of Agatha’s Ghost Types are Ghost/Poison Pokemon, they are weak to Psychic attacks too)
• Lance: Dragon Type (weak to Fairy, Dragon, and Ice types)

Pokemon Let’s Go is steeped in nostalgia. Going back to Kanto, remaking Pokemon Yellow, and only sticking to the original 151 Pokemon, while bringing it all to life in glorious HD, the game is undoubtedly meant simultaneously as a welcome to new players and a glorious homage to long time fans

One of the many ways the game pays tribute to the older games is by letting you take on Red, Blue, and Green from the original games and their remakes—battling them in all their glory. Another is by letting you Mega Evolve your favorite Pokemon in battle, giving them new life. This guide covers both of these things

RED, BLUE, AND GREEN BATTLES

Red was the hero of the original games while Blue was his cocky rival. Green is the official female character who was canonized in FireRed and LeafGreen. While Blue plays a role in the story of the game, and you even get to battle him, you won’t face him at full strength, nor face Red or Green at all, until you finish the main campaign and beat the Elite Four.

Once you do, you have to track these trainers down and challenge them to a battle. Be prepared—even in a game as easy as Let’s Go can otherwise be, these battles can be very difficult. The video below walks you through them all.

MEGA STONE LOCATIONS

Beating each of the three trainers, Red, Blue, and Yellow nets you a Mega Stone each, but there are further additional ones to be found in the game too. Below, you can see a full list of the ones you can find, and where to find them:

• Venasaur, Charizard, and Blastoise: You can find them in Professor Oak’s lab once you beat the Cinnabar Island gym
• Aerodactyl, Alakazam, Beedril, Gengar, Gyarados, Kangaskhan, Pidgeot, Pinsir, Slowbro: These ones can be bought for $30,000 each from the salesman inside the Pokemon League building
• Mewtwo: This one can be found in Cerulean Cave, at the exact spot where you captured Mewtwo

CANDY

Pokemon Let’s Go does a major thing by de-obfuscating the stats and how they grow for your Pokemon. Each Pokemon has six major stats: Health, Attack, Defense, Special Attack, Special Defense, and Speed. Each stat is further linked to a specific kind of candy, that you in turn get for catching Pokemon and sending them to Professor Oak.

These are six of these candies:

• Health Candy (for the HP stat)
• Mighty Candy (for the Attack stat)
• Tough Candy (for the Defense stat)
• Smart Candy (for the Special Attack stat)
• Courage Candy (for the Special Defense stat)
• Quick Candy (for the Speed stat)

Each candy starts out by increasing the relevant stat by 1 each; however, as your Pokemon grow in level, you’ll need more candy to increase their stat by 1. Large and XL variants of candy will help counter this.

There are two other kinds of candy: species specific candy (such as Pikachu Candy), which you can get for sending the Professor a lot of specimens of that specific species (so, sending a lot of Pikachu to the Professor means that he will start sending you Pikachu candy). Species specific candy increases every stat of a Pokemon for that species by 1 (so, giving a Pikachu candy to Pikachu means that every stat will increase by 1 for that Pikachu).

Finally, there is Rare Candy. Rare Candy works exactly as it did in previous games, which is, it increases the Level of one Pokemon by one.