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The following content contains subjective advice or recommendations. Please take it into consideration and make your own decisions based on your playstyle and goals.
The early game is a completely different ecosystem compared to the mid or late game. Advice frequently given to players in the mid and late game is not necessarily representative of what you should be doing early game.
The goal of this guide is to help you navigate the early game, dispel some of the many misconceptions floating around, and make the start of your Pokémon Sleep journey easier! By no means is this the only way to play the game, but optimizing certain aspects of your early game will certainly help your progress. Let's begin!
What Pokémon do I focus on catching early game?
Berry Specialists
Berry mons are strong early-game contributors and a top priority to befriend. Your early game should be focused on increasing the Friendship Level (FL) of meta-relavent Berry mons to 10. FL10 guarantees the Level 10 subskill slot will be a gold skill. This is advantageous since the gold subskill Berry Finding S (BFS) will then have a 1/7 chance of appearing in this slot!
If you’re wondering which Berry mons to focus on, we recommend Pichu, Totodile, Cyndaquil, Chikorita, Spheal, Torchic, and Mudkip as they’re not only relatively common encounters on Greengrass Isle (GG), but also some of the best Berry mons for their respective islands. Note that this is not an exhaustive list; a full Berry mon meta analysis will be linked here once it has been ported to the site.
Ingredient Specialists
Sometimes you get unlucky with your morning spawns and you don’t encounter any worthwhile Berry mons. On these mornings, you can aim for Ingredient mons instead! While consistent cooking is usually a mid-game milestone and not typically a priority in the early game, you can still get a head-start by befriending Ingredient mons and looking for ones you will keep long-term. A full Ingredient mon meta analysis will be linked here once it has been ported to the site.
Skill Specialists
Skill mons require significantly more resources to reach viability—requiring 3-5 Main Skill Seeds (MSS). While temporary Skill mons can be beneficial in the short term, the resources (especially MSS) used to raise them will delay your long-term progress. This is particularly impactful for F2P players. Additionally, because Skill mons need to maintain viability throughout your late-game progression, Skill mons are evaluted with higher subskill standards compared to their Berry and Ingredient mon counterparts.
That being said, we're not saying to "NEVER run Skill mons in the early stages." From a resource standpoint, we're just discouraging early-game players from actively hunting for Skill Mons as your Biscuit resources are better allocated towards hunting Berry and Ingredient mons. Though, if you happen to find a Skill mon with long-term potential, it may be beneficial to invest in it.
The single most important/impactful Skill to invest in is Energy For Everyone (E4E). This allows your Pokémon to recover energy throughout the day which is disproportionately impactful from the mid game onwards. We do NOT recommend running temporary or univested E4E mons. The meta-defining E4E mons worth befriending are Gardevoir (Ralts), Pawmot (Pawmi), and Shuckle.
Outside of E4E, here are a couple of optional Main Skills worth considering in your early game:
- Charge Strength M (CSM): Provides an early boost to Snorlax strength without relying on Pokemon levels, at the cost of MSS. This can raise your standards when hunting for a permanent BFS Berry mon per island, as you won't need to settle as quickly. Keep in mind that high-level Berry mons will eventually surpass even well-invested CSM mons.
- Mareep
- Noibat
- Eevee (Espeon)
- Ingredient Magnet (Ing Mag): Buys time when hunting for long-term Ingredient mons. Ingredient mons are notoriously weak before level 30, so a good Ing Mag mon can enable more consistent cooking in the early game, at the cost of MSS. Even after your Ingredient mons have developed, an Ing Mag mon can still be useful for refilling your ingredient bag.
- Heracross
- Eevee (Vaporeon)
This is not an exhaustive list; a full Skill mon meta analysis will be linked here once it has been ported to the site.
Of note, Premium Pass players have access to 1-2 MSS monthly compared to F2P players who have access to 1 MSS every SECOND month, on average (based on our recommended Sleep Point spending plan—your mileage may vary). Premium players can be more generous with their MSS and can consider building multiple of the aforementioned Skill mons while F2P may struggle with the resources required to invest in one. Regardless of Premium or F2P status, we recommend taking your time to hunt for ones that are good enough to be permanent additions to your team BEFORE spending the MSS.
How do I tell if my Pokemon is good?
Do NOT rely on PRs or tier lists They do not teach you anything about the game and are frequently missing/assuming some information that tends to lead to misinformed choices. They also cannot compare across different species. A PR85 Xatu will likely beat out a PR95 Musharna, but you will not know that just comparing rankings.
The Pokémon evaluation guides are a good starting point for judging subskills, natures, and matching the right ones to your Pokémon's specialty (ingredient finders are very important for ingredient specialists but less so on skill specialists).
It is highly recommended to move on to one of the various calculators here once you have a feel for how to judge mons:
These calculators are species-agnostic and show you exactly what a mon produces for you to accurately assess between any 2 mons (for example, it can show the AAA dratini you caught can make 120 herbs at 60 while an AAA gastly you've been using makes about 80 herbs as a lvl 60 gengar)
Which Pokemon do I use on the team? What do I cook early game?
Berry specialists!!! Ingredient specialists are terrible before level 30 as their big spike occurs when they unlock the second slot in their ing list, and the early game recipes are incredibly weak so there is little reason to run ing mons early. Skill mons are also incredibly bad with no main seed investment, and are not worth putting main seeds in if they are bad. Do NOT run teams of 3-5 ingredient specialists/uninvested skill specialists.
Go into the game and use the in-game berry team builder, which will display your strongest mons from left to right. Energy is accounted for, so if you have a good berry mon and it's dead tired, it may not show up on the screen. Once your relevant mons have recovered, feel free to replace the last mon with an ing mon that synergizes with the ings produced by your team.
Take a look at the game's recipes and see if an ing mon will unlock any of the 2 ing dishes available for your meal type this week. You may also run an early game skill mon if you've caught a good one to invest in.
When do I leave Greengrass?
It is up to you. Greengrass allows you to see a lot of different types of Pokemon and a lot of different sleep styles (for progression) but it is difficult to hunt for any specific ones. Moving to a new island is tougher, but makes it much easier to hunt for specific mons. Your Area Bonus gain per week is boosted to 15% (usually 5%) up until you hit 250% total across all islands so it is incredibly worth it to increase your AB on harder islands.
I personally recommend trying to save as much of your newbie bonus AB as possible for the later islands by not going to GG and Snowdrop for as long as you can manage it. Some new players have been able to stretch their newbie bonus all the way to Amber Canyon by focusing on sleep styles and manipulating their AB caps (forcing 10% gains instead of the full 15% if you went to Cyan Beach at 30% AB with a cap of 40%)
How often should I be investing in a Pokemon?
On average, people seem to get 1 investable mon a month, with early gamers finding more as they have a lot more pokemon they need and their standards are somewhat lowered for progression. Lategame players tend to find investable mons less often as they hunt only a handful of Pokemon per island and they can afford to be pickier with the ones they catch.