Category: Guides

My Discord Server started playing Pokecord and it’s not exactly well documented, so I thought I’d make a guide with basics and commands to help people get going!

Pokecord Basics

How Pokecord works is it pulls Pokemon data from Bulbapedia. Each pokemon has base stats, IVs, a Nature, Moves, and can potentially be Shiny (presumably at the standard astronomically low rate).

Pokemon can be traded and fought (1 v 1), and there’s no penalty for losing a fight and no reason not to catch or trade anything. There’s no winning or losing the game, so you can play as casually or intensely as you like.

Pokecord isn’t a perfect Pokemon clone however. Some important points to note: Pokemon do not have teams or abilities in Pokecord (right now). Your ability to earn money is limited to dueling (a pittance), voting for Pokecord daily on Discord Bots (kinda…icky), or selling pokemon on the ingame market (which is pretty weird).

Where To Play Pokecord

You can play on any Discord server that has Pokecord enabled. You can either invite the bot to your own server, join our server (we’re well moderated!), or join the official pokecord server (expect catching spawns to be incredibly competitive).

Spawns seem to be a combination function of time and how many messages posted, meaning a more active server means more pokemon—but also more competition to catch those pokemon. On fast, popular servers, mobile users have a pretty strong disadvantage compared to keyboard users.

Quickstart

Once the bot is in your server, pokemon will start to spawn based on time and number of posts. Type p!start to get started, then p!pick (starter name) to select a starter.

When a pokemon appears, the first to correctly p!catch it gets it. There’s no limit to how many pokemon you can get, so there’s no reason (other than politeness) to not catch a pokemon. In a server with friends, consider letting other players catch pokemon you already have (alternately, catch them and trade them to who wants them for free).

It helps to add all pokemon you’re planning to duel with to your favorites list, so you don’t have to go through the whole pokemon list every time. Pokemon are always referenced by number not name in commands, so this will help you find the numbers quickly.

Pokemon level just by chatting in a server with Pokecord active; only your active pokemon gets experience this way though, so be sure to p!select who you want to raise. Without an Everstone (in p!shop), Pokemon that can evolve via level will automatically evolve at that level with no cancel prompt.

Duels are very buggy but there is no harm in losing, so do them as much as you want. See the Duel Commands section below for pitfalls.

What’s Missing/Different In Pokecord

As far as I can tell these are the major differences/omissions from Pokecord

• Teams/battles for more than 1v1 pokemon
• Status/stat changing moves do not work at all
• Pokemon gender, meaning some evolutions are presumably random? and some moves likely do not work
• You can’t cancel evolutions manually, you must buy and hold an everstone
• Held items only exist for evolving or preventing evolution
• Abilities are also completely omitted
• There is no breeding of pokemon
• Mega Evolutions work differently and are semi-permanently activated out of battle. Use p!mega to toggle Mega Evolution state rather than having them hold the stone in battle.
• Aside from selling pokemon (Team Rocket, anyone?) there’s no effective way to get money at a reasonable scale
• Any pokemon can be a random spawn, including baby pokemon, legendary pokemon, starters, and evolved forms that aren’t usually available.

Competitive Gameplay

Continue reading “Pokecord: Discord Pokemon Game Guide & Command List”