Monsters

Monsters are creatures that inhabit the world around you! The will change depending on which data pack you are currently using, but a lot of aspects are the same.

Imagine being a child in a monster world: you start befriending the species living around your house, and then you begin your adventure exploring the surroundings and finding new monsters to add to your squad.

Monsters are 100% catchable when they are defeated. Simple as that. They're ko, what can they do in that state?

The wild monsters you find and their levels depend on your carreer as a trainer. In further details, they depend on the level of your team and the number of badges you got in that region.

Each monster has its genetic traits and personality. Monsters in the active team have different interactions with each other depending on their personalities, and you can observe their behaviour.

Some monsters have one or more evolutions. You'll get noticed, whenever a monster is ready to change its form into the next evolution. Sometimes they require a special item for this. All evolutions are induced manually, not in the midst of battle. When the conditions are met you can evolve the monster from its own options.

A monster's options list (long click on its button in the Team screen) lets you give a nickname, assign/remove an item, check the status, evolve, and release.

Monsters automatically fight and their levels, type advantages and inner power decide who wins. They can be tired after a fight depending on how they performed: if they had a flawless victory they'll probably be as fresh as new, but if they barely won, or worse, if they lost, they're gonna need a bit of time to recover. Anyway they also have PP (power points), representing the number of attacks they are able to perform, so they become tired after using lots of attacks regardless of the outcomes. PP slowly recover over time.

You can find more about how battles work on the battles wiki page.

Monsters with items
About the items found sometimes on wild monsters, the concept behind it is that if you defeat them, there a chance they'll drop their item. In case that doesn't happen, the only way to get it for sure is to catch that monster. By the way, you can't know what they're holding until you get it. So it's normal that you don't always get the item after defeating them. If the monster has not dropped its item, it will be shown with a little package. If you catch this monster, you'll also get the item (see image).

Monsters with TMs
Sometimes, if you're lucky, when you catch a monster there's also a chance that this monster has a TM applied on it. You can then remove the TM and give it to another monster if you like.

Shiny Monsters
You can encounter shiny versions of monsters. These have a special and unique look and are also marked by golden sparkles around their picture.

Legendary Monsters
You can encounter legendaries if you're lucky, but only when you're already a good trainer. Once you've caught a legendary, you'll never encounter another of that same species again.