Alola’s a big place, so to help you get started on the road, here are some useful tips.

Free Space¶

As you travel the region, you’ll end up picking up a lot of items. Now, the good thing is that you’ll never, ever run out of space to put items in your magical bag. The bad thing is that it can be difficult to find something you want in a pinch.

To make your life easier, there’s a “Free Space” compartment towards the end of your bag, where you can place frequently used or important items. Simply select an item in any compartment and choose the “Move to Free Space” option. If you need help looking for a particular item, you can also press the X button to sort by name, etc.

Easy Experience Boosts¶

Need help increasing your Pokémon’s levels quicker? If so, there are a few ways.

Firstly, Pokémon traded to you from another player will gain 50% more experience points; this has been the case since the original games. Moreover, if the traded Pokémon is from a different language version, it will gain 70% more experience instead.

The bad thing is that if the traded Pokémon is too high level, then it won’t obey you. Check your Trainer Passport to see the level limits.

Secondly, any Pokémon with an Affection level of 2 hearts or higher in Pokémon Refresh earns 20% more experience points. This is pretty easy to achieve; a dozen or so rubs and Poké Beans can get you there. If you’ve got any Rainbow Beans from Poké Pelago, you’ll be laughing.

Finally, once you’ve beaten the game, you can get a Lucky Egg from Professor Kukui in his research lab. When a Pokémon holds this item, it will earn 50% more experience points. That said, this scenario may be pretty far off.

Other things to consider include using the Exp. Share item, which gives all non-battling Pokémon in your party 50% of the experience points. Meanwhile, all Pokémon that battled against a particular Pokémon receive the full 100% experience points, even if they didn’t score the KO.

Happiness¶

The game doesn’t really make this clear, but Pokémon have a hidden Happiness stat, which has nothing to do with the Affection stat in Pokémon Refresh. This mainly affects Pokémon that evolve after reaching certain Happiness and the moves Return and Frustration. You can increase a Pokémon’s Happiness via the following methods:

Delaying Evolution¶

It’s always a marvelous sight to see a Pokémon evolve, especially as they grow stronger. However, there are times when it may be beneficial to wait just a bit longer before evolving your Pokémon.

Firstly, evolved Pokémon generally learn moves at a slower pace compared to their their unevolved counterparts. That said, having your Pokémon remain in a weaker form isn’t exactly an ideal scenario either. Indeed, for the most part, you’ll be fine evolving ASAP.

That is unless your Pokémon requires an evolution stone to evolve, in which case it’s entirely possible they won’t learn any moves after they evolve. So you’d better have all the moves you want already or TMs available to teach new moves.

Some Pokémon also learn exclusive moves at late levels in their unevolved forms. One such offender is Oddish, which learns Moonblast at Level 43, but none of its evolved forms learn this powerful Fairy-type move…

Evolution Timescales¶

One thing that you may not consider straightaway when picking a Pokémon is when is the earliest opportunity they can evolve. Normally, evolution proceeds in a natural manner, but for some Pokémon, there are certain milestones you must reach for them to evolve.

As you can see, some Pokémon evolve a lot later than you might expect, despite being available early on. Thankfully, it’s now a lot easier to evolve some Pokémon–like Feebas, Charjabug and Crabrawler–compared to in Sun and Moon.