So I recently moved into a new home and was noticing a lot of strange activity. Well, it turns out it was being lived in by a duskull! She’s very sweet and friendly so I’m not upset or anything, in fact she grabbed one of the pokeballs on my nightstand and flew into it. So id like to know the proper methods of caring for duskull! I have a Rowlet, flygon, pikachu, sylveon, and gardevoir on my team

As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, caring for ghost-types is actually relatively easy, anonymous. Most of them only need a bit of food, water, a place to relieve themselves, and little else. Duskull especially are among the most docile of ghost-types and rarely even need a vigilant eye (as they don’t typically engage in excessive pranking). Yours may be even easier than that, as she was eager to become one of your partners.

Thus, all I can offer is a short word of warning: duskull dislike light, more so than a lot of other ghost-types. You’ve probably already realized this through observations of the strange activity in your home. However, the point is, try to give her a cool, dark place to rest if she hasn’t already chosen a part of your home as her own corner already.

Best of luck, anonymous!

My duskull has a habit of trying to scare me and my other Pokémon. Well recently I got a baby wooper and duskull scared her and it made her cry. Duskull has been too upset to scare anyone or get near wooper at all. Is there any way I can make my duskull feel better?

Well, presumably, your duskull understands that its habit of scaring people and pokémon will need to change, which means it may be easier to work with at this point. Thus, your first step is really to train your duskull proper ways to interact with others. Explain to it that approaching others from the front, fully visible, may help reduce its likelihood of accidentally startling or scaring someone. Have it practice, and reward it every time it approaches you without scaring you so it can understand the right and wrong way to approach someone else.

At the same time, check your baby wooper and work with it to introduce it to your other pokémon. Allow it to get comfortable being around others so that when you reintroduce it to your duskull, it will be a bit more used to interacting with other pokémon.

Then, set up an introduction. Provide your pokémon with a safe, comfortable place with toys and distractions. Get your wooper settled in, then bring your duskull over. Reassure your duskull every step of the way, but have both it and your wooper take things slowly, so to speak. If at any point, they seem uncomfortable with each other, immediately withdraw one or both of them, then try again at a later date.

In other words, the easiest solution to making your duskull feel better is to work with it and to prepare it for a gradual reintroduction to your new family member. If your duskull goes into the interaction understanding how to avoid scaring others and if the reintroduction is slow and comfortable for everyone, then your pokémon should have no trouble becoming friends.

Best of luck, anonymous!

The Duskull Line

Duskull
The Requiem Pokémon
Type: Ghost
Official Registration #: 355
Entry: A small, reaper-like pokémon native to mountainous regions. This pokémon is quite fond of small children, and it’s known to appear suddenly before crying ones in particular. After that, researchers aren’t entirely sure what happens, but according to Hoennian folklore, it whisks the noisiest ones away in the middle of the night to a strange and wondrous place. The story doesn’t entirely go into what a duskull would do with a child after that point, but the author has no doubt that this pokémon fully intends on making friends with them and feeding them candy.

No, Bill. Just … no. —LH

Dusclops
The Beckon Pokémon
Type: Ghost
Official Registration #: 356
Entry: The evolved form of duskull, by battle experience. Dusclops’s body is completely hollow, save for an unending void which is said to suck out one’s soul when they gaze deep into it. How do researchers know that dusclops is hollow save for an unending void that we can’t even directly observe? Well, readers, the author isn’t at liberty to say himself, but it certainly did not involve a stick, three expendable aides, a length of rope, a blindfold, and the distant hope that there would be candy inside.

Dusknoir
The Gripping Pokémon
Type: Ghost
Official Registration #: 477
Entry: The evolved form of dusclops, via trading, if the subject is wearing a reaper cloth. The golden disk on this pokémon’s head is actually an antenna through which it receives commands from the spirit world to recapture wandering spirits. Unable to do anything else but comply, dusknoir may stop what it’s doing and seek out a lost spirit. When it finds one, it stuffs the spirit into its pliant body and drags them back to the spirit world. The author also realizes that this satisfies the tastes of at least three different questionably moral internet subcultures, so he’ll end the entry right about here.

What could be considered a normal behaviour in a duskull? I’ve recently caught one and while usually pretty calm, it likes to tug at my hair and prank my other pokemon a bit too often. Nothing harmful or serious, just childish. It does obeys commands in battle, so I guess it’s just excited, but I’m not really sure.

That actually sounds like normal behavior for any ghost-type, especially one that may have had a misdreavus or shuppet father. Duskull especially feed off fear and surprise, so there’s also the possibility that he’s attempting to get a between-meal snack. You may want to increase the amount of kibble he receives to tide him over from one meal to the next or otherwise work hard to establish the fact that you will, in truth, take care of all his needs (which will hopefully discourage him from taking care of itself).

However, in some varieties of duskull, this is actually their form of affection, so if the above doesn’t work, show him methods of affection you do approve of and use positive reinforcement (in the form of treats—duskull typically like sweets) whenever he engages in them.