Do you have any tips on how to care for a slurpuff? I was just traded one from a friend and I want to be cautious.

Believe it or not, slurpuff are primarily dog-like pokémon. As such, they require many of the same things your average snubbull or furfrou may need: a meat-based diet (or kibble), dog toys, frequent walks, a soft bed, regular tooth-brushing and baths, and so forth.

The difference is in its fur and nose.

First and foremost, you’ll notice that your slurpuff is constantly sticky, even slightly so on good days. This is perfectly normal and a by-product of the unique sweat and curly fur coat of the swirlix line. However, this also means that you’ll need to maintain it regularly by not only brushing out loose hairs and dirt but also, perhaps, by giving it a bath. Baths are not necessary (or recommended) on a daily basis, but it’s always a good idea to give your slurpuff one ever few days—and either way, daily brushing is essential to remove debris. Additionally, an important note: if anything larger than a tennis ball ends up stuck to your slurpuff, try not to pull it out, as this will hurt your pokémon. Rather, carefully clip the object out with a sharp pair of scissors.

Furthermore, be sure to take your slurpuff to a professional groomer—or groom it yourself, if you have the confidence—at least once every few months to keep its coat pared down. Otherwise, your slurpuff’s sticky hair may grow long and inhibit both movement and comfort.

As for its nose, it’s important to keep in mind that slurpuff’s sense of smell is among the strongest in the pokémon kingdom. It’s therefore important to keep a clean house and to remove any sources of bad odors to avoid confusing or irritating your slurpuff. You may also consider lessening your use of perfume or cologne, although some slurpuff actually enjoy those scents. (It may be worth asking your slurpuff.)

Best of luck, anonymous!

Tips on caring for a freshly evolved Flygon?

Continue caring for your flygon as you had for your vibrava. Most flygon have the exact same needs as a vibrava; the only difference is that they’ll require more. That is to say, your flygon should need more space to fly, more sand to nest in, more food (insects and meat primarily, if not kibble) to consume, and more time to train. Just about the only thing your flygon will need less of is perhaps sleep, as it will no longer be saving energy for a future evolution.

Well, that and toys, as final-stage pokémon rarely want toys for enrichment. They mostly prefer battling, truth be told.

How do take care of a treecko and what kind of toys he would like to play with?

Believe it or not, treecko don’t often need toys. Certainly, they’ll play with toys you give your other pokémon (although as a word of advice, due to their shedding skin and the fact that they often carry salmonella, you perhaps will want to give them toys that are easy to clean), but oftentimes, treecko will be content to sun, climb, and train.

That said, above all else, it’s important to provide your treecko with an optimal environment. They’re reptiles, grass-type tropical ones at that, and that means they need plenty of sunlight, warmth, and humidity. (Because of their grass typing, they are not nocturnal, by the way, unlike their animal “counterparts.”) If you live in an urban environment and/or can’t provide your treecko with at least eight hours of sunlight, you’ll need to provide them with a heat lamp, particularly one that can emit UVA and UVB lighting. This will become especially important as your treecko evolves and develops more plant-like characteristics, as by then, it will need light that mimics sunlight to photosynthesize.

Regardless of whether or not you will require a heat lamp, your treecko’s environment will also need two key features: a flat rock on which they can sun (or hide beneath, if they choose) and something they can climb. For the latter, a tree would be ideal, but a cat tree (typically used by meowth, skitty, espurr, and litten trainers as a scratching post) will do just as well. Treecko will often use the former to rest while sunning, and the latter is simply for comfort.

Likewise, to mimic humidity and to keep your treecko’s skin moist on dry days, invest in a humidifier to add moisture to the air at a constant rate. Alternatively, on especially warm days, you may also spray the air periodically with a bottle of clean water.

As your treecko evolves, it will of course be imperative that you provide more and more space for it. While it’s possible to continue keeping a grovyle indoors, it’s highly inadvisable to keep a sceptile due to its sun and space requirements. Thus, it’s worth it to invest in an everstone early on—preferably at the treecko stage—if you live in an urban environment with limited space. If you cannot provide your sceptile with adequate room to sun and climb, you may wish to consider rehoming it or making arrangements with your landlord to provide rooftop accommodations for it.

Despite being able to photosynthesize in later stages, members of the treecko line are actually carnivores and prefer insects—particularly live ones. (This is why many treecko trainers prefer feeding their pokémon kibble, actually. It’s either less of a hassle, or the trainer isn’t particularly inclined to handle live crickets and mealworms.) They can eat berries or leafy greens, and their later stages can gather energy from photosynthesizing, but keep in mind that neither of these methods should be their primary diets due to their nutritional requirements (contrary to popular belief). Either way, provide your treecko with clean water and change their water bowls at least once a day. Twice for later stages.

Regarding keeping treecko’s environment clean, treecko can be taught to use a litter box, but be sure to line it with bark, not sand, as sand carries a risk of soaking up precious humidity. Be sure to clean not only the litter box but your treecko’s environment (unless it lives outside, of course) regularly as, once again, treecko skin may carry salmonella.

Incidentally, treecko do indeed shed their skins (as do their later stages, although sceptile do so at a less frequent rate), but it’s not necessary to clean it up, as the first thing treecko will do upon shedding is eat their own skin. (It’s a defense mechanism held over from their time in the wild, not to mention the skin is a ready source of energy.) You’ll be able to tell if your treecko is about to shed based on energy levels and color: if it seems dull in color and isn’t quite as energetic during your training sessions, then you’ll know. Provide your treecko with an especially humid environment during this time and keep an eye on its extremities. If It seems like its skin is not coming off its toes or limbs, wrap it with wet towels for at least a half an hour. If this doesn’t help, use a pair of clean tweezers to gently peel the skin off for your treecko.

Finally, as always with tamed pokémon, you’ll want to exercise your treecko daily by putting it through at least a half an hour of training. No bedding is required for sleep, as most treecko prefer to sleep in trees or whatever else they can climb.

I’m having trouble bathing my Midday Lycanroc, since he’s a Rock-type. How do I keep him clean?

Provide him with a dust bath, not a water bath, anonymous. In the wild, lycanroc (and rockruff, for that matter) roll around in volcanic ash in order to clean themselves, and this can be simulated in domestic settings, either by spreading commercially sold pokémon dust in a manmade sand pit or by simply leaving a bare patch of dirt in your lawn, depending on whether or not you live in a dust-heavy environment. Either way, be sure to clean your lycanroc’s bathing area regularly by raking the used dust away and replacing it with new dust every few days.

It’s also highly recommended that you follow up your lycanroc’s dust bath with a thorough brushing to remove excess dust.

This may seem like it’s not enough, but really, a thorough dust bath clears oils and dirt off the fur, scrubs the skin beneath clean, and knocks off and suffocates parasites. It will actually be perfectly sufficient unless your lycanroc is too weak to bathe himself or too caked in dirt for a dust bath to be effective. In these cases, you may need to use a water bath as well, but be sure to keep your lycanroc’s rock collar as dry as possible. Moreover, it’s imperative to follow up with a dust bath anyway, either by allowing your lycanroc to administer one himself or by helping your lycanroc to roll in his dust pit. This will help draw out any moisture from his fur and allow his body to dry.

I’m planning to aquire a sableye soon and I wanted to know the basics of how to take care of one; diet, toys, and husbandry Anything I should be worried about?

One of the most important things to keep in mind about sableye is that they are nocturnal, cave-dwelling pokémon. While they can be trained to tolerate daylight, they generally don’t, and it’s easier and frankly more humane if their trainer accommodates them, rather than the other way around. Many trainers do this by constructing sableye homes (that is, manmade caves) in their backyards or by allowing their sableye to burrow, but even simply giving them a dark room with either no or covered windows will be sufficient. If choosing the latter option, be sure that the coverings you choose block the light completely, not partially. This room should also be stocked with bedding, food and water dishes, and a litter box. It’s not necessary to line the litter box, as sableye droppings are merely gravel unless you give your sableye a diet of kibble.

What people say about sableye eating rocks is both true and false. It’s true in the sense that, yes, they do subsist largely on stone material. It’s false in that it’s not true that the stones have to be gems. Really, any kind of rock will do; it’s just that sableye prefer precious stones for their taste and the fact that they incorporate them into their bodies. However, if you have a fully grown sableye, it won’t require as many gems to decorate its skin, so you can easily pacify them with any sort of rock you find outside. Of course, as with all pokémon, you may also feed your sableye specialized kibble (especially if you have other pokémon or if rocks aren’t readily available to you), but trainers who live in more rural areas generally find feeding sableye stones is much more preferable to cleaning up the mess produced by kibble.

As for toys, sableye are impish, childlike pokémon, so toys that appeal more to humanoids are ideal. In particular, sableye like shiny toys and toys that make sounds—the former because shiny objects remind them of gems, and the latter because noisemaking toys appeal to their sensitive hearing. Some sableye also like dolls, including pokémon dolls, or anything that’s otherwise soft and easy to grasp and claw. (They do not, contrary to popular belief, use scratching posts.)

When it comes to hygiene, sableye, like other humanoid or imp-like pokémon, are fine with baths. Some trainers even find that they’re surprisingly easy to coax into baths, likely because water helps them wash dirt off their gemstones, and said gemstones are also polished in the process.

Finally, when it comes to socialization, generally speaking, sableye are actually shy pokémon who prefer to hide away in a quiet space (regardless of what their reputation as fearsome pokémon may lead you to believe). This isn’t to say it’s impossible to acclimate one to a team; it’s just a warning that it may take time and patience and that it may be best to introduce your sableye to like-minded pokémon first. However, it should also be noted that because of sableye’s diet, one should never keep a sableye on the same team as carbink unless that sableye is thoroughly trained.

Best of luck, reader!

Can you give advice on taking care of a Axew and eventually Haxorus? I’m especially worried about the tusks, so any info on dealing with those is appreciated!

Although this entry covers both the jangmo-o and axew lines equally, it may still be of some use to you, anonymous: http://bills-pokedex.tumblr.com/post/155566649591/what-are-the-proper-ways-to-care-for-a-jangmo-o-i

As for the tusks, they’re actually much easier to take care of than one would think. While it’s true that it’s possible for fraxure tusks to break off and that these tusks will not grow back, the tusks are actually highly resilient, and it takes a considerable amount of force for a fraxure to lose one. Axew and haxorus, by contrast, have to worry less about losing tusks. This is because axew tusks fall out and grow back quite frequently, and haxorus tusks can’t be broken off at all. So once you receive your axew, don’t be surprised if you find tusks lying about your home now and then. Simply dispose of the tusks and give your axew wet food until a new tusk grows in, and provide your axew with something to chew on to help strengthen its jaws and teeth. As for fraxure, be sure it has a rock or wooden post that will allow it to sharpen its tusks whenever it wishes, and as for haxorus, all it will need is occasional polishing. (Its lower forms will need routine tooth brushing, but that’s something you should be doing with all of your toothed pokémon anyway.)

Best of luck, anonymous!

How do I approach to an eevee that I recently saved from an abusive trainer?

Cautiously, anonymous.

The most important thing to remember about eevee abuse is that it normally stems from the unfortunate but not entirely uncommon thought among extreme eevee otaku that eevee are collectible objects, rather than living, breathing beings that have basic needs for survival. Sometimes, “affection” given to an abused eevee may come in the form of dressing it up, violating its personal space, and, yes, even violence, especially if the eevee in question had been bred or obtained specifically for the contest circuit. Of course, while knowing exactly how your eevee was abused helps, this doesn’t change the fact that even if yours had received an entirely different form of abuse (such as, for example, physical abuse, which can be common among house eevee), the process is by and large the same.

Start off by making sure your home is comfortable. Provide all the basic necessities—the higher the quality, the better. Make sure your eevee has a comfortable place to sleep, with a nice bed and the thermostat adjusted for its personal optimal temperature. (If your eevee is shivering or looks overheated, change the temperature accordingly as soon as possible.) Also be sure to stock your eevee’s area with plenty of fresh food and water, as well as a clean place for relieving itself, and also provide it with plenty of toys and distractions.

Once you’ve provided its basic needs, here is where the difficult part comes into play. You need to give your eevee plenty of space—literally, I mean. Don’t handle your eevee too much or too roughly for the first few days and gauge from its body language whether or not it’s comfortable with you. Try to assume non-threatening poses whenever you’re around it, and only touch it when it’s relaxed and ready to receive affection. Allow your eevee to come to you whenever possible, but always speak softly and reassuringly to it in order to establish that it can feel comfortable around you.

What may also help is asking the shelter, center, or breeder your eevee had come from about their routines. Feeding, cleaning, exercising, and putting your eevee to bed at the same time they had every day will help ease the transition from the shelter to your home, which in turn will reduce the stress your eevee goes through and allow it to open up to you more readily. The more you can mimic the first humans who were kind to it, the easier it will be for your eevee to begin to trust you.

Above all else, though, have patience. Take care of your eevee as best as you can and do everything you can to maintain a low-stress environment and day for it. Don’t begin battling or pokémon training right away. (You may train your eevee, but stick to the basics, such as paper training and training it to trust you and adjust to its environment.) Work up to that slowly until it feels comfortable enough with you and its new home to engage in aggressive physical activity. And always keep in mind that it’s very difficult for fresh psychological wounds to heal. It may take your eevee a month or few to begin trusting you, and that’s perfectly normal. Just keep showering it with kindness and being open to it, and eventually, it will be able to grow and love once more.

Best of luck, anonymous!

Hello, Bill, I have a question regarding my Primarina. She was trying to practice using her Sparkling Aria attack, but I think she overused her voice, because it was getting hoarse and she started coughing. What should I do to help her?

Hello! We do apologize for the delay. Please note that we are currently experiencing a very heavy backlog of asks, dating back to mid-December. While we’re doing our best to fill the queue with asks, if you sent one later than December 15, it may take some time for us to unearth. For all emergencies, please consider using your local pokémon center. —LH

When vocal strain occurs, either for humans or for pokémon, it’s important to rest. You see, the voice is produced by the vocal cords, which are less cords and more bands of muscle surrounding the larynx, or voice box (which itself is situated just above the wind pipe in all organisms that possess lungs and are capable of sound production). As with all muscles, overuse of the vocal cords can strain them, especially if the speaker hasn’t exactly been exercising proper self-care. However, just like any other muscle, it’s not that difficult to recover from a strained voice; it’s just a matter of practicing vigorous self-care in the meantime.

For one, yes, rest is important. If at all possible, have your primarina avoid using her voice to attack. Switch to more basic, non-water moves such as Moonblast and take this as an opportunity to practice her other techniques. If your primarina has a habit of shouting while battling, try your best to train her not to do this to avoid straining her voice further. This may also be a great opportunity to add stealth training to your regimen.

Off the battlefield, be sure she’s well-hydrated. While this seems obvious for a water-type, what I mean is she should be more hydrated than she is currently. Have her drink plenty of water, and allow her plenty of time to rest in humid environments. Consider purchasing a humidifier as well; it’s extremely important to ensure that the air around your primarina isn’t dry, as this will dry out the vocal cords and lead to further problems.

Also, be sure that your primarina gets an adequate diet that doesn’t irritate her throat or dry out the mucous membranes around her vocal folds. Not a lot of trainers think about this when their pokémon are ill, but diet can be extremely vital to one’s recovery. In your primarina’s case, avoid dry or spicy berries and beans (even if she likes them), and supplement her diet with vitamins A, C, and E. The latter can be found naturally in sour or bitter berries, as well as grains. Most brands of commercial poké kibble for the popplio line include grains or are fortified with the aforementioned vitamins for this express reason (that is, because the line is so reliant on vocal health), but be sure to check the label before purchasing.

Finally, while it’s important for your primarina to exercise, be absolutely sure she gets plenty of actual rest as well. Have her sleep for a minimum of eight hours a day, and don’t let her overexert herself otherwise.

It may take a week or two of rest and proper care before your primarina gets back on her metaphorical feet, but if her condition lasts longer, take her to your nearest pokémon center. If, however, she recovers within a week, your regimen of self-care shouldn’t stop here. Be sure to keep her hydrated, and train her to use proper singing techniques for Sparkling Aria. Have her maintain the proper posture (back straight, shoulders back) and be sure she supports her voice with deep breaths from the chest. Never sing using the vocal cords or throat alone, and certainly don’t do it while slouching. Additionally, give her plenty of time to rest between battles as well; never have her run a gauntlet of battles or “spam” Sparkling Aria.

Best of luck!

I was thinking about geting a dragon type Pokemon, becuse dragon’s. Most likely goodra, or dragonite lines since I do know where to get one legally. I gess I’m looking for care tips for them or dragon types in general. And aslong as I could meet there needs would thire be any problems geting both?

Offering general tips on how to care for a particular type is a bit tricky, anonymous, and the reason why is because even within a type family, different species may require vastly different things. For example, you wouldn’t take care of a seviper the same way you would take care of a standard muk, even though they’re both purely poison-types. Or for a closer comparison, you wouldn’t care for a scyther the same way you would a vespiquen.

Similarly, dragon-types, while all draconic in nature (obviously speaking), all have slightly different variations in care requirements. For example, noivern are nocturnal, eat fruit, and require a perch; garchomp are diurnal, carnivorous, and require wide-open spaces they can burrow into. Axew and jangmo-o are both similar to take care of (as they are both primarily carnivorous dragon-types that dwell in mountains and caves, require a source of heat, and evolve into at least one aggressive stage), but haxorus has a completely different personality from kommo-o and thus requires a different sort of training and psychological support. Granted, this doesn’t necessarily mean they won’t get along at all—and in fact, haxorus gets along quite well with a number of different pokémon, not to mention kommo-o generally feel protective towards anything it considers to be part of its herd or team—but it’s worth keeping in mind.

Then you have pokémon like dragonite and goodra. Goodra, by necessity, needs to be kept moist at all times. Otherwise, the fluids coating and composing its body dry, resulting in cracked skin that may be open to infection—or worse, general tissue damage. Dragonite, meanwhile, don’t necessarily need water to survive (although dratini and dragonair, being lake and river pokémon, do), but as wild dragonite live in and around the ocean, a tame one would be happiest when given a large pool. Thus, these pokémon may be difficult to keep with the aforementioned dragons, but they do quite well with the likes of kingdra and dragalge.

Other than that, goodra are primarily vegetarian (and one of the few dragon-types that are, with noivern being the other), whereas dragonite is an omnivore. Dragonite, additionally, cannot be put onto a full vegan diet, as it needs protein from meat sources to fuel its fantastic draconic powers. Both don’t normally need toys or extensive bedding, but dragonite needs a large amount of space, as it’s both a marine pokémon and one that flies. Letting it out to stretch its wings (so to speak) for a few hours should be enough for it. Goodra, meanwhile, is a less active pokémon and will require very little beyond a normal training routine. It’s worth it to allow a goodra at least an hour to swim, however.

Finally, as both goodra and dragonite fill very similar roles on a team, they can actually train together rather well. It would be a good idea to allow them to work together as they grow and learn new moves, as one pokémon can easily help the other to adjust and perfect their techniques.

In other words, by and large, there are certain combinations of pokémon that may be difficult to raise together, but at the very least, dragonite and goodra are highly compatible. The only differences between them are diet and exercise, really, unlike other dragons that require environments and routines that differ vastly from the more aquatically-inclined dragonite or goodra. If you plan on collecting more dragons than these, it’s imperative to do basic research into the habitats of the dragons you’re considering, as their natural environments will tell you a lot about what you would need to know to raise them—such as, for example, whether or not you can house them in the same enclosures as either dragonite or goodra.

Best of luck, anonymous!

What are the proper ways to care for a jangmo o? I want him to one day be a kommo o and so help with this line would be much appreciated!

I’ll answer both of these at once, as taking care of both lines is actually astoundingly similar.

In many ways, taking care of jangmo-o or axew is a lot like taking care of any other reptilian pokémon. For one, temperature is important, especially in the case of the tropical jangmo-o (although axew also shy away from cold as well). Thus, always be sure your jangmo-o has a flat rock for sunning during the day and hiding beneath at night. For axew, be sure you have a shelter with nesting materials (such as straw) for nights and a clear space for sunbathing during the day. In colder weather, move both pokémon indoors and provide them with enough space to roam about and a sunlamp. As both are mountainous and cave-dwelling pokémon, they don’t need much more than that to sleep on, so beds aren’t necessary.

Also, be sure they both have clean water dishes, and change this every day. Likewise, line their enclosures with poké litter or straw and change this often. Both axew and jangmo-o, being reptiles, are at a high risk for carrying nasty bugs such as E-coli and salmonella, so changing their enclosure linings frequently minimizes the risk of allowing diseases to spread to you or your other pokémon. Grooming consisting of giving them warm baths every so often further minimizes this risk and, in the case of jangmo-o, helps polish pokémon scales.

As with most dragons, jangmo-o and axew are also primarily carnivorous, but their diets can be supplemented with leafy greens and berries as well. Cleaning their enclosures also removes stray food and prevents rot (especially if you choose to supplement their diets), but when your jangmo-o or axew lives outdoors, you can easily sweep these to an inaccessible corner for easy composting.

When it comes to toys, while they do enjoy chew toys and bones, many axew and jangmo-o do just as well without them. You may even find that your dragons will prefer exploring their environments or sunning to occupying themselves with objects. In a way, this means they’re a little bit more of a challenge than most pokémon to satisfy in terms of enrichment, but that’s where the battling part of their lives come in.

You see, in both cases—but especially jangmo-o’s—it’s necessary to train and battle with them, even if you don’t claim to be a trainer. Even setting up a training dummy would be sufficient, but ideally, you should set up sparring matches between your dragons and other pokémon, as well as create specialized training exercises to develop specific attacks or skills. Either way, it’s important to keep in mind that unlike many other pokémon, battling is mandatory for them, else they won’t be able to develop the skills they need to survive later in life. For example, although haxorus are gentle pokémon, fraxure most certainly are not, and the fact that they aren’t is both the contributing factor to why their tusks are so long and sharp as well as their main method of keeping them pared down to a reasonable length. Hence, training axew from an early age and instilling a strict regimen of fighting and battling allows it to build up the strength, skills, and endurance needed for proper battling as a fraxure.

In a similar manner, jangmo-o comes from a line that eventually gains the fighting element in its more advanced stages. Additionally, just like fraxure, both hakamo-o and kommo-o are well known for their battling prowess and their predilection to battle each other on sight. Thus, a battle regimen is in a way especially important to jangmo-o, as battling is essentially a part of its nature.

Here’s where the two species diverge, however. While axew and haxorus may be able to get along with their own kind, fraxure actually cannot, as the fraxure stage represents a departure from one’s birth nest to lay down the groundwork for their territory and breeding nest. Fraxure see one another as competition for the same territory, so keeping multiple fraxure of the same gender may get complicated. By contrast, jangmo-o are a more tribalistic species in that they form groups that are highly dependent on one another. Raising multiple jangmo-o is thus sometimes preferred, as members of the jangmo-o line feel most comfortable battling one another. On the other hand, members of the jangmo-o also get particularly enthusiastic about battling one another, so a match between two or more jangmo-o may be just as destructive and violent as a match between two or more fraxure.

In other words, always hold your dragons’ battles outdoors.

Best of luck, anonymous!