Placing your team
Each map shows its defenders and a set of lit tiles: those are your slots. Drag Pokémon from your box onto them. You can bring fewer Pokémon than there are slots, and doing so gives a better grade if you still win.
When you press Start, every Pokémon picks a target and fights on its own: basic attacks, and its moves whenever they are ready. You don't control the fight, but the team you bring and where they stand matter a lot.
Grades
A won battle gets a grade from S+ (best) down to D. Two things lower it: each Pokémon you bring and each one that faints. Win with a small team and lose no one for S+. A lost battle is graded F.
Better grades drop Pokémon more often:
| Grade | Chance a win drops a Pokémon |
|---|---|
| S+ | 32% |
| S | 24% |
| A and below | 18% |
Stamina
Every battle costs stamina: 3 for each defender on the map. See Stamina and potions for how it comes back.
Rewards
- Experience, shared by the Pokémon you brought.
- Gold (Pokédollars).
- A Pokémon, now and then: one of the species you just beat. Rarer species drop less often, and species from your own team's families drop more often. Every defeated Pokémon also rolls for a shiny.
- Items: stamina potions, evolution stones and TMs of the defenders' types, held items, Nuggets, Bento Boxes and more. Each map's Map info lists everything it drops, with the chances.
A loss still pays a little gold and sometimes a potion.
The boosted map
One map is boosted at a time, for six hours (four a day). It pays more experience and gold (less once your team outlevels it), drops Pokémon more often, and drops evolution stones, TMs, items and held items more often too.
The daily rotation
Some maps change part of their wild Pokémon every day at midnight (UTC): visit them through the week to meet more of their region's Pokédex. Map info shows today's lineup.
Auto mode and speed
With the Arena Pass, Auto mode repeats a map for you and battles can run at 2× or 4× speed.