Quests and the journal
How quests are found, taken, tracked and turned in, and the three kinds there are.
In short
- Quests come from people. Someone who "has work for you" is marked in the place's cast.
- The Quest Journal has three tabs: Available, Active and Completed.
- Three kinds: the main line of Academy and League chapters, side quests that open with each badge, and repeatable jobs in towns that trust you.
- Objectives are things you do anyway: catch, defeat, find, bring, visit, talk.
Finding one
Walk into a place and look at who is there. An NPC marked "Has work for you" offers a quest when you talk. Locals also drop rumours: a line about a record fish or a flooded meadow is pointing at a quest somewhere else. The Available tab lists what you could take right now and where.
Almost nothing is offered on day one. The first Academy quest opens the moment you start; everything else waits for a badge, a chapter or a quest before it, so the journal grows as you travel rather than listing seventy-six things at once.
Taking and tracking
Accept the offer in the dialogue and the quest moves to Active. Each one lists its objectives with a count, who to turn it in to, and where. Progress is counted automatically: catch a Pokemon the quest wanted and the count ticks, whichever route you caught it on.
| Objective | What it means |
|---|---|
| Defeat wild | beat so many wild Pokemon of a species, or any species, in battle |
| Observe | start a wild battle with the species; catching is not required |
| Catch | catch so many |
| Bring | have a Pokemon in your party that meets the ask: a species, a type, a level, a held item, or one you bred |
| Deliver | hand over so many of an item |
| Visit | stand in a place |
| Talk to | speak with a named person |
| Defeat trainer | beat a named trainer or a quest's own opponent |
A delivered item leaves your bag when you turn in. A brought Pokemon is shown, not given; it stays yours.
When every objective is done the journal says "Ready" and names the person to turn in to. Rewards are money, items, sometimes a choice of one from several, and for a chain's finale something rare: a TM, an evolution item, a Pokemon.
You can abandon an active quest from the journal. Progress is lost; the quest returns to Available if its gate is still met.
The three kinds
The main line. Four Academy quests teach catching, raising, held items and battling, and end with your licence. Then eight League chapters, one per gym town, given by the leader. Finishing a chapter is what makes the leader fight you. Twelve quests in all.
Side quests. Forty-nine, each twenty to forty minutes across two or more places, with at least two steps of real play. They open with the badge of the district they sit in, and they pay three to ten thousand plus an item worth having. Several unlock something for good: Surf, the three rods, the evolution-stone counter, the imported-goods counter, the breeding items, the fossils. The Uxie chain is six of them in strict order.
Repeatable jobs. Fifteen, two or three steps each, ten or fifteen minutes, paying fifteen hundred to four thousand and one of a few rotating items. A town's jobs open once you have finished an ordinary quest there, and each can be taken again after a cooldown of under a day.