Meta-PokéBase Q&A
8 votes
2,581 views

Even though Bulbapedia is arguably the single largest collection of Pokemon-related information, we still get some questions that (mainspace) Bulbapedia cannot answer. If you have information that is not on Bulbapedia and can answer Pokebase questions, please post them in an answer to this thread. Include links and explain what kinds of questions can be answered using each source. You can also post ways to get information from Bulbapedia (talk pages, other namespaces, etc.) that people usually don't see just by browsing mainspace articles.

Also definitely use these sources to answer questions, especially the ones that have been unanswered for a long time. We very much appreciate that.

Please post a new thread if you have a different idea that can help answer questions.

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8 Answers

8 votes

If you know that an answer should be on a Bulbapedia page, but it's not there, then I recommend putting an incomplete template on that page. There have been a few people who saw the incomplete templates and added the missing information.

Dragonfly Cave Catch Rate Calculators
These calculators calculate catch rates.

guide to Swap Breeding
I don't know where I found this or how reliable it is, but this random .png file contains a lot of information about swap breeding in gen 7.

Metalkid's IV Calculator
Metalkid has a few other Pokemon-related resources and calculators, but the IV calculator is the one I use the most.

Pokemon event locator
This website can find tournaments that are happening in person.

Showdown!
The /ds command can answer almost every "What are all the Pokemon that..." question, and the /ms command can answer almost every "What are all the moves that..." question. If you don't already know how to use them, enter "/help ds" or "/help ms" in a chat room to read about how to use them. You can also ask for help in the help chat room. This site also has a damage calculator.

Smogon Forums
Many people already know this is my second-favorite source after Bulbapedia. Smogon is most importantly a competitive Pokemon community, so they have a simple questions simple answers thread for every popular format, including official stuff like Battle Stadium and VGC, and a whole bunch of unpopular formats. The Smogon users who answer questions in those threads are often better than the best competitive battlers on Pokemon DB. They can also answer a bunch of other questions.

Showdown! SQSA thread for Showdown! questions
Usage stats for questions about what Pokemon and moves other people are using, this roughly correlates with viability, but almost every format has some things that are viable and unpopular. SQSA threads are more reliable when answering questions about what's viable.
Current gen mechanics research (click the link, click the subforum for the current generation, and ctrl F "mechanic") for current generation battle mechanics that should be on Bulbapedia but are not there
Past gens mechanics research for past generation battle mechanics that should be on Bulbapedia but are not there
Orange Islands SQSA thread for out-of-battle mechanics that should be on Bulbapedia but are not there
RNG mechanics and PRNG help/information for RNG abuse questions
Battle facilities for battle facility (Frontier, Subway, etc.) questions
In-game tier lists for in-game team questions

Speedrun.com
Each Pokemon game has its own page on this site. You should be able to click either "guides" or "resources" on the top of the page and see the moves and exact stats for all the Pokemon that speedrunners battle, which usually includes all the rivals, gym leaders, antagonists, and Pokemon League. You can also ask more questions by clicking the Discord link at the top right corner of the page.

Trainer Tower Damage Dissertation
This article contains a lot of details about damage calculation. It can answer most questions about damage rounding and order of operations and which modifiers modify stats, power, or damage.

ultimate Pokemon Center
This site contains a lot of Mystery Dungeon information that is not on Bulbapedia. Unfortunately, the servers stopped running in 2015, so you have to read the archived site in the Wayback Machine, which loads very slowly.

I have heard good things about Nugget Bridge and Pokerng (and heard that some website publishes usage stats from official VGCs instead of Showdown!), but I have never tried to use them.

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6 votes

It goes without saying that Serebii is a resource that rivals Bulbapedia. In particular, their Eventdex is the most accurate and comprehensive list of Pokemon events I've found online.

One resource I feel is a little underrated is veekun. Granted, it tends to update with new information extremely late (they still haven't updated for base SwSh, although a look at their source code shows that the site is being updated for it. Slowly). But for your Gen 1-7 needs, They have a search engine for both Pokemon and moves that are both stupidly specific and configurable, among some other gadgets like their Pokemon comparison tool and Pokeball calculator.

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Serebii also documents the TCG and game mechanic guides better than Bulbapedia. :P
A particularly impressive part of Serebii is their trainer dex. Example: https://www.serebii.net/pokedex-dp/trainers/403.shtml
It's only for Gen 4 and 5, but it shows that whoever went through the ROMs for those games was very very thorough. Bulbapedia has this information, but as usual it is difficult to browse there.
5 votes

I will add to this answer if I think of a resource that hasn't already been added.

Glitch City Wiki is a high-quality resource for glitches in Pokemon, especially the first four generations. Its articles are usually clearer and better-structured than their equivalent on Bulbapedia. The wiki is continuation of Glitch City Laboratories, which was archived in 2020.

ChickasaurusGL is a long-time glitch researcher with an active YouTube channel. If you need live gameplay of glitches, especially for Gen 1, then you are likely to find it there. Other researchers on YouTube I've taken note of are Crystal_ and RETIRE (and there are many others out there). Overall, if you're dealing with glitch questions, YouTube is a good resource, with a lot of documentation that's hard to find elsewhere.

PokeAPI is the most complete source of Pokemon data in formats that are easy to parse. And obviously, it lets you query an API for Pokemon data. You can use their GitHub repo to directly access data for most aspects of Pokemon up to US/UM, after which it gets a bit patchy. You can use it to answer questions like this where you think "gee I wish you could query PokemonDB/Serebii".

Pokemon Reverse Engineering Team (PRET) is a disassembly and decompilation project for various Pokemon games. The code in their repositories can be built back into a working ROM for the target game. Their most complete project is Pokemon Red (and their projects for Game Boy games are very faithful to the actual source code, as assembly code is quite close to machine code).

Project Pokemon is a community mostly focused on save editing, RAM manipulation and romhacking. A great deal of research on game mechanics comes from these areas -- in particular, it hosts PKHeX which is the culmination of years of research on Pokemon save file structures. Lurking their forums and tutorials area and trying hacking software can help you learn how the game works.

(It's worth adding that Smogon is bar none the best source for original Pokemon research, especially research from testing the game directly. But that research is strewn across their massive forum and also moves around often, so it's hard to link one place to start finding info.)

@Sibuna_Switch/Anubis/Lusamine does a lot of research on game mechanics for modern games, and publishes the results on Twitter (index). Other notable researchers such as Kaphotics also use Twitter (and here's his repository).

Bulbapedia walkthroughs (example) are useful to understand precisely what a (completionist) playthrough of a certain game entails. You can use the info to inform advice on what Pokemon are best for in-game playthroughs, and refresh your memory of when certain events happen or when items become available.

Reddit is rarely a primary source of information, but it can useful to read the experiences of other people in certain contexts. You can filter to Reddit using site:reddit.com on any search engine. It is a good idea to find the source of information shared on Reddit, or try things yourself before repeating them here. Reddit is also a good place to direct people asking for things we don't do on PokeBase, e.g. trade requests.

Bulbapedia talk pages (example) are useful to get context around the contents of a page you're reading, such as the technique used to prove a certain fact, and other discussion between experts that could be useful for technical PokeBase questions. The edit history may provide further context.

Smogon's Contributions & Corrections forum has WIP analyses for its strategy dex. These can be useful for answering questions about competitive play. Also useful is the surrounding discussion that can give insight into why information was or wasn't included. Obviously, these should not always be taken at their word as they have not yet passed Smogon's QC measures, and could also be outdated.

Hidden Power of Masuda is Junichi Masuda's (former Pokemon director) blog. It hasn't been updated since 2015, but it has insider info about the development of Pokemon games from Gen 3 to Gen 6. Even better, I actually used it to answer a question once.

im a blisy's YouTube channel and website has demonstrations of RNG abuse in Gen 3, 4 and 5. There is content here appropriate for people with almost any level of experience with RNG. sumwun linked Smogon's written guides above, which are good but also a bit outdated (PokeFinder is replacing RNG Reporter) and a bit verbose.

The Cutting Room Floor has well organised and up-to-date information about cut content in Pokemon games.

The Internet Archive and LibGen store many paid publications, leaks, and other such materials. Parts of this have questionable legality, so I will say no more.

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Do you think these sites can answer some of our currently unanswered questions, like https://pokemondb.net/pokebase/393027/what-happens-when-you-bad-clone-an-egg ?
What about the other glitch-related questions on the unanswered list?
One thing worth mentioning about Bulbapedia walkthroughs is that they often don't tell you when is the earliest you can visit certain places or get certain Pokemon or items. For example, you can visit Lake of Rage anytime after battling the wild Sudowoodo and surf there anytime after defeating Morty.
3 votes

For Pokémon Go related questions, I often use Gamepress. It has reliable and detailed information on Pokémon go, with many articles about the many things included in the game.

Here is an example of a Pokémon’s page on gamepress. Almost every Pokémon has a description of their best Movesets and overall viability in PVP and PVE. It even has a calculator for a Pokémon’s DPS and TDO. Pokémon Go Hub also has many detailed articles on, of course, Pokémon Go.

Using these two sites, almost every Pokémon Go question can be answered.

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I’m looking through the articles, so far I haven’t found a single thing mentioning them having different rates in general-there’s a possibility that they all have the exact same encounter rate. I’ll look some more, though, and I believe there’s a community on Gamepress where I can ask about that if I don’t find anything
Answered that
2 votes

Although uncommon, any time I can remember answering a question about sprites or models, or anything similar, I've used the VG Resource. At the top of the page, there are tabs that take you to different parts of the site, and there's one for sprites and one for models. Although many of them are not entirely complete collections of the sprites/models, it's nonetheless been very useful in answering the few questions that come up pertaining to those topics. Very niche, I know, but it works very well in the few situations it's needed.
I've used it to answer at least these two questions:
https://pokemondb.net/pokebase/381468
https://pokemondb.net/pokebase/374233

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0 votes

For viability of Pokemon and what moves to use, I usually choose Pikalytics > Smogon. It’s very simple and it’s easy to understand, plus its nice on the eyes. It can be out of date, but its relatively useful for understanding the viability of different Pokemon. It also has stats for the items a Pokemon runs, its moves, abilities, teammates, and EV spreads.

Note: recommended mostly for VGC but it does have other formats.

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Side note, you can also get raw data + up-to-date data from Showdown via Smogon: https://www.smogon.com/stats/
The /moveset directory does the same thing as Pikalytics and has data going back many years, if you want that. You can find even older data on Smogon's forums (Antar posted lots of stuff years ago).
Pikalytics and Smogon usage stats are both good for finding out what's popular, but I think it's better to ask viability-related questions on Smogon Forums SQSA threads. This is mostly because almost every format has a few Pokemon and moves that are both viable and unpopular.
Popularity ≠ viability. Smogon usually explains the ev spreads and why teammates are good too. The viability rankings are almost always better for knowing how viable a pokemon is.
Pika[insert characters here] isn't that reliable imo. I'd prefer Smogon > Pika[insert characters here] for now.
0 votes

I’ve been seeing others use this website for tgc, and it has a lot about new expandsion. They also have a forum for fake cards, etc.

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0 votes

Bulbapedia doesn't have existing SM, USUM and SwSh walkthroughs. If you need any of them for answering questions or for your own walkthroughs, there exist walkthroughs from site called Pokemonlp, which gives walkthrough in the style and quality of Bulbapedia ones. These are reliable and used them myself too. Here they are:

SM Walkthrough
USUM Walkthrough
SwSh Walkthrough

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