Pokémon Pokopia: 10 Most Useful Pokemon Specialties, Ranked

2 hours ago 1

Published Mar 18, 2026, 2:08 PM EDT

Daniel has been playing games for entirely too many years, with his Steam library currently numbering nearly 750 games and counting. When he's not working or watching anime, he's either playing or thinking about games, constantly on the lookout for fascinating new gameplay styles and stories to experience. Daniel has previously written lists for TheGamer, as well as guides for GamerJournalist, and he currently covers tech topics on SlashGear.

When you think of a Pokémon having “specialties,” what springs to mind? Probably specific moves, prioritized stats, advantageous typing, stuff like that? Certainly, through the lens of Pokémon battling, that makes sense, but what about when battling isn’t part of the equation? What about, for example, trying to rebuild an entire society like in Pokémon Pokopia?

Well, as it turns out, Pokémon are incredibly adaptable critters, able to put their many wondrous skills toward a variety of practical purposes outside pummeling each other. The Pokémon you recruit in Pokopia have a multitude of specialties based on both their typings and particular abilities and backgrounds, and some are more overtly helpful than others when it comes to rebuilding and revitalizing a completely barren region. These are the specialties you’ll be actively seeking out when making new habitats to entice Pokémon, and the ones you’ll keep near your own home just so you always have easy access to them. Provided they don’t wander off to play tag or something. Again.

10 Trade

Whaddaya Buyin’?

I’m pretty sure Pokémon don’t understand the concept of commerce, but they are smart enough to understand bartering, at least. You give me a thing I want, you get a thing you want, everybody’s happy. Some particularly smart Pokémon, though, are able to take it an extra step and offer a whole variety of things for all kinds of exchanges.

Brainy Pokémon like Alakazam and Audino possess the Trade speciality, which allows them to set up little shops and sell a small variety of wares that change daily. If you want to buy something, you need to trade them a variety of other things with an equivalent value. What determines that value? No idea! I guess food and metal and such are worth more than dirt? It’s kind of arbitrary, but it’s a handy way to not only get some helpful resources, but also offload all the assorted blocks and bits of trash cluttering up your pockets. The only catch is that a Pokémon needs a cash register set up to use Trade. They’re not putting anything in there, they just like the sound it makes.

9 Appraise

Put That Nonexistent Degree to Work

Did you ever store a bunch of junk in a coffee can when you were a kid and call it a time capsule? Well, apparently so did all the missing humans, which is why, by digging through the ground, you can occasionally uncover various large and small relics of humanity. Ditto is a decently smart cookie for a Pokémon, but unfortunately, even it can’t identify everything a human ever laid hands on. That’s a job for the unique Professor Tangrowth.

Professor Tangrowth holds the exclusive Appraise speciality, allowing him to identify buried human relics. Whenever you dig up a coffee can, just bring it to him, and he’ll be able to tell you what’s inside. Using Professor Tangrowth’s Apraise, you can get all kinds of neat stuff that may otherwise be unavailable in ruined dwellings or the PokéLife shop. They make for great gifts and decorations, and some of them are also required for making particular Pokémon habitats, like the one Gimmighoul requests.

8 Search

Let’s Search for Treasure

Speaking of buried treasure, it’s not always obvious where valuable relics and artifacts are buried. Sometimes, you need a little extra assistance if you want to find something cool hiding in the dirt. Specifically, you need both a Dowsing Machine, and a Pokémon with the Search specialty.

The Search specialty, possessed by curious Pokémon like Pidgey, Zubat, and Drillbur is used to search for buried valuables. You can only use this specialty if you have a Dowsing Machine equipped, but you can get one of those pretty early in the game, as well as craft a fresh one later. With a Dowsing Machine and a Search Pokémon following you, you can gradually sniff out and dig up cool stuff, including human relics, CDs for music players and DJ Rotom, dolls for Drifloon, and even Mysterious Slates for the big mural in Withered Wasteland. It’s handy for securing extra bits of set dressing for a burgeoning town, and it’s just generally fun to dig for treasure.

7 Storage

Self-Storage, Cheap Rates

The one thing you can never quite seem to have enough of in this game is storage space. Regular storage crates can only hold one page worth of item stacks, and even the larger storage crate can only hold three pages, which is annoying considering they require PokéMetal to craft. If you’re in need of a little extra space to stash some odds and ends, just turn to your good friends Gulpin and Swallot and their Storage specialty.

The Storage specialty allows Gulpin and Swallot to stash any items you give them in their bottomless bellies without digesting them, horking them back up at your request. Their storage isn’t huge or unlimited, unfortunately, but this specialty does have one major perk: if Gulpin or Swallot are following you, and you interact with a workbench, you can instantly access whatever they’ve got stashed for crafting, not unlike having an adjacent storage crate. It’s very helpful if you’re running all over town and using a lot of different workbenches.

6 Recycle

One Mon’s Trash

A certain subset of Pokémon, mostly Poison types, really, really like trash. It’s their absolute favorite thing, a beloved delicacy to be enjoyed any time of day. As it so happens, a lot of trash gets left lying around when society collapses, some of it actually useful, which is where Pokémon with the Recycle specialty really shine.

Trash-loving Pokémon like Trubbish or trash-compacting Pokémon like Metang can be given various forms of junk you pick up off the ground like nonburnable garbage and wastepaper. After they’ve had some time to either devour it or crush it, depending on their preferences, they’ll yield actually helpful resources like clumps of iron ore or stacks of clean paper. It’s a great way to get some quick ore if you don’t feel like trudging through a mine, and it’s literally the only way to get paper, which is required for both various crafts and several mainline quests.

5 Generate

Give it a Little Spark

It’s been shown multiple times throughout various supplementary Pokémon materials that Electric types are commonly used in power plants to generate energy. They’ve got voltage to spare, and they seem to like doing it, so it’s a win-win. As you progress in Pokopia, electrical infrastructure becomes more important, which is when those Electric Pokémon and their Generate specialty become invaluable.

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All Electric-type Pokémon, such as Raichu, Electabuzz, and Mareep, possess the Generate specialty, allowing them to provide a quick jolt of electricity to nearby machines and appliances. They’ll do this automatically if they pass by a depowered machine while wandering around, though you can also manually lead them to something that needs power if you need a spark. The only downside is that electricity provided by Generate is only temporary, but it’s still handy for single-use devices like vending machines, especially if you don’t want to clutter your towns up with utility poles connected to furnaces or waterwheels.

4 Water

Splashes and Bubbles

One of the two most vital things for any burgeoning society is good, clean water. It keeps plants healthy, washes away filth, and feels really good to have splashed on your face. Oh, and you need to drink it, obviously. While there’s plenty of standing water in every Pokopia locale, if you need mobile sources of water, that’s a job for a Water Pokémon and their specialty… er, Water.

Water-type Pokémon like Squirtle, Piplup, and Froakie possess the Water specialty, which has a couple of convenient uses. Firstly, if a Water Pokémon passes by a plant or crop that’s dried out, they’ll automatically spit some water on it to perk it back up. It’s a good idea to have your Water Pokémon live near any farms you raise for this reason. The second use is that, when you have a Water Pokémon following you, they can spit bubbles onto any mud puddles you encounter, after which you can blast them with your own Water Gun to wash them away. Mud makes it harder to travel around quickly, and most Pokémon don’t like living near it, so it’s vital to have this specialty in Bleak Beach and Sparkling Skylands.

3 Build

Raise a Barn on Monday, Soon I’ll Raise Another

Despite not really needing houses themselves, more than a few Pokémon are quite skilled in residential architecture and construction. I guess knowing how to raise a good building is an instinctive thing, and the physical workout doesn’t hurt. If you want your towns to look more like actual towns and less like poorly-managed wildlife preserves, you’ll want a couple of Pokémon with the Build specialty on hand.

Beefy, industrious Pokémon like Machoke, Makuhita, and Conkeldurr possess the Build specialty, which is required for just about every buildable construct in the game. Alongside other specialties and some extra Pokémon for manpower, you’ll always need at least one Builder on hand to lead the operation. Obviously, you’ll need Build Pokémon to progress the main questline, as they’re necessary to repair the Pokémon Centers, but it definitely doesn’t hurt to have at least 2-3 Build specialists per town so you can raise multiple buildings at once. Side note, Tinkmaster possesses an upgraded version of Build called Engineer, which allows them to not just lead construction jobs, but get them done in a fraction of the time it’d normally take.

2 Burn

Light Fires, Craft Bricks, Smelt Ore

Remember how I said there are two vital things a proper society needs? Well, the other thing is fire, the great equalizer. Fire wards off the cold, lights up the night, and breaks down the rough elements of the world into something you can actually use. That’s why, if there’s one thing any town in Pokopia can’t have enough of, it’s Pokémon with the Burn specialty.

Fire-type Pokémon like Charmander, Torchic, and Vulpix can use the Burn specialty for all sorts of handy purposes. The simplest one is just lighting fires, such as candles and campfires, which they’ll do automatically or when you lead them to one. In addition to that, if you bring some Squishy Clay to a Burn Pokémon and give them a little while, they’ll bake that clay into a stack of hearty bricks, which can be used for all kinds of crafts. Most importantly, with the help of a smelting furnace, Burn Pokémon can melt down iron, copper, gold, and PokéMetal ore into usable ingots, as well as melt sand and ash into glass. Burn Pokémon are your most reliable source of high-grade, endgame materials, so be extra nice to them.

1 Dream Island

The Best Reason to Get Carried Off by a Drifloon

While the various locales of Pokopia are all pretty decently-sized and rich with resources, those resources aren’t endless. Sooner or later, you’ll run out of easily-accessible sources of things like ore and materials, which is annoying if you’re trying to progress the main quest or want to do a lot of creative crafting. If you’re in need of resources, just do the one thing every Pokémon world mom told their kids not to do, and grab on to a Drifloon.

Drifloon possesses the exclusive Dream Island specialty, allowing them to ferry you to the titular uninhabited islands, each positively rife with assorted resources and materials. All you have to do is present Drifloon with a doll, and they’ll take you to a corresponding Dream Island, which also means you can use the same doll again if you want to go back for more stuff. You can only visit one Dream Island per day, but you can visit that same Dream Island as many times on that day as you like. Who knows, if you’re lucky, you may find something exceptionally rare, like a new outfit for Ditto or even a Legendary Pokémon!