The Library
The Pokémon Dungeon Library
Our collection of knowledge and imagination: stories, guides, reviews, articles and information, written by Pokémon Dungeon and its community.
- 76 articles
- 7 shelves
- About 7 hours of reading
The Library is Pokémon Dungeon’s reading room. On its shelves you’ll find a fan fiction serial, competitive battling guides from the PokeDS Battling Community, explainers for the mechanics behind every game, guides to catching the trickiest Pokémon, Gengar’s Online Pokédex and its reference tables for the Game Boy games, reviews and opinion pieces, and pages rescued from the site’s early days.
Much of it was written by members of our community over the years. Pick a shelf to jump straight to it.
Stories & Writing 7Competitive Battling 10Game Mechanics 10Game Guides 7Game Boy Classics: Red to Crystal 16Reviews & Opinion 3From the Archive 23
A fan fiction serial that moves between Sinnoh and Hoenn, some advice for writing your own and a who’s who of the Pokémon world.
Fan fiction serial · 5 parts · about 72 minutes
Legend of the Exile
In the swirling snow of Mount Coronet, an Eevee climbs towards an ancient prophecy as Giratina the Exile returns. Five Pokémon set out to discover what the prophecy means, and each chapter opens with a new verse of it.
- Introduction: An End of Times2 min
- Chapter 1: Run and Survive13 min
- Chapter 2: Wave of Chaos18 min
- Chapter 3: Chains of Darkness20 min
- Chapter 4: Jailbreak!20 min
Making a well-rounded protagonist
How to build a believable hero for your Pokémon fan fiction (or any story), with a character sheet to fill in.
Pokémonworld Who’s Who
White Phoenix’s guide to the people of the Pokémon world for fan-fiction writers, with his own invented history, regional accents and an alphabet.
New from our members
Test Story: Route One Morning
A short test story for checking the new story pages. Safe to remove.
Do you write Pokémon fan fiction? Members can share their own stories here, one-offs or chapter by chapter, and a moderator reads every one before it goes up. Share a story → · Join for free →
Competitive Battling10 articles
From your first team to hyper offense. Many of these were written by the PokeDS Battling Community in the Black & White days, so the metagame details are of their time, but the fundamentals still hold.
Competitive battling basics
Where to start once you’ve beaten the Elite Four: EVs, IVs, natures, tiers, team roles and how online battles differ.
Tiers and metagames
Ubers, OU, UU, RU, NU, Little Cup and VGC explained, and how a Pokémon ends up in each tier.
Team building guide
Choosing a core, covering weaknesses and giving every member of the team a job, with an example team.
Team building 2: beyond the basics
The follow-up to the team building guide: cores, threats, checks and refining a team that works.
Analysing your opponent’s team
Reading Team Preview, spotting common sets and working out what your opponent is likely to bring.
A guide to predicting
Reading switches, catching counters as they come in, and knowing when not to predict.
Hyper offense
Building fast, all-out offensive teams and keeping up the pressure from the first turn.
Volt-Turn
Holding momentum with Volt Switch and U-turn: how it works, the best users and how to build around them.
Moving from Gen V to Gen IV
Weather, stats, items and the OU metagame: what changes when you step back a generation.
Guide to using Pokémon Online
Getting started with the Pokémon Online battle simulator: download it, build a team and find a battle.
Game Mechanics10 articles
The numbers behind every battle: types, natures, IVs, EVs, breeding, happiness and how to find a shiny.
Type chart
Which attack types are super effective, not very effective or have no effect against each type of Pokémon.
Which attack types hit everything?
White Phoenix’s type coverage study: the attack types and pairs of attack types that no type can resist, in every generation.
Natures
All 25 natures, the stat each one raises and lowers, and how to choose the right one.
Individual Values (IVs)
Why two Pokémon of the same species can have different stats, and how to check their IVs.
EV training
Effort Values explained: the 510 and 255 limits, which Pokémon give which EVs and where to train fast.
Breeding guide
Egg Groups, Ditto, the Day Care and Egg Moves, plus passing down natures and IVs.
Happiness
What raises and lowers happiness, how to check it, and the evolutions and moves that depend on it.
Shiny Pokémon
What shinies are, how rare they are, and the tricks that make them easier to find.
Poké Radar shiny chaining
Building long chains, working out your shiny odds, Repels and picking the best patch of grass.
Glossary of Pokémon terms
The jargon of old battle guides and game-mechanics manuals explained, from “alternate color” to “über”.
Game Guides7 articles
Catching the hard-to-find Pokémon, beating the Battle Frontier and keeping your wallet full.
Roaming Pokémon
Finding and catching the roamers in every region, from the legendary beasts of Johto to Latios and Latias.
Finding and training Feebas
Where Feebas hides from Ruby and Sapphire to Black and White, and raising its Beauty so it evolves into Milotic.
Battle Frontier guide
Every facility from the Battle Factory to the Battle Tower, with tips for beating each one.
Making money in the Advance generation
The best ways to earn Pokédollars for TMs and vitamins in Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, FireRed and LeafGreen.
The Legendary Pokémon of Black 2 & White 2
Where and how to catch every Legendary, from Cobalion, Terrakion and Virizion to Kyurem and the Regis.
Move Tutors in Black 2 & White 2
Where the tutors are, the moves they teach and how many Shards each one costs.
Tips and cheats for every Pokémon RPG
Rod Lockwood’s collection of glitches, events and tricks from Red and Blue to Battle Revolution, with false reports marked.
Game Boy Classics: Red to Crystal16 articles
Gengar’s Online Pokédex and the reference tables that went with it: every move, item and machine in Red, Blue, Yellow, Gold, Silver and Crystal, plus breeding, max stats and the old codes and secrets.
Reference · 251 Pokémon · 8 games
Gengar’s Online Pokédex
One of the first online Pokédexes, restored: every Pokémon from Bulbasaur to Celebi with its Pokédex text, locations, moves, breeding and stats from Red, Blue, Yellow, Gold, Silver and Crystal.
- Browse all 251 Pokémonsearch & filter
- How to read an entrythe original help page
- Download the offline versionv3.2 & v4.0
Attacks & abilities
All 165 moves with their type, power, accuracy and PP, what they do and how they’re learned.
TM & HM list
All 50 TMs and 5 HMs: the move each one teaches, where to find it and what it costs.
Items list
Every item from A to Z: its price, where to get it and what it does.
Best moves & movesets
Gengar’s pick of the best moves and four-move sets for every Pokémon family, with a rating for each.
Gold, Silver & Crystal attacks
All 251 moves of the first two generations: type, power, accuracy, PP, effects and how they’re learned.
Gold, Silver & Crystal TM & HM list
All 50 TMs and 7 HMs: the move each teaches, where to get it and what it costs.
Gold, Silver & Crystal items list
Health items, Berries, key items, Apricorns, Poké Balls, Mail and decorations, with prices and locations.
Breeding in Gold, Silver & Crystal
Nirav Zaveri’s guide to the Day-Care, Egg groups, Ditto, passing down moves and hatching times.
Egg moves for every Pokémon
The Egg groups and Egg moves of every family that can breed, linked to their Pokédex entries.
Which Pokémon are in which game?
All 251 Pokémon ticked off against Red, Blue, Yellow, Gold, Silver and Crystal.
Max stats for every Pokémon
Level 100 max stats from Bulbasaur to Celebi, plus Mechanism8’s max stat graph.
Secrets, cheats & tips
The MissingNo. glitch, the 100+ items trick, Level 100+ Pokémon, the Box Trick and cloning.
Gift, trade & prize Pokémon
Every one-time Pokémon from Red to Crystal: starters, gifts, legendaries, Game Corner prizes and in-game trades with their nicknames.
The Present glitch
Why Present’s damage in Gold and Silver depends on types instead of levels and stats, and how Crystal fixed it.
Download the offline Pokédex
The original downloadable versions 3.2 and 4.0 of Gengar’s Pokédex, still in their zip files.
Reviews & Opinion3 articles
What we and our readers think: an opinion piece, reader reviews of the games and reviews from the magazines of the day.
Thoughts on every generation (2011)
Xarxes looks back over the first five generations, from Red and Blue to Black and White: what each got right and wrong.
Reader game reviews
Reviews of the Pokémon games written by Pokémon Dungeon readers, with their scores.
Retro magazine reviews
Previews and reviews of the early games, scanned from the magazines we read at the time.
From the Archive23 articles
Pages from Pokémon Dungeon’s early days as Gengar & Haunter’s Dungeon: the 1999–2000 card price guides, the story of Haunter’s Haunted House and White Phoenix’s Imakuni? article and projects.
Pokémon card price guides (1999–2000)
What every card was worth when the craze began: the US and Japanese sets, promos, Topps and Action Flipz.
Haunter’s Haunted House (2005)
The sister site run by Haunter and Gengar, and the fan forums that led to it.
Imakuni?
White Phoenix on the singer, writer and card master behind the strangest cards in the game.
White Phoenix’s projects (2005–2012)
The Trainer’s Assistant, the CardDex Plus, a PC remake plan and the other fan projects White Phoenix ran on Pokémon Dungeon.
Every price guide in the archive:
- US Base Set
- US Jungle
- US Fossil
- US Team Rocket
- US promos
- Japanese Base Set
- Japanese Jungle
- Japanese Fossil
- Japanese Team Rocket
- Gym Leaders
- Gym Leaders #2
- Tropical & Rainbow Island
- Neo Preview
- Birthday Pikachu
- Best Collection CD
- All Nippon Airways
- Ancient Mew
- Action Flipz
- Topps
A note on older guides
Most of these articles were written for the games of their day. Where a newer game has changed the rules (the Fairy type arrived in X & Y, for example), the basics still apply but some details will differ.
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