Pokémon Quest is a free to start game, which means that at some point you're probably going to have to drop a bit of cash to get the most out of it. You can comfortably play for free, but your progress will be super duper slow unless you buy an expedition pack or three.
There is a way you can mitigate this though, and that's by hoarding PM Tickets. These stand for Poké Mart Tickets and you can spend these in – you guessed it! – the Poké Mart. Here you can buy decorations that increase your item drop rate, Pokémon catch rate, and the experience you gain from going on expeditions. There are also box expansions that let you collect more Pokémon and Power Stones.
Curiously, you can't directly purchase PM Tickets using your real life cash. Instead you have to earn them by playing, and in this guide we're going to tell you exactly how to do that.
How to get free PM Tickets in Pokémon Quest
Get your free Member PM Tickets once per day
The easiest way to get yourself a bunch of free PM Tickets is to collect the batch you get for free from the Poké Mart once per day. You only need visit the Poké Mart, tap on the big PM Ticket sign, and the PM Tickets are yours.
By default, you get 50 free PM Tickets per day, but you can increase this by purchasing DLC from the Nintendo eShop. The maximum number of free PM Tickets you can currently get per day as part of your membership is 190, and that requires grabbing the Expedition 3-Pack Bundle for £26.99 / $29.99.
Complete quests
You get an absolute ton of PM Tickets just for completing quests, as well as ingredients you can use for cooking to attract new Pokémon. You'll complete a bunch of quests just by playing the game regularly, but it doesn't hurt to take a quick glance to see if you're close to beating any others. That way you can prioritise certain activities to beat them quicker.
There are two different types of quests: Main and Challenge. Main are the more straightforward of the two, pretty much requiring you to perform activities for the first time or complete a level. Challenge quests are basically collector challenges, requiring you to collect or encounter a bunch of Pokémon of a certain type, collect and use moves, and cook various recipes. Basically everything you can collect, you can complete a quest for it here.
What to spend your PM Tickets on in Pokémon Quest
Decorations
If you plan to play primarily for free, we'd recommend you prioritise getting decorations in as soon as possible. These will help speed up pretty much everything in Pokémon Quest, from levelling up Pokémon to catching them by cooking.
Ignore the bottom row for now though. You get all of them as part of the 3-Pack Expedition Bundle, and you might decide you want that at a later date. The decorations at the top of the list you can only get using PM Tickets, so grab a few of them. It doesn't really matter where you start though, as you'll want them all eventually. Prioritise stuff that matters to you.
Collection boxes
Initially, you can only collect 20 Pokémon and Power Stones, which isn't very much at all. If you plan to play for free though, it will suffice for the first few days at least, so focus on getting a few decorations in instead.
However, if you are a paying customer, then upgrading your collection boxes should be your first priority. You get a ton of decorations depending on which Expedition Pack you go for, so you'll be well covered there for now.
Pokémon collection box expansions should be your first priority, seeing as you'll start to collect a lot more Pokémon when you have two or more cooking pots. Besides, you can use your Power Moves across all of your Pokémon, so if you don't mind swapping them out each time you edit your team, you can get away with only having 20.
Comments 13
The transaction thing kind of turned me off. But I would love to read a review some time (:
I used 50 tickets to buy a powerstone box. I had 20 powerstones but only 8 Pokemon at the time, now up to 9. This game is so slow collecting Pokemon compared to previous rumble games that I may never need to buy another box.
Still hoping for an update in a few months that tweaks things a bit. And I really don't understand how this isn't connected to MyNitnedo so we can use platinum coins to buy tickets, or even new Pokemon. Seems like a natural fit.
So I was lucky enough to get a Shellder with withdraw and iron defense, and 4 sturdy stone slots. Then I got a sharing stone so that the defense buff from withdraw works for your whole team. And I think I broke the game. Shellder literally can't die, and he just keeps taking hits until the other 2 members of the team come back and I've already beaten several way high level quests with a pretty low level team.
@siouxrunner15 Going up shortly
@rjejr It's super slow unless you buy the Expedition Packs. I bought them last night and already have well over 40 Pokémon, and that's after using a bunch of them to train my favourites.
If you like it, and don't mind spending money, the Expedition 3-Pack makes it behave more like a traditional game.
@Evenmoresteven sounds lke my onix
@edgedino Yeah, I'm trying to get an onix now. I've been just cooking all grey ingredients. Is there a better recipe?
@Evenmoresteven ice rock, and fossils for attracting rocks.
@Evenmoresteven beware 7-2 it is the dangerous level in the game.
@FoxyGlen "the Expedition 3-Pack makes it behave more like a traditional game."
Thanks for that. I've never spent any money on a free-to-start game w/ the glaring exception of SMR which I bought on sale for $5, but to me that was more - here's a demo then buy the game rather than one of these free-to-start things. If they were really expecting us to spend money on this I'd prefer that called this a demo and locked it after world 1, 2 or 3. I'm not sure I can get past world 3 w/o spending money anyway but if they had said that up front then I would know.
I spend way too many hours playing free Pokemon Rumble World on 3DS. I never did the last balloon or 2 that required 21 diamonds or whatever it was but there was more than enough to do before then. My kids and I thought they just should have put this on mobile first, then make a Switch game later that plays more like the other rumble games where we control character movement.
Now that you've given me the heads up I can just treat it as a demo and not worry about it.
If they are willing to let us have a full game for free, then I don't mind it being slow. Why is everyone in such a hurry anyway? I've never paid anything for the mobile animal crossing game which I've played daily since it came out in November (unlocking every single thing too), and I never paid anything for the Pokémon shuffle game after all these years but pretty much beat that game too, and the time "waiting" to get things for free in these games is always just fine with me. TBH I'd rather just BUY a physical copy of a game and play it as it's intended to be, but they don't want to sell those anymore so I just enjoy the free route at their expense. Nothing will make me ever cave in and pay for these "free to start" games because they are never really mine unlike physical copies. Should it become a requirement to pay, I just won't play them. 😉 But as for this game, I've played it a little while so far and it seems pretty good to me. I can't see any reason to pay for the tiny files they charge excessive prices for anyway (did anyone see how tiny the downloads are for the expansion packs and all that?!) Ridiculous!
@rjejr I have been playing for 5 days and have a team of over 9000 points and I am battling trough world's 7,8,9 and 10. Not a single penny expended so far. It is slow but you don't need to pay if you don't want
@Balta666 I've played about 30 minutes every night since it released. I have that 22 hour 50 ticket clock in my head. I usually play after dinner while i digest before moving on to other things.
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