Taking classic Pokemon gameplay and injecting the show’s typical dark humor, Pocket Mortys has you taking on the role of a Rick… and battling your Morty to the death against other trainers.
Preparing To Fight Trainers
When exploring dimensions filled with enemy trainers, you need to be picking up new wild Mortys to increase your options at the Morty Daycare. If you didn’t plan ahead and craft manipulator chips for catching a wild Morty, you can now buy manipulator chips straight from the Salesman Ricks entry in the menu screen, rather than having to return to the Citadel.
When buying items in a dimensional quest, don’t waste money on healing items. The game doesn’t come right out and say this, but there’s actually no penalty to losing and leaving a dimension when all your Mortys are knocked out – especially since full healing is free at the Citadel of Ricks.
If you’ve run low on AP and health for all your Mortys, that’s a good sign its time to lose a battle, heal up, and jump back in the dimensional portal again.
Of all the items to buy before fighting trainers, the courier flap in particular is a massive waste of 1,000 schmeckles, since you can just return for free by losing a battle with a trainer. Smart Ricks will save those schmeckles instead, and only use health and AP recovery items for Council of Rick battles or when playing the more high stakes Morty Games.
Buying Manipulator Chips
Deck Lineup and Choosing Morty Skills
Before battling trainers, you can have up to three decks of Mortys to swap out, but in most cases you probably only need one. What’s important in the deck lineup, however, is the distribution of types.
A Rick who is worth his salt should have all three types of Mortys - rock, paper, and scissors - in the deck to counter other trainers, or you will find yourself frequently losing battles.
Don’t forget that you can swap out skills on individual Mortys when they level (or by visiting Lab Rick and spending tickets), and some Mortys of the same type have better attack lineups. In general, each Morty should ideally have one untyped and two typed attacks. Even if you are battling a Morty of the stronger opposing type (such as rock fighting paper), an untyped attack will still deal normal damage.
Personally, I very rarely use the buff and debuff skills on any of the Mortys. Most battles don’t last long enough for those status effects or reduced defense to matter, and they just take up a slot that could have an attack instead. If you do use buffs, obviously get rid of the weak ones as soon as possible when leveling and replace them with upgraded buffs labeled as strong.
Choosing A Balanced Deck Lodaout
Trainer Battle Basics
Besides fighting wild Mortys to capture, any trainer will automatically initiate a battle when you cross their line of sight.
Don’t just tromp across their view right away though! Instead, take a moment to study the lineup – as not only can you clearly see what their full Morty deck looks like, but more importantly you can also tell which Morty will be the first in the battle.
Why does this matter? If you know your Mortys, then it’s a snap to change your lineup so that your first Morty will beat the other Morty’s type for a quick win. For instance, if you know ahead of time that you are going to start the fight against a scissors-type Exo Omega Morty, then swap your lineup so you begin with a rock Morty.
Exo Omega Morty Will Be Your First Enemy With This Trainer
Even if you don’t know each Morty type by heart, a savvy Rick can easily guess what type they will be based on certain characteristics.
Anything hair-focused is going to be a scissors Morty because they need a haircut, as is anything scratchy like a Morty carrying cats. Sometimes things with two prongs – like bunny ears – will also be scissors. Anything strength or stability focused is usually rock, such as Karate Morty, and of course Punk Morty is rock (because punk rock, duh). Most of the lineup focused on frailty (such as Old Morty), or a non-descript Morty (like Orange Shirt Morty), or anything super weird (like Test X46 Morty) will usually be paper.
If the trainer has a Morty in their lineup that counters your current Morty, they will switch to that one for an advantage. Even if you aren’t sure what type an enemy Morty is, you can usually guess correctly based on what you are currently using. For instance, if you just beat an opponent using a paper Morty, the trainer will probably throw out a scissors type, meaning you’ve got better than even odds of coming out on top if you switch to rock.
This Is A Bad Matchup - Switch Types, Quick!
Pocket Mortys Leveling
When level 26 Mortys are battling level 14 Mortys, the three main types really don’t matter nearly as much – so leveling is key to beating those trainers and getting more badges.
Here’s the thing though – don’t earn badges too quickly if you want to level and find more wild Mortys! Each badge you earns increases the power of the next dimension’s trainers and makes battles more difficult. So it’s a better idea to purposefully lose a battle and return to heal a few times than to immediately go straight for the end trainer with a badge.
Don’t forget to level your base Morty, who is untyped (and remember even typed Mortys have untyped attacks that can be used against their opposing types to good effect). If your best scissors Morty is already unconscious, pull out your base Morty to fight a rock type instead.
If you aren’t saving level up seeds for the Egg Morty who can’t fight in battle, putting them on your base Morty is a good idea, since the other types will level up on their own as you create new combos or capture new wild Mortys. You can end up with higher and higher level Mortys just by combining them into their second and third tier iterations, such as combining two Beard Mortys into a Hipster Morty.
For an edge in battle, you can increase individual stats on a Morty using the other types of seeds – but this is more beneficial for max level Mortys or Mortys upgraded all the way to the third tier. Usually it’s a better idea to save up the different seed types and use them to craft a level up speed. If you’re spending any significant amount of time playing the game, those minor bonuses from stat seeds won’t matter, since that Morty will likely be combined before long into something better.
Are your old Mortys falling behind and you haven’t found a new one of high enough level in the correct type you need yet? Don’t forget you can send ’em to bootcamp through the Morty Daycare! It takes 24 - 48 real world hours (unless you spend money on tickets), but is worth the wait if you need a specific type of Morty to be higher level.
Combining Two Beard Mortys For A Higher Level Hipster Morty
More Pocket Mortys Mayhem
You’ve now got the skinny on mastering combat with your Mortys! Want to know even more about the game’s quests and modes? Check out our other Pocket Mortys guides for even more help with the game:
Master list of all Mortys Pocket Mortys tips and strategies Full crafting recipe guide Using Investment Rick Guide to winning the Morty Games
