Environment Level runs from 1 to 10 in each town, and 10 displays as Max, which is the game being tidy about it. It is not a difficulty setting and it is not decoration. It is the town reporting how well it is doing, and it decides what that town is willing to sell you.

Gold rungs are the gift milestones: a special item at 5, recipes at 10. Once per town, so there is more than one of these ladders waiting for you.

Climbing unlocks the good stuff, and the gating starts early. Shop stock depends on level, so the rebuild kit you have your heart set on may simply not be for sale yet. Further up come more recipes, materials and furniture, more ambitious buildings like cafes and gardens, and more challenges to take on.

What actually moves the number

• Happy residentsThe big one. Every resident's Comfy Level feeds the town's total, so a contented population IS the Environment Level.
• Building anythingHabitats, buildings and kits count on their own, even before anybody has moved into them.
• ChallengesFinishing challenges pushes the number up, and higher levels unlock further challenges. Pleasingly circular.
• Fixing the roadsUnglamorous, genuinely counts. The town notices.
• A Legendary in residenceRaise a Legendary or Mythical resident's Comfy Level and the whole town climbs faster.

Worth knowing before you get comfortable: playing a town's story through tends to leave it around Level 3 or 4. The back half of every ladder is something you go and do on purpose.

They are not interchangeable, and the difference matters more than the names let on. Some carry the story, some do not, and one has a rule about who may live there at all.

• Withered WastelandStorywhere it all starts, dust and all
• Bleak BeachStorysand, shallows, and a name that undersells it
• Rocky RidgesStorystone, height, and a lot of climbing
• Sparkling SkylandsStoryup where the good stuff lives
• Palette TownNo storyoff the main plot, essential for a full dex
• Bubbly BasinDLCan extra region, and strictly for swimmers

The story towns are the ones with a plot attached, and they are the ones the ending asks about. Every story town has to reach Environment Level 5 before you can see the credits, because the Team Initiation Challenges that take you there are locked behind that level. Given that story progress alone leaves a town at 3 or 4, closing that gap is the real endgame.

Palette Town plays by different rules. The main story does not run through it, so it is easy to file under optional, and that is the mistake. It is reachable well before you have finished elsewhere, the game nudges you to hold off, most players sensibly do, and meanwhile a long list of Pokémon you can only meet in Palette Town sits there waiting. Skip it and your Pokédex simply cannot be completed. Not story critical, absolutely dex critical.

Where a Pokémon first turned up does not tie it there, which is the part that makes all of this worth planning. Some species only appear in one place, so meeting them is that town's business, but once they are yours you can generally move them wherever you think they will do the most good.

Bubbly Basin is the exception, and it is a firm one. Only Pokémon that can go underwater can live there. Everyone else is simply not a candidate, however well they would have got on with the neighbours. Plan that region around who can swim, not around who they like.

Planning a town means seeing it whole, and doing that from the game means walking there. My Areas puts them side by side instead: one tile per area, everybody sorted into the tile they belong to, and a distribution bar across the lot, so the area you have been quietly neglecting stands out next to the ones you have not.

A Pokémon lands in one of those tiles for one of three reasons, checked in this order:

• It lives in a houseEvery house sits in an area, so a Pokémon living in one is counted there. This comes first, because the house is the real answer.
• You put it thereNo house yet, but you have dropped it into an area yourself. Saved to your account like everything else.
• Nobody has decided yetIt waits in the Unassigned strip at the top, being visibly unhelpful until you deal with it.

Worth being clear about one thing: the app cannot see your game. It only knows what you tell it. So say you drop Pikachu into Bleak Beach here, and later you build it a house up in the Sparkling Skylands. Once you save that house in the app, with Pikachu in it, that is all you need to do. Your earlier note does not have to be undone, because a saved house outranks it and Pikachu moves to the Skylands on its own. You never have to tidy up after yourself, but you do have to tell us once.

Since the town score is built out of resident comfort, Comfy Level is where the real work happens. Every Pokémon has one, and a Pokémon with no habitat at all counts as zero, however fond of it you are.

• Iffytechnically housed
• Averagethe basics are met
• Nicerequests are being answered
• Greatclimate matched, gifts flowing
• Awesomea proper home, not just a habitat

It rises when you answer their requests, when the habitat matches the climate they actually wanted, and when you visit and bring things. Disliked items nearby pull it back down, which is a polite way of saying your decorating is being marked.

It runs backwards too. Move residents out of an area and its score sags, which can drag the Environment Level down with it and re-lock shop items and challenges you had already earned. Rearranging costs nothing on a planning screen and quite a lot in the game, which is the entire argument for deciding here first.

Each area tile has its own advisor. It looks at who already lives there, then at everyone you have queued up, and suggests the ones who would genuinely fit: a candidate has to share at least two favourite item categories with somebody already living there before it will recommend the move.

When nothing qualifies it says so plainly instead of inventing a recommendation, which is the more useful answer. When something does, it names who it matches and what they have in common, and moving them is one tap from there, with a few seconds of undo for when you think better of it.

Cloud Island is a separate playthrough with its own save, and it has no in-game areas to sort into. The app keeps the two apart rather than blending them, so an area tile never quietly includes Cloud Island residents and your percentages stay honest on both.

For the rest of the picture: climates and habitats are in how habitats work, who is area-locked is in how catching works, and the scoring behind a house that lifts everyone's comfort is in how houses and roommates work.