Open any habitat in the Habitat Dex and you get a list. That list is not uniform. Some entries are things you pick up, some are things you make, and some describe a feature that needs to already exist in the spot you choose. Knowing which is which saves a lot of confused staring at a half-built habitat.

• GatheredCollected from the world: lumber, stone, clay, flowers. These go into your inventory and get placed.
• CraftedMade from gathered materials. Arrow signs, candles, fences. The recipe screen turns raw stuff into something the habitat recognises.
• EnvironmentalAlready in the world: tall grass, water, lava, a high-up location. You arrange the habitat around them, not the other way.

The environmental ones are why two habitats with identical item lists can end up needing very different spots. One wants water nearby, one wants a high ledge. You pick the location first, then build around what is already there.

The world is full of gather nodes: trees drop lumber and small logs, rocks give stone and clay, bushes yield vine rope and berries, sparkle spots on the ground can produce almost anything. Three ways to work through them:

• Press YNear trees, rocks, bushes, flowers, or sparkle spots. One item at a time.
• Hold Y (Ditto inhale)Pulls in multiple nearby items in one go. Faster once you know a node-dense area.
• Gather-specialty PokémonSet one as your active partner and materials appear as you walk past nodes. No button required.

Some materials need crafting before the habitat will accept them. The in-game recipe screen turns raw gathered materials into finished items: a stack of lumber becomes an arrow sign, raw stone becomes stone bricks. You do the gathering first and the crafting second, then place everything.

Once every item is in place and the habitat's conditions are met, it activates. You will see the area change. A Pokémon appearing after that still depends on its own rules: time of day, weather, whether the habitat is the right type for that species.

The Build Queue keeps your planned habitats in order and shows the full item list for each one. Add from the Habitat Dex, drag to shuffle priority, and check items off as you gather them. Each row shows which Pokémon the habitat attracts, so you can see who you are actually building toward.

When every item for a habitat is checked off, its border turns green. That is your signal: everything is gathered, go build it. The habitat stays in the queue until you press Mark as built.

Building one habitat in isolation is fine. Building four at once is where things go sideways. Lumber shows up in the first recipe. Then the second. Then the third. You gather for the first one, use it all, start on the second and discover you needed to gather twice as much in the first place. Or you gather for all four at once but lose track of which pile goes where.

The per-habitat item lists do not help here, because they show each recipe in isolation. What you actually need to know before a gathering session is the total: across every habitat I am planning, how much lumber do I need in total, and how many stone bricks, and how much vine rope?

The Items / Materials tab adds up every habitat in your queue and gives you one unified total. If three habitats each need 4 lumber, the tab shows 12 lumber, not three separate fours. Same for crafted materials: if the crafted items across your queue need 8 stone bricks total, that is the number you see.

Each row has a counter. Tap the plus as you collect, and the number tracks what you have versus what you still need. When a material hits its target, the corresponding checkbox in every affected habitat ticks itself automatically. Drop the count back down and the checkbox clears. The two ways of tracking stay in sync without you managing them separately.

Environmental items like tall grass and water show in the list for reference but have no counter, because you do not gather them. They are already in the world.

Once a habitat is ready and you have built it in-game, tap Mark as built in the queue. The habitat comes off the queue, gets ticked in the Habitat Dex, and its materials drop out of the Shopping List. Your dashboard completion percentage updates.

If the habitat attracts Pokémon you have not caught yet, the app asks whether you caught them while building. Say yes and it marks them in your Pokédex in the same step, so you do not have to find them twice in two separate places. Say no if they have not turned up yet and you can mark them later.

Any to-do items you linked to that habitat close automatically. Everything attached to it resolves together, not one by one.