Every Pokémon is attached to habitats. Build one, finish the recipe to the last item, and it becomes somewhere its residents can turn up. Almost finished attracts precisely nobody, however lovely it looks from a distance.

So the dex is really a build list in a party hat. That Pokémon you have never laid eyes on is not avoiding you. It is politely waiting on a habitat you have not put up yet, or on a moment you have not happened to stand in.

Which brings us to the second gate, and to the sinking feeling of a perfectly finished habitat with absolutely nobody in it.

What decides whether anyone is home

• DayUp with the sun, gone by bedtime. Turn up at midnight and you get an empty field.
• NightZubat and friends. The habitat is finished, they simply have plans until dark.
• SunnyFair weather only. No amount of building will talk them into a drizzle.
• RainThe one time bad weather is good news. Wait it out, do not rebuild.
• Area onlyRight habitat, wrong postcode. It has to sit in one named region.

And they stack. Right region AND right hour is a real combination, and it is always the one you forget by morning.

The Pokédex tracker lists every Pokémon in the game in one scrollable place. Search by name or dex number, tap a row to mark it caught, tap the info button for the full profile. Sign in and the ticks follow you about, which matters when the game is on the telly and you are on the sofa with your phone.

The filters are where an evening gets rescued. Narrow by appearance condition and hundreds becomes a handful: pick Night and there is tonight sorted, pick Rain and you have something to look forward to next time the sky turns on you. There is also climate, flavour, favourite item category, specialty, which area a Pokémon currently lives in, and source, so the main game, the Bubbly Basin DLC and limited time event Pokémon each get their own score instead of one percentage quietly dragging the others down.

The island is not one big lucky dip. It splits into named regions, and a chunk of the roster will only live in one of them. Build the very same habitat in the wrong region and the recipe completes, the habitat looks gorgeous, and the Pokémon you did all this for never had any intention of showing up, because it was never on the guest list there.

• Withered Wastelandwhere it all starts, dust and all
• Bleak Beachsand, shallows, and a name that undersells it
• Rocky Ridgesstone, height, and a lot of climbing
• Sparkling Skylandsup where the good stuff lives
• Palette Townreachable early, but the game nudges you to wait
• Bubbly Basinthe DLC, and an excuse to start over

Palette Town is the one that gets everybody, and not for the reason you would expect. You can get there fairly early. The game just suggests you hold off, most players sensibly do, and then a long exclusive list quietly sits there for weeks while they wonder why their dex has so many blanks in it.

Working out who is region locked from inside the game means opening habitat entries one at a time and holding the fine print in your head until you get there. We did all that squinting once so you do not have to.

The area exclusives list groups every single region Pokémon under the region it belongs to, names the habitat that hosts it, and keeps any extra conditions attached, so a night only entry still says night only. It reads like a travel itinerary rather than a reference table: here is everything the Wasteland owes you, in one block, then everything the Beach is holding onto.

A caught Pokémon is a resident in waiting. What comes next, where it lives, who it puts up with, whether it is actually happy about any of this, runs off a handful of traits it arrived with.

Which is why a full dex is not the finish line. Park a dark climate Pokémon in a bright habitat and it is caught, counted, and thoroughly fed up, and fed up residents sit on an area's Environment Level like a weighted blanket. Catching was the easy half.

For the harder half, climates, Comfy Level and what turns a visitor into someone who unpacks, read how habitats work.

Every profile carries those traits on the card, so nobody has to run a spreadsheet in their head at eleven at night. Specialty, ideal climate, flavour and favourites all sit together, next to the habitats that Pokémon turns up in and a shortcut straight to who it would happily live with.

Then the ticks go off and do the actual work. The Roommate Advisor scores housing options against the Pokémon you actually have, My Areas shows the collection by region, and the Habitat Dex points at the build that would introduce you to somebody new.