Today, we’re going over which sub-skills are best for which Pokemon according to their Specialty in Pokemon Sleep and some of the things you should consider when assessing whether they’d be worth investing in, or better sent to the Professor for candy that you can invest in better ones.
In Pokemon Sleep, the Pokemon that you recruit have a variety of parameters to consider which can dramatically affect their productivity when you’re awake. Although their Main Skill is fixed by their species, their sub-skills, which they will learn at Level 10, 25, 50, 75, and 100, are randomly selected from a small pool of options, and can make a huge difference on how effective they are at their Specialty.
The first thing to note is that there isn’t one single set of sub-skills that will fit every Pokemon in the game: there are some that are generally useful, which we’ve outlined below, but depending on the Pokemon’s Specialty (Ingredients, Berries, or Skills) some sub-skills will be better for it than others
At what level the Pokemon learns the sub-skill is also important if you’re more interested in short-term gains, especially if you’re a free-to-play user. At time of writing the maximum level a Pokemon can reach is 60, and even without this level cap to consider, getting a Pokemon to level 50 for its third sub-skill is a considerable investment and will require a lot of candy, dream shards, or several thousand hours of sleep – likely a combination of all three. A Berry specialist that has Berry Finding S at level 25, for example, might be of more use than one that has it at level 50, at least in the short-term. One that has it at level 75 won’t be able to learn it yet at all, so it may be worth trying to find another Pokemon to use for the time being.
One or two less optimal sub-skills doesn’t make a Pokemon useless! More beneficial sub-skills are always better, but one or even two that aren’t helpful (especially if these are at higher levels) don’t mean that the Pokemon in question won’t perform better than average if you choose to invest in it. This guide is intended only to give you an idea of which sub-skills are most beneficial: any Pokemon is technically usable and will still provide gains to your Snorlax even if it doesn’t have the best setup. But for the best results, we’d recommend things as below.
Generally useful Sub-skills for all Pokemon
Regardless of their Specialty, any Pokemon that has these sub-skills is worth considering, as these are always useful:
Helping Bonus is the most universally beneficial sub-skill that you can have regardless of specialty, as it boosts the output of every Pokemon on your team by 5%. This can stack up to 20%, so the more Pokemon on your team that have this, the better.
Helping Speed S and Helping Speed M are also useful regardless of the Pokemon’s specialty, increasing their productivity. Having both of these on a Pokemon is not a bad thing at all.
Energy Recovery Bonus affects the whole party, and if you don’t have a Pokemon with the Energy For Everyone skill, it’s an extremely useful sub-skill to have, giving you a helpful boost during sleep sessions. It becomes less useful if you do have this, but as an early game sub-skill, or in teams that don’t have a way to recover energy outside of sleep sessions, you could do a lot worse than this.
Best Sub-skills for Ingredient specialists
Ingredient Finder S and Ingredient Finder M are the number one sub-skills you want on your Ingredient specialists. These will increase their productivity significantly, allowing you to more easily meet the requirements for dishes – an ingredient specialist with these skills could potentially meet one of the ingredient requirements to cook a dish by itself.
Inventory Up comes in three tiers – S, M, and L. This will allow your Pokemon to hold more ingredients, which won’t be automatically given to Snorlax the same way that berries are when you don’t have space in your inventory for them, but ideally you don’t want any more than one tier of this skill on your Pokemon. The more skill slots that are taken by Inventory Up, the less you have for other, more useful skills like Ingredient Finder and Helping Speed. This is also quite a useful skill to have if you don’t regularly check your Pokemon throughout the day, and is especially useful if you catch an evolved Pokemon that won’t gain the increased inventory from evolution.
Best Sub-skills for Skill specialists
Skill Trigger S and Skill Trigger M are essential for Pokemon that specialize in Skills. Main skills do not trigger as often as berries or ingredients drop, so you’ll want to increase the trigger rate as much as possible. This is especially true of Pokemon that have the Energy for Everyone main skill, which is one of the most useful.
It’s worth noting that Skill specialists are generally a lot more versatile, and can also benefit from Ingredient Finder S/M and Berry Finding S depending on their speed and the type of ingredient or berry that they have. Although having an Ingredient or Berry specialist with the opposing sub-skills will hinder their productivity slightly, the same cannot be said of Skill specialists.
Best Sub-skills for Berry specialists
Berry Finding S is the number one skill to have on Berry specialists, as it increases their output by 1 berry: this accumulates very quickly, especially if you pair it with a nature that favors speed or some Helping Speed skills. In the majority of cases, you will want this skill on a Berry specialist over everything else, and unless the Pokemon has a nature that hinders their Speed of Help and/or Ingredient Finder skills, it will perform better than a Berry specialist without it over the long term.
Other Sub-skills
We’ve covered which sub-skills are most useful, but there are a few sub-skills left to talk about. Although these aren’t useless, they are a little more situational, and if you have too many of these on one Pokemon instead of sub-skills that are more useful to their specialty, it might not be worth investing in them over the long-term.
Sleep EXP Bonus is more useful later in the game, when it becomes more expensive to level up your Pokemon with candies and dream shards. Swapping out for Pokemon with Sleep EXP Bonus before you go to sleep is a good way to make use of the boost, and it is especially useful during Good Sleep Days or other events where EXP is multiplied, but it doesn’t provide any benefit to productivity during the day.
Research EXP Bonus is a nice sub-skill to have, but it isn’t particularly useful over the long-term: you’ll gain research EXP naturally the more you play the game, and although increasing your Research Rank will increase the value of clusters and give you additional benefits when you level up, this won’t make your daily production any better. If you’re just starting out with the game then having one or two Pokemon with this skill will help you gain Research Rank early, but you should look to replace the Pokemon that have this with ones with better sub-skills where possible.
Dream Shard Bonus is a difficult one to rate, giving you a 6% increase to the shards you earn from sleep research. This can stack up to 30% if every Pokemon on your team has it, which isn’t an insignificant boost. Dream shard costs to level up increase noticeable after level 30, and exponentially after level 50. Upgrading your pot to hold more ingredients also costs a large number of shards, and the boosts provided by clusters – which are not difficult to obtain for free as rewards, but are still a scarce resource – are better the higher your Research Rank is. This skill is best taken advantage of towards the end of the week or on Good Sleep Day events, when your drowsy power will be higher and you’ll find rarer sleep styles, and therefore more dream shards. Outside of these instances it doesn’t provide much value compared to other skills, however.
Skill Level Up S and Skill Level Up M will raise your Pokemon’s main skill level by 1 and 2 respectively, which can be very useful if you don’t have a premium subscription. Main Skill Seeds are quite difficult to get outside of the Premium Exchange shop and are generally only distributed as part of larger bundles (which cost Diamonds, the game’s paid currency that you only get in very small increments and will want to use on permanent storage upgrades first) or as one-time rewards for achievements. These sub-skills will give you a useful boost, but they’re not as useful as benefits you can only get through other sub-skills, such as Helping Speed and Skill Trigger.
For the moment, those are all the sub-skills available in Pokemon Sleep. Ultimately you need to consider every Pokemon on a case-by-case basis if you want to have the most optimal setup to reach those higher ranks as quickly as possible, but hopefully this guide has given you a starting point and some idea of what you need to look out for. We’ll have more guides on the mechanics of Pokemon Sleep, and some guides about optimal setups for individual Pokemon, coming in the future.
