The Ultimate Pokopia Tips Guide (Inspired by Austin John Plays)

I’ve watched every single one of Austin John Plays’ Pokopia videos. Multiple times. As a long-time subscriber and supporter of the channel, I can say without hesitation that his Pokopia series is some of the best gaming content on YouTube right now. The man poured hundreds of hours into this game and documented everything — every trick, every hidden mechanic, every build technique that the game never bothers to tell you about.

This guide compiles all of that knowledge into one place. Every tip below is sourced directly from Austin John’s videos, organized by category so you can find exactly what you need. Whether you’re just starting out at Bleak Beach or you’re deep into Palatown city planning, this is the reference guide I wish I had when I started playing.

Building Tips

All building tips sourced from Austin John Plays’ Pokopia series

The Basics Nobody Tells You

As Austin John covers in his building guides, every house in Pokopia needs exactly three furniture items to be valid. That’s the rule. A 4x4 perimeter with a 2x2 interior plus a door is the minimum valid house, and it can hold up to four Pokemon. The maximum house interior is 10 blocks in any direction, which means a 12-block perimeter on the outside.

Here’s the thing that will ruin your day if you don’t know it: if you remove any single piece of a house, ALL Pokemon in that house become homeless at the same time. Not one. All of them. Keep that in mind before you start renovating.

You can actually dig into a rock face and use the cave wall as housing — a 2x2 dig plus a door counts as a valid house. Outdoor fence enclosures work too. Press the right stick to see a house’s engagement perimeter so you know which area it covers.

Advanced Building Techniques

Austin John’s museum and park builds showcase these techniques perfectly. The block oval generator is your best friend for circular structures. A 13 wide by 9 tall oval looks way more circular than a 13x13 square. Use extravagant pillars instead of round ones — they look more powerful and give your builds that museum-quality feel.

Relocation kits can move entire structures at once. If you mess up placement (and you will), this saves you from tearing everything down.

For roofing, corrugated metal works great for shallow slopes. Iron plating floors look surprisingly luxurious inside apartments and larger builds. Hardwood floors will transform a cave room from ugly to livable instantly.

Paint glass black to reduce the see-through effect on windows — it creates a much cleaner look from the outside. And use security cameras for a static vantage point when reviewing your builds from different angles.

The Leafage Trick

This one’s huge. Quick press on a brick places individual climbing vines. Long-hold places dense vines that cover all exposed block sides (but not transparent blocks like glass or doors). Then use Magnemite Rise with a long-hold Y to collect those dense vines as tangible items you can place anywhere. Instant greenery for any surface.

Nesting Habitats Inside Houses

Place grass or flower patches inside a house and the nested Pokemon benefit from the parent house’s furniture items. Eight habitats can fit in an 8x8 space and house up to 12 Pokemon simultaneously. Alternating 2x2 grass patches and 2x2 flower beds in a 6x6 area is the most efficient layout Austin found — 12 Pokemon in a tiny footprint.

Elevator and Multi-Story Builds

Establish your elevator shaft first, then build floors around it. An elevator needs two platforms (one at bottom, one at top) and measures three floors. You can run wireless transmitters up the shaft — hide one per floor for invisible power distribution.

Flying-type Pokemon can fly across a void between buildings, which means you can design gaps between structures without losing resident access.

Farming and Resources

Farm designs and strategies from Austin John Plays’ dedicated farming episode

The Fossil/Stone Farm

As Austin John demonstrates in his farming guide, fossil Pokemon litter stone — roughly 50-70 pieces per visit at max capacity (about three hours of in-game time in the area). The key trick: block ALL sides of a house except one opening. This concentrates all litter drops at that single exit point. It works for any litter-producing Pokemon and dramatically increases collection efficiency.

Lumber, Clay, and Garbage Farms

For lumber, use four chop-type Pokemon paired with a community box and honey to maximize output. Fair warning — Haxorus litters small logs at roughly a 1:5 ratio to lumber, so you’ll end up with way more small logs than you actually need.

Squishy clay comes from Trapinch, Flygon, and Wooper. Non-burnable garbage for crafting comes from Grimer, Muk, Garbodor, Glimmet, and Glimmora.

Automated Brick Production

Fire types follow you and immediately start smelting when you look at a furnace — no prompting needed. Put fire-type Pokemon in a community box with multiple furnaces nearby and you get automated brick production. Torchic on day one, Arcanine later. Set it and walk away.

The Best Crop Setup

Maximum 60 crops with a sprinkler system (5 blocks in each cardinal direction). The best crop combination is beans plus potatoes because they’re the ingredients for Potato Hamburger Steak — the single best food item in the game. More on that in the food section.

Concrete Production

Concolder makes concrete using a concrete mixer plus limestone. Each batch yields 4-6 concrete blocks. Limestone is found on surfaces and in hot springs areas. Set up four concrete mixers with two crush-type Pokemon and let automation handle the rest.

Pokemetal Mining

Austin John Plays’ mining method from his rare Pokemetal guide

The Best Method for Rare Pokemetal

Austin John’s method: go to the beach on a dream island, dig down 6 blocks, then 1 more (7 total depth). Use Graveler form to excavate horizontally without picking up sand or moss automatically.

Critical rule: do NOT pick up sand or moss. It hits the object limit and clears old valuable blocks. Let them despawn naturally. The oldest items despawn first (not by location), so put anything you want to keep into your inventory immediately.

Each rock has approximately a 90% chance of regular Pokemetal and a 10% chance of rare Pokemetal. In Austin’s demonstration, 13 minutes of mining yielded nearly 4 stacks of fragments plus 41 rare Pokemetal. Never strip mine — excavate wide open areas for maximum efficiency.

One Potato Hamburger Steak before mining extends your stamina significantly. Always eat before you dig.

Habitats

Habitat discoveries and combinations from Austin John Plays’ series

General Rules

As Austin John documented across multiple episodes, there are 209 total habitats in the base game and 728 total recipes (308 in daily shop/water spots, 216 in permanent shop, 8 evolution items, and 56 wallpaper recipes that are water spot exclusive).

Every habitat requires specific furniture combinations, usually three items. Here are the ones you’ll want to prioritize.

Must-Know Habitats

Dragonite (Waterside Dinghy): Duckweed plus canoe plus water with leafage. This unlocks Dragonite’s glide ability, which is essential for exploration. Find the unlock spot at the pond with the canoe in Sparkling Skylands.

Charizard (Berry Feast Campsite): All five berries plus bonfire at high altitude. This is way easier than trying to spawn Charizard through grass habitats.

Porygon (Researcher’s Desk): Powered computer plus science experiment plus tables. Porygon then teaches you the wireless power transmitter recipe — one of the most important unlocks in the game.

Pikachu Space: Pikachu sofa (found in the SSN captain area) plus Pikachu doll (from the Pokemon fan club). Pikachu spawns immediately.

Fortune Teller’s Table: Crystal ball plus two seats plus a table. Spawns Alakazam. Crystal ball recipe is just glass plus twine.

DJ Rotom’s Party: Requires a setting plus food plus entertainment. Gather hype Pokemon (Wigglytuff, Clefairy, Ludicolo, Jigglypuff) to push the party mood to 100. The party culminates with Volcarona shooting fireworks.

Hard-to-Find Habitat Items

Berry basket: Requires all 6 infinity berries. Extremely hard to get legitimately, but you can photograph one on the dev island and 3D print it for 2 rare Pokemetal.
Eerie candle: Found near the Alakazam spawn in Skylands. Needed for the Chandelure habitat (requires 2).
Photo cutout board: Required for the Plusle/Minun habitat.
Guitar: Requires “strange strings” obtained from Pokeballs or Gimmighoul exchange.
Nap time bed: Found in the sewers under the Selvco building.
Boom-in-the-box: Found in the museum sound room. Looks like a striped block — collect with fists or Y, NOT Graveler.

Dev Island and Cloud Island Codes

Dev island code: pxqcg03s — Visit using the mysterious goggles from your PC. Has antique items, guitar, armors, arcade machines, microwave, magazine, Pokeball walls, and more. The berry basket can be photographed here and 3D printed.

Austin’s cloud island code: Qdrl7nxh — Contains one instance of every single habitat in order from 1 to 209, plus all flower and bush variants. Visit this island to photograph anything you need for 3D printing. An incredible community resource.

Food and Recipes

Recipes and cooking strategies from Austin John Plays’ food and recipe episodes

The Best Food in the Game

Austin John says it best — Potato Hamburger Steak. Beans plus potato on the pan. Powers up Rock Smash “a lot” — meaning dramatically extended mining sessions and way more Pokemetal per trip. Grow beans and potatoes on your farm and never run out.

Cooking Basics

There are four cooking methods: salad (always needs a leaf), pan-fried burgers/steaks (always need beans), soup (always needs water), and pizza oven bread (always needs wheat).

All six salads power up Leafage equally. For soups, Electrifying Soup requires an electric-type Pokemon as helper. Healthy soup is water plus bean plus leaf. For bread, Fluffy bread needs a water-type Pokemon plus pascha berry, and Bread Bowl needs a fire-type Pokemon plus simple soup.

Chef Greedent

Get Greedent in your kitchen. Chef Greedent can randomly double the output of any cooked dish. That’s free food multiplication just for having the right Pokemon nearby.

Snorlax Food Effects

Bitter food gives rare item drops. Sweet food boosts ancient artifact spawning (roughly a 20% increase). Feed strategically based on what you’re hunting for.

Getting More Recipes

Two recipes rotate daily in the shop plus a permanent lower shelf section. Visit other players’ cloud islands to buy from their shops — each island has different stock.

Rippling water spots in fresh water are a major recipe source. They respawn approximately every hour, with a max of 4 per map at once. Rules: fresh water ONLY, must have sky exposure, no grass underneath the water, can be in flowing water. Muddy water, sea water, hot springs, and lava do not work.

56 wallpaper recipes are water spot exclusive — they cannot be bought anywhere. This is the only way to get them.

Pro tip: using 8 Nintendo Switch profiles gives you 8 cloud islands with 8 separate recipe shops. That’s 16 extra rotating recipes per day.

Pokemon Tips

Pokemon acquisition methods from Austin John Plays’ dedicated guides

Getting Mew

Austin John’s Mew guide covers this in detail. Collect all 27 mysterious slate blocks from artifact spots throughout the world. The slates are found near the top layer of rock, up to 2 blocks below the surface. Rocky Ridges is the best hunting area because artifacts are visible from far away thanks to the fog coloring.

At night, use Magnemite Rise to spot glowing artifact spots easily. Once all 27 are collected, a portal appears in the ruins underground near the wasteland Pokemon Center. Mew appears and becomes a town resident — but fair warning, Mew has no abilities. It can only teleport and basically acts like a cat.

Getting Mewtwo and Legendaries

Each dream island doll corresponds to a specific legendary:

Eevee doll = Suicune
Pikachu doll = Raikou
Arcanine doll = Entei
Dragonite doll = Mewtwo

Dolls cost 50 coins each. The legendary hides in the underground cave area of the dream island. Encounter chance is estimated at 3-5% per visit, so keep trying.

Austin’s theory: do the cloud island dream island first, then check the main game. There may be a mechanic where finding a legendary on the cloud island means the same type appears in the main game that same day.

Shiny Pokemon (The Pattern System)

Shinies in Pokopia aren’t Pokemon running around — they’re patterns painted onto furniture. You need Smeargle (found at Bleak Beach) living in your town. Each day, visit a dream island cave and find “dazzling items” in books and chests. Show them to Smeargle and he learns that pattern permanently. Paint furniture with it and the shiny Pokemon appears.

There are 98+ different prints discovered so far across 3 categories, plus 60 Pokemon-inspired patterns available from Vespiquen by trading 3 honey.

Key Pokemon to Prioritize

Magnemite: Complete Team R initiation to unlock Magnemite Rise — the best building tool in the game. Float freely, place items with precision, break and collect items in midair. This is the post-credits reward that changes everything.

Dragonite: Glide ability (press R in the air, hold B to go faster). Opens up all vertical exploration. Dragonite can also reach slightly higher platforms by walking toward them.

Tinkaton (Engineer): Found in Sparkling Skylands. Builds dramatically faster than you — small houses go from 15 minutes to 5, overnight builds drop to about an hour. Also works as a bulldozer for demolition. Always use Tinkaton as your main builder.

Porygon: Teaches you wireless power transmitters. Porygon Z has the Rearrange ability — turns star pieces into rare Pokemon using 99 stardust per conversion.

Greninja: Can both water AND chop. Two abilities in one Pokemon.

Power and Wireless Transmitters

From Austin John Plays’ “Wireless Power is AMAZING” episode

Why Wireless Power Changes Everything

As Austin John discovered when Porygon taught him the recipe, utility poles and wireless transmitters have the same range: 14 blocks. But wireless transmitters are full blocks that embed into walls, floors, and ceilings. No ugly wires. They chain wirelessly, cost only 1 Pokemetal each, and can be hidden underground by digging down 2 blocks, placing the transmitter, then putting the floor back on top.

Each transmitter has a small light indicator showing it’s active. Run them up elevator shafts, hide them in walls, bury them under roads. Your city stays clean.

Power Generation

Windmill = 10 power
Water wheel = 20 power
Mini generator = free supplemental power, good for small or remote builds

Bring utility poles from previous areas when moving to a new zone — they’re essential before you unlock wireless transmitters.

Housing Limits and Town Management

Housing mechanics from Austin John Plays’ housing limit and prefab episodes

The 40-Value Cap

Austin John breaks this down in his housing limit video. Pre-fab homes have a cap of 40 value per map. Tier 1 (den) and tier 2 (hut) each count as 1. Tier 3 (cottage) and tier 4 (house) each count as 2. The game tells you “you can’t build any more houses” when you hit the cap.

The key insight: modular/block homes do NOT count toward this cap at all. Only pre-fabs count.

Best scenario: 20 tier-4 houses (value 40) store 80 Pokemon indoors, plus roughly 20 outdoors = 100 total per map.

Why Cottages Are the Sweet Spot

Tier 3 cottage costs 20 lumber + 20 leaves + 20 stone, holds 2 any-size Pokemon, and has a value of 2. Same efficiency as a full house but uses way fewer materials. The stone cottage variant (25 stone + 25 brick + 25 iron ingots) looks even better.

Prefab vs. Modular: The Hidden Advantage

Pokemon inside prefabs do NOT count toward the 20-30 outdoor model render limit. Pokemon in modular homes are always visible outdoors and eat into that limit. This means prefabs are actually better for population density even though they’re less customizable.

You can stack tiny prefabs (double-decker style). Keep useful Pokemon like burn and grow types in cottages near spawn points for quick access.

Demolition Without Consequences

Demolishing your entire town does NOT affect your rating level. But it does temporarily drop your environment level and lock out some purchasable items. Buy high-level items BEFORE doing large renovations. Move Pokemon in stages to minimize disruption — the level drops as Pokemon realize they’re homeless.

Storage and Organization

Organization system from Austin John Plays’ storage guide

The Workbench Trick

As Austin John shows in his storage video, your workbench pulls items from all four adjacent chests simultaneously. Keep your crafting bench right next to your supply chests and you’ll never have to manually move materials again.

Hidden Mechanics

Hold X to auto-sort your inventory. Push the left stick to cycle between nearby interactable objects — this is a HIDDEN MECHANIC that the game never tells you about, even after 160+ hours. It’s critical for accessing stacked items like chests behind chests.

Recommended Chest Layout

Use frames on walls above chests to label them visually. Austin’s recommended categories: food, crafting supplies, seeds/flowers, prefabs/treasures, furniture, relaxation, decorations, lighting, toys, house pieces, roads, man-made blocks, nature blocks.

Create a “sort later” chest as a temporary holding zone for items you haven’t categorized yet. Your first chest should always be food.

The Hoppip Event

From Austin John Plays’ Hoppip Event guide

Austin John covers this event in detail. The event runs March 10-25 on the in-game calendar, but it’s controlled by the system clock — change your Switch date to activate or deactivate it anytime. Requires at least one Pokemon Center restored.

Collect cotton spores from dream islands (all zones drop them). During the event, Hoppip sets up shop at your Pokemon Center and exchanges spores for event items.

Three event habitats to build:

Yellow carpet habitat: 4 dandy flower seeds — spawns Hoppip, Skiploom, and Jumpluff
Field trip friends: Backpack + water bottle + lunch box — spawns Skiploom
Dandelion lunchtime: Dandelion + flower cushion + flowery table setting + lunch box — spawns all three (Hoppip, Skiploom, Jumpluff)

Jumpluff is very rare. Prioritize the dandelion lunchtime habitat for the best chance.

S.S. Anne Loot Checklist

From Austin John Plays’ S.S. Anne plundering episode

Austin John’s advice: bring a utility pole before you go — you’ll need power on the ship. Here’s what to grab:

Luxury sofas (4 in ballroom rear) — required for specific habitats
Alarm clock (rear cabin) — needed for Happiny’s quest
Cash registers (forward pokeball area) — 2 available, saves buying the recipe
Mug (forward section) — saves buying the recipe
Pikachu sofa (captain area, inside a pokeball above the captain’s wheel)
Captain’s wheel — needed for the “playing pirate” habitat
Ship’s wheel recipe — jump into the SSN smokestack

Austin’s philosophy: “If I don’t plan on ever coming back here, really, why not just take everything.” He’s not wrong.

3D Printing

3D printing tips from Austin John Plays’ rare items and inspiration episodes

Photograph any item in the world to unlock its 3D print blueprint. Costs vary: flowers are 4 Pokemetal each, rare items like the berry basket cost 2 rare Pokemetal.

Visit other players’ islands to photograph patterns and items you don’t have. Austin’s cloud island (Qdrl7nxh) and the dev island (pxqcg03s) are the two best sources for hard-to-find printable items.

Quality of Life Tips

Hidden mechanics and shortcuts Austin John Plays discovered throughout his series

Faster surfing: Hold B while riding Lapras
Fast travel trick: From the town return menu, your current location is pre-selected — mash A to return instantly
Rain control: Place a fire-type Pokemon at a sunny day site with a berry to stop rain
Security cameras: Set them up early — they notify you when new Pokemon spawn in an area and can see through walls
Scaffolding: Use it as actual working scaffolding for temporary height during builds, then remove it
Surface lights: Only cost 4 materials each — cheapest way to illuminate large areas
Date skipping: Change the Switch system clock to speed up builds, respawn dream islands, rotate recipes, and activate events. If you don’t want to date skip, Engineer Tinkaton’s build speed bonuses are the legitimate alternative

Final Thoughts

Everything in this guide came from watching Austin John Plays figure it out in real time across his complete Pokopia series. The man demolishes his entire town, discovers hidden mechanics after 160 hours, accidentally creates habitats, and narrates the whole thing like he’s hosting the world’s most entertaining building show.

If you haven’t watched his channel, go subscribe. I’ve been following Austin John for years and his Pokopia content is peak. The tips above will save you dozens of hours, but watching him discover them is half the fun.

Now go build something incredible.