Intro to MissingNO

Right. You signed up here at MissingNO and you’re all ready to go! What now?

Unlike other online TCGs, MissingNO has a lot more things to do besides just collecting cards. As you master decks, you get new pokemon and characters that will help you on your quest. You have to keep your pokemon healthy and train them and you can even teach them an attack or two. And as your pokemon collection grows, you can choose which ones to use for what games!

There are a lot of things to consider, but don’t feel daunted by them! This guide will help you make the first steps on your journey to become the top trainer here at MissingNO!

Your First Pokemon

Stage
Make sure you pick a Basic pokemon that doesn’t have any prerequisites. You can view a pokemon’s prerequisites on its deck page.

“Why can’t I pick another pokemon? That Stage 2 Charizard is really cool!”
While that may be true, you can’t master Stage 1 or Stage 2 pokemon right away. You’ve got to master the basic pokemon first and then evolve it into its Stage 1 and Stage 2 forms.

For example, if you want to master Charizard, you’ve got to collect and master Charmander and Charmeleon first!

There are also some Basic pokemon that do have prerequisites. Those are baby pokemon and to master those, you’ll have to master the parent pokemon first. For example: if you want to master Pichu, you have to collect and master Pikachu first!

In short, the only pokemon you can master right now is a Basic pokemon without any prerequisites.

Rarity
Rare cards are harder to collect than uncommon or common cards. (You can recognize a card’s rarity by looking at the symbol on it: a dot denotes a common card, a diamond an uncommon card, a Star a rare card and 2 stars a legendary card.) So it’s easiest to start out with a common pokemon, so you can master it quickly and use its abilities as fast as possible. Some common pokemon are really popular though, which makes them harder to collect. If a lot of members are collecting Eevee or Charmander, it will be tough to master the deck quickly. If you do want to collect a rare or popular deck, or even a legendary deck, it’s a good idea to collect a more common deck at the same time as a back-up plan!

Ability
Pokemon have all kinds of different abilities. You can view all current abilities in this list. If you master a pokemon and use it in the games, it will use its ability and help you. It’s good to find and collect a pokemon with an ability you like. (Hint: the “show an extra card” or “take an extra card” abilities are very powerful!)

And if you do look for a good ability in your pokemon, be sure to give some thought to your first character too.

Your First Character

Availibility
Some character cards cannot be won in the games until you’ve reached a certain level. For example, all the Johto League gym leaders will only show up as prizes when you reach Cooltrainer level (level 4). For the Hoehn and Sinnoh gym leaders you’ll need to be at an even higher level.

Make sure you don’t pick one of those as your first collecting character, or it will be nearly impossible to master it!

You can see all the different gym leaders here.

Rarity
As with pokemon, rare cards are more difficult to collect than uncommon or common cards. With characters this is doubly so: most rare characters are also needed to collect Gym badges, which means everyone in the TCG will be collecting those characters at some time. As such, it can be very difficult to complete a rare character deck when you’re just starting out. If you do decide to go for a rare character right away, it can pay off to collect a non-rare character at the same time.

Ability
Make sure your pokemon and character can work well together. This means: pick a character with an ability that complements your pokemon’s ability. If you’re going for a pokemon that lets you “show one more card”, it’s good to master a character that lets you “take one more card”. With both, the game will show one more card as a prize, and since you can take one more card as a prize, presto! You get an extra prize card in each game you play!

Important fact: all card effects written on the prize page are cumulative. So you can add all the different effects to each other to determine how many cards you can take as a prize! See the image below for an example:

Whenever you get a prize, an overview like this is given so you know what you can take. The overview shown here has 4 lines.

• The first line is the default prize. You can take 2 cards and all items and you get 54 PokeDollars, too. Usually, 2 cards are shown when you get this prize, so that you can take them both.
• In the second line, you see your character’s ability. Here it is that one more card is shown.
• The third line is your pokemon’s ability. Here it’s the Torrent ability, which also shows one more card. (You can also see that your pokemon loses 50 HP, which is higher than usual because of Piplup's attack)
• The final line shows the attack you used, if you used any. Here it’s the Bide attack, which lets you take twice as many cards. (You can also see that the Bide attack loses 1 PP)

So while the default prize was 2 cards, because you used this combination of character, pokémon and attack, you managed to get 4 cards instead! Remember, you can only take the amount of cards shown! If only three cards were shown, you would only be able to take those 3, despite your ability/attacks allowing 4 to be taken.

A Forum trading thread

You can open a trading thread here. Opening a thread has a few big advantages.

First of all, a lot of people prefer trading on the forum. If you open a trading thread of your own, you’ll get a lot more trade offers!

Second, people like to trade with active members. Replying regularly in your trading thread is a great way to show you’re active. And that will get you even more trade offers.

Third, with a trading thread, you can keep a nice overview of all the trade offers you received. You can easily reply to multiple trade offers at the same time. And other members can also see all the pending trades, which can help avoid cards being offered to you twice. So trade offers can increase in quality if you have a trading thread.

All in all, if you want to trade effectively, opening a forum trading thread can help a lot!

Tip: focus on collecting only a few decks! Since there are so many cute or cool pokemon to be collected, it can be tempting to hold on to most of your cards. After all, why would you trade all those cards away if you want to collect them later on anyway? But since you’re just starting out, it can be really worth your while to not hold on to all your cards. This is because you’ll want to master your first pokemon and your first character as fast as possible. That way, you can use them in the games and earn extra cards as fast as possible!

So don’t be afraid to trade away all those cards that you’d like to save for later. Concentrate on your first collecting pokemon and character and master them and from that point on you’ll get a boost in game prizes. After that, you’ll find it much easier to collect cards from other decks, including the ones you just traded away!

The Pokemart

For the moment, you don’t have to worry about all that too much. But one part of MissingNO is pretty important for starting trainers, and that is the Pokemart.

Keep in mind the following hints and tips to really put the Pokemart to good use!

• Check the Pokemart as often as you can, if possible at least once a day. The more often you check, the more likely you are to find a key item for sale (like a Fashion Case, a Coin Case or a Good Rod). Those items are needed to play certain games, so if you manage to buy one, you get a whole extra game to play!
• If you need money, you can sell your items by going to your inventory, clicking on an item and choosing to sell it. But don’t sell your stuff too fast! If you sell an item, it will only get you 10% of the original price. It’s often better to wait a week and earn more money in the games than it is to sell things you’d maybe want to buy back later.
• If you do need money fast (for instance, to buy a key item), you can choose to sell some items, but otherwise it’s better to hold onto them. There are a few exceptions though. Some items aren’t used for anything in the game. Instead, they exist only so you can sell them for money!
• Potions are extra important: hang on to those as much as possible, since you’re going to need them to heal your pokemon. If you don’t have a potion and your pokemon faints, you have to go to the pokemon center to heal it, which is more expensive. So if you have the money to spare, it can be a good idea to buy potions in the Pokemart too. In the long run, you can save lots of money that way!

So if you want to save money, you can best just let your pokemon faint and heal it afterwards. This kind of tough training is a bit cruel of course…

Start the Adventure!