With all the craze around the new store prices and limits, maybe it's time to hunt some nice cosmetic items. I see plenty of nice sleeves and coins during the matches, and I'm wondering if there is a comprehensive list of these and what packs to buy to get them.

The more I think about it, the less I understand why we need to buy the cards. There's no trading to be disrupted, and they don't seem to make money from this. So why? I mean they can keep alt arts and etc for purchase with crystals and give us the basics. Am I wrong or there is really no reason for this?

I played PTCGO years ago and I remember buying code cards so I'd have packs to trade for cards I wanted. I recently came back to the game and was supprised how different PTCGL is. I actually quite liked the new system as all cards are pretty much available to you (whereas back in the day Tapu Lele GX was something crazy like 35 packs!). Out of curiosity I looked on ebay how much code cards were, ~£10 for 50 seemed about the going rate. I don't remember how much I used to spend on code cards but I don't remember it being as cheap as that. I'm guessing because up until now they are largely useless if you can just craft any card in the game. So now, if you were only interested in gaining credits I'm wondering if that will push up the price of the second hand bulk code cards market? I quite like my infinite money glitch with the charizard deck and glad I made full use of it while I could!

Celebration is ONLY good if you have a the full set.

If you just recently start playing, steer away from celebrations pack..

Edit, also refer to this post for detailed explanation

i! I was looking for suggestions or guidance as to how to pull specific cards, this is the deck I'm running rn:

Pokemon:

1 Shellos SSP 46 PH

4 Gimmighoul SSP 97

1 Gastrodon SSP 107 PH

1 Radiant Greninja ASR 46

1 Manaphy BRS 41

4 Gholdengo ex PAR 139

2 Togepi SSP 70

2 Togekiss SSP 72

Trainer:

1 Energy Search Pro SSP 176

2 PokéStop PGO 68

3 Irida ASR 147

4 Night Stretcher SFA 61

3 Nest Ball SVI 181

2 Boss's Orders PAL 172

2 Rare Candy SVI 191

4 Superior Energy Retrieval PAL 189

1 Roxanne ASR 150

3 Buddy-Buddy Poffin TEF 144

3 Ciphermaniac's Codebreaking TEF 145

3 Ultra Ball SVI 196

1 Earthen Vessel PAR 163

Energy:

1 Basic {D} Energy Energy 15

1 Basic {F} Energy Energy 14

1 Basic {L} Energy Energy 12

2 Basic {W} Energy Energy 11

1 Basic {R} Energy Energy 10

1 Basic {G} Energy Energy 1

1 Basic {P} Energy SVE 13

4 Basic {M} Energy SVE 16

And I'm close to get to arceus level with it, just grinding for the extra gems as I'm saving to buy the obsidian flames x6 booster pack:

what I'm looking for:
2x Scyther MEW
2x Scizor OBF
1x Iron Bundle PAR
1x Fezandipiti SFA
1x Energy retrieval
2x Heavy ball
1x Thorton
1x Counter catcher

I came back to Pokemon TCG last month after nearly 6 years gone from it. I've been grinding like crazy on this month's ranked ladder; lo and behold, I've finally reached the top of the ladder. With Hisuian Zoroark V, no less! I know he'll rotate out in a few months but he's been so good for me and I'm really enjoying the game again. Cheers to everyone who's already made it, and good luck to those last-minute pushers!

Don't look at the W/L ratio too hard.

Not in frame are 8 Basic Psychic energies.

Built an ancient box deck then faced Regidrago Vstar and I was dealing no damage to it. Was confused since mini moon was hitting ogrepon for almost 300 atp but was hitting Regi for way way less. I check the cards and couldn’t see any resistance or weakness that would make me do less damage. Just would like to know what’s going on or if I just got robbed.

Recently got into the game with a bud and we've been challenging each other to see who could reach masterball league first. We won but I made it there with a higher w/l so I count it as my win. Just wanted to share my achievement!

My coins are gone and I didn't get any crystals for it.

The other day i was in a game, i had mimikyu with safeguard in ky active spot, my opponent had mew ex in their active spot, it was their turn, they used genome hacking used ghost eye knocking out my mimikyu what the heck!?! Isnt safeguard supposed to prevent all damage from ex and v Pokémon? How could a mew ex damage me!?!

https://preview.redd.it/elhw6tr5xr4e1.png?width=381&format=png&auto=webp&s=33afb25cb2f85caa65de246b55155335739e124d

I WAS TOO COCKYY AGHHH

Nothing big, but I think it shows how convoluted the underlying system has to be. The number in the description text changes depending on the slot it is displayed? Or maybe they have the quest multiple times in their DB and some have the error?

The new purchase limits completely change how we have to think about the credit farming economy. 4 purchases of each bundle is not enough to get a great return on investment. However I think a lot of people are missing something important that was said in the Letter to the Community today:

Some items in the Shop will now have exchange limits, restricting the number of purchases one can make within a certain period. This allows us to fine-tune our offerings and promote a healthy balance of resources in the game.

This strongly suggests that the purchase limits are not permanent, but rather that after a certain amount of time has passed they will reset and we will be able to purchase 4 bundles again. The problem is that we do not know how long we will have to wait. Or maybe it will be a permanent cap. This uncertainty makes it hard to know what to do.

I cannot give a definite answer, but I sat down to crunch some numbers to get a better idea of what our options are. If you just want my advice and don't care about the math, jump to the conclusion below.

First I calculated how many credits you can get from each of these bundles:

Bundle | Cost | Credits | Credits/Crystal | Credits Lost ------|------|------|------|-------|------- 6x Celebrations | 1120 | 5168 | 4.45 | 103100 Shadow Rider Calyrex | 1250 | 4150 | 3.32 | 5440 Miraidon ex | 1250 | 3715 | 2.97 | 6640 Ice Rider Calyrex | 1250 | 3645 | 2.92 | 5320 Single Strike Urshifu | 1250 | 3635 | 2.91 | 6060 Mew VMAX | 1250 | 3580 | 2.86 | 6120 Rapid Strike Urshifu | 1250 | 3450 | 2.76 | 6240 Inteleon VMAX | 1250 | 3375 Palkia VSTAR | 1250 | 3340 Zacian V | 1250 | 3215 Charizard ex | 1250 | 2690 Gardevoir ex | 1250 | 2615

(I did not bother continuing calculations for the last bundles, but I included them here for completeness.)

For Celebrations, I used the Dusting Simulator to estimate the credits you can get when you already have a maxed out Celebrations collection. I also included the 600 extra credits you get for buying the 6x Celebrations pack.

The Credits Lost column requires an explanation. What this captures is the value of all the cards that you will receive that will not be turned to dust. A bundle will have more credits lost if it has more valuable cards, but also if it has more unique cards, because you will have to purchase more packs to fill out the set. You do not lose all of these credits up front, but you do lose most of them early. You continue to lose a small amount of credits until you have 4x of every card in the bundle (1x for Radiants and Ace Specs).

Celebrations does exceptionally bad here because there are 50 unique cards in the Celebrations set but you only get 4 cards in pack (24 in each bundle). Celebrations has always been the best long term value for credits per crystal, but the fact that you "lose" so many credits filling out the set has made it a poor choice for anyone new to the game. The deck bundles on the other hand start giving returns on the second purchase, and give nearly full returns on the third and fourth purchases. This makes them a much faster way for new players to get into the game.

So next I tried to calculate how long it would take buying Celebrations packs to pay off. To do this I estimated how many crystals you can get per day. Quests give 90 crystals per day. The current ranked ladder rewarded 2100 crystals, and ranked ladders last about 30 days. The current Battle Pass rewarded 2000 crystals, and I estimate that Battle Passes last about 60 days. I did not account for crystals that are earned from your player account leveling up. Putting this together gives about 193 crystals per day. Of course this number could change, and probably will. In the one year that I have been playing this game, the structure of the quests, ladder, and Battle Pass have all changed dramatically. But for now I will assume that it will remain constant.

Using a simplistic model where all credits lost are lost up front, we can then calculate how many credits you will get from Celebrations packs versus Shadow Rider Calyrex over time:

Celebrations: 193t*4.453 - 103100
Shadow Rider Calyrex: 193t*3.2 - 5440

From this we can see that it would take 404 days for Celebrations to surpass Shadow Rider Calyrex in value.

At this point I'd like to take a moment to talk about short term versus long term value. It is tempting to say that since Celebrations provides the best long term value, players should just bite the bullet and start buying Celebrations packs. I believe this has historically been wrong for two reasons:

1. Realistically, you must ask yourself how likely you are to still be playing the game in one or two years. People lost interest and move on to other games. This is normal. I can say from reading comments on this subreddit, most people seem to have been playing for less than one year. If you won't be around playing every day in two years, Celebrations is not going to be a better value.
2. Even though the deck bundles provide a lower value, they still provide more than enough credits to buy any cards that you want. I started playing about 11 months ago. I now have 95k credits saved up just from buying Shadow Rider Calyrex bundles (and Charizard ex this last month). I have built every meta deck and many rogue/meme decks. I can buy whatever meta cards I want from the next several sets. If I keep playing, this bank will only continue to grow. So I would never have benefited from the better return of the Celebrations packs anyways.

But now we throw the wrench into the works. The purchase limit. Buying Shadow Rider Calyrex is no good if we are permanently capped at 4 purchases. But what if the purchase cap resets? Using the above estimate of 191 credits per day, it would take 26 days to reach the purchase limit.

If the purchase limit resets every month, or every ranked ladder season, this is barely a limitation at all.

If the purchase limit resets less frequently, another strategy is possible: We could rotate between multiple deck bundles, from greatest value to least value, until the purchase limit resets. Doing this lowers the crystals/credits and increases the credits lost, but it can still remain competitive with Celebrations for awhile. Here are the values of bundle combinations of increasing complexity:

In the last case it would take you 155 days to buy 4 of each bundle. If purchase limits reset at all, I'm sure they reset more often than this. We could in theory still get some decent value from the next few decks, until you get to Charizard and Gardevoir where there is a sharp drop off in value. However as we add more decks Celebrations also gets closer and closer to catching up. If after 155 days the purchase limit has never reset once, it's probably safe to assume that they never will and we should just be buying Celebrations packs. Of course if you have committed to this strategy of buying decks, you will be quite a bit behind on filling out the Celebrations set. Conversely, if you start buying Celebrations packs today and the purchase limits reset in January, you will have basically wasted all your crystals that were spent on Celebrations.

For players who have been playing for awhile, it's also worth considering that most of us already have a complete Shadow Rider Calyrex set, and a nearly complete Miraidon set. Therefore I believe it is a no-brainer to purchase these two bundles until you have reached the purchase limit.

Conclusion

In the face of this uncertainty, what should we do? Well my advice, and what I will do, is to purchase Shadow Rider Calyrex and Miraidon for now. After that, if you have nearly complete copies of any of these other bundles, I would buy those. For example, when I was new I bought the Mew VMAX bundle in order to play it. So I have already eaten the cost of most of the "lost credits" for Mew VMAX. So after Miraidon I will buy Mew VMAX bundles. If there is still no sign of a purchase limit reset at that point (which will probably be sometime in February), then and only then will I start purchasing Celebrations packs.

Hello, I just started playing this game 2 days ago. I'm from Pocket TCG and discovered that there is this Pokemon Live and I seems to like it because it is similar to IRL TCG. I'm loving the Roaring Moon EX deck and upon searching for tutorials on how to play the deck. They also include Pecharunt EX and Fezandipiti EX.

So my question, is there still a way to get this 2 cards, and how?

They actually added something very useful here, love to see it

Ps- went back to Zard & forgot how much I love Turn2 (going 1st) energy acceleration to delphox v lol

I'm playing around with this deck, it's been working pretty well for me. Unfortunately, when I play Ranked, all I seem to go up against are Charizard ex decks. It's annoying. I got really comfortable with the Loyal Three deck and this one is loosely based on Loyal Three, but hinging on Pecharunt's Poison Chain coupled with its Toxic Subjugation ability, along with Radiant Hisuian Sneasler's ability and Brute Bonnet's Toxic Powder. Perilous Jungle chips off a little more HP when possible. Pecharunt ex of course using Subjugating Chains to move my Pecharunt back into active when someone uses a Boss's Orders to move my Pecharunt out of active. Okidogi is my hard-hitter when I need to take down a big HP opponent, like Charizard ex. Cobalion and a Gravity Mountain, which will hopefully be available when I need them, will bring the necessary damage to take a Charizard ex down to 270, so as long as my Okidogi has a Binding Mochi attached it will take it out. If not, Brute Bonnet can poison for 10, Okidogi can hit for 260, right? Am I doing my math correctly?Anyways, any thoughts or opinions on my deck are appreciated. Also, the one-off Bianca's Devotion has pulled my Okidogi out of some tough spots, so that's why she's there.

Been having success with this deck so far, bit definitely needs to fine tune. Any suggestions?

I've been mainly using miraidon to set up, and as an extra attacker. Powerglassing raichu v and my pawmot exs. Pawmots are used to collect energy on the bench for discard/ to come up and do 230 damage while only exposing a 1 prize carder for the opponents next turn. Pawmot and pawmot ex having no retreat cost has been great. Haven't really had to use magneton yet.

Because I still have the same number of crystals before the update, and I had about 2,000 to 3,000 coins.

All of these should be recent!

After the new update it seems that celebration packs are the best way to grind for credits, but which product is the most efficient to buy? The individual packs (and if so, which bundle size of them) or the bundles in the shop with the extra pikachu cards? Sorry for the dumb question, but any help is appreciated!

Hi,

So I play what I'd say is modified version of a Klawf deck. It works fairly well for me, but draw engine ruins my games somewhat regularly.

I definitely have an issue where I play a game, something very specific happens, I add cards to fix that specific problem - and now I feel like I'm weighing down my deck for scenarios that happen 1 in 10 (or even less...) So if anyone can help point out the dead weight to me, that'd be appreciated!

Definitely interested in increasing my draw engine, or perhaps more the ability to get needed cards. As a side note I hate squawkabilly cause I always seem to end up discarding something that screws me later and takes up too much bench space.

Thanks

Any tips to make this card work or is it a lost cause because of borderline one shot meta like because of raging bolt and regidrago

Well, that was fun.

I just started playing and have 12,400 crystal and 1,515 credits from merging my stuff. What should I spend it on? I do have celebration at 2x so would it be better for me to just 4x celebrations and farm it that way? Or just buy the charizard ex decks at 1250 each?