All 64 moves, the 15 kinds and how 59 of them evolve

How a move actually works

Your Pokémon attacks on its own. You never press attack and you never aim. What you control is where you are standing when the active move fires, and which of your four move slots is active. That single rule explains almost everything about how moves feel, because a move's usefulness is decided by how its shape interacts with where the enemies are standing.

Moves level up through the card choices you pick at each level, and a move caps at level 5. Once a move is maxed, the only way to make it stronger is to evolve it: you need to hold the specific upgrade card that move asks for, and only then does the golden evolution card appear in your level-up choices. The game has 64 moves and 59 of them can evolve.

The golden card is not random. It only shows up when a maxed move and its matching upgrade card are both in your inventory. Until then the game will never offer it, no matter how many level-ups you take.

There is also a practical ceiling on how many moves you can run at once. The interface is built around four active slots, so a good build is not one that collects twelve moves — it is one where four moves cover the situations you will actually meet, and the other eight are upgrade material you level on the way to an evolution.

The 15 kinds of move, and what each asks of you

The 64 moves fall into 15 kinds, and the kind tells you more about how to play the move than the type does. Grouping them by the demand they put on you is the fastest way to understand the roster.

Three of those kinds change the shape of a fight rather than its numbers. Buff moves deal no damage at all, so a build running one is paying for a stat with a slot. Aura and Orbit moves keep working when you are not aiming anything, which makes them the safest answer to a horde you cannot out-run. Turret moves decouple your damage from your position, which is the closest thing in the game to a passive build.

Kind beats type when you pick a starter. A projectile you can walk into position with will beat a stronger melee move for a new player, because a move you cannot aim is a move that kills you when you walk backwards into the horde.

The seven upgrade cards

Upgrade cards are the currency of the move system. Every evolvable move asks for one specific card, and the cards are not interchangeable. There are seven of them, and they are not evenly distributed across the 59 evolutions.

The distribution tells you how the game thinks. Power alone accounts for 24 evolutions, which is nearly two out of every five, so most of the roster ends up as a bigger version of what it already was. Reflexes is the second card, and it is the one that turns a single-target move into a crowd-clearing one. The rest are narrow: Synthesis for the three orbiting and pooling moves, Sprint for the two dashing and trail moves, Magnet for the two chain moves.

That narrowness is why a run should be planned around upgrade cards rather than around damage. If a card shows up and no move you own wants it, it is still worth taking — it is progress toward a specific evolution you may want later — but if a move you own asks for that card, taking it is what unlocks the golden card for that move.

All 64 moves

The complete move list, with the type and the kind for each one. The effect text is the game's own description of what the move does, and it is worth reading rather than assuming, because several moves behave differently from their name.

Two things stand out when you read the list straight through. The first is that the ten non-damaging moves are all concentrated in two places: three Normal-type buffs (Swords Dance for attack, Agility for speed, Harden for defence), one Water buff (Aqua Ring for regeneration) and one Dragon buff (Dragon Dance, which builds attack faster than Swords Dance does). The second is that Poison, Ground and Bug are the only types with no beam and no chain move, so a partner built around those types has to come at enemies from close or mid range.

All 59 evolution chains

Every evolvable move, the upgrade card it asks for, and the exact change the evolution gives. These are the numbers the game publishes for each evolution, so you can plan a target move precisely instead of hoping.

The multipliers cluster tightly, and that is useful. The seven ×1.9 evolutions are all melee moves that become 360° coverage: Tackle into Take Down, Body Slam into Giga Impact, Vine Whip into Power Whip, Karate Chop into Close Combat, Wing Attack into Brave Bird, Bug Bite into X-Scissor, Lick into Shadow Punch, Bite into Crunch, Metal Claw into Iron Head. The ×1.8 group is the projectile and turret set, and the ×1.7 and ×1.6 groups are the wide multi-shot conversions where the multiplier is smaller because the number of projectiles goes up instead.

How to read an evolution note

An evolution note can add damage, coverage, reach or a new body, and those four things are not interchangeable. A note that adds projectiles is the most valuable kind in a dense wave, because each extra projectile is another hit landing. A note that adds range changes which fights you can take at all. A note that adds radius or bodies is what makes a defensive move keep up with the late game.

• Damage. The ×1.9 and ×1.8 multipliers are close enough that the extra effect is usually the real reason to take the evolution.
• Pierce. A projectile that pierces passes through a line of enemies instead of stopping at the first one, which is the difference between one hit and five in a corridor.
• Extra bodies. Synthesis and Armor add orbiting orbs, turrets or clouds. They multiply your damage without needing a better aim.
• Reach. More range and 360° coverage let a melee-style move keep hitting while you back away, which is how melee moves survive the late game.
• Cooldown. Sprint evolutions add distance and reduce cooldown, which is the quietest upgrade in the game and often the one that lets you survive.

One note, one decision. A level-up gives you three cards and you take one. If you are chasing an evolution, the card that matches your maxed move is worth more than the card with the biggest number — unless the big number is a real evolution for a move you already use.

Which moves to max first

If you are new, you will not have all 64 moves and you cannot evolve everything. The order matters more than it sounds, because a move at level 5 that never gets its upgrade card is a move that wasted five level-ups.

1. Max one projectile early. A projectile move is the easiest to aim and the easiest to keep alive with. Take it to level 5 as soon as you can, then hold onto whatever upgrade card it asks for.
2. Hold the card, not the move. When the golden evolution card finally appears, take it immediately. An evolution is the single largest power spike available in a run.
3. Keep a second damage move. Four slots is not much. One maxed projectile, one evolving move, one defensive or utility kind, and one slot you are allowed to lose.
4. Do not build around a Buff move early. A buff takes a slot to raise a stat that another card could have raised. Buffs pay off late, when your base damage is high enough to matter.
5. Treat orbit and aura moves as insurance. They do not need aiming, so they cover the seconds when a dense wave lands on top of you.

There is one more thing worth knowing about the level cap. Because a move stops at level 5, past that point your level-ups have to go somewhere else — new moves, stat boosts for your partner, or more cards for a second move. A run that maxes its first two moves early spends the rest of its levels on a broader board, which is usually the stronger position by minute 20.

What the type on a move is for

The type on a move decides how it interacts with the enemy roster rather than how it looks. The chart is deliberately flatter than the main games: ×1.6 for super effective, ×0.6 for resisted, ×0.3 for immunities, and a ×2.4 cap on a dual-type matchup. That means a type advantage is worth having but never worth building a whole run around.

What that means in practice is that you should pick the kind you can use well first and take the type matchup second. A burst move that hits everything in range will clear more enemies than a projectile that happens to be super effective against three of them.

Type is a multiplier, not a plan. At ×1.6 the matchup is worth roughly one extra move level. The bigger lever is always coverage — how many enemies a single cast touches.

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