How training and exp tickets work

From what I can tell roughly plus what I found on the trainer research forums there were a few rules involved with how fast pokemon can grow stronger. The first was that the evolutionary stage they were on determined their maximum level of power before no amount of training will do much of anything. Pokemon with a single form were lucky in this regard as they were basically exempt from this rule as they were able to grow without any real known upper limit with enough training and resources. The pokemon with multiple evolutionary stages however still had this problem to deal with.-

The first stage is of course always the weakest and tends to have an upper limit at about the fourth gym leaders normal pokemon in power. In system terms at about level fifty or so depending on the other rules which I'll get to in a moment. It needs to be noted that evolving before a pokemon reaches their upper limit for their stage didn't effect their future progress at all. In fact according to research a pokemon is encouraged to evolve to their final forms as soon as possible so they don't have to deal with these limits at all.-

The second stage is a subject for debate actually as apparently the upper limit of power for that point was wildly different based on the form and species of the pokemon themselves. An example was that a Caterpies upper limit after evolving to a Metapod was entirely unchanged while say a Raltses upper limit nearly doubled with Kirlia being known to be able to hit sixth badge level before training stops bringing any decent benefits which in system terms meant around level seventy. There were plenty of other examples of this vast difference but that about covers what you need to understand about it.-

The second rule was that ALL variants had higher upper limits per stage than their nonvariant counterparts. Even further research said that the more variants a single pokemon had the higher this upper limit became , to a ridiculous degree in fact. Take the Charmander line for example a normal member of the line has the upper limits set at about fifty and eighty respectively for the first and second forms. A single variant member however had them at about five levels higher and a two variant member ten levels roughly and one with three variations having an upper limit almost the same as a normal second stage member of the line.-

There was unfortunately not that many with four or five variations so exactly how massive the upper limit could get for first stage pokemon was unknown. But the idea of variants being better than the normal counterparts was a well established rule in this regard. The third rule was that the stronger the pokemon was the harder it was to grow further. A one badge pokemon for example will skyrocket with the right training and resources but like rolling a snowball up a mountain it gets harder and harder the larger the snowball gets.-

This meant that while one exp ticket would be a lot of levels and progress while the pokemon was weak it started to have rapidly diminishing returns. Sure there will still be a tiny amount of progress but barely even a noticeable amount. The final rule was that resources were KEY for training effectively. There was serious research done into this and there is definitive proof that a pokemon regularly eating high calorie foods , supplements and boosting medicines while training hard would always grow stronger than a pokemon that relied purely on the same amount of effort without any of that at a vastly faster rate.-

Don't get me wrong pure effort is still capable of greatness by itself but it is much slower than with resources as well. Most trainers who aren't rich as hell end up having to juggle their finances in order to have a good amount of resources for their pokemon during training. Being a trainer is actually very hard work as most of the naïve newcomers quickly figure out. It is frankly speaking a money pit that constantly demands cash even without buying resources as caring for one pokemon alone can get expensive as hell.-

Unless you only use smaller light eating pokemon or those that eat natural resources like rock or emotions(I am not joking , that is a legit thing) of course. That was an interesting thing to learn as well as I hadn't even thought about size specialist trainers being a thing until I found this information. It's most commonly seen in the beauty contest scene but there are legitimate battlers that specialize in certain sized pokemon even if they are super rare.-

Unlike most trainers that had to figure out their pokemons needs on their own for supplements and resources I had the system observe that told me flat out what they needed at any point in time and I try to fulfill them to the best of my ability. Thanks to my alchemy and foraging skills however I could usually handle these things with spending a single poke` if those skills were high enough. That was why I needed these six exp tickets in fact as with them I could easily find the ingredients to make the resources my team needed personally rather than paying an arm and a leg for them resources.-

For skills rather than pokemon the tickets gave a month each of experience and as my mastery increased I too got diminishing returns from them. That is what I did once we reached a spot in the wilderness out of sight from the road. Two tickets for my alchemy skill and one for my foraging skill. Three months of day in and day out nonstop training in the two skills filled my head giving me an intense headache. I didn't learn any recipes or about any plants or minerals from this but I suddenly had practice using the skills at the same time.-

It was hard to explain really so I won't even try but I was eager to put this new experience to the test. Thanks to the ever helpful forums online I knew a couple of step by step recipes for a few basic potions and pills that I had the ingredients for at the moment. For example the recipe for the energy potion that serves as a highly nutrient rich thing allowing a weaker pokemon to train longer than normal with double the results.-

The recipe for this was a liter of pure water , two oran berries , a sitrus berry , a whole ginseng root , a teaspoon of Ghastly grudge spores(pokemon world mushroom don't bother looking it up) and a half teaspoon of energy root powder. Ghastly grudge was the only plant not mentioned in either earth or the games but was a fairly common purple mushroom about half a foot tall with a white evil looking smiley face pattern on top of it's cap that reminds people of Ghastly hence the name. The mushroom itself is highly toxic but the spores have an effect very similar to anabolic steroids without all the downsides if properly used.