How to build and upgrade a Pokopia house

While habitats are great, nothing really compares to settling down in your very own Pokopia house. Houses not only provide shelter, but also offer a lot more room for decorating, and you can invite multiple Pokémon to live in them. Plus, you can claim a house as your own home, which is important if you want to be able to teleport between islands easily.

In this guide, we tell you how to build a Pokopia home, both manually and by recruiting the help of other Pokémon, as well as how to upgrade houses, invite Pokémon to live in them, and, of course, how to claim one as your own. After all, with all the hard work you’re putting in to make the land a nice place to live, you certainly deserve a place to rest your blobby little head!

Here’s everything you need to know about building Pokopia houses:

How do I build a Pokopia house?

To manually build a Pokopia house, you just need to make a square of blocks with a door. Yes, it’s that simple – anything after that is personal preference. Once the house has a wall and door, it will show up in the top-left corner of the screen as an unoccupied house, with grey circles showing you how many Pokémon can live there.

Of course, a house this simple isn’t exactly appealing. Luckily, there are a heap of different blocks, windows, roofs, and furnishings that you can either make via the various Pokopia crafting recipes, purchase from the Pokémon Center’s PC shop or trading Pokémon’s stalls, or find and forage as you explore. Thanks to the Rock Smash Pokopia move, you can even gather various blocks to make up unique walls and floors, even if you don’t have the recipes to make them yet.

Alternatively, if you don’t fancy manually building a house, you can use a Pokopia building kit. Like furnishings and other materials, you can purchase building kits from the Pokémon Center’s PC shop, or you can occasionally find them in shiny ripples or Pokéballs.

To use a building kit, simply place it where you want the building to go, then add the materials to the box at the front. After that, you need to gather the required Pokémon and assign them to work on it. Most building kits require at least one Pokémon with the Building specialty, though others may also need Pokémon with other specialties, such as Bulldoze, Burn, or Water.

Once you’ve added all the materials and assigned the various Pokémon needed to construct the kit, simply hit the build button to get started. Building kits take real-world time to complete, with larger builds taking longer, and your Pokédex will tell you the projected completion time once you commence building. You also can’t ask the Pokémon you’ve assigned to the project to assist you with anything else until it’s complete, so keep that in mind if you have plans to do other things while you wait. Alternatively, you can always do a Pokopia time skip if you’re feeling impatient.

How do I mark a Pokopia house as my home?

To mark a Pokopia house as your home, you need to place a Ditto flag outside it. You get the crafting recipe for the Ditto flag by following the main story quests in Withered Wasteland. To make one, you need one sturdy stick, one twine, and one leppa berry.

After you’ve marked a house as your home, you’ll wake up there each morning, and can teleport back there at any time through the Pokédex’s ‘Return Home’ option. You can have one home assigned on each island, and can change which one you live in by moving the Ditto flag to a different location.

How do I upgrade a Pokopia house?

If you build a house through a building kit, you can upgrade or remodel it by placing another building kit over it. This allows you to transform it into a whole new house with all of the same furniture inside. However, you can’t turn a large house into a small one, and you can’t place a kit to upgrade or remodel a house while a Pokémon is currently inside it.

How do I invite Pokémon to live in a Pokopia house?

To invite Pokémon to live in a house, you have to ask them to follow you, then lead them to the house in question, and ask them whether they want to move in there. A Pokémon will only agree to move into a house if it has at least three pieces of furniture inside. Some building kits come with furniture already inside, but most of the time, you’ll have to furnish them yourself. Each house has a maximum number of occupants based on its size.

Most Pokémon prefer living in a house over their Pokopia habitats. However, each Pokémon has its own unique likes and dislikes, so if you want to make them happy, you should focus on filling their homes with furniture, items, and food that align with their interests. This increases their comfort level, and, in turn, increases the island’s environment level.