If you’re fighting to stay on top of Pokemon TCG Pocket’s onslaught of card updates, then you’ll know a simple “Thanks!” goes a long way. Up to five times a day, any player that presses the “Thanks” button after a battle or a Wonder Pick will grant the recipient a shiny new Shop Ticket to use. Collect enough Shop Tickets, and you can exchange them for valuable Trainer Cards (Professor Oak is the GOAT), Accessories, and perhaps most importantly, stacks of Hourglasses every month. You’re going to want as many packs as you can get for free, especially if you’ve vowed to never spend money on the game. But that’s still a lot of effort for scant rewards—so here’s a neat trick for speeding it all up.
You can almost completely circumvent that daily grind while still lapping up all the daily Shop Tickets you can, because the Pokemon TCG Pocket community has created a way to quickly and efficiently trade those “Thanks!” between each other. Months into the mobile game’s existence, this community-driven initiative is still going as strong as ever based on my testing. If you’d like to give and receive thanks while spending the least effort possible, say hello to your newest lifehack (lifehack is still a thing people say, right?).
Truthfully, this couldn’t be easier to participate in. All you have to do is…
1: Go to the “Battle” menu.
2: Select “Versus.”
3: Select “Private Match.”
4: Enter the password “THANKS”. As far as I can tell, this isn’t case sensitive. “Thanks” or “thanks” should also work.
5: Press “Battle!” You should be matched with an opponent after a short wait. You may need to sit in the queue for longer if you’re playing at off-hours (like late at night), though in my testing I’ve quickly found opponents at any time of day.
6: Once the battle has started, concede immediately. It doesn’t matter if you or your opponent does this, but both of you will (hopefully) be on the same page.
7: Click through the results, and make sure to press “Thanks!” for the battle once you see the prompt. Your opponent should do the same.
That’s the process in its entirety! Just repeat until you get all the Shop Tickets you need, and make sure you use any stocked up booster packs or Wonder Picks so you can complete your daily missions. Because this channel specifically exists to quickly trade thanks, you should have more luck here than if you just conceded a bunch of random matches. Congrats on gaming your daily grind!
Do note, however, that this is a community-driven trick that is subject to change depending on how the game is updated in the future. In other words, your mileage with the thanks channel may vary. On a similar note, it bears repeating that you should make sure you press “Thanks!” whenever you finish a match in this channel. No, you’re not going to get sent to jail if you forget to press the button once or twice, but repeatedly taking advantage of the community is, to quote my Kindergarten teacher, not a nice way to play with others. Also, stop putting Lego in your mouth.
Well, this trick has been around for several months now, and Random Matches are still abundantly easy to find, so no. Also, Ranked Battles will come to the game by the end of March, so competitive players almost certainly have nothing to worry about here.
In fact, if you fancy yourself a competitive player, I still suggest fitting in Random Matches when you can, just to see what cards are dominating the landscape. After all, practice makes perfect, even if your Darkrai deck is still picking up wins left and right. But if you’re about ready to go to sleep and don’t want to stare at your phone for another 45 minutes, then just enter into a Thanks battle and call it a day.
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