Game data quality

Costume and cosmetic variants are collapsed into the base form because they are identical in battle, and the Game Master's form-less template is dropped whenever a species has real form templates — that stale template is what used to make Genesect and Zacian appear twice.

Evolution lines are read from each form's own evolutionBranch, so they are form-accurate: Galarian Slowpoke points at Galarian Slowbro, and the Alolan forms that merely name a Kanto parent are left unlinked because the game does not let you evolve into them. 2 edges (Stantler → Wyrdeer, Girafarig → Farigiraf) exist only as a child's parentPokemonId with no branch and no cost, and the pages say so rather than printing a candy number nobody sourced.

A form is held back only when the Game Master gives it nothing but the placeholder moveset (Splash + Struggle) — never on a guess about the release calendar. Pokebattler's own dataset fills the same set with its Pound / Body Slam placeholder, so both sites agree these forms have no real moves yet. Species with genuinely tiny movepools (Magikarp, Cosmog, Cosmoem, Smeargle) stay released.

Control group, in full: Necrozma (Ultra), Magearna, Great Tusk, Scream Tail, Brute Bonnet, Flutter Mane, Slither Wing, Sandy Shocks, Iron Treads, Iron Bundle, Iron Hands, Iron Jugulis, Iron Moth, Iron Thorns, Roaring Moon, Iron Valiant, Walking Wake, Iron Leaves, Gouging Fire, Raging Bolt, Iron Boulder, Iron Crown, Terapagos — every one of them has only Splash and Struggle in the Game Master and no in-game icon, so they are excluded from rankings rather than simulated with fake moves.

Megas only in Pokebattler's data (33)

The Game Master snapshot (PokeMiners, last updated 2026-08-29) has no temp-evolution template for these, so they cannot be audited with the four signals above. Their stats, types and movepools are Pokebattler's, copied as published; the Mega Energy cost is unknown and left blank. 1 of them is out in Pokemon GO (Mega Staraptor, since 2026-09-19); the rest are Legends Z-A Megas with no GO release date yet, so they are held out of rankings, counters and pickers until the game catches up.

• absol-mega-z (unreleased)
• barbaracle-mega (unreleased)
• baxcalibur-mega (unreleased)
• chandelure-mega (unreleased)
• chimecho-mega (unreleased)
• clefable-mega (unreleased)
• zygarde-complete-mega (unreleased)
• crabominable-mega (unreleased)
• darkrai-mega (unreleased)
• dragalge-mega (unreleased)
• drampa-mega (unreleased)
• eelektross-mega (unreleased)
• emboar-mega (unreleased)
• floette-mega (unreleased)
• excadrill-mega (unreleased)
• feraligatr-mega (unreleased)
• froslass-mega (unreleased)
• garchomp-mega-z (unreleased)
• glimmora-mega (unreleased)
• golisopod-mega (unreleased)
• golurk-mega (unreleased)
• hawlucha-mega (unreleased)
• heatran-mega (unreleased)
• lucario-mega-z (unreleased)
• meganium-mega (unreleased)
• meowstic-mega (unreleased)
• pyroar-mega (unreleased)
• scolipede-mega (unreleased)
• scovillain-mega (unreleased)
• scrafty-mega (unreleased)
• staraptor-mega
• tatsugiri-mega (unreleased)
• zeraora-mega (unreleased)

Mega-exclusive moves (13)

The Game Master carries a charged move that only one Mega can use, under VM_MOVE_TEMP_EVOLUTION_<FORM>_V####_POKEMON_<SPECIES>. It ships raid numbers, PvP numbers and the same isLocked flag that marks Behemoth Blade, Behemoth Bash, Dynamax Cannon and Secret Sword — but no name, only the animation key it reuses. No learnset entry points at it either, so scripts/build-data.ts attaches it to the Mega that owns the template. Pokebattler names all thirteen after the same animation (brick_break → Brick Break+) and prints the same power, duration, energy and damage window for every one, so those names are used here.

npm run data:build makes a second pass over the raw Game Master, written independently of the pass that builds moves.json, and re-derives every move's power, energy, turn count and stat-change block from its own COMBAT_ template. That sweep covered 337 of 337 templates — including the ones with a numeric id instead of a name (Dynamax Cannon is uniqueId 482) and the thirteen Mega-exclusive moves that have no id at all — and found 0 disagreements. So nothing in the override, movepool-supplement or Mega-exclusive machinery downstream is quietly rewriting a Trainer Battle number.

Seventeen answers written down by hand, re-checked on this request

The build-time sweep above would not catch a bug in the sweep itself. These expected values were transcribed from the raw COMBAT_V####_MOVE_* templates by hand and are stored as literals in src/lib/data-fidelity/pokedex.ts; the page reads the same moves back out of moves.json and compares the strings. 17 / 17 match

Stat changes, by activation chance

104 moves raise or lower a stat, on either side of the battle. Each stage moves the stat along the ladder the Game Master ships — 0.50, 0.57, 0.67, 0.80, 1.00, 1.25, 1.50, 1.75, 2.00 for stages -4 to +4 — and every one carries an activation chance.