The Unofficial Pokemon Trainer Club

I realized that I could test out what happened being connected to other people if I just waited until the final screen rather than disconnecting during the adventure.

So, I did one DA by myself and reset, then loaded up the same DA but invited other people. I do already know that if you are NOT the host then you will NOT get the same path. However, I was the host this time, so it gave me a convenient opportunity to check!

While connected to other people, it looks like it might...not actually have been the same pool? I saw several Pokémon on the map that had been there before, but it may have been a coincidence.

I reset again on the take-home-a-Pokémon screen and ran the same DA again. The Pokémon were back to where they were the first time!

(While playing with real people we battled a skarmory, but with NPCs I could not find skarmory on the map.  It is always possible I just missed it, because I know I saw jolteon, sneasel, charmeleon, obstagoon, and heatmor all three times, but I'm leaning toward massive coincidence.)

Online and off, the rental Pokémon were the same. However, while I picked lycanroc every time, the real humans did not pick the same rentals as the NPCs.

I decided to see what would happen if I chose a different rental Pokémon, so even though I want to save up ore, I'm going in again...the NPCs chose different slots (first NPC selected the first Pokémon instead of the second), but the "backup" rentals that appeared after we took the Pokémon were the same options that showed up before (blaziken was in the back).

The map is the same. Um...are the NPCs behaving differently? I wish I had a better memory. I don't THINK any of the NPCs kept jolteon previously. Will test this later.

Pure speculation, but I think it might go something like this:
- The adventure map shape is created.
- The 6 rental slots are filled.
- Players select their Pokémon.
- Based on the way players select Pokémon, NPCs will choose Pokémon from the rental slots in some order, using some sort of decision tree connected to some sort of seed, possibly having to do with map shape.
- The map is filled with Pokémon.  This is affected by...something, something like whether there are multiple real humans in the raid or not?
- More decision trees (presumably from the same seed) will tell the NPCs whether to swap or not at any given opportunity.  Will test whether this tree is affected by rental decision.
- However the tiebreaker works among NPCs is consistent. Presumably it is also consistent among players, but all players have a higher priority than NPCs.

Started a new adventure with real people. I was the host (at least I think I was???  I was confident I was the host but I'm seriously second-guessing myself now). I grabbed the rental dedenne immediately.

Redoing the adventure now with NPCs. No dedenne available. Way too many of the Pokémon on the map are the same to be a coincidence, but they are definitely not in the same place.  I see palossand, fraxure, vaporeon, scyther, flygon, and mudsdale at least.  A bunch of water-types I didn't have time to check, and I know my first impression the first time around was "wow, that's a lot of water."

I don't think I know enough about games to get to the bottom of this, but it's very interesting.

I must have been wrong; I must not have been the host before. I decided to test it out just now, and after doing a raid with other people where I was the host, then resetting, the rental options were the same.

I don't know if the map is exactly the same pool of Pokémon, but I saw orbeetle, lickitung, drakloak, and sealeo both times for sure.

It appears there is no difference between catching a Pokémon but rejecting it vs. declining to catch it; the NPCs' decisions seem the same either way.