The bulk of activity on GPX+ revolves around the collection of different Pokémon, primarily through hatching them from eggs. Users of the site can obtain eggs from a number of sources, hatching them through a combination of user interactions and image views. Eggs are regarded highly by Professor Cypress, a Pokémon Professor who plays prominently in the fiction of GPX+, who looks to develop a complete Pokédex with information about both Pokémon and their eggs.
In-Site Fiction
Pokémon and their eggs serve a prominent role within the fiction of GPX+. Like other Pokémon professors, Cypress is looking to specialize in a particular aspect of Pokémon life. Having discovered her first Pokémon, a Remoraid, as an egg on the shore of a beach, she has devoted her career to developing the perfect Pokédex, one that contains information about Pokémon and their eggs. She thus recruits the users of GPX+ to try and obtain and raise as many eggs as possible; after some time, the eggs will be ready to hatch into Pokémon. Cypress hopes to gather all the data from users' eggs and Pokémon so that she can build her Pokédex and make it the most informative resource in the Pokémon world.
Obtaining Eggs
GPX+ provides a number of ways for users to obtain Pokémon eggs. Under most circumstances, the maximum number of Pokémon and eggs a user can have in their Party is 6; hatched Pokémon can be stored in the PC, allowing users to obtain additional Pokémon or eggs.
Lab
- Main article: Lab
The main GPX+ page presents Professor Cypress and her Lab, where the Pokémon Professor explains the purpose of the site and how users can contribute. Every hour, a new batch of Pokémon eggs is generated, and a portion of these eggs is added to the lab every three minutes. On loading the page, users are presented with four eggs, each chosen randomly from this pool, and may choose one at a time until their parties are filled. The eggs are presented along with the description, or "flavor text", that describes the eggs in the Pokédex.
Users are able to modify the mechanics of the Lab through the purchase of certain items from the Shop. The Wide Lens forces the lab to display one additional egg on every refresh. A Repel will prevent eggs already in the user's Pokédex from appearing in the lab the moment the item is used. Finally, Summoning Items will bring forth eggs belonging to one of 13 Legendary Pokémon, and users will have a limited time to find them before they become visible to others.
The Daycare Center and the Egg Shelter
A user may choose to deposit two compatible Pokémon into the Daycare Center, where, after some time together, the two Pokémon may create one or more eggs. Users may choose one or none of the eggs produced; the remaining eggs are automatically sent to the Egg Shelter, allowing them to be adopted by others. Eggs that had already been taken into a party but were later abandoned will also appear in the Egg Shelter. Daycare eggs will be displayed using the generic egg image while still at the Daycare Center. Shelter eggs appear with their unique designs; additionally, hovering over them with the mouse will display a small pop-up identifying the egg as "Mystery" if the user has never obtained it and with the egg's identity otherwise.
Purchase of the Silph Scope account upgrade will permit users to learn the identity of their Daycare eggs by changing the generic egg sprite to the individual eggs' sprites.
Another part of the Shelter, the Safari Zone, holds abandoned, but hatched, Pokémon, and is the only way in which hatched Pokémon can be obtained directly by other users.
Explorations
- Main article: Explorations
The rewards of many Explorations, a series of GPX+-related tasks framed by contributors' stories and illustrations, are Pokémon eggs, primarily Legendary Pokémon that are difficult to obtain from the Lab or Shelter. Two Special Explorations are made available for a month, after which they are swapped out for another pair; normal Explorations are permanent and yield less rare Pokémon and some valuable items as rewards. Users are required to have a certain number of total interactions and Pokédex entries before taking on these tasks.
Other Distributions
Manaphy and MissingNo. Eggs
The eggs of Manaphy and MissingNo. can only be obtained by interacting with two small sprites, the Tiny Egg and the Old Man, respectively. These sprites will appear very rarely in the header portion of every page if the party has at least one open spot. Clicking on these sprites will instantly place the corresponding egg into the user's party.
Vouchers
The staff often give away Egg Vouchers as prizes for a variety of contests. When used, these vouchers often generate a specific Pokémon egg in the user's party, often a Novelty Pokémon related to the contest. Other vouchers permit the generation of certain Legendary Pokémon Eggs.
Special Events
Every year on or around December 25th, GPX+ hosts a Secret Santa event, wherein users can submit any Pokémon for a chance of obtaining a Pokémon of the same rarity. The Pokémon is awarded to another user as an egg, stripped of any interactions or views.
To date, Arceus remains one of the most elusive Pokémon on the site. Aside from its very rare appearance in the Lab, winners of graphic design or Dress Up contests are often awarded with an Arceus egg placed directly in their party.
Maturity and Experience
On GPX+, as with other adoptable sites, Pokémon and their eggs receive a form of "experience", primarily through obtaining interactions from other users and views from outside websites. Pokémon and eggs will begin receiving this experience once they are placed in a user's party. Different amounts of experience are necessary to alter the appearance of eggs and bring it closer to hatching or, as in the games, allow the Pokémon to evolve and increase in level.
Views
Users are encouraged to place the sprites of their Pokémon in forum signatures in order to receive two different types of views: Unique Views are counted whenever a unique IP address "views", or specifically caches, the Pokémon or egg sprite. Views count repeated views by the same IP address each day. GPX+ provides a number of options for presenting party sprites: large sprites link to the individual Pokémon, while one small sprite provides a permanent link to the user's party. While large sprite addresses must be changed manually to reflect any changes in the party, views and unique views obtained from the larger sprites give more experience than the smaller sprite.
Interactions
When on GPX+, anyone, even non-logged in individuals, may open a link to an individual Pokémon's or egg's page and provide an Interaction. Eggs are provided a button to "warm them up", and Pokémon can be fed one of five berries or, if the person viewing the page is logged in, one of three drinks; berries provide Experience, while the drinks provide Happiness. In general, an interaction will give more experience than a View or Unique View.
Other Experience Gains
Users can provide experience to Pokémon and eggs through other mechanics implemented on GPX+, including the Mobile Walker and the Vs. Seeker. Use of these mechanics does not increase Views, Unique Views, or Interactions, but nevertheless provides a varying amount of Experience or Maturity on use of the devices.
Hatching Eggs
Egg experience is branded as "maturity", but works the same way as experience. As the egg obtains more maturity, the sprite used to depict it will start displaying cracks. At every 16% total maturity, more cracks will appear on the egg, accompanied by mouse-over text that reflects the egg's "physical" state. Once the maximum maturity is reached, the user is free to hatch the egg on his own at any time, provided one hour has passed since obtaining the egg.
A number of factors influence how many interactions and/or views will bring the egg to full maturity. The Lucky Egg account upgrade randomly increases the amount of maturity obtained from a view or interaction. Various weather conditions can either increase or decrease the amount of maturity obtained, and multiplier effects (such as those rewarded during "Critical Mass" days) will similarly influence maturity gains.
Egg maturities range from 1280 to 40,960. The maturity levels of canon Pokémon eggs are reflective of an old formula used to calculate the number of steps required to hatch the egg in the video games. Novelty Pokémon largely have made-up maturity levels, often greater than those of their canon source Pokémon.
Raising Pokémon
GPX+ streamlines the raising of Pokémon, in part to simplify the process but also to accommodate the differences between the site and the video games.
Levels
Pokémon hatch and level 1 and can reach a maximum of level 100, barring the rare glitch. As the Pokémon gains experience, it will increase in level; however, unlike the video games, where experience requirements per level increase, the amount of experience needed to raise the Pokémon's level is the same at each level. The total experience needed to reach level 100 is the same as in the games, so on GPX+ a Pokémon gains a level when it has obtained 1/100th the total experience.
Evolution
When a Pokémon reaches the proper conditions, a user may elect to evolve it or change its form; this capacity to change will remain so long as the conditions persist, and will even permit evolution of multiple forms at level 100.
Many of the evolution mechanics from the games are preserved on GPX+, sometimes modified to account for the differences between the two platforms. For example, many trade evolutions merely require users to possess the Pokémon for five days, and any items that may be used are consumed from the user's inventory. Some Pokémon require particular weather conditions, and a few of the more complicated evolution methods are simplified to make obtaining the different forms easier. All the details needed to evolve Pokémon can be found in the Pokédex; hovering over the icon(s) in the "Evolves To:" section will indicate what must be done to obtain those forms.
Form Changing
- Main article: Form Change
Form Changing is, in many cases, treated as a form of evolution on GPX+, and thus the different forms of various Pokémon are cataloged as their own Pokédex entries. Like with evolution, a number of changes have been implemented to make obtaining the different forms easier, and are indicated in the relevant Pokédex entries.
Trading Pokémon and Eggs
In a more general sense, the trading of Pokémon and eggs between users is a highly informal affair. There is no direct method of exchanging one particular Pokémon or its egg for another, and so any exchange would require the users to deposit the eggs or Pokémon in their respective sections of the Shelter. Due to the randomness of times at which the deposited Pokémon appear and the availability of these parts of the website to the entire userbase, exchange of highly sought-after Pokémon is risky and up to the discretion of the users.
Sprite Design
While in the Lab and, normally, in a user's Daycare, eggs are represented as having an off-white "shell" with numerous green spots dotting its surface. Under other circumstances, such as in a user's Party or in the Egg Shelter, these eggs are represented by unique sprites for each of the different canon and Novelty Pokémon evolutionary families. Designed for the website primarily by Kazyx, Pokii, and Jacin Tatt, the patterns of these eggs reflect unique aspects of the sprite of the Pokémon that will hatch from the egg, such as prominent colors, spots, and other striking design elements.
Canon Pokémon hatch displaying one of up to sixteen sprites used throughout the main Pokémon video games; one each for Red/Blue, Japanese Red/Green, Yellow, Gold, Silver, Crystal, Ruby/Sapphire, Emerald, FireRed/LeafGreen, and Black/White, and two for each of the animation frames in Diamond/Pearl, Platinum, and HeartGold/SoulSilver. Thus, a Generation V Pokémon will only have one sprite, while a Generation I Pokémon can have 16 sprites. Whenever a Pokémon is hatched with a particular sprite, it is recorded in their Pokédex entry. One of these sprites is designated the "Default Sprite" for the Pokémon, hatching with it more often than a specifically-labeled "game" sprite. Use of the Sprite Power will increase the probability that a Pokémon will hatch with a "game" sprite, and the Sprite Changer item can be used to manually change a Pokémon's sprite once hatched.
- Main article: Novelty Pokémon
Novelty Pokémon sprites tend to be edits of one of the sprites that represent the Pokémon from which its Novelty form is derived. Like the eggs, these designs come from site users, primarily Pokii, Kazyx, Jacin Tatt, Black Ice, and Icicle. These Pokémon only have Default Sprites and are not affected by Sprite Changers or Sprite Power.