Regional and weather forms you can only get by trading

Basic forms you can catch. Regional and weather forms you have to be in the right place at the right time for, which for most players means someone else was. That is what trading is for.

Regional forms

A regional form spawns only in one region. If you play mostly in the Nimbus Fields and the form you want lives in Beast Fang Ridge, you either travel and hunt or you trade with someone who lives there. The catch path is documented well by the map sites and by the game's own distribution view; the trade path starts with finding a player whose home region matches.

On this site, a spare's note can say where it was caught, and a market page lists the regions a creature spawns in, from the publisher's dex.

Weather forms

A weather form appears only under a specific condition, and some carry a different element from the base form. Thunderstorm Thornblade, for instance, was reported as Grass and Electric where the standard form is Grass and Water. Weather is fickle, so weather forms are the scarcest spares of all, and the ones most worth asking for in a post.

The level-4 gate

Both kinds of form need affinity level 4 with your trading partner, against level 2 for a basic form. That is days of play together, so:

• Pair up early. The Friends tab exists for exactly this.
• Do a basic-form trade first at level 2. Trading raises affinity, and it proves the partner is real.
• Keep the lock in mind. A regional form you receive is locked for 30 days, so you cannot pass it on in a chain.

Finding the right partner

Match on your server, then look for overlap: the ticket shows the hours you both play, and a spare's note tells you where it came from. If nobody on your server has the form yet, mark it as a want. Every want is a watch, and the first spare that appears sends you an email.