How to level up and evolve Pokémon in Pokémon Sleep

While you don’t catch Pokémon in a traditional sense in Pokémon Sleep, there are still nearly 200 Pokémon you can encounter after completing sleep research sessions and befriend by feeding them special biscuits. Every Pokémon you befriend can be levelled up, giving them access to more skills that can help you power up your Snorlax and even be evolved, just like most other Pokémon games.

Levelling up Pokémon

The first and most important way to level your Pokémon up is by completing sleep research sessions and getting a high sleep score for a healthy night’s sleep. Your score after each session will directly translate to experience points for all the Pokémon in your current team of helpers.

Once you’ve registered seven entries into your Sleep Style Dex, you can also level up your Pokémon manually. This requires using Pokémon species candies – which you can gain much like Pokémon GO or Let’s Go Pikachu & Eevee by catching Pokémon of that species’ evolution family or by transferring them to the Professor from your Pokémon Box – as well as Dream Shards. The higher the Pokémon’s level, the more of these items you require.

As your Pokémon hits certain level thresholds, the ingredients they will gather and the skills they will have access to will steadily unlock, making them even more helpful members of your research team.

Evolving Pokémon

Much like any other Pokémon game, to evolve Pokémon, you will usually need to hit a certain level threshold, or for Pokémon that normally evolve through happiness, log 50 hours of sleep with that Pokémon as a research partner, as well as use certain specific items including Pokémon species candy and any item that the Pokémon might normally require to evolve, such as a Water Stone.

For Pokémon that usually evolve by trading, such as Haunter, a Link Cable item can be obtained and used instead, as trading is impossible in Pokémon Sleep.

Handy Candy

While each Pokémon species and their family of evolutions share a unique candy that will be required for manual levelling-up and evolutions, there is an additional candy item available called Handy Candy that can be used in place of any Pokémon Species candy if you happen to be short of the required amounts.

These come in three sizes, Large, Medium and Small and are frequently available as rewards and gifts for completing missions, etc.