Pokémon Pokopia: unlocking the storage device and the vault in update 2.0

The big novelty of the free 2.0.0 update for Pokémon Pokopia, rolled out on August 5 alongside the Bubbly Basin DLC, is found neither underwater nor in the most-discussed patch notes. It's a piece of furniture: the storage device, the first chest whose contents are shared across all regions. No more back-and-forth between Terrassec and Flotîles-Millefeux because your bars are stuck in the wrong town.

Its in-game description is crystal clear: "Any item deposited inside can be retrieved from any other storage device." A second piece of furniture arrives alongside it, the safe, lockable with a code — designed for multiplayer, which supports up to four players.

The problem is that these two methods aren't found where you'd expect to look for them. They're sold at the shop in Ville-Nouvelle, the sandbox region many players leave untouched precisely because it has no quests. And crafting the device requires rare Poké Metal, the game's most temperamental resource. Here's the step-by-step process, along with the real bottlenecks.

What the storage device does — and doesn't do

The storage device (Portal pod in the English version) belongs to the Furniture category. It accepts neither paint nor patterns: don't expect to match it to your decor, it'll stay as is. You can place only one per region, and every unit shares the same inventory. Deposit twenty Poké Metal in the one at Collinangle, and they'll be waiting for you in the one at Grisemer.

Its capacity, as noted by jeuxvideo.com on the French version, is 80 item slots. That's comfortable for shuffling materials around, but far less suited to serving as permanent storage: keep your regular chests for dormant stock and reserve the device for resources you move around often (metals, stone, wood, seeds).

Be careful not to confuse this mechanic with fast travel: the device teleports items, not your Metamorph. Nor does it replace the shared box powered by Pokémon with the Storage specialty, or the daycare service run by Pokémon specialized in Stockpiling — these are three distinct systems that coexist.

Good news for expansion pass holders: a unit is already installed at Bubbly Basin. So you have nothing to craft for the underwater town, only to place units in the surface regions so that syncing becomes worthwhile.

Step 1: Open the Ville-Nouvelle shop

Ville-Nouvelle unlocks once you've learned the Rock Smash ability, by taking the bike path west of Terrassec. Once there, head to the ruined Pokémon Center: turning the PC back on is what opens up access to challenges, the local Pokédex, and above all the shop, where purchases are made using Poké Life coins.

Both 2.0 methods are found there, under the Methods tab:

• Storage device — 3,000 Poké Life coins
• Safe — 500 Poké Life coins

If one of the two doesn't appear in the list, there's no point reloading the shop over and over: the catalog is indexed to the region's environment level. As long as New Town stagnates, the methods stay invisible. That's where most of the work happens.

Step 2: raising New Town's environment level

Quick reminder of how it works: a town's environment quality is the sum of the comfort of every Pokémon living there. Individual comfort is measured on five notches, from "passable" to "exceptional", and can be checked by talking to a Pokémon or from the PC. When the sum crosses a threshold, the region gains a level — and new lines appear in the shop.

New Town starts at a disadvantage: it's practically empty on arrival. So before raising comfort, you need residents. Build habitats to attract Pokémon — the area is known for Eevee and its evolutions, whose habitats require dishes obtained through local challenges. Once the population is settled, the comfort levers remain the same:

• Atmosphere: adjust warm, cool, bright, dark, humid or dry depending on the species
• Furniture: mix rest, fun and decoration rather than stacking ten chairs
• Food: nearby Berry trees, or placed dishes
• Path: a walkable route to the Pokémon Center
• Preferences: respect each Pokémon's specific thematic tastes
• Housing: house Pokémon in proper homes
• Interactions: talk, give gifts, play regularly

For funding, everything goes through challenges. They can be checked at the PC and pay out from 50 to 5,000 Poké Life coins depending on difficulty; New Town's regional challenges should therefore be prioritized, since they kill two birds with one stone. From environment level 2 onward, daily challenges unlock: they expire, but pay noticeably better. Remember to validate your completed challenges in a row with the Y button, and to turn on the notification with + so nothing gets left behind.

Two useful markers to gauge your progress: Poké Metal appears in the shop at level 6 of a region, and rare Poké Metal at level 7. If you're already seeing these lines in your game, you're well above the threshold for the new methods.

Step 3: securing rare Poké Metal

Once the method is purchased, crafting requires Poké Metal ×10 and rare Poké Metal ×1 per unit, at the workbench. The first ingredient farms without much trouble; the second is the real bottleneck, especially since you need to find it as many times as you want devices. Four routes exist:

• The furnace. Burn a Rare Poké Metal Fragment in a Furnace, with a Pokémon specialized in Combustion. The fragment is extracted from Poké Metal ore with a bit of luck, and can be gathered naturally at Collinangle and Flotîles-Millefeux. A Furnace is available directly at Collinangle; otherwise, the method costs Stone ×4 and Iron ×4.
• The Rare Ore specialty. A Pokémon that has it — Porygon2, notably — converts a Star Piece into rare Poké Metal. Reliable, but costly in Star Dust.
• The shop. Rare Poké Metal can be bought directly once the region reaches environment level 7, in the five base regions as well as at Fonds-Bulleux.
• The expansion pass bonus. Purchasing the pass grants 30 bars of rare Poké Metal via Mystery Gifts, provided you buy before August 31, 2027.

Do the math before diving in: covering the five surface regions requires 50 Poké Metal and 5 rare Poké Metal. If you're starting from zero on this resource, it's better to equip two well-chosen regions first — the one where you're building and the one where you're gathering — then fill in the rest as fragments come in.

The safe, the other piece of furniture not to overlook

Noticeably more affordable, the safe is crafted with Poké Metal ×3 and Iron Bar ×3, for a method costing 500 coins. Its special feature: "You can protect this safe with a code. Store your most precious items in it." In a solo playthrough, its value is purely cosmetic. In multiplayer, however, it's the only storage that visitors cannot empty — useful if you regularly open your island to other players, or if you share the console.

Where to place your devices so they actually save time

A poorly placed device doesn't save any time. Three spots stand out:

• Next to the Pokémon Center of each region: you already pass by for the PC, challenges, and the 3D printer.
• Near your industrial hub, furnace and workbench together: metals arrive and leave from the same spot.
• At your biggest ongoing construction site, even if you have to move it later — that's where back-and-forth trips cost the most.

Reminder: regular storage boxes remain local. The storage box, the wall storage box, and the large storage box — three times bigger than a normal box — have no connection between regions. They still hold plenty of value as long-term storage, as long as you accept that they can only be accessed on site.

The other 2.0 improvements for item management

The update doesn't stop at these two pieces of furniture, and several additions genuinely lighten the routine:

• Bulk item transfer between the storage box and the bag.
• Ability to delete items placed in trash-type containers.
• Batch appraisal with Professor Bouldeneu, up to ten items at once.
• A Pokémon whose habitat was destroyed returns to it if you rebuild it in the same area; those that dislike the disappearance of a piece of furniture notice its replacement more quickly.
• The limit on placeable electricity generators has been raised from 64 to 128, furnaces excluded, and up to 40 photos can now be displayed per town, compared to 10 before.
• Fine-tuned depth adjustment for windows and doors, movement allowed while the abilities wheel is open, and camera settings designed to reduce motion sickness.

Where to start today

If New Town is still bare ground, the most cost-effective order is as follows: switch the Pokémon Center's PC back on, set up three or four basic habitats to kick-start a population, work through the regional and daily challenges back to back to build up a cushion of Poké Life coins, then buy the safe method for 500 coins while the environment level climbs. The storage facility comes next, once you've gathered 3,000 coins and a rare Poké Metal in hand.

And if you already own the expansion pass, start by claiming your 30 ingots via Mystery Gifts: the most tedious part of the job is already sorted, and all that's left is to level up New Town.