Hourglasses are special items in Pokémon TCG Pocket that allow you to open packs and roll a wonder pick sooner. While usually you can only open a pack every 12 hours, you can use a Pack Hourglass to reduce this timer by one hour. You can also use Wonder Hourglasses to reduce the wonder pick timer by one hour each.
There are quite a few ways to get your hands on Pack Hourglasses and Wonder Hourglasses, so you’ll want to make sure to play every aspect of the game to earn them. It’s possible that future features and limited-time events may also give out hourglasses, but these are what’s available at launch.
Below, we list all the methods we know of to get Pack and Wonder Hourglasses in Pokémon TCG Pocket and explain how to use hourglasses.
How to use hourglasses in Pokémon TCG Pocket
To use your Pack Hourglasses, select the pack you want to open and just select the “open a pack” or “open 10 packs” button (depending on how many hourglasses you have and want to spend). This will prompt you to spend your hourglasses to open the pack, provided you have any in reserve.
For Wonder Hourglasses, you’ll need to do the same, only for wonder picks. Select a pack you want to wonder pick from, and follow the prompts to refill the required amount of wonder stamina. The game will automatically set the right amount of Wonder Hourglasses to use to start your pick.
Do your daily missions
You’ll get a four Pack Hourglasses from your daily missions. The missions themselves aren’t too difficult and you only have to complete three of the five presented missions to get your daily dose of hourglasses. To complete these, you’ll need to do three of the following:
- Log in
- Open 1 booster pack
- Open 2 booster packs
- Wonder Pick 1 time
- Participate in 1 battle
Complete additional missions
In addition to daily tasks, you’ll have beginner missions to complete that reward you with a whopping 120 Pack Hourglasses, enough to open 10 packs at once. The missions are as follows:
- Wonder Pick 1 time (24 Pack Hourglasses)
- Reach player level 3 (24 Pack Hourglasses)
- Open 4 booster packs (24 Pack Hourglasses)
- Participate in 1 solo battle (24 Pack Hourglasses)
- Collect 50 cards (24 Pack Hourglasses)
- Complete 1 beginner mission (24 Wonder Hourglasses)
- Complete 3 beginner missions (24 Wonder Hourglasses)
- Complete 5 beginner missions (24 Wonder Hourglasses)
After your clear out the beginner missions, you’ll get some advanced missions, which also reward you with an additional 120 Pack Hourglasses. Unlike the beginner missions, you won’t get rewards for completing the individual missions, but rather a lump sum of hourglasses from completing nine of them:
- Edit a deck
- Register 1 friend
- Apply card sleeves to a deck
- Apply a playmat to a deck
- Obtain flair 1 time
- Send 1 thanks
- Send 5 thanks
- Win 3 solo battles
- Register 3 friends
- Obtain flair 2 times
- Reach player level 6
- Link your Nintendo account
- Complete 3 advanced missions (250 Shinedust)
- Complete 6 advanced missions (500 Shinedust)
- Complete 9 advanced missions (120 Pack Hourglasses)
Note that there are 12 missions to complete, meaning you don’t have to do all of them to get that big reward.
These missions comprise of things you’ll do as you play the game naturally, so you don’t have to go really far out of your way to clear them.
Clear the battle guide and solo card battles
You’ll get a tiny handful of Pack Hourglasses if you complete the tutorial for battles and then the solo card battles that come after. Each of the seven tutorials will give you two Pack Hourglasses for a total of 12.
There are seven solo battles per difficulty and each difficulty rewards different numbers of Pack Hourglasses (the higher the difficulty, the more you get). The only exception is for the expert difficulty, where there are only six battles. The rewards are as follows:
- Step-up Battle Beginner battles: 2 Pack Hourglasses each
- Step-up Battle Intermediate: 3 Pack Hourglasses each
- Step-up Battle Advanced: 5 Pack Hourglasses each
- Step-up Battle Expert: 7 Pack Hourglasses each
That said, you won’t be able to clear these all right away. While we were able to clean out the beginner level battles pretty quickly with early cards, the later sets require more strategy and more cohesive decks (rather than just slapping together whatever you got from your first few packs).
Buy them with shop tickets
You can buy each type of hourglass from the shop for two shop tickets each. You can get shop tickets from other players giving you thanks, thumb-up-ing your collection, and completing solo battles. Each solo battle also has specific challenges that will give you additional shop tickets, so make sure to pay attention to what you need to do before you jump into battle.
Level up by battling and collecting
You’ll get a handful of hourglasses every time you level up, which isn’t super different from the methods above, since you have to battle and open packs to get XP. That being said, if you noticed that some hourglasses showed up in your inventory and you don’t know where they came from, it’s probably from leveling.
Collect cards from Themed Collections
Collecting certain cards will complete sets that will sometimes reward hourglasses. You can see these by opening your missions menu and selecting the “themed collections” button in the bottom right corner. Some of the missions are listed, but a few of them are hidden and won’t show up until you complete them. For reference, Serebii.net has a useful list of all the Themed Collections (even the hidden ones).
For a few bucks: Get them from premium missions
If you wanted to pay for the $9.99 Premium monthly subscription, you can get up to 11 Pack Hourglasses and eight Wonder Hourglasses from completing the premium missions. The missions appear to reset monthly (with the next month being December, since the game just came out on Oct. 30 and giving you 48 hours to complete a month-long mission set seems cruel).
The post How to get more Hourglasses in Pokémon TCG Pocket appeared first on Polygon.
