Trade an Evermon with a friend

Press Trade on the Play screen and you can swap an Evermon with someone on another computer — your brother upstairs, or a friend who gets the link.

How it goes

1. Open a trade. You get a five-letter code and a link. Send either, or invite someone you've already battled from inside the game.
2. Each of you picks one, from your box. Your party is what you fight with, so the game will not let you trade it out from under yourself; move an Evermon to the box first if you want to offer it.
3. Both see both offers — species, level, moves, shiny colours. Nothing is hidden, because a trade isn't a contest.
4. Both press Trade. They swap. If either of you changes your pick, both confirmations clear, so nobody can switch creatures at the last second.

The Evermon arrives in your box, rested, keeping its nickname, level, moves and colours, and it counts as seen and caught in your Everdex.

The part that took the longest

A trade is the only thing in Evermon that changes two games at once — and each game lives in its own browser, not on our server. So the hard question is not how to swap two creatures. It's how to make sure that under no circumstances does one of them end up in both games, or neither.

Here's what happens:

• The moment you press Trade, your Evermon leaves your box and sits in a pocket inside your own save. It is never in two places at once.
• If the trade is called off — the other player cancels, changes their mind, or the trade expires — the pocket puts it straight back.
• If the swap happens while your tab is closed, the new Evermon waits for you. The Play screen checks for an unfinished trade every time you open the game, the same way it checks for a gift from the Professor.
• Just before the swap, each side quietly saves a copy to your account: "Before trading with Max". A regretted trade can be loaded back.

While testing it, one browser managed to receive the same Evermon twice — the trade screen and the Play screen both finished the same trade at the same moment. That was the whole reason for the care above, and it is now impossible: both ask the same question, and only one of them can answer it.

Worth knowing

• Both players need to be signed in, so the game knows whose game is whose.
• A trade expires after a day if nobody finishes it.
• Two trainers on the same account can trade, laptop to tablet. It's the easiest way to move an Evermon between two of your own games.
• Nothing stops you trading a Lv.60 for a Lv.5. Whether that's generous or unwise is between the two of you.