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Professor Oak wanted young trainers to catch 150 Pokemon and call it a day. Professor Rowan, a real charmer, didn't mind if you simply looked at them. And Professor Juniper, well, she pretty much did what the rest of them did, but at least she was funny.
Everything's gone and changed in Pokemon Legends: Arceus. No one's going to be satisfied with a simple catch, let alone a cozy glance from afar. Research Tasks form one of this game's core gameplay pillars, and without a solid understanding of just much more complex Hisui's Pokedex is, new players will soon find themselves as overwhelmed as the Survey Corps prior to a certain fortuitous fall from the sky.
What Are Research Tasks?
Continuing the forced references to past games, think about all the data that suddenly pops into your previous Pokedexes. You catch one Abra, and all of a sudden, its information page is a veritable wellspring of information. There's a trivia bit and plenty more.
This makes sense. After all, most of the time you're not actually the first person to encounter a particular species of Pokemon. Your Pokedex already has some behind-the-scenes scoops on Phantump's disturbing nocturnal activities — it simply won't show up until you've caught one.
In Pokemon Legends: Arceus, you are a true pioneer. Sure, the player character isn't necessarily the very first person to lay eyes on Hisui's fauna, but they aren't far off from it. People are generally afraid of Pokemon here, so your Pokedex is a legitimately blank slate this time around.
That's where Research Tasks come in. First contact with a species of Pokemon adds a page to the book — a real book, mind you, not some gadget — and that page will task you with several assignments related to each and every Pokemon there is.
The Nuances of Completing Research Tasks
Raising the Research Level for every Pokemon's page is a matter of completing the page's Research Tasks. It's straightforward in theory; but in practice, it can be a challenge.
Take Shinx's Research Tasks page, for example. Catching and battling a specified number of them is time-consuming, but a broad enough request that you won't need to pay a ton of attention while you're doing it. But what about the need to see one use Bite up to 25 times? Waiting for wild Shinx (Shinxes? Shinxi?) to use that attack can be an exercise in frustration, given that enemy Pokemon tend to hit a fair bit harder in this game than past entries.
On the other hand, if you'll be catching and evolving some lovely little lions anyway, and given that they learn Bite at an early level, why not spam it against weak prey until you're finished? The game rewards outside-the-box thinking like this. In this case, it didn't matter that the Shinx performing the attack is yours. The people of Hisui are just that fresh to seeing pretty much anything of the sort.
This hardly scratches the surface of some of Pokemon Legends: Arceus' most obscure Research Tasks. For another early-game example, one of Geodude's Research Tasks involves watching them leap out of ore deposits a set amount of times. The key here is to keep an eye out for rustling ore deposits. No, it's not the game's uneven graphics playing a trick on you. That's a Geodude doing exactly what you need it to do.
Submitting Reports and Raising Your Star Rank
Your primitive Pokedex won't magically reward you for completing Research Tasks. Instead, you must speak with Professor Laventon at the conclusion of survey expeditions. (A survey expedition is a fancy term for every time you venture out into one of Hisui's regions and have some fun for a bit.)
Laventon calculates your achievements if you take a sec to chat him up at camp. These achievements earn you Research Points, which must reach predetermined totals before Laventon shares the good news that you're due for a promotion.
Go let Captain Cyllene know the good news and your Star Rank will rise accordingly. Among other things, your Star Rank dictates how many of Hisui's five main regions you can survey, so it will feel like a "level gate" if you're not proactive throughout your journey.
Research Levels and Requests
Every Pokedex page features what is called a Research Level at its bottom-right corner. This ranges from 1 to 10, and the level rises as you fulfill more Research Tasks. There's an interesting — and appreciated — wrinkle in all this. You do not need to complete every Research Task to elevate a page's Research Level to 10.
This is big news because 10 counts as completing the page. Many of the game's sidequests involve climbing to Research Level 10. Take Marli, for example. She wants to see an adorable Starly. Who wouldn't? Marli also wants to know a bunch of things about Starly. You can finish Marli's sidequest (known as Requests in Legends: Arceus) by getting Starly's Pokedex page to 10.
Having said this, there are reasons to strive for truly completing each page, as in surpassing the conditions for Research Level 10 and doing absolutely every Research Task. The likelihood of encountering the Shiny version of a Pokemon increases when that Pokemon's page is entirely maxed out. A huge boon for all those Shiny hunters of the world, and still pretty cool even to folks whose goals are not so lofty as to pluck every alternate color scheme pal from the planet.