How Tempo works
Tempo makes patience pay. The longer you go without a hit, the more your next pack works in your favor, until it guarantees one. It never takes anything away.
What counts as a hit
A pack hits when one of its cards is worth at least the pack's price. Worth means the card's market price at the moment you open the pack. Say you open a 700-gem pack: if any card in it is worth 700 gems or more, that pack is a hit.
The meter
- Cold
- Melting
- Warming
- Climbing
- Hot
- Ready
Every pack that misses adds to your meter. What it adds is that pack's own chance of a hit, so a pack that hits often fills the meter in small steps, and a pack that rarely hits fills it fast. When a pack hits, the meter comes back down. One meter covers your whole account, whatever packs you open.
Past the tick, your odds climb
Once the meter passes the tick, the rarities that can hit become more likely in the last three slots of every pack, and the filler rarities become less likely by exactly the same amount. The boost grows with the meter, up to 1.5× the normal odds at Ready.
At Ready, the next pack carries a Tempo Card
When the meter reaches Ready, your next pack is a Tempo Card pack. One slot skips the rarity roll and draws from a list of cards picked by their value. It is a filler slot just before the hits: the eighth card of a ten-card pack, the third of a five-card pack. The cards after it still roll, at your Tempo odds, so the Tempo Card never takes the place of a chase pull. The promise is whichever of these two is higher:
- at least 12.5% of the streak
- the streak is the price of every pack you opened since your last hit, gifted and drop packs included, with the Tempo Card pack itself counted. A longer streak pays a bigger card.
- never under twice your average pack
- twice the average price of the packs on your streak, capped at twice the pack you open. A streak of 750-gem packs sets a 1,500-gem floor even if the Tempo Card lands in a pricier pack, so opening one at Ready does not raise it.
A 12,200-gem streak of 941-gem packs promises at least 1,882 gems: twice the average pack beats 12.5% of the streak, which with the Tempo Card pack comes to 1,643 gems. The card is drawn from the set's cards worth that value, up to one and a half times it, never more. A set with no card in that range gives you two Tempo Cards instead: its most expensive card under the value, and a second card in a filler slot beside it (the seventh card of a ten-card pack) chosen so the pair reaches the value together, still never past one and a half times it. If no card can bring the pair up to the value without passing that, the second card is the set's best card under what is left, when it has one that is not a common or uncommon, and your meter only comes down by the share the cards paid: the rest stays owed, and your next Tempo Card is sized from it. Cards worth the full value clear the meter and the count starts again.
Rules you can count on
- Tempo only ever raises your odds. Below the tick your packs roll at the odds printed on the pack page. It never lowers them.
- Daily packs stay outside the meter. Gifted packs and drop vouchers count like any other pack: they fill the meter, can carry a Tempo Card, and add their pack price to the streak.
- Hiding the meter changes nothing. Turn it off in your settings and Tempo keeps working exactly the same.
- Card values are market prices at the moment you open the pack, the same prices the marketplace shows.
Tempo and Provably Fair
Tempo never touches the random numbers. Every slot still gets its rolls from the committed server seed, your client seed, your salt and the nonce. What can change is the table a roll lands on, and every rip records the exact odds table each slot rolled with, and for a Tempo Card pack the exact list of cards that slot drew from. The verifier uses those, not the pack page, and tells you when a pack rolled at Tempo odds or was a Tempo Card pack. Verify any rip.
Questions people ask
- My meter went down after a small card. Why?
- Any card worth at least the pack price is a hit, even by a single gem. The meter comes down on every hit.
- Do expensive packs fill it faster?
- The meter counts hit chances, not gems, so no. But the Tempo Card is sized from the gems you spent, so an expensive streak pays a bigger card.
- Do multi-pack rips count?
- Yes. Every pack in the rip counts on its own, hits and misses alike.
- Should I open a pricier pack when I am at Ready?
- It will not help. The floor is twice the average price of the packs on your streak, not twice whatever you open last, and the share grows by only an eighth of the extra you spend. Open the pack you want.
- Does it matter which set I open at Ready?
- Only when the set has no card near your value. Then you get two Tempo Cards, its most expensive card under the value plus a second that brings the pair up to it. In the rare case no card can close the gap without passing one and a half times your value, the second is the best card the set has under what is left (never a common or uncommon, so a set without one gives just the first), and your meter keeps the share that was not paid, so you are owed the rest on your next Tempo Card. A set with cards near your value pays it in one card and clears the meter.
- Can I see what my last pack rolled at?
- Open the rip on your profile and check its Provably Fair page. It shows the exact odds each slot used.
Not affiliated with The Pokemon Company International.