Ditto has always been the shapeshifter of the Pokémon world, but Pokémon Pokopia takes that identity to a whole new level. Instead of copying enemies in battle, Ditto becomes your all-purpose tool for rebuilding a world, watering crops, carving through stone, gliding across skylands, and everything in between. With 14 total skills to unlock across the game's regions, knowing what each transformation does and how to upgrade it makes the difference between struggling through a habitat puzzle and breezing right past it.
This guide breaks down every single Ditto skill in Pokémon Pokopia, where to unlock each one, and which food upgrades take them to the next level.
How Many Skills Does Ditto Have in Pokémon Pokopia?
Ditto can learn exactly 14 skills throughout Pokémon Pokopia. Eight of these are accessible via the skill tab in the bottom-right corner of the screen, or by opening the skill wheel with the L button. The remaining six are either passive enhancements to existing abilities or additional movement options that expand what you can do in the world.
Almost all of these skills are needed to complete the main story, though a handful sit slightly off the critical path. Here is the full breakdown.
Ditto's full skill wheel
All Ditto Transformations: Unlock Locations and Upgrades
Water Gun
- Unlock: Learn from Squirtle in the Withered Wasteland
- Food Upgrade: Soup (increases range)
Water Gun is the very first transformation Ditto picks up. In this form, Ditto sports a Squirtle shell and tail and fires water in a plus-shaped pattern across four tiles. You will use it constantly to revitalise dry ground, water crops, flowers, and trees.
Once cooking becomes available, eating Soup extends the range of Water Gun significantly, making large-scale watering far more efficient.
Leafage
- Unlock: Learn from Bulbasaur in the Withered Wasteland
- Food Upgrade: Salad (unlocks duckweed creation and moss pulling)
Leafage lets Ditto extend vine-like limbs to pull grass up from the earth, which is essential for building grass habitats. By default, it only works on dry grass and standard grass tiles.
After eating a Salad, the move expands dramatically. You can create duckweed on water surfaces and pull moss directly from rocks and hard flooring, opening up a much wider range of habitat types.
Cut
- Unlock: Learn from Scyther in the Withered Wasteland
- Food Upgrade: Bread (adds ranged cutting and metal grating slicing)
A classic from the mainline series, Cut gives Ditto blade-like hands capable of chopping through trees, overgrown grass, and stacked wood piles. It is one of the most frequently used skills in the early game.
Rock Smash
- Unlock: Learn from Hitmonchan in the Withered Wasteland
- Food Upgrade: Hamburger Steak (temporarily allows punching through all materials)
Rock Smash channels Hitmonchan's boxing energy to let Ditto punch through soft terrain like grass, earth, sand, and hay. You will be using this skill constantly throughout the game.
The Hamburger Steak upgrade is a temporary power boost that lets Ditto punch through granite, stone, steel, and crystal. This pairs exceptionally well with Rollout later in the game for fast ore mining.
Rototiller
- Unlock: Learn from Drilbur in the Withered Wasteland
- Food Upgrade: None
Rototiller is your farming foundation. Using it on soil patches prepares them for planting crops, which you can eat, gift to Pokémon, or save for cooking recipes later in the story.
Jump
- Unlock: Learn from Magikarp in the Withered Wasteland
- Food Upgrade: None
Yes, Ditto genuinely has to learn how to jump from Magikarp, the Pokémon famous for doing nothing but splash. Press R to jump once you have this skill. Simple as that.
Surf
- Unlock: Learn from Lapras in Bleak Beach
- Food Upgrade: None
Surf is mandatory for progression in Pokémon Pokopia, just as it has always been in the series. After finding Lapras in Bleak Beach, press B when touching water to transform and swim across any body of water.
Camouflage
- Unlock: Learn from Zorua in Bleak Beach (outside the Pokémon Center)
- Food Upgrade: None
Camouflage lets Ditto transform into environmental objects rather than Pokémon. It has no direct gameplay function in the single-player experience, but it is designed for use in Multiplayer, where it enables prop-hunt style play with other players.
Suck Up Liquids
- Unlock: Learn from Paldean Wooper in Bleak Beach
- Food Upgrade: None
This skill upgrades Ditto's existing ability to absorb items by holding Y. Once learned, standing in any body of water (sea, river, hot spring, or mud) lets Ditto suck up the liquid directly. This is particularly useful for habitat manipulation.
Strength
- Unlock: Learn from Machoke in Rocky Ridges
- Food Upgrade: None
Another series staple, Strength lets Ditto push large boulders and blocks around the environment. This opens up genuinely creative possibilities for habitat design, especially when combining moss, lava, and repositioned boulders.
Strength clears the way
Rollout
- Unlock: Learn from Graveler in Rocky Ridges
- Food Upgrade: None (but pairs with Hamburger Steak Rock Smash upgrade)
Rollout channels Graveler's spinning destruction to let Ditto barrel through blocks at a much faster rate than Rock Smash allows. If you need to clear large areas of terrain quickly, this is the skill for the job.
Glide
- Unlock: Learn from Dragonite in Sparkling Skylands
- Food Upgrade: None
Glide is one of the most satisfying skills to unlock. After jumping with R, press R again to transform into Dragonite and glide across the skylands. Traversal becomes dramatically faster once this skill is in your kit.
Waterfall
- Unlock: Learn from Gyarados in Sparkling Skylands (hidden beneath a waterfall stream)
- Food Upgrade: None
Waterfall upgrades the Surf transformation. While swimming in Surf form, press A to climb up waterfalls. Gyarados is tucked away beneath the falls in Sparkling Skylands, so keep an eye out when exploring that area.
Magnet Rise
- Unlock: Post-game
- Food Upgrade: None
Magnet Rise is the final skill Ditto learns and arguably the most powerful for building. It becomes available after the main story concludes. Without spoiling the details, it grants the ability to fly vertically, place blocks freely, and absorb blocks directly in front of you, making large-scale construction dramatically more manageable.
Magnet Rise is locked until post-game. If you are trying to unlock it mid-story, you will need to finish the main campaign first.
What Are the Best Food Upgrades to Prioritize?
Four skills in Pokémon Pokopia have food upgrades, and all four are worth pursuing as early as cooking becomes available.
- Soup for Water Gun extends your watering range, saving significant time on large habitat restoration projects.
- Salad for Leafage is essential if you want to create aquatic habitats with duckweed or work with mossy rock surfaces.
- Bread for Cut unlocks ranged cutting and metal grating removal, both of which gate off certain areas and items.
- Hamburger Steak for Rock Smash is the most impactful upgrade in the game. Temporarily punching through any material, including crystal and steel, combined with Rollout, makes mining feel effortless.
How Does the Skill Wheel Work?
Eight of Ditto's skills are available on the active skill wheel, opened by pressing L. You can also access them through the tab in the bottom-right of the screen. The remaining skills, like Jump, Surf, and Glide, are triggered by context-sensitive button presses (R, B, and A respectively) rather than being manually selected from the wheel.
This split design keeps the most-used transformation tools within quick reach while keeping movement abilities tied to intuitive inputs.
For more Pokémon Pokopia, check GAMESGG guides below:
How to Get Eevee & All Eeveelotions
How to Rebuild the Pokemon Center