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Before you remove the battery tab, it’s important to know what the buttons on your device are. The three buttons to the right of the screen are; from top to bottom: A, B and C. Their functions are as follows:

• A - Select: This lets you cycle through the different icons at the top and bottom of the device. This also lets you choose between different menu items. When viewing the clock, this toggles the display between 12 hour and 24 time.
• B - Confirm: Once you have highlighted an icon or menu item, press B to confirm that selection. If no icon is highlighted, and you are not in a menu, B will show you the clock.
• C - Cancel: If you have an icon highlighted, C will cancel the selection, making it so no icon is highlighted. If you are in a menu, C will take you out of the menu. If no icon is highlighted, and you are not in a menu, C will a brief summary of your Digimon's status.

Sometimes you can press two buttons together to create a different effect. The following combos exist:

• A+C on main screen. This will allow you to mute the sound on the device. Useful for school, work or other times when you don’t need beeps disrupting everything.
• A+C on clock screen. This lets you change the time. Changing time will not speed up growth on Digimon, but you may decide that your Digimon goes to bed later than you like. Change the clock to better match up with your personal schedule, it doesn’t necessarily have to be the real time after all.
• A+B on Egg or Computer. This will begin the hatching process with a new egg.

That’s the reset button! You shouldn’t need to push it very often, but if at any point you think you want to reset your Digimon, you can press this button to soft-reset your Digimon, which brings up the option to Load or Reset. Choosing load will make you set the clock again, and then bring you back to the most recent saved state of your Digimon. Choosing Reset will erase EVERYTHING, so be careful.

Your device uses CR2032 batteries, make sure to have some spares handy! The battery that comes with new devices aren't always reliable, so they may die shortly after you buy a new device. Regardless of that, your progress will be saved automatically every minute, so you don't need to worry about continuing raising your Digimon when the battery dies. After putting in a new battery, just hit LOAD to restore your progress.

Because it contains a pendulum! A little clacky thingy that keeps track of the number of times you shake the device vertically. Well, that’s not entirely true anymore though, because the Pendulum Z uses an accelerometer, just like the one in your phone, to keep track of shakes. That clacky pendulum is apparently just for show now. The shaking is mainly used for training and battles. For best results, always shake the device with the chain pointing downward.

WAIT! Let’s make sure you know what the Menus are first.

Various important stats about your Digimon appear here.

• Name - The Digimon’s name, in Japanese.
• Age - How many days your Digimon has been alive.
• Weight - How much your Digimon weighs, in Gigabytes. If you hit 99 Gigabytes, your Digimon will get sick! Eating adds weight while trainings and battles shed weight.
• Hunger - As time proceeds, or as you battle, these hearts will empty. Feed your Digimon meat to fill the hearts back up. Your Digimon starts with two hearts, and will get more as it evolves. You cannot battle if this meter is empty.
• Strength - Your Digimon likes to be at maximum strength, refill these hearts by feeding protein or training. Your Digimon starts with two hearts, and will get more as it evolves. When the strength meter is full, your Digimon's power increases.
• Effort - Every 4 training sessions you perform will fill 1 effort heart, whether or not the training is successful. Effort is very important for evolution: different numbers of hearts can lead to different evolutionary lines, so you don’t necessarily need to have full, or even any, effort hearts. Experiment and see what happens!
• Attribute - There are 4 attributes: Vaccine, Data, Virus and Free. These operate in a Rock-Paper-Scissors format, where if your attribute has an advantage over your opponent, you will have a higher chance to win than normal. If your Digimon is a Free attribute, there will be nothing listed for attribute.
• Vaccine is strong against Virus
• Virus is strong against Data
• Data is strong against Vaccine
• Free has no advantages or disadvantages

Having an attribute advantage will effectively grant a +32 bonus to your Digimon's Power stat. In addition, attribute determines Jogress compatibility and outcome.

• Evolutionary Stage - There are 7 evolutionary stages, which are represented on your device with Roman numerals I through VI, with the seventh stage appearing as VI+. The common names of these stages are as follows, with the Japanese name appearing first, followed by the localized name. Please note that for the general purposes of this site, the Japanese versions are used, since V-pets are not generally localized for other regions.
• I - Baby I / In-Training I
• II - Baby II / In-Training II
• III - Child / Rookie
• IV - Adult / Champion
• V - Perfect / Ultimate
• VI - Ultimate / Mega
• VI+ - Super Ultimate / Ultra
• Level and Experience - Your Digimon can level up as it fights battles in the Colosseum. After each battle, experience is awarded, and when enough experience is gained, a Digimon will level up. The higher its level, the more power, meter and HP it has. Level also can affect evolution. Each evolutionary stage has a set max level, and when that max level is reached, a star will appear next to your level.
• Jogres - An O means your Digimon is able to Jogress, while an X means it can't.
• Battle record - Number of wins vs number of losses. It is not currently known if this affects anything, or if it's just there for reference.

In addition to the above stats, the following stats aren't displayed on the Stats screen, but are still important.

• Power - How strong your Digimon is. If your power is higher than your enemy's power, then your attacks are more likely to hit. The higher the power difference, the higher the liklihood. All Digimon have a base power. That number is the same for all Digimon of the same species.
• HP - How much health your Digimon has in battle. This can be increased by leveling up.
• Attack - How much damage your attacks do. Each attack animation does a different amount of damage, and how much damage is dealt is increased by leveling up.
• Care Mistakes - How many care mistakes you make by missing a Call. This stat resets on each evolution back to 0. See the Call section below for more information.

Pets need food to survive! In addition to the two traditional types of food, there are several items that can be gained from battles. These items are found here as well, and can be found by pressing the A button while looking that the Meat and Protein options. Keep an eye on your weight, since reaching 99G will make your Digimon sick, and too many sicknesses will cause death.

	Meat	Basic food. Giving this to a Digimon will add one half heart to the hunger meter, and add one gigabyte to their weight.
	Protein	For strength! Giving this to a Digimon will add one half- heart to the strength meter, and two gigabytes to their weight.
	Filling Meat	This large hunk of meat will completely restore Hunger Hearts, and adds four gigabytes to weight. Using this will cause your Hunger Hearts to take longer to start decreasing again.
	Big Protein	Similarly, this will completely restore Strength Hearts, and adds two gigabytes to weight. Using this will cause your Strength Hearts to take longer to start decreasing again.
	Power Board	Increases your power while fighting in your next quest area, and adds 8 gigabytes to weight. The effect wears off as soon as you exit the area.
	HP Rom	Gives you +2 HP while fighting in your next quest area, and adds 8 gigabytes to weight. The effect wears off as soon as you exit the area.
	AP Chip	Gives you +2 Attack while fighting in your next quest area, and adds 8 gigabytes to weight. The effect wears off as soon as you exit the area.
	Jumper Gate	Lets you skip straight to the boss in your next quest area, and adds 8 gigabytes to weight.
	EXP Coat	Doubles the amount of experience you get in your next quest area and adds 8 gigabytes to weight.

For colosseum items, you are only able to use one at a time. Your Digimon will refuse another colosseum item until you have completed a battle in colosseum mode.

Training is the primary way of adding hearts to the strength meter, and the only way to add hearts to the effort meter. When you do a training, you get .25 points on the effort meter, so four trainings will make a full heart, regardless of whether or not they are successful. Your Digimon will also lose at least one gigabyte of weight every time they train. If training is successful, you will also gain at least half a strength heart.

When you start the training, you will see an one or more arrows, telling you how much you need to shake your device. When it says count, shake the device until you have generated that many arrows. The number of arrows changes based on evolutionary stage, attribute and current experience level. After the count has been set, your Digimon will fire several shots, and be awarded a score of either Bad, Good, Great or Excellent. Excellent is the best score, and comes from shaking the specified number of arrows that appear when training starts. The results of these scores are as follows:

• Bad - +0 Strength, -2 Gigabyte
• Good - +1 Strength, -4 Gigabytes
• Great - +2 Strength, -10 Gigabytes
• Excellent - +4 Strength, -16 Gigabytes

Battling is a HUGE part of Digimon culture, and they can start fighting as soon as they evolve into Baby II. It’s every Digimon’s dream to be the strongest, and the Colosseum is where they all go to compete. There are several levels to battle through on your device,and each battle will give you experience points. Each area has a certain number of battles, and beating all of those battles will clear the area and give you a prize. You must defeat each Digimon in a single level without being defeated yourself, otherwise you will need to start that area over. Items will make the battles easier, as will using Digimon at higher experience levels and higher evolutionary stages. Your Digimon cannot battle if its hunger hearts are empty.

Poop is such an iconic part of the Digimon experience that there are over a dozen Digimon built entirely around POOP! Your Digimon will poop as time passes, and sometimes it will unleash a JUMBO poop. Just select this icon to clean it up, and make sure you never let 8 piles accumulate, or else your Digimon will get sick!

When you choose this icon, you are given an option for On and Off, and these options do different things depending on whether your Digimon is tired, sleeping or frozen. Your Digimon will become tired every night, which is indicated by it switching between its idle and sleeping animation. Failing to put a tired Digimon to sleep will result in a care mistake. Waking a tired or sleeping Digimon will not result in a Care Mistake. All Digimon will wake up at 07:00. A sleeping Digimon will still grow, and may even evolve while sleeping, while a frozen Digimon does not grow at all. When your Digimon is frozen, its sprite is replaced with a refrigerator.

• If your Digimon is not tired, sleeping or frozen
• On  - Nothing!
• Off - Freezes your Digimon
• If your Digimon is tired
• On - Wakes your Digimon up
• Off - Puts your Digimon to sleep
• If your Digimon is sleeping
• On - Wakes your Digimon up
• Off - Nothing!
• If your Digimon is frozen
• On - Unfreezes your Digimon
• Off - Nothing!

If your Digimon gets sick or injured, this is how you heal them! There are two types of ailment: Dots and Skull. Dots means your Digimon is sick (probably because it’s TOO FAT) and Skull means your Digimon is Injured (probably because it LOST A BATTLE). When you select this icon, you choose which one your Digimon has, and it will be healed. Note that if your Digimon gets sick or injured 20 times, it will DIE. They are separate pools though, so you can get sick 19 times and injured 19 times without dying.

Information about your history as a Tamer is stored here. You have three options to choose between:

• Backup: If you are sick of looking at your current Digimon, throw it in backup to get it out of your sight for a while. Digimon in backup are essentially frozen, so they will not age or evolve. When you choose an empty backup slot, you will immediately get a new egg to hatch. If you choose a slot that already has a Digimon in it, that Digimon will change places with the Digimon you are currently raising. You can have up to two Digimon backed up at one time. You can use backed up Digimon to Jogress with the one you are raising.
• Digimon: Here you will find a series of question marks that represent the obtainable Digimon on your device but you will see that some numbers are missing. These missing numbers will fill in as you unlock new evolutions by connecting to other Digimon Pendulum Z devices. Anytime you achieve an evolution you haven't gotten before, its question mark will be replaced with an image of that Digimon.
• Recode: Yes, that is supposed to say Record, not Recode. These are your overall wins and battles. It only goes up to 999.

Those little metal nodes on the top of your device aren’t just for show, you can use them to connect to another device! After choosing the connection you wish to perform, your device will play a jingle indicating its ready to connect. While the jingle is playing, connect the devices and press the A or B button on one of the devices to initate the connection. Make sure to hold the devices together until you hear a confirmation sound, at which point you can pull them apart and view the result of your connection.

• Battle - Use the Z option to battle against another Digimon Pendulum Z. Battling here works the same way it does in the colosseum. When battling another series of Digimon Virtual Pet, choose Other. The Universal Digimon Battle system will be used, which doesn't require any inputs of any kind and uses a more simplified power system.
• Jogress - Apparently if you take two Digimon and smash em together, you get a new Digimon! In order to Jogress, you will need two Digimon that are Stage IV or higher, and they must be compatible. You can choose to Jogress between two devices, or you can Jogress with a Digimon in your Backup slots. The Digimon currently being raised determines the outcome Digimon, based on the attribute of the Digimon it Jogresses with. When Jogressing between two devices, both Digimon will evolve, and will be treated as the Digimon being raised. When Jogressing on the same device, the Digimon in the Backup slot will disappear, because it has just been absorbed by another Digimon. For information on what combinations make what Digimon, check out the evolution guide.

If your Digimon needs you, it will call out to you with a few beeps, and this icon will light up. When this happens, act fast! If the call light goes out before you take care of the Digimon, that counts as a care mistake. The number of care mistakes you have will affect the outcome of your evolution. Calls may occur for the following reasons:

• The hunger meter is empty
• The strength meter is empty
• Your Digimon is tired and wants to go to bed

The call light will go out after 10 minutes for an empty meter, and after 30 minutes for a tired Digimon. Note that if you have sound off, calls will still occur.

It’s time to start raising your Digimon, pull that tab out! You’ll get a cute little splash screen and be asked to set the time. Use A to change the hours, B to change the minutes, and C to stop setting the clock. After this, your first egg appears!

Once you see a bouncing egg on your screen, hatching has begun! If you manage to shake your device 100 times before the egg hatches, you will receive 3 Exp Coat items. After 1 minute of an egg being on screen, it will hatch, and immediately beep at you because it is STARVING! Feed it, train it, or just do whatever. Literally nothing you do during this stage matters, but it’s a nice warm up. After 10 minutes, the Digimon will evolve to its Baby II form.

At this point, how you care for your Digimon begins to matter. Care mistakes are now being tracked on your device, but you won’t see a meter for that anywhere, so if you are concerned about that, you will just have to keep track separately. The number of care mistakes you make will decide your evolution paths, but the number of care mistakes you have resets after each evolution, they do not carry over.

Evolution will occur at set times, based on when the previous evolution occurred. The times are as follows:

The timer ticks as long as your Digimon isn’t frozen, so your Digimon will grow even while sleeping. So long as you don’t completely neglect your Digimon, you are pretty much guaranteed to reach the Stage IV. All evolutionary stages use Care Mistakes and one other metric to determine evolution outcome. Stages II and III both take Effort into account, while Stages IV, V and VI all take Level into account. It is possible to fail evolution if you do not meet the requirements for Stage V, VI or VI+ within 32, 40 or 48 hours of your most recent evolution respectively. Please note that you may experience minor variances in evolution times for some stages.

Alternatively, you can also choose to Jogress to reach Stage V or VI. Jogressing can be done with two Digimon on your device, or by connecting to another device. See the Connect section above for more details on Jogressing. While you can Jogress a Digimon that has failed evolution, it will not be able to evolve naturally again during its lifetime, it will only be able to Jogress.

Every time you defeat an enemy Digimon in the Colosseum, you gain experience. With enough experience, you level up, and each level up grants new bonuses for your Digimon. The below table shows how much experience you need for each level, as well as what bonus you receive.

All bonuses are cumulative, so a level 10 Digimon would have all bonuses seen, resulting in HP+10, Power+30 and Attack+2. As you level up, your Attack Meter will also become easier to hit, and your Digimon will use stronger attack animations.

While you aren't interacting with your Digimon, it will move around the screen doing different animations. These animations are all just there for show, and don't mean anything by themselves. If you don't interact with your Digimon for about a minute, the screen will turn off. You can press any button to turn the screen back on.

Even while you aren't using your Digmon, events may occur! These encounters will either be battles or free items.

The older your Digimon is, the harder it is going to try to die. Potentially you could still keep it alive forever, but you aren’t going to. You’re going to go to a party one night and forget to freeze them before you leave. And then they will die. You monster. There are actually several ways your Digimon can die, including the following:

• Getting sick 20 times in one form
• Getting injured 20 times in one form
• Getting a care mistake 20 times in one form
• Getting a care mistake 5 times upon or after reaching the evolution window for Stage VI or VI+; or after hearts start depleting faster.
• Remaining sick or injured for 6 hours

Sometimes though you may be able to prevent death! When a Digimon is about to die, it stops moving and lets out a series of cries that get progressively more desperate for one minute. This is your chance! SHAKE! SHAKE YOUR DEVICE! SHOW YOUR LOVE BY SHAKING! If you shake hard enough, you very well could save it. Please never do this to a real pet. Ever.

For those of you that couldn’t save your Digimon, you are now looking at an old school computer (or an egg, see below). Your Digimon has died and converted back into raw data. Oh well! LET’S MAKE A NEW ONE! Press A+B simultaneously to start a new egg, and the life cycle will begin anew.

If you manage to keep your Digimon alive for 48 hours after its most recent evolution, you will get a Traited Egg when your Digimon dies. After the death animation plays, you will see your Digimon leave an egg which will remain on the screen. This will grant the next Digimon a minimum level of 3 for all of its evolutions (excluding Baby I).