Pokémon Pokopia: How to Clone Items on Treasure Islands – Best Targets

Treasure Islands Item Cloning in Pokémon Pokopia – The Short Version

After a few evenings testing Pokopia’s Treasure Islands, the loop boils down to this: you use the Strange Glasses to visit the community-made “Treasure Islands” (by creator Mel_shota), take an object-mode photo of whatever item you want, then feed that photo into the Pokémon Center’s 3D printer in exchange for Rare Pokemetal ingots. The printer spits out a physical copy of the item – effectively cloning it as many times as you can pay for.

If all you want is the bare minimum, here’s the core flow:

• Unlock Strange Glasses and the 3D printer at a Pokémon Center.
• Have Nintendo Switch Online active – Strange Glasses online travel requires it.
• Use Main Hub → Strange Glasses → Visit Island and select the Treasure Islands by Mel_shota.
• Walk to the section with the item you want, switch to object photo mode, and snap a clear picture.
• Return to any Pokémon Center with a 3D printer terminal.
• Choose the photo, pay in Rare Pokemetal ingots, and receive a cloned item.

Below I’ll walk through the exact steps, the quirks I ran into, and which items are actually worth burning Rare Pokemetal on, based on my own runs.

How Treasure Islands Actually Work

The important thing to understand is that this “exploit” isn’t a glitch in the usual sense – it piggybacks on two normal systems:

• Strange Glasses (Gafas Extrañas): A device that lets you visit other players’ special islands, similar to dream or showcase islands in other games.
• 3D Printer at Pokémon Centers: A machine that can materialize an item from a photo taken in object mode, charging Rare Pokemetal ingots as a cost.

The community-made “Treasure Islands” world by user Mel_shota is basically a giant showroom. Items are laid out in themed sectors, so you can walk aisle by aisle and photograph almost anything that exists in the game without hunting or grinding for it in the wild.

The breakthrough for me was realizing that the printer only cares about the object photo metadata, not who owns the original item or where it came from. As long as the picture is tagged as a valid object shot, it will accept it and offer a print, even if you never legitimately obtained that item in your own file.

Step 1 – Unlock the Required Systems

Before you can clone anything, you need four things set up. I tripped over this at first because I went straight to Treasure Islands and couldn’t print anything.

• Strange Glasses unlocked: Play through the early story until you’re introduced to Strange Glasses and online island visiting. This happens naturally; you can’t miss it.
• Nintendo Switch Online: Treasure Islands is an online island. Without an active NSO subscription, the Strange Glasses menu won’t let you connect.
• Pokémon Center 3D printer: Not every Center has it from the start. Progress the main quests until you get a tutorial about “materializing items from object photos.” After that, look for the printer terminal (it’s usually near the PC).
• A stash of Rare Pokemetal ingots: Each print costs these. Early on you’ll only afford a handful of high-value clones. I’ll explain fast farming later.

Once you have all four, you can do the entire clone loop in one sitting. From where I was mid-game, it took about 30–40 minutes of story progress to get Strange Glasses and the printer both online.

Step 2 – Connecting to Pokopia Treasure Islands

With Strange Glasses unlocked, you use them as your portal to Treasure Islands. Here’s the sequence I follow every time:

• From the overworld, open the menu and choose Strange Glasses.
• Select Visit Island (Online). Confirm your NSO connection if prompted.
• Look for a search option like Search by Name/Creator.
• Enter the island name “Treasure Islands” or search by creator “Mel_shota”.
• Confirm the island description – it should mention that it contains all items separated by sectors.
• Connect and load into the island.

If the island doesn’t show up immediately, I’ve had success backing out, reconnecting, and checking for a “featured” or “popular” tab. The codes and naming can shift if the creator updates the island, so if it disappears completely, it’s worth checking current community posts for an updated listing.

Once you’re in, don’t rush. The island is dense. I usually do a slow lap first just to understand how the sectors are laid out (held items together, crafting mats together, etc.), then reset and start my actual photo run.

Step 3 – The Exact Item Cloning Method

This is where most of my early attempts went wrong: the printer is picky about how the photo is taken. You can’t just snap a random screenshot and expect it to work. Here’s the reliable method I settled on:

• Stand in front of the item you want on Treasure Islands.
• Press the camera button (usually Up on the D-Pad) to open the photo interface.
• Switch to Object Mode – there’s typically a toggle like Y → Object.
• Move the reticle over the item until the game highlights it and shows its name. That highlight is key; it tells you the object metadata is locked in.
• Frame the item cleanly. Avoid other items overlapping it in the highlight.
• Press A to take the object photo and confirm saving it.
• Repeat for every item you want to clone; you can stockpile a whole album of object shots in one island visit.
• When you’re done, exit via the Strange Glasses menu to return to your own world.

Back in your game, head straight to a Pokémon Center with a 3D printer.

• Interact with the 3D printer terminal.
• Choose Print from Object Photo.
• Select the photo of the item you want to clone. The preview should show its name and cost.
• Confirm the Rare Pokemetal ingot cost. If you accept, the printer consumes the ingots and gives you the item.
• You can reuse the same photo as many times as you want, as long as you keep paying the cost.

The big discovery for me: you do not need to revisit Treasure Islands every time. Once a good object photo is in your album, it’s a permanent template. I now have a “printer album” of my favorite high-value items and only go back to Treasure Islands when I want something entirely new.

What’s Actually Worth Duplicating

Because each print eats Rare Pokemetal ingots, cloning everything is a trap. I wasted a bunch of ingots early duplicating things I could just buy in a shop for normal currency. These categories have given me the best return:

1. Evolution and Progression Bottleneck Items

Anything that hard-gates a Pokémon’s evolution or a key upgrade is top priority:

• Evolution stones and equivalent evolution triggers.
• One-off upgrade materials needed to unlock higher-tier facilities or recipes.
• Items required to access late-game zones or projects.

Being able to churn out extra evolution items completely changed how aggressively I rotated my team, instead of hoarding them “for later.”

2. High-Impact Held Items

Anything that permanently lives on a Pokémon and can swing battles is a strong clone target:

• Damage-boosting items (type-boosters, crit-boosters, etc.).
• Defensive items that patch specific weaknesses.
• Items that speed up training or leveling.

Instead of constantly swapping a single copy between multiple team members, I cloned a full set and built multiple squads that were always “ready to go.”

3. Rare Crafting Materials

Some late-game recipes have materials that are a nightmare to farm in the wild. If you see those materials laid out on Treasure Islands, grab an object photo immediately.

Cloning those is especially good when:

• The material is used in many different recipes or upgrades.
• The natural drop rate is low or tied to annoying encounters.
• You need a large quantity for a specific project (like endgame gear).

4. One-Per-File or Time-Gated Rewards

Anything that’s normally limited (or on a long timer) but can be laid out physically on Treasure Islands is ideal to duplicate. That might include special reward decorations, certain cosmetic unlock tokens, or rare event items that have been placed there.

On the other hand, I avoid cloning:

• Basic healing items and Poké Ball equivalents – normal currency is fine here.
• Common crafting junk that drops everywhere.
• Anything that costs more Rare Pokemetal to print than it would to obtain through normal playtime.

Farming Rare Pokemetal Fast to Fuel Your Clones

Cloning only feels good if you’re not starved for Rare Pokemetal. The best method I’ve used is the Minecraft-style strip-mining trick popularized by the community on Dream Islands.

• Head to a resource-rich Dream Island (any that allows underground digging works).
• From the surface, dig down about six blocks – far enough to hit the dense ore layer.
• Carve out a 1×2 tunnel and then branch it into parallel shafts.
• Use moves like Rock Smash and Rollout to quickly clear columns of blocks and expose ore deposits.
• Mine every visible Pokemetal and Rare Pokemetal node you see.

Once I got into the rhythm, I was comfortably pulling hundreds of Pokemetal and a solid haul of Rare Pokemetal in around an hour, which was enough to fund multiple high-value item prints. The key is to stay focused on dense layers and avoid wasting time wandering on the surface.

Advanced Tips, Limits, and Things That Can Go Wrong

A few lessons from my own mistakes that will save you some Rare Pokemetal and frustration:

• Make a dedicated “printer album”: As soon as you get home from Treasure Islands, mark your best object photos as favorites. This keeps them from getting buried under normal screenshots.
• Check the cost before spamming prints: Some items are surprisingly expensive to clone. I always run a quick mental check: “Is this worth X Rare Pokemetal, compared to just playing the content that drops it?”
• Test one print first: For unknown items, I do a single print, make sure it works as expected, then commit to a bulk run. That way you don’t overinvest in something underwhelming.
• Watch your inventory cap: It’s easy to slam into item limits if you mass-print. I clear out junk and sell extras before I start a cloning session.
• Keep an eye on updates: As of early 2026, this method works because it uses normal game systems. If a future patch changes how object photos or printers work, double-check current community info before burning resources.
• Don’t rely on Treasure Islands for basic progression: I treat it as a way to smooth out rough edges and skip pure grind, not replace the entire gameplay loop. The game is better if you still engage with its normal exploration and battles.

Used thoughtfully, Treasure Islands and the object-photo 3D printing loop turn Rare Pokemetal into a flexible wildcard resource. Once you’ve got your core album of high-value items, most of your late-game bottlenecks stop being about luck and start being about how efficiently you can convert time into ore and ore into exactly the items you want.