Here, some useful tips for you all found on Tumblr.
Pokemon GO advice
I’ve seen a few posts going around, but to add a few things that I haven’t necessarily seen, or to reiterate points that I find extremely important:
ON CATCHING POKEMON
-Catch EVERYTHING you come across. Even if it’s the 5000th Rattata. Catch them, because maybe one day you’ll come across a 500 CP Rattata, and you’ll have several hundred Rattata candies saved up, and then it’ll evolve into maybe a 1000 CP behemoth Raticate. And all caught Pokemon also give you stardust, so catching that 1000000th Weedle will help you boost up your fav’s power.
-Once you’re at the level where you know you’re never going to use Pokemon of certain lower levels, transfer them immediately after catching, and when there’s nothing around take the time to clean out your storage. It will save you from a lot of frustration when you find a Pokemon you desperately want to catch but you can’t because you have to make space.
-The higher level you are, the higher level the Pokemon around you will become. Some Pokemon will be new, but most are the same old, but instead of 15 CP Eevees you’re seeing 400 CP Eevees. Depending on how much you play, if you’re seeing Pokemon rapidly level up around you and you’ve just managed to get enough candies to evolve a Pokemon that takes a lot of candies (like 50 or 100), consider saving candies until you catch a Pokemon that is high level. It takes the same amount of candies, and evolving a Pokemon with higher CP will create a monster when it’s evolved. Therefore, a high level Rattata is much more valuable than a Raticate of the same level.
-The higher level you are, and the higher level the Pokemon around you become, THE HARDER IT WILL BE TO CATCH THEM. Use the berries, they help. If it’s a Pokemon you want, use Great Balls, Poke Stops hand them out pretty generously.
-Also, I don’t know if this is a game glitch or if others have experienced this too, but with some Pokemon (mostly high level, but sometimes not), you will toss the balls again and again and they’ll veer completely off course as though blown by a wind. It’s frustrating af because you know you’re throwing right, you’ve been catching other Pokemon this way all day. I’ve found that moving your screen so the Pokemon is at the edge of whichever direction the balls are veering towards helps. Then you throw normally towards the centerish, and hopefully the ball will veer to and hit it.
-In addition to veering balls, the higher level the Pokemon, the more important it is to measure the depth correctly. For weaker level Pokemon I just toss the ball and it usually hits, but for higher level ones I need to be more careful to make sure I throw far enough or close enough.
-You’ll notice the circle that shrinks down around the Pokemon when you’re facing it. The following observations are my guesses based on my current experience. The center circle is colored, and that color changes depending on how difficult it will be to catch it. If you can hit the colored circle, you will get a great! or nice! and it will be harder for the Poke to break free. I think the easiest to catch is green, and then there are orange and red circles too. The green circles are wider, shrink slower. The orange and red give you much less wiggle room, they shrink fast and are small and hard to hit. Hitting the white circle will put the Pokemon in the ball, but if they’re high level there’s a good chance it’ll break free.
-Time your pokeball throws. If you put your finger on the ball, you’ll see the circles mentioned above, and again, they move, from wide to small. The longer you hold the ball, the smaller the hit range, but again it restarts, so time your throw well if you’re not throwing immediately. But be careful, because sometimes Pokemon run and won’t wait for you to aim carefully. ALSO if there is no circle and you have your finger on the ball, it means the Pokemon is doing their little motion thingy and will headbutt/bat the ball away, so hold off.
-You see the little Pokemon tracker thing bottom right corner right? That thing works. You tap on it, you see the number of footprints. If you’re going in the right direction, it’ll show little pulsing movements. The number of footprints diminishes as you get closer. If it’s zero, tap around, don’t move, it’s on top of you and will appear. If the Pokemon disappears, turn around, walk in another direction and it should hopefully pop up again. This is how you catch rare Pokemon/multiples of ones you’re trying to evolve. NOTE: They may disappear before you get there. Also, if you find it but it escapes, then it disappears from the map.
-Sometimes, if you close the app, wait a bit, and reopen, a Pokemon’ll pop up. Try it if you’re having no luck finding any by just waiting.
ON POKESTOPS
-I’ve noticed that if you tap them too early when you’ve just come into range and they haven’t loaded the picture yet, sometimes it won’t turn purple (which shows you’ve finished using it) and will give you a “come back later.” So wait to poke and spin the thingy until after it’s changed shape and you’re as close as you can be to it along your way before spinning. The “come back later” will take the same amount of time for it to go away as other Pokestops do to recharge.
-If you see petals spewing, someone’s planted a Lure. Lures attract Pokemon to a specific Pokestop for 30 minutes, and everyone can see it and benefit from it. Pokemon SWARM around those. I’ve found that if you go up to it, sometimes you’ll see 3-5 Poke. Then walk a block, come back, more.
ON LEVELING
-One of the most useful tools is the Lucky Egg. What it does is give you double XP for 30 minutes. Double is A LOT. I recommend you use one if you’re in an area that has a lot of Pokestops, has a Lure, you’re using incense, you’re going to evolve a Pokemon, or an egg is about to hatch, or hopefully all of the above. Stopping at a Pokestop gives you 50 xp, I think. With the Lucky Egg, that’s 100 XP for just spinning the thingy. My town has an area that has shittons of Pokestops only a few seconds away from each other. I walk around that area, and I’m gaining several 100 XP every other second. If you catch Pokemon and are using tools that increase your chances, that also gives you 200 XP per Pokemon. Evolving Pokemon gives you a lot of XP, hatching an egg gives you LOTS. If you’re going to be sitting grinding at a gym of your color, I don’t recommend using a Lucky Egg, you don’t get much XP. If you’re going to fight (and know you’ll win) against a rival gym, go for it, it’ll give you lots of XP ^ ^
-Even if you’re not using a lucky egg, try to do as much of the above as possible. Choose walking routes that have as many Pokestops as possible.
-Leveling up gives you access to a bunch of items, including new ones (great ball, razz berry, hyper potion etc.). It makes the Pokemon you find get stronger, and makes it easier to find Pokemon that were previously rare.
ON GYMS
-You will find it A LOT easier dealing with gyms if you visit them with groups of friends the same color team. If you’re like me and don’t have friends, tough luck ;A;
-Basics: The strength of the gym is based on “prestige.” Gyms of higher levels have more prestige; that’s the difference between the gym levels. When you train at a gym of your color (bottom right boxing glove), what you’re doing is raising that gym’s prestige. Putting one of your Pokemon there will also raise prestige (the + symbol bottom left). When you fight at a gym of a different team, you’re chipping away at their prestige. When the prestige drops to zero, the gym loses color and is up for grabs.
-Sometimes you will go to a gym of your color and find that there is no option to add your Pokemon. This means that with that gym’s current prestige, it can’t support any more Pokemon. You’ll see the prestige gauge under the gym name, top left, and it’ll say 1000/2000 or something. That means it needs to hit 2000 prestige in order to go a level up and become able to host a 2nd, 3rd etc. Pokemon. TRAIN THERE.
-Fighting at gyms gives challengers from other teams the advantage. They can use up to 6 Pokemon (they lose if 2 faint, but they can switch out), whereas in training at your own gym you can only use 1. This means that if there aren’t many Pokemon guarding a gym, it’s pretty easy to defeat, even if they’re super strong Pokemon. One on one, it might be hard to defeat a 1000 CP pokemon with any of yours, but if you can use 6 Pokemon to chip away at it and switch them out smartly, it can go down.
-What the above means: When claiming a gym or adding your Pokemon to it, choose wisely. You must be able to at least defeat the weakest Pokemon, or you will not be able to raise its prestige and another team will easily claim it. If you can’t defeat a single Pokemon at the gym, your gym will gain zero prestige and you’ll just have a wounded Pokemon. If there are more than one Pokemon, you gain around 100 xp per Pokemon you defeat, even if you don’t make it to the last one.
-The more time you invest raising the prestige, the more time it will take for rivals to take it. They’ll have to defeat your gym many times in order for the prestige to go down to zero.
-At the same time, it’s best not to have even the lowest Pokemon easily defeated. I think gym prestige can still be lowered by a bit, even if the challenger only defeats a few Pokemon. They can just beat up your lowest again and again until prestige drops.
-When training, DO NOT be discouraged just because you know you won’t be able to defeat the whole gym with just your one Pokemon. Do it anyway. You get prestige proportional to the number/strength of the Pokemon you do defeat. That being said, it takes much longer to raise prestige than drop it because you can only use the one Pokemon, so again, it’s best to do it with friends so a challenger doesn’t swipe the gym away from you in front of your eyes.
-I personally have found it more worthwhile to focus on a small number of gyms that are “yours” and invest in strengthening them up with other locals rather than spreading your forces thin and having them get taken over again and again. Choose one gym, put a strong Pokemon there, and build it into your fortress, and hopefully others will help you.
ON TECHNICAL STUFF
-Pokemon GO is currently super glitchy and I’m sure everyone has experienced not being able to get in (server issues, not loading, etc.), getting kicked out of the server, the game freezing etc. When just closing and reopening the app again and again or waiting a bit doesn’t work, i’ve found that the following sometimes helps: closing the app, opening and using some other apps while waiting, then try again; turn off your phone entirely, then turn it back on; switch from wifi/data back to the other.
-Sometimes, after you FINALLY get back into the game, you might find that it tells you that you’ve caught/seen zero Pokemon, have no items, there’s no Pokestops/gyms nearby when you know there should be, and there are no Pokemon nearby in the tracker. My little avatar in the bottom left also has a turquoise circle instead of usual red. When this happens, I close the app once one more time, and I can usually get in to my actual account next time.
-If there’s a gym/Pokestop suuuper close by but just out of range of wherever you are, sometimes the GPS gets confused immediately after you start the ap and you can take advantage of it. It only lasts for a few seconds/minutes, but sometimes it’s enough to do what you want. I’m technically outside the range of my gym, but if I close and open the app (sometimes without actually quitting), I’ve found that I can fight at my gym without leaving bed which is hella useful.
-Doing the above may also have the effect of making the app think you’re moving (I’ve seen my avatar sprint down the block when I haven’t moved lol), which is super handy if you’re just shy of hatching an egg, or perhaps it’ll help you encounter a Pokemon.
I’m sure there’ll be more to add later, but this is what I’ve got off the top of my head ^ ^;
