My husband and I started playing Pokemon GO pretty seriously more than six months ago (on our honeymoon, funnily enough). Now he’s level 39 and I’m level 34. Even though we both have goals we’re still working to achieve, it’s safe to say we now know a thing or two about how to have the best playing experience in a short time frame. 

Some of those things we’ve learned through trial and error, and many things we’ve learned just by going online and doing the research. Other tips were revealed to us by fellow players in our network. Now, we want to share these tips with you. Whether you’re a beginner Pokemon GO player or have been playing for a while and need to level up, these tips should help you reach your “GOals” too!

1. Network. It’s not what you know, it’s who you know, right? Log on to Facebook or Discord and search for Pokemon GO groups in your own community. Having teams to go raiding with is especially helpful when just starting out. Plus, you’ll meet real, live people who probably have experience and advice to share with you.

2. Make friends. Make lots and lots of friends. (You can have up to 200!) Use Facebook or other social media channels to grab the friend codes of people who want to exchange gifts. Sending gifts and growing friendships in-game is one of the quickest ways to earn XP (Experience Points). Plus, when opening gifts, you’ll receive much-needed items like balls and potions.

3. Track your friendships. In the Friends tab, you will see a list of all your friends along with their avatars. If there is a blue halo around their avatar, that means you’ve already interacted with them for the day. You only need to interact with a friend once a day to grow your friendship. Interactions include sending/receiving gifts, trading Pokemon, and battling together. 

4. Know when to crack a Lucky Egg. Lucky Eggs double your XP earnings for 30 minutes, so if you’re trying to level up quickly, there are a few key moments to use one. One such moment is when you’re about to become Best Friends with someone. Use the Friendship tracker to see how many days of interaction are left until you become Best Friends. On the last day, crack a Lucky Egg just before interacting with that friend. If possible, coordinate with them so they can do the same!

5. Movesets matter. TMs (Technical Machines) can be used to change either the Fast Attack or the Charged Attack of a Pokemon. Use your precious TMs wisely. The ideal movesets for your Pokemon somewhat depend on what you’re trying to achieve. Do you prefer raiding, or battling Player-vs-Player? Or is defending gyms more your jam? There are a lot of websites that can coach you on which Pokemon to use and what movesets they need. Here’s my favorite resource: https://pokemon.gameinfo.io/.

6. Walk for candy. The more steps you get, the more candies your buddy will find, which is necessary to evolve and power up your Pokemon. I would recommend going to your game settings and making sure Adventure Sync is on; this will reward you for all the steps you take with your phone on your person. (The only downside is it can be a drain on your phone’s battery, so this is not possible for everyone.) Then…walk! Walk everywhere you can–around the neighborhood, running errands, at the mall–and always take the stairs instead of the elevator. It’s good exercise too! There are also apps and devices that simulate walking for you, but these are considered cheating and can make you susceptible to consequences from the game makers. 

7. Look for Pokemon with high CP. When collecting Pokemon and deciding which to keep and invest in, looking at the assessment stats is helpful, but the CP (Combat Power) is more critical. Briefly, CP is an indicator of how strong a Pokemon is, and the higher its CP, the more damage it will inflict in battle. A simple way to gauge the CP is to check out the “rainbow” arching over the Pokemon on its display page. At the very bottom on the right is the maximum CP for that Pokemon; you want to see the white dot as close to that as possible. This means the Pokemon is already pretty strong, and you won’t have to invest as much candy and Stardust into powering it up.

8. Take note of events. Pokemon GO has a new dashboard feature (accessed by clicking on the binocular icon in the lower right corner) that describes ongoing events. This is often important to help you maximize resources. For example, if an event offers 2x hatch candy, hatch as many eggs as you can during that time. Look for events that offer double XP or double Stardust so that you can use a Lucky Egg or Starpiece to quadruple your earnings when appropriate.

9. Watch for the Weather Boost. The weather in Pokemon GO reflects the weather in your area, and different Pokemon are boosted during certain weather. (Click the top-most right icon to view what the weather is and which types are boosted.) Try to catch Pokemon that have the Weather Boost, especially if raiding, because their base level will be automatically higher. Which, again, means you’ll have to invest less resources to power it up down the road.

10. Farm resources by battling. PVP (Player-vs-Player) battles are a great way to collect resources that are otherwise pretty scarce, such as TMs and Rare Candy, as well as Stardust. If you play the maximum number of battle sets allowed (at this writing, five sets of five battles) you can earn up to five TMs, 10 Rare Candies, and 9,000 Stardust. These are all items you NEED to build strong teams.

These 10 tips for Pokemon GO only touch on some of the many intricate parts of gameplay. Some of the more complex aspects will be revisited in future posts, so stay tuned! In the meantime, these tips should be enough to get you on your way to being a Pokemon Master.

We hope you learned a trick or two, but more importantly we hope you continue to have fun playing Pokemon GO!

By Emily Domedion

Contact the author at emily@domedion.com

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