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Pokémon GO Life Hacks

You can catch'em all using helpful Pokémon GO life hacks.

By Samantha BentleyPublished 8 years ago 10 min read
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After my last piece raving about why Pokémon GO is the best thing that ever happened and encouraging everyone on the planet to play, I thought it only polite that I share some of my Pokémon GO life hacks.

Thus far, it seems to be pretty hard to cheat at Pokémon GO, anyone that remembers the Gameboy game will recall that there were certain ways to cheat and obtain all 151 Pokémon… yes, including Mew. Though you can’t cheat, which, incidentally, I think is a credit to the game. It makes people actually play and work hard to gain levels, but there are ways to gain extra XP.

My partner and I got our own real life Pokémon this month (an English Bull terrier puppy who’s combat power seems to be 10,000,000,000), he is relentlessly time consuming and has eaten well into my Pokémon hunting time, therefore I am not exactly where I should be level and Pokéd wise. But, don’t worry, I have my ways of making up for lost time.

Pikachu Cheat

This point is redundant for anyone that has already started the game and might irritate you, so if you are already deep into the Pokémon universe, skip to the next point. If you are thinking of playing and looking for tips, here is the first one. You can have Pikachu as your first Pokémon, just like Ash Ketchum. All you need to do is follow this very simple advice.

Go through the dialogue with Professor Willow, choose your name, outfit and hair etc. (Which , by the way you can now change later on in the game, as many times as you like, with the new update. So high five, Niantic, now I don’t have to wear those ugly red shorts). So you have your bad ass outfit, your weird little plimsoles and your hair and eye color matched perfectly to IRL you, Professor Willow will now tell you it is time to catch your first Pokémon. Bulbasaur, Squirtle and Charmander will appear on your screen.

Any old school Pokémon fan will know that, in the TV show, Ash Ketchum turns up late for his meeting with the Professor and the three starter Pokémon have been claimed by other eager trainers. He is left with the infamous electric mouse. Pikachu famously refused to be inside a Poké Ball and preferred to walk beside his master, this doesn’t happen in Pokémon GO, but should you wish to also have Pikachu as your first Pokémon, all you need to do is completely ignore the other three, walk away from them and come back. Make sure you walk far enough that they disappear from your screen, then return. You may need to do this three or four times, but eventually when you return, Pikachu will be there. Trust me, if you haven’t started, you want to have Pikachu as your first Pokémon. He is incredibly rare in the game unless you are lucky enough to hatch him from an egg.

Pokestop Date Night

Wherever you live (unless you live in the mountains in Norway, where I have been for three days and have not caught a solitary Pokémon or visited a PokeStop) but for the sake of argument, let's just say wherever you live is not a mountain in Norway, there will be a PokeStop or three nearby. PokeStops are usually stations, places of interest or eating/drinking establishments. If you’re like me, you go through Poké Balls pretty quick. I frequently find myself with no balls and no desire to spend real life human money to buy more. During the first week of having the game I spent £40 in the PokeShop, on Poké Balls and incense, and decided very quickly that this was not the way I wanted to bankrupt myself.

So my way around said bankruptcy is to utilize the time I leave my house wisely, be it date night with my boyfriend, dinner with my friends, or walking my dog. I go somewhere that is within reach of a PokeStop, I am aware that my life being defined by PokeStops may sound sad to someone not invested in the game, but this shit is important and I am not about to let a perfectly good opportunity for collecting maximum Ball stock go to waste. PokeStops, on average, will spit out three or four goodies per spin, eggs, balls and potions. They also reactivate after 10 minutes. If you are at dinner that is six or seven spins. A good old collection of balls. Just don’t waste them all on a Zubat five minutes later. Come on now people.

You can also put a Lure module on a PokeStop (these can be found in your items) the Lure module attracts Pokémon to this particular PokeStop for 30 minutes, it also benefits everyone around you, so shout out to everyone that throws a Lure on a PokéStop, you are kind and giving in the Pokémon universe. It’s also important to mention that most high streets are PokéStop central, so if you are walking down a high street, have the game open and spin those stops! Please be aware of other human beings, dogs and roads.

Free Coins

This is something not many people are aware of, every time you leave one of your Poké squad in a Gym, you are eligible for a reward. All you need to do is open the in Game shop, in the corner there is a small shield symbol along with the words "collect now." Each Pokémon assigned to a Gym gives you 500 Stardust and 10 coins. This might not seem like a lot as you need 100 coins to buy any Poké Balls, but it does add up. The only problem is, you can only collect one reward every 24 hours, so if you put two Pokémon in a Gym within the same 24 hours you are only able to collect one award, you must wait another 24 hours to collect the next, unless during that 24 hours your Pokémon is kicked out of the Gym, in which case your reward disappears and you get nothing for the placement. Pretty harsh right?

In my opinion, the battling and Gym side of Pokémon GO needs some serious work before it is perfect, the incentive to battle and leave Pokémon in a Gym isn’t very strong. Nine times out of 10 I won’t bother battling or training in a Gym as the XP gained is akin to catching a Pidgey. That being said, if you leave a Pokémon in a Gym 10 days in a row you have enough to buy some Poké Balls from the shop, so if you are ever in that horrific position of being without ball and seeing a Wigglytuff appear in all its glory before you, you can quickly nip into the shop and buy some Poké Balls.

Catch Everything!

The only Pokemon I refuse to catch is a Zubat. I have already caught a Golbat and I do not wish to ever interact with a Zubat again. For some reason they seem to be harder to catch than any other Pokémon and drain your Poké Balls in mere seconds. However, other then this illusive bat, I will catch every single Pokémon I see, Why? For the XP. The more XP you get, the quicker your levels go up. The higher the level you are, the stronger and rarer the Pokémon you catch. My Pokédex tells me I have caught nearly 350 Ratata and over 200 Pidgey. That's a total of almost 55,000 XP. The higher the level you are, the more XP you need to level up. By Level 21 you need 75,000 XP to get to Level 22. That is a lot of Pokémon.

It is also important to mention that, unlike the Gameboy game, your Pokémon do not evolve by themselves when they reach a certain level, nor do they gain levels from battling, Pokémon in this game evolve by using their Candy, for example, a Pidgey will evolve into a Pidgeotto using 12 Pidgey candies, a Pidgeotto can be evolved in to a Pidgeot using 50 candies. Candies are Pokémon specific, so you can’t catch 50 Weedles and use that candy to evolve your Ponyta. Each time you catch a Pokémon you gain three candies and each time you transfer a Pokémon back to the Professor you gain one. So that is four candies per Pokémon. Always keep your strongest Pokémon, so if you catch 23 Ratata, transfer every single one except the one with the highest CP, this means, when you evolve him, he will be as strong as possible in his evolved state. You have to transfer your Pokémon as your Pokébox only holds 250 and you don’t want a team of low level Magikarp and Metapods.

There are other ways of gaining XP. Every time you spin a PokéStop, you gain 50 XP. Every time you add a Pokémon to your Pokédex, you gain 600 XP. Every time you evolve a Pokémon, you gain around 500 XP. Every time you win a Gym battle, you gain XP (it seems to differ each time). And every time you hatch an egg, you gain XP (this depends on the distance of the egg that you hatch). You want to do all of these things, but not sporadically. In fact, you don’t want to evolve anything, just collect, collect, collect and I will explain why in my next point.

Lucky Egg

The lucky egg is my favorite part of the game. A lucky egg doubles your XP for 30 minutes. They are very rare and you usually get one or two every few levels. Use them wisely.

So, you’ve saved up your Pokémon for weeks, you’ve taken my advice and caught everything. You have 125 Ratata candies, 160 Pidgey candies and enough to evolve a bunch of other Pokémon. As a rule, I will not do a lucky egg unless I have at least 15 Pokémon to evolve, these will mainly be doubles and usually four or five will be Ratatas, but you want the XP, so it doesn’t matter. I also wait until I have three or four new evolves that will add to my Pokédex so I am gaining 1200 extra XP on those three of four Pokémon, on top of the 1000 XP each I will get for evolving them.

This is where it gets convoluted. So you have 15 Pokémon you want to evolve, you have a lucky egg and you want to get maximum usage. Another rule I have is that I will not spin that lucky egg until I am a few thousand XP away from the next level. I do this because when you level up you get, yup… XP… the final piece of the puzzle is waiting until I have eggs ready to hatch in my Pokébox. I tend to wait until I am 0.3 away from hatching.

So I have all the above. I spin my lucky egg. I start walking, and as I am waking I begin evolving my Pokémon. While I walk and evolve my many monsters I am getting closer and closer to hatching my eggs. Somewhere within the first 10 minutes of my lucky egg, my other eggs will hatch. Even if they are doubles you will gain XP. After I have hatched my eggs, I set up camp at the nearest PokéStop and drop a lure for the final 20 minutes, capturing maximum Pokémon in the remaining time. I am geek central when it comes to Pokémon and I hope at least someone reading this tries my strategy, however convoluted it may seem.

Now go! Fellow Pokémon masters, gain those XP and make me proud!

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About the Creator

Samantha Bentley

Born and Bred Londoner, Mother to baby Roman and my two pooches, Plant Eater, Yoga and Aerial Teacher + Learner, Music Maker... was once in Game Of Thrones, was once a Penthouse Pet, used to win awards for getting naked.

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