6 tips I wish I had known starting Pokemon GO

I, much like the rest of the world, am hopelessly obsessed with Niantic’s Pokemon GO. The app has completely overtaken my gaming-life and drawn me into the world of Pokemon deeper than I have ever been before.  While I am not controlling any gyms in my area yet, mainly because I haven’t tried, I am finding myself understanding the game more and more with each passing day. It seems like tips for the game are all of the rage right now and I have found myself doling out advice to friends, family, and other staff members recently; so why haven’t I shared this information with the audience? That’s a question I was asked today and I did not have an answer so here are six quick tips that I wish I had known when I started playing Pokemon GO.

•  When attempting to catch a Pokemon, turn off the AR feature: We can all appreciate the joy and fun of capturing pictures of your favorite Pokemon out and about in the real world. While the AR aspect of the game is awesome to see in action, it also complicates the capture process. Pokemon visible through the game’s AR camera feature can move around a lot and have to be held within your sight in order to catch. If you turn off the AR however, they are focused directly in the center of the screen and become a little easier to keep an eye on. The feature can be turned off and on so easily with a toggle on the game screen so take advantage of it. Snap and pose for your pictures in AR and then switch it off to take that Pocket Monster home.

• Just because it freezes, all hope is not lost: As much fun as Pokemon is, the fact is that the application is filled with a ton of bugs and problems.  The game is known to crash and freeze on people a lot, and that is something that the developer will hopefully be addressing in the near future. One of the most common crashes / freezes occurs at the moment in which you trap a Pokemon in a Pokeball. There is nothing worse than snagging that Scyther that you have been hunting endlessly for and having the game crash the moment he gets sucked into your Pokeball. When this happens, pay attention to the game’s “save” icon in the upper left hand corner of the screen. Let’s the save process and make sure that the icon disappears BEFORE you force quit the game and restart. Most of the time, as long as you have waited for the save process to end, the Pokemon will show up in your inventory when you restart the game. It doesn’t work 100% of the time, but it does work a lot.

• Recover those missed throws:  There is nothing worse than whiffing a throw with a Pokeball. Those things are a precious commodity in the world of Pokemon GO, especially if you live in an area that isn’t flooded with Pokestops. You have to make every throw count with these things and it is painful to watch one roll away into the background. The answer to this is simple: don’t let it roll away. The game gives you a brief moment in which you can recover missed throws by simply tapping on the Pokeball as it rolls on the ground. If your recovery registers with the game, the ball will vanish and return to your inventory.

• Quick shot to weaken or catch the enemy: This is a little bit of a cheap tactic but it has proven to be extremely effective. When you enter into an encounter with a Pokemon that you are trying to catch, there is a brief animation that plays as the scene is set up, before the Pokeball icon appears at the bottom of the screen and you can actually throw a ball. When this is happening, begin swiping upwards as if you were rapidly throwing Pokeballs at the target. When the throwing icon finally appears, you will immediately throw a laser beam of a shot directly into the face of the Pokemon before the camera has pulled back to it’s regular position. This will immediately score you a bonus XP hit on the Pokemon for the throw and capture them in the ball. Granted, they may break out, especially if they are a strong specimen, but you will have weakened them slightly for the rest of the battle as you have already scored a high-value hit on them before the battle even starts.

• Pidgeys are your friend, make lots of friends: Pidgeys appear to be literally everywhere. They are also one of the cheapest Pokemon to evolve. Combine that fact with a Lucky Egg, which doubles your XP for 30 minutes, and the strange XP value of their evolution process and you have an easy means of shooting up through the trainer ranks. For some reason, evolving a Pidgey into a Pidgeotto garners you nearly twice as much XP as any other evolution. Combined with the benefits of the Lucky Egg, that means you can get 4,000+ experience points per evolution. This is something that I am expecting to be adjusted with an update in the game in relatively short time, but until them, use the large Pidgey population and the candies that they offer to rake in ridiculous amounts of XP with a Lucky Egg. I recommend stocking up on 15-20 Pidgeys and the candy needed to evolve them; keep in mind that you will be awarded with a Pidgey Candy with each evolution plus one from the Professor when you transfer them to the University. This basically means they cost 10 candy to evolve. It’s so easy it is criminal.

• Save that Stardust: Plain and simple, don’t waste your Stardust on leveling any Pokemon until you at least reach level 20. That is, of course unless you stumble on something extremely rare with a very high CP, but that isn’t likely to happen at low levels. The reason being is that as you level up, the CP levels of the Pokemon that you will catch will also increase. Eventually, you are going to catch common Pokemon with higher CP levels than those you find early on. Save your Stardust for those Pokemon, don’t waste on the one’s you will be replacing with random catches in a few levels.

My biggest tip, or general recommendation to anyone playing the game, is to have fun out there. I am learning that the Pokemon community is a vast and friendly one. While you may read some stories in the media of people doing stupid things or those who are crossing the lines and causing headaches for those around them, please remember that they are the minority. There are plenty more players out there meeting new friends and making this world a friendlier and better place; be one of those people.

Happy hunting!