The world famous tagline may be “Gotta Catch ‘Em All” but Pokemon Go is an RPG at heart. The pokemon are an ends to the stat-driven mean. Ultimately, everyone stomping around town is looking to level up themselves, in addition to their favorite pokemon of choice. You trekked all weekend for a handful of grass pokemon, a few flyers and hit up a variety of pokestops, but that XP bar has barely moved. It only gets more difficult each level thanks to the current design from Niantic slapping players with an exponential curve. But there are a variety of ways to reduce the drag.
Here are the top 5 tips to increase your experience gain without blowing out your sneakers. And yes, many of these have – wait for it – synergy!
- Travel the World, or State, or County
It’s true that there are numerous pokemon unavailable currently. Of the 151 OG Pokemon we have to wait for “special events” to capture at least a half dozen. That being said, if you sit in your home you’ll never catch them all. And new pokemon are worth, at minimum of 600 XP each. Niantic has insulated numerous pokemon from each area forcing players to move large distances to acquire even the most common pokemon. Don’t believe me? Check out a string of tweets between myself and an Ubisoft PR gentleman recently plane hopping.
@iTZKooPA my layover in Seattle pic.twitter.com/mfJ3OEPF1e
— Stone™ (@GreatWallofChin) July 19, 2016
-
Plan Your Route
This can’t be understated. You plan your day based on expectations, the weather, assignments and plans with friends. Well, you installed an app that’s likely to consume your life for, at least, forever. There’s no reason to be inefficient when walking around. You’ll need three types of routes for each location you frequent, i.e. home, work and whatever else is your normal pattern. Put together a short, medium and long route that possess a collection of pokestops and at least one pokemon gym. It’s a good idea to throw some sort of park, waterway or other area that’s likely to have wild pokemon running around. Such an area is worth more than a few pokestops.
Gold star if you can convince non-Pokemon Go players to walk a few extra blocks on a regular basis.
- Select Your Lunch Spot Carefully
You’ll know everyone is playing Pokemon Go. Coincidently, even more people eat lunch on a regular basis. Poke around your area of lunchdom, be it work or home, for a pokestop-rich location. Adding a gym into the mix is a double bonus. If you can find one of these not-so-hidden gems, you’ll collect hundreds of XP from pokestops alone. What you’re really looking for is a cross matrix of lure goodness. Find one of these spots and you’ll ignore spinning pokestops because you’ll be swamped with pokemon to capture.
Don’t forget to pay it back and throw up a lure from time to time!
You’ve probably landed a curveball and wondered what the heck was going on. You probably stopped caring as soon as you saw an extra 10 XP hitting your bank. Landing your throws can be incredibly lucrative over time. You’re going to be catching hundreds of pokemon over the course of your career. Learn the ropes of throws sooner rather than later – practice on easy pokemon so they don’t escape – to capitalize on thousands of free XP. Believe me, you’ll need it for later levels.
- Make Your Own Luck
There are Eggs and then there are Lucky Eggs. That adjective is of the utmost important. Eggs hatch pokemon, the more rare the longer the distance. A Lucky Egg increases your XP gain by 50% for a full half hour. That’s a long time to walk around a sun-drenched sidewalk tossing pokeballs at everything that moves. Lucky Eggs are rare, popping up when you hit momentous levels, unless you’re okay with throwing money at the game. Use them wisely, which, at the moment, means when the servers won’t go down. An impossible decision. Outside that, pop a Lucky Egg when you’re focused, around pokestops galore, have lures or know a spot that does and don’t mind using an essence.
- The Lure of Essence
Do you feel the synergy building? As with any RPG, stacking ways to increase XP gain is godly. This is one of the tips that can work in any condition as long as you meet three requirements, a pokestop, a lure and an essence (and enough battery). It is quite simple, pop an essence when you’re next to a pokestop that has a lure. If you’re about to have dinner, feel free to pop the lure yourself. Bonus points if you can take a pokepic when your date thinks you’re taking their pic!
-
Love Those Lucky Eggs Evolution Grinding
There’s a new term about to hit the Oxford Dictionary. That term is Pidgey Grinding, or how to level up fast in Pokemon Go. There’s a bit of math behind it, but the gist is to save your Lucky Eggs and your pokemon candy until you have about 60 evolutions to rattle off. You learned above the importance of a Lucky Egg in general, increasing XP by 50%. Pidgey Grinding guarantees hundreds of XP every minute while the egg is live. You don’t need synergy here unless you’re lacking the 60 or so evolutions (loading and evolution animations take about 30 seconds, so you can do two every minute for 30 minutes).
- Bonus Tip: You Can’t Play Without Power
If you wanna be your very best, like no one ever was then I highly recommend you snag a portable power pack. This Anker pack is versatile, small and holds a few charges for nearly any device, tablets included.
Had enough caterpies, weedles, pidgies and zubats? Not so fast. You’ll need extras to process all those evolutions. Save the highest CP duds to ezmode capture high CP evolved states. More on evolutions and how to chose between CP levels in an upcoming post. Naturally, we’ve plenty more Pokemon Go coverage.