Pokemon Go Tracking Pokemon with Sightings Guide

Pokemon Go Tracking Pokemon with Sightings Guide by Zakrael

So since the update I’ve seen a lot of people complaining about how “it’s changed nothing”, “you still can’t track anything”, and so on.

Well, I don’t want to say that you’re wrong. But you’re wrong. The increased refresh accuracy of the Sightings list has made it very possible to track Pokemon, it just requires a bit of thought.

Please consult this shitty diagram as a reference with the below explanation.

1. You, a trainer out on a walk, check your Pokemon Go app at point A. “Hot damn, a Pidgey!” you think to yourself as you look at your Sightings list. You now know that you are some point within 200m of a Pidgey, but not exactly where that Pidgey is. Time to start tracking.
2. Keep walking straight ahead. Eventually, you will get more than 200m away from the Pidgey, and it will disappear from your Sightings list. This is Point B. Stop here, and take note of where you are as accurately as you can, you’ll need to use this point later.
3. Turn around and go back the way you came. The Pidgey comes back into your Sightings list. Keep walking in as straight a line as you can, past point A, until the Pidgey disappears again. This is Point C, on the other side of the Pidgey’s “detection circle” to point B.
4. Find the halfway point on the line you walked between points B and C (this is why you had to pay attention at B), and go there. This is point D. When at point D, make a turn and start walking at right angles to the line you just walked between B and C.
5. One of two things will happen. If you chose correctly, you’ll walk right into the Pidgey. If you chose poorly, you’ll end up moving away from the Pidgey and wind up at point E, where the Pidgey will disappear again. No problem there, just turn around and walk back the way you came, and eventually you’ll hit Pidgey.

Why is this different to what we had previously? Well before, the Pokemon didn’t disappear from your nearby list until they were either replaced or you force closed and restarted the app. Now we can accurately tell whether we are within ~200m of a Pokemon or not, which lets you reliably map out the edges of it’s detection circle. Once you’ve found three points on the edges of a circle (B, C and E in this example), you can find the middle. Easy.

Of course, doing this before it despawns can sometimes be a challenge, especially in places where there might be buildings in the way to mess with your straight lines. But in a lot of ways, we’re back to where we were on launch week with regards to tracking Pokemon. This triangulation process is exactly the same as I was using when the steps worked, but instead of marking the difference between 2 steps and 3 steps, I’m marking the difference between “there” and “not there”.

Hope this helps, and maybe stops people complaining about at least this specific thing. ;D