Pokemon Go Important Tips Guide

Pokemon Go Important Tips Guide by bsertz100

The right pokemon

1. Don’t waste stardust until you are around 20-25, if possible even later. Wasting stardust early on is useless since you will constantly be finding higher CP pokemon as you level up. While in the later level the rate of leveling up is slower so it actually makes it worth it.
2. Some Pokemon (such as dragonite, exeggutor, arcanine) raise CP through stardust higher than other pokemon. For example, a pidgey may go up 20 cp when stardusted, while a dragonite will raise up around 50cp when stardusted. Those are not exact numbers, but let’s you know what pokemon to waste your stardust on.
3. IV Vs MoveSet Vs CP Moveset is above all in all cases. Having the right moveset will increase your pokemons DPS plus moveset is random and can not be changed at the moment. For IV vs Cp For rare pokemon (that are above at least 1500 CP) or endgame pokemon such as dratini’s->dragonite IV>CP Exception: if the CP is so low powering up will be impossible, this of course will rely on the own player to make a decision whether they think its worth it or not. For pokemon that will be constantly changed out such as ninetails, golduck, etc CP>IV
4. Stardust a Pokemon before Vs after evolution: Always power up the Pokemon after evolution. Since moveset is the most important thing, you don’t want to waste a bunch of stardust on a crappy moveset Pokemon. Plus from my understanding (still haven’t done any research on this myself) stardust and cp change is portional. So you may use less stardust before evolution but the cp also raises less, while after you use more stardust but the cp raises more.

Eggs:

1. Best way of maximizing egg incubators is use 2km egg and 5km eggs first. 2km egg should be placed on the infinite incubator while 5km eggs should be placed on 3 use incubators.
2. From my understanding, eggs from the USA can not hatch regional exclusive pokemon from other countries. However, an egg from another country that is hatched at the USA might.
3. Level 20 is where you reach the best time to use egg incubators. At level 20 you can get the same level CP pokemon as anyone higher level. (same way wild pokemon works for level 30)
4. Best way at the moment to hatch an egg is to walk in a straight line, moving too fast (such as in a car) will prevent you from gaining any Km on the eggs.
5. Eggs are the best way to get ahead when using real money (other than special eggs). It gets you a lot of stardust and candy for a pokemon (which is completely random however I have noticed you get more stardust and candy from high Km than lower Km eggs on average)
6. It has been shown that you have a higher chance of getting a high IV pokemon from eggs than from wild pokemon.

Nests:

1. Nests change around every 23-24 days (however nests that contain starter pokemon don’t), you can easily find a list of pokemon nests around your area through google (lol).
2. At the moment there is no dratini nest in the SoCal. Your best bet is to go to almost any beach or pier. they tend to spawn around a certain location near a beach or pier, so pay attention to where that area is. However, keep in mind the spawn rate is no where near a nest.
3. It has been shown that pokemon found in a nest are less likely to have high IV. So if you are hunting for an endgame pokemon in a nest, instead of looking for a high IV one focus on farming candy and waiting for an egg hatch or wild pokemon catch to evolve.

Gyms:

1. If you have a pokemon at a gym you are able to collect stardust and Pokecoins. You simply go into “Shop” and in the top right collect press the shield with the number. For each pokemon you have on a gym when you press the button you gain 500stardust and 10 Pokecoin. There is a limit to how many you can collect for, which is 10. So the most you can get in one day is 5000 stardust and 100Pokecoins. However, make sure you press collect when you have the most pokemon on gyms since you will not be able to collect for another 21Hours.
2. Taking downs gyms is easy when you know about weaknesses. All pokemon have a certain type weakness. For example, a pokemon that is ice type is weak against a fire type pokemon. So make sure you lineup your pokemon in a order to combat the gym easily. These type weakness can easily be googled, but a lot are common sense. Like water beats fire or fire beats grass, while others aren’t such as dark beats psychic.
3. To put a pokemon on a gym you must power up the gym to the next level. For example if the gym is level 3 and have three pokemon in it already, you must power up the gym to level 4 to add a fourth pokemon into it. This is done by adding prestige. An example is, at level 3 with three pokemon (if not one has battled the gym yet) it should have 6000/8000 prestige. If you obtain the gym to 8000 prestige, its rank goes up to level 4. A new gym is the best bet if someone takes down a gym and it is left white. Three people of the gym team can put a pokemon. Since the prestige is so low at lower levels just putting a pokemon brings the prestige high enough for three pokemon without having to power it up (unless someone of another team powers it down)
4. When powering up a gym always use lower CP pokemon. Sounds dumb but it actually powers it up faster. If you power up a gym and use a higher cp pokemon than the pokemon on the gym, on average the gym prestige goes up by around 200-300 (defeating all pokemon). While defeating only one pokemon with a lower cp than the pokemon on the gym, the prestige goes up by about 500-600.

Maximizing Exp. (With the use of lucky egg)

The things that will get you the most exp. in pokemon is evolving any pokemon or catching a new pokemon. Both of these will give you 500 exp while something like catching will get you 100 exp (with no nice, curve, great, or excellent through, those give you more) to give you something to compare to.

1. Best way of gaining lots of experience when using a lucky egg is evolving. So in order to maximize the exp. you must save lots of candy of pokemon in order to evolve them in a 30minute time span. The best way to get lots of candy is just simply catching all the pokemon you encounter. However, if you don’t want to do that or don’t get a lot of pokeballs on the daily i would suggest you catching pidgeys, weedles, and caterpies. The reason for this is because those are the three pokemon that only need 12 candy to evolve. So if you horde 120 pidgey candy you can get 10,000 exp from evolving them while using a lucky egg. While something like a 120 psyduck candy will only get you 2,000 exp since it takes 50 candy to evolve on psyduck into a golduck.
2. Second best way is to catch new pokemon. This is can also be used with tip number 1 in order to get even more exp. Besides pidgeys, caterpies, and weedles, if you have never had a certain pokemon that you can now evolve to obtain it is worth the wait to evolve it during a lucky egg. For example, if you have 50psyduck candy but never have had a golduck. If you evolve a psyduck during a lucky egg, you get 1000 exp from evolving and 1000 more for catching a new pokemon.
3. Last way is through eggs. Every egg gives you exp when hatched equal to the number of km’s needed times 100. So 2km egg+200exp, 5km=500exp, 10km=1000 exp. So if you are planning to buy incubators. Consider planning all your eggs to hatch around the same time. When they are really close to hatching pop a lucky egg, walk around and evolve. That way you when they hatch you get double the exp in a short time.

IVs [source: Conan-The-Librarian] does a great job at explaining this

Pokemon have 3 stats: Stamina, Attack, Defense. Each type of pokemon has different base values for these. You can look these up in charts because they never change.

For example, all Vaporeons have base stats of: 260 STA, 186 ATK, 168 DEF.

However, each Pokemon is also randomly assigned a 0-15 bonus to each of them. These bonuses are called IV’s (i.e. Individual Values, because they are values specific to each individual). They represent genetic variance, in that some pokemon are just genetically superior to others of the same type. A pokemon with a +15 bonus to all 3 stats (15/15/15) is considered 100% perfect. A pokemon’s IVs stay the same when you evolve it.

For example, when IVs are added, individual Vaporeons can have total stats ranging from: 260-275 STA, 186-201 ATK, 168-183 DEF. A perfect Vaporeon will have 275 STA, 201 ATK, 183 DEF.

Pokemon with higher stats will have higher CP (combat points, the number above their head in the game). This means that pokemon with higher IVs (and thus stats) will have higher CP than ones with lower IVs, even when they are the same level.

For example, a level 20 Vaporeon with the worst IVs (0/0/0) would have 1387 CP. But a level 20 Vaporeon with the best IVs (15/15/15) would have 1610 CP.

Note that a pokemon’s level is not shown in the game, but can be estimated by looking at how much Stardust it costs to power them up to the next level (higher levels require more startdust). The game also does not show you what your pokemons’ IVs are, so people use spreadsheets to estimate what their pokemons’ IVs are using equations. More ambitious players will set up proxies to intercept server data in order to know exactly what their pokemons’ IVs are. People want to know what their pokemons’ IVs are because they don’t want to waste candy and stardust powering up pokemon with low IVs (and thus stats). They will wait until they find one with really good IVs, and then spend resources powering it up.

However, finding a pokemon with the right abilities (i.e. quick move and special move) is much more important than IVs. Idealy though, you want a pokemon that has both the best Quick/Special Moves and the best IVs.