5 tips to help you level up in Pokémon Go

Jul 13 2016, 3:07 am

Written for Daily Hive by Cam Davis.

So Pokémon Go has been out for a week now.

While some are just figuring out the basics, others are levelling up hard. So whether you’re getting deeper into the game, or you’re are starting off your Pokémon journey; here are 5 top training tips to help maximize that Poké awesomeness.

   1) Save your stardust and candies

Although it is immensely tempting to power up and evolve your Pokémon quickly, it is a mistake that everyone has been making in this first week after release! Let me explain. The lower the trainer level you are – the lower the base CP (Combat Power) level is for Pokémon that you come across.

For example, at a trainer level of 5 you might have caught a CP107 Drowzee and decide to power it up or evolve it a few hundred points with stardust and Drowzee candies, when perhaps you weren’t aware that if you had just waited until you get to a trainer level of 15, you can actually come across Drowzees with much higher base levels. This means that you could have actually saved all the stardust and candies for evolving and levelling up Pokémon that are already much stronger!

Pokemon Cam Davis

Caught at level 5/Cam Davis

Pokemon Cam Davis 2

Caught at level 15/Cam Davis

2) Combine Lucky eggs + incense for maximum XP

Considering that you only get gifted a small amount of both of these items upon leveling up you will definitely want to make the most of them! It really is quite simple.

Lucky Eggs = Double XP for 30 minutes
Incense = Attract more Pokémon to your location for 30 minutes
TIP = Always use them both at the same time.

3) Use Your ∞ Egg Incubator on your smaller distance eggs

Eggs play a massive role in landing some really Pokedope Pokémon. They are also great sources for stardust and candies so you will want to get maximum usage out of all of the Egg Incubators that you come across. To do this effectively, you will always want to use the ∞ egg incubator on your 2 km eggs so that you can consistently be making room to find new (hopefully 10 km) eggs.

If you start using your limited use incubators on small distance eggs, then you will find that you run out of incubators very quickly and in turn won’t have space to loot some bigger distance eggs from Pokestops.

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A Magmar hatched from a 10 km egg/ Cam Davis

4) DO NOT discard Pokeballs

This is a mistake that I made that I regret terribly, so make sure you guys don’t make the same one. When you first start exploring and catching Pokémon, you will find that it rarely takes more than 1 Pokeball to secure your target. However, once you get to higher levels this no longer is the case. All of a sudden you will find that using 3, 4 or even 5 Pokeballs will become quite common and your stock can quickly get low.

My advice for this is to discard most of your potions and revives until your focus switches to controlling gyms with fellow teammates so that you always have room to stack Pokeballs. The last thing you want is to come across a very rare Pokémon and not have enough Pokeballs to catch it.

5) Make friends & split up to find the Pokémon

This is not only a lot of fun, but also makes expanding your Pokedex a lot easier. As you may already know, the number of footprints beneath Pokémon in the “nearby” interface indicates how close they are to your location.

Cam davis pokemon 4

Nearby screen/Cam Davis

3 Footprints = within ~ 100 feet
2 Footprints = ~ 50 feet
1 Footprint = ~ 20 feet
0 Footprints = Super close to you!
*estimates from Redditors

You can optimize the use of this information by trying out these steps:

  • Team up with some fellow Pokémon trainers & make a group chat on your phones.
  • Pick a Pokémon on the “nearby” interface that you all want to catch.
  • Split up into different directions until someone starts getting closer to the Pokémon (indicated by the number of footprints getting smaller & the Pokémon moving closer to being in the top left corner of the interface).
  • Regroup with whoever got closer to the desired Pokémon and continue in their direction until you find your target.
  • Expand dat Pokedex!

Happy & safe Pokémon’ing, everyone!

Guest AuthorGuest Author

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