The Pokémon Go Tips You Won’t Want to Miss

You may have read my other post, “What Is Pokémon Go?” or Ask Science’s post “What Does Pokémon Go Mean for Augmented Reality?” If you haven’t downloaded the game yet, you can impress gamers with the depth of knowledge you possess after reading these tips:

1)    Catching the Same Pokémon

In the original Pokémon games, after you caught a single type of Pokémon, there was no real reason to catch the same one over and over. In fact, it was often a waste of time. In Pokémon Go, that’s completely the opposite. You want to catch as many Pokémon as possible for three reasons. The first is that you can ‘Experience,’ ‘Stardust,’ and ‘Candy.’ In order for your player to level up they need to gain ‘Experience,’ which you gain for every Pokémon you catch. In order to power up your Pokémon, you need both ‘Stardust’ and ‘Candy.”

But what the heck does this mean? ‘Stardust’ is used for powering up all of your Pokémon, and ‘Candy’ is used for powering up specific Pokémon. After a long day of catching Pokémon, you’ll want to transfer all but one of each single type of Pokémon. Say for example you catch 100 Pikachus; you’d want to transfer all but the strongest. Each time you transfer a Pokémon you are given a candy specific to that Pokémon. In this case, you would get 99 Pikachu candies. In order to level up Pikachu, you need this candy.

All of that to say, you should only keep the strongest of any one type of Pokémon! Early on, this is not apparent and works completely contrary to most of the original games.

2)    Pokestops

As you walk around in real life, you’ll see Pokestops in the game. These are explained a little bit in the game introduction so I won’t reiterate that. However, the more of these you swipe, the more items and Pokémon that appear. You also gain experience each time you swipe one. If you live, work, or go to school near one, you can swipe it every five minutes, which means pretty much unlimited times and experience!

3)    Evolving versus Training

In the game you’ll catch a ton of Pokémon and be tempted to evolve them as early as possible. However, I would recommend powering them up much more before you can evolve them. They will be much more powerful the longer you can wait to evolve them.

4)    Staying Safe

Of course, when you’re playing the game, be aware of your surroundings so you don’t have an accident like the ones that have major news recently. Remember to take a couple of seconds to see what’s around you so that you don’t become another Pokémon Go news story.

Share any other tips you have with me on the Tech Talker Facebook page.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.