Pokemon Go Tips and Tricks


Pokemon Go Tips

Here's are some useful hints, tips and tricks for Pokemon Go.

  • Curve ball - To throw a curve ball you can shake the ball in a circular motion until it sparkles, this will give the throw a lot of spin so it might take some getting used to.
  • The egg menu is swiped to from your Pokemon menu. You have one permanent incubator but you can obtain disposable ones with limited uses to hatch multiple eggs at the same time. You need to walk to hatch eggs (driving will not work unless you are crawling at like 10 Mp/h)
  • Different moves - Pokemon of the same species can have different moves The color of the circle when you are catching a Pokemon reveals the difficult of catching it (green/yellow/orange/red)
  • Choosing a faction - Once you are level five you choose a faction by entering any gym. This decides what color your gyms are, ALL gyms of your faction color are allies, the grayish gyms are unclaimed, ALL other gyms are rivals.
  • Training - Fighting an allied gym is called "training", you can lose etc here but your Pokemon cannot faint in training and winning gives you a bit of exp and prestige for you gym. Losing in a rival gym faints your Pokemon and they can only be revived with items.
  • Pokemon Go Tips and Tricks

  • Prestige is best thought of as life points for your gym. If a rival faction beats your gym enough times you run out and are evicted from the gym which becomes up for grabs again.
  • You can only place one Pokemon per player in a gym, so if you have friends you can stack a strong team in a single gym to protect your turf.
  • When your gym is defeated and the Pokemon in it are evicted they return to your party.
  • Type does matter (Electric beats water) though there seems to be some hidden values as well for things like how fast a Pokemon attacks, Seadra in particular is really OP feeling.
  • Battery Usage - In the 4 hours I played I used about 80% of my iPhone 5s' battery and only 23MB of data. If possible, bring at least a ~6000mAh battery pack. This will give you 4x the battery life that you normally would have. Obviously, if you can afford to get anything higher, do so.
  • Stardust is a currency used to power up any Pokemon, it is acquired by catching any Pokemon. Catching a Pokemon for the first time or with special throws will give you a bonus.
  • Pokemon Go Tips
  • Pokemon that have an XS means they are small.
  • Candies are a currency used to power up and/or evolve a Pokemon. It is acquired by catching Pokemon or transferring them to Prof. Willow. (One candy per) You will only get candies of the species of Pokemon in either method and the species' candy can be used on evolutions (A nidoran candy can be used to power up a nidorino/nidoking).
  • Wild Pokemon are visible to all local players, while Pokemon that you attract with an incense drop are only visible to you.
  • Pokestops recharge every 5 minutes with no daily limits.
  • Collecting Rewards - If you have Pokemon occupying a gym, you can collect rewards! Go to Shop, and on the top right you will see a circle with a number on it. The number reflects how many Pokemon are occupying gyms. You get 10 Pokecoins per Pokemon and 500 stardust each. You can only "cash out" once every 21 hours. Credit to ArturPrakapas
  • You can only cash in on 10 gyms max for a total of 100 pokecoins and 5000 stardust Credit to Xeroith
  • Pokemon Go Tips
  • When you fight a gym there are little bars filling up while you spam your basic attack (depends which moveset you have it changes the speed cast and how much you need to fill), and those bars are your special attack pp. In order to use them keep pressing anywhere in the screen and a little bar starts loading under them. Once it's loaded you release your finger and the special attack goes off. It cosumes 1 bar each time. Credit to NapzorTree
  • Hatching an egg gives trainer exp and random number of candies (I have received up to 21 personally) of the Pokemon hatched.
  • Finding Electric Pokemon - People in industrial areas have reported to have caught voltorbs, electrodes, magnemites and magnetons.
  • We highly recommend not powering or evolving until your trainer level is at least 6+. At that point more powerful Pokemon are caught very commonly and you can spend less power to up them more.
  • When in battle you can use your secondary attack after you have used your primary attack enough to charge the little bar underneath your Pokemon's health. Tap and hold the screen until you see it load that attack the release.
  • The inner circle that decreases in size is a bullseye, hitting within it as it gets smaller results in a nice, great, or excellent throw. This mechanic doesn't seem to have any effect on catch rate, but it does give exp bonuses. However unrelated to the nice/great/excellent mechanic, the smaller the circle the higher your success rate.
  • Player Limit - GYMs have a limit of players that can put Pokemon on. Once the gym reaches a certain prestige another player may add on to the gym up to 8 player.
  • The higher level you are the higher level Pokemon are available to find.
  • The higher level you are different items are available at the pokestops.
  • Pokemon Go Tips
  • Evee evolves to the 3 different types randomly.
  • Max Stats - A Pokemon has different max stats. Catching a Pokemon with player level 10 could end up with higher max stats than a Pokemon caught by player level 1.
  • Re-battling a Gym - You can immediately re-battle or retrain a gym after finishing it once.
  • You can simultaneously attack an enemy gym with other players nearby.
  • Catching a Pokemon gives you 3 candies of the lowest evolution of that Pokemon. Transferring it to Prof will result with 1.
  • Evolving a Pokemon that will usually consume all candies will leave you with 1 candy.
  • When using pokeballs and the counter says 2, you only have that one left. Afterwards you have none.
  • You can see the CP of a wild Pokemon if you have caught that Pokemon before. Otherwise there are Qs.
  • Pokemon Go Tips
  • When catching a Pokemon, not only the size of the circle, but where you hit it affects if you catch it or not.
  • When catching a Pokemon if it is in the ball and fails it will pop out in the direction you are facing when it fails and not the original direction. So if you are driving and you want to re-position the Pokemon orient the phone in the direction you want while it is in the ball.
  • When attacking an enemy gym the Pokemon with the lowest CP will appear first and the highest last.
  • When training on friendly gym the Pokemon you own with the highest HP will be default, but you can change by tapping it and choosing another.
  • When an enemy gym drops below the required prestige for the current level, the weakest Pokemon will be removed first keeping the strongest for last.
  • Sometimes to reset Pokemon pool you have to leave the range of the original set and return. Say you started on land, then you moved to water, and then walked back and forth beside the water. If you remained a certain distance from the original position you will not see as many water Pokemon as if you left that distance THEN went back and forth along the water line. (This may be like holding A+B while catching Pokemon helps the chances, but it seems to work)
  • Restarting the game helps change the pool of available Pokemon available in that area.
  • Pokemon Go Tips
  • Evolving a Pokemon when caught at a higher level will give you an evolved Pokemon with higher max stats than evolving a Pokemon you caught at a lower level.
  • You cannot drop or sell eggs and have a limit of 9.
  • Always try to keep as close to 9 eggs as possible, and burn through them before going to Pokestops to replenish.
  • Ultra Balls - After level 20 you get access to Ultra Balls (level 12 = Great Ball).
  • XP Scale Requirement - After level 20 the XP req scales insanely high (19-20=25k, 20-21=50k, 21-22=75k totals required).
  • Always try and stack XP eggs with Evolves, KM eggs, and adding new Pokemon to your codex.
  • Anything that has a red circle, use berries and highest level Pokeball (its most of the time worth it).
  • Your berries are only active for one Pokeball catch attempt. If you fail, make sure you recast another berry.
  • Catch Everything - Even the Pidgeys and Ratatta. Just stock up on them and trade them all in for candies to spam evolves for XP (while using your XP egg!).
  • Avoid gym battles unless you're sure you can hold them long enough to get the daily bonus consistently. They don't offer enough XP to waste time/consumables on them. Focus on building up your Pokemon legion and grinding Stardust.
  • Turn off AR - It may look cool, but it's just a gimmick and doesn't grant you anything extra.


These tips were submitted by Xenivid, Mokin, site staff and others.

If you have any of your own hints, tips or tricks for Pokemon GO, or if you find incorrect information that needs fixing, please submit them in the comments below. This page will be updated over time to include more tip so check back soon. If you found any of the tips helpful, please consider sharing this page.