Pokémon Go was released years ago and it was much anticipated. When Niantic announced that they were developing an open-world, real life, free mobile game based on Pokémon, every person in the world went nuts for it. What’s even better is it lived up to the hype. Although it was definitely more talked about in the first few months of its release, it still has a huge user base today (myself included).
The only thing is that the more you level up, the harder it becomes to advance. Once you hit level 30 or so, the grind to gain experience points and level up further becomes harder. So here are some tips you might have forgotten about to keep leveling as quickly as you can.
10. Close The App Properly When You Aren’t Actively Playing
Recently, Niantic announced a major update for the game: it will count your steps and put them towards eggs, experience points, and other rewards even if the game isn’t open. There’s a catch, though. This doesn’t work if the app is running in the background. You have to actively make sure that the app is either pulled up on your screen or closed down completely for those steps to count. This was a major advance since the game used to only count your steps if it was constantly up and draining your battery.
This is good news for those of us who’d go out hunting and would have a dead battery in a couple of hours.
9. Catch All The Pokémon You See
It sounds kinda obvious, but when I first started playing the game, I wouldn’t catch Pokémon if I already had them. I caught enough Pidgey to evolve him into his final evolution, then stopped — that sort of thing. But the candies and experience points really add up if you get into the habit of just throwing balls at every creature you see, rather than deciding some aren’t worth it. They won’t give you major experience points on their own, but there will come a point when they’ve all added up. In the end, you’ll be glad you even stopped for the ones that just didn’t seem worth it.
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8. Keep Streaks Up
Another semi-recent addition to the game is streaks. If you spin a PokéStop for seven days in a row, you get a reward. If you spin 10 new ones in a row, you get a reward. When you catch Pokémon—any of them, not just new ones!—for seven days in a row, you get a reward. It’s worth opening the app at least once a day and seeing what you can do if you get a minute when you’re out and about. The experience points and rewards that are given from the streaks can be really worth it. Some of them are even evolution items, which you’re going to need for the Pokémon you’re missing if you really want to level up fast.
7. Make Friends And Give Gifts
Trading and friends were finally introduced recently to the game! This means that gifts can now be given, and the more gifts you give someone, the more your friendship level increases. The reason you want to make sure this happens is that there are pretty huge experience bonuses given for leveling up a friendship. Clearly, Niantic knew they needed to do something to keep people motivated and interested as they started to get tired of the grind, so they were pretty generous with the bonuses here.
It can take a while of gift giving to hit the max, but don’t fret — the reward is worth it.
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6. Make Sure You’re Always Hatching Eggs
It can be easy to forget about eggs since they essentially run in the background, but the experience and potential of new Pokémon are worth making sure there are always eggs incubating. This is especially true because hatches give a lot of candy, which is good for evolutions and therefore, good for experience! If you make sure you have as many incubators on duty as possible, an egg will hatch every couple of kilometers or so and it becomes easy experience points. So spin those PokéStops and keep your stock of eggs full because it’s worth doing.
And is there anything better than the thrill of that notification that an egg is hatching? No? Just me?
5. Spin All PokéStops And Gyms
Don’t miss out on these! Even if you’re in a vehicle (and aren’t driving, of course, be safe), open the app and spin the stops that you pass. Sometimes you might be going too fast and the app can detect you aren’t really walking. In these cases, it won’t let you spin anything, but sometimes when you’re in traffic or slowing down, the app won’t realize you’re in a vehicle and will let you spin the stops anyway. The rewards from these are mainly not experience, but the streaks help for experience (if that makes sense). You can even get evolution items which will help, so just do this! It’s effortless — a quick swipe of your finger every time you see one of these.
4. Battle In Gyms And Raids
Battling in gyms is always good for experience, especially if you end up taking over the gym and can leave a Pokémon there to defend it. What’s even better is battling in a raid.
If anyone’s new to the game, a raid is when a wild Pokémon takes over a gym. It’s usually super powerful, and you can team up with other players around you to take down that Pokémon. If you manage it, you get a chance at catching the Pokémon. Heck, even losing can reward as much as 10,000 experience points. For a battle that might take a couple of minutes, that’s a lot of experience points to be giving out.
3. Drop Lucky Eggs
People seem to forget these are a thing. When you level up, sometimes you’re gifted these as rewards. Otherwise, they can be bought in the store. When you drop one, all experience is doubled for 30 minutes, which gives you plenty of time to gain some!
Make sure to drop these strategically, though. There’s no point in wasting them in the middle of nowhere where your signal is dipping in and out. It isn’t 30 minutes of game time, it’s 30 minutes of real time from the moment you drop it. Make sure you’re around a bunch of stuff or ready to get involved in battles when you decide to use these up.
2. Drop Incense
Another reward from leveling up or something that can be bought in the store is Incense. When you drop one of these, Pokémon will spawn around you as you walk. There’s usually one every five minutes if you’re standing still, or more depending on how fast you’re walking. This means that along with the Pokémon you’d usually encounter, there are plenty more, so if you’re grinding hard to get to that next level, this can really help.
The Pokémon seem to be pretty random, but you never know; you might get one you’ve been hunting for. Even if you don’t, every little thing helps when it comes to the level grind.
1. Participate In Research Tasks
The game introduced a new concept a few months back to prevent people from getting bored: research tasks given to you by the Professors! There are two categories: field research and special research. Field research is found at PokéStops, and will give you small tasks to complete that will generate rewards. Complete a few of these tasks, and you’ll be offered the chance to catch a special Pokémon (often a legendary). The reward changes every month.
Special research takes a lot longer, is a lot harder, and is geared at catching the super rare Pokémon like Celebi or Mew. All of it, however, is great for gaining experience points.
