Pro Tips for Pokémon GO Players

Playing Pokémon GO the way you want it is fine. However, there are some fundamental ways you need to play Pokémon GO if you want to save time, money, and yourself from regrets. The Pro tips for Pokémon GO players you will find here are those that are generally recommended by pro players in the Pokémon GO community.

Take all the following recommendations to heart and apply them when you play Pokémon GO. You will be glad you did. These pro tips for Pokémon GO players have been tried and tested. However, some may not be what you need every time, depending on the way you play the game.

Please note that there are pro tips that are event-specific. You may not find them here but you are sure to find them in the weekly event content I publish on digancy.com. These tips have to do with events such as Community Days, Dynamax/Gigantamax Battles, Raid Days, Mega Raid Days and more. You can check them via Digancy.com’s Recommended Pokémon GO Events Tips.

Pro Tips for Pokémon GO Players

Catching Tips

1. Always use the Quick/Fast Catch Method when catching Pokémon. This helps to speed up the catching process, especially during Community Days, Special Events, and Spotlight Hours. You can watch this YouTube video to learn what the Quick Catch Method is.
2. Use Pinap or Silver Pinap Berry when Catching a Shiny Legendary from Raids. Shiny Legendary Pokémon from Raids are guaranteed catches on the first ball that hits. Use those berries to get more candy per catch.
3. Avoid clicking on the same Pokémon twice when shiny checking in the wild. Any Pokémon you have already clicked on will face your in-game avatar. You can avoid clicking on those Pokémon when shiny checking during events like Spotlight Hours or Community Days. This works for all Pokémon except Nosepass which faces North instead of your avatar.
4. Ensure you always use a Pokémon GO-recommended autocatcher and autospinner. This device helps with catching. Although it is not perfect, it is better usage-wise than having none.

Gifting Tips

1. Focus more on leveling up friendships rather than just sending and receiving gifts. It’s good to send and receive gifts. However, with the potential of having a maximum of 450 friends, sending and receiving gifts become more difficult to coordinate. Hence, you should focus more on leveling up friendships while still sending and receiving gifts. You can do this by using a search string every day. Whenever you want to send and receive gifts, sort your friends by friendship level, then type giftable&interactable&!friendlevel4. This will show you a list of friends you can increase your friendship level with by a day (or 2 days during rare events). These are the friends you want to send and receive gifts with. After you reach your gift opening limit for the day, send the remaining gifts (and the others you get) to the remaining friends on that list.
2. Skip the gift opening, and the sending animation. It takes time to focus on leveling up friendships. One way to minimize the time spent on the process is by skipping the animation. You can do this by pressing the X button on the screen immediately after you open/send the gift. On an Android phone, you can use the system back button or gesture instead of pressing the X button on the app screen.
3. You do not have to save Postcards if you want to easily manage your Postcard inventory. You can simply pin and un-pin immediately. Doing this still counts for your Scatterbug hunts.

Storage Tips

1. Clear your Pokémon storage every day. You don’t want to run out of Pokémon storage when you find a rare Pokémon in the wild. Also, you don’t want to do that during an event. Besides, it is quite expensive to get Pokémon storage. To avoid this, you should clear your storage once every day. Check Pokémon GO Search Strings to Mass Transfer everything but 3*+ and Shiny and Pokémon GO Search Strings to Mass Transfer everything but PVP IVs Pokémon for how to do this quickly. The search strings will help you transfer everything except hundos, shiny, and 3* Pokémon. In some cases, you could also transfer the shiny and 3* Pokémon. However, ensure you do not transfer your hundos (i.e. perfect IV Pokémon). You can ensure that by ‘favoriting’ them.
2. Save and use top search strings. You can save some top search strings by searching for the string, checking the recent searches, long pressing on each, and saving them with a name you can easily remember. You can save/favorite a maximum of 12 search strings. Examples of what you can search for are all the Pokémon that you can evolve during the 2x XP evolve spotlight hours; Pokémon for each GO Battle League type; Pokémon you can transfer during the 2x transfer candy spotlight hour, Pokémon you are willing to trade, etc.
3. ‘Delete’ items by using them. Rather than outrightly deleting items such as Medicines, Poké Balls, Berries, Rare Candy, Rare Candy XLs, Lures, TMs, and Evolution Items, you can use them instead. Use your Pokémon in Gym battles and then use Medicines to heal them; Feed those Berries to Pokémon in Gyms held by your team; Use the Rare Candy and Rare Candy XL for the most relevant Pokémon in your Pokémon storage; Lure up PokéStops around you; Use the regular TMs to get the recommended moves for your favorited Pokémon; and use the evolution items on the Pokémon that needs them.

Battling Tips

1. Select the right Pokémon for your battles. To avoid using the wrong Pokémon during battles, you can know which moves/attacks the Pokémon has when building your battle team. You can know this by pressing on the Pokémon and it will show you the moves/attacks the Pokémon has. This is possible if you go through the “PARTY” tab in the “BATTLE” section of the app.
2. In addition, you can also select the right Pokémon that are effective against the Pokémon you want to battle. This works especially when battling any Team GO Rocket member. Before you start to battle the Grunt, you will need to make a battle team. Tap on the question mark next to the search bar, you will see information about type effectiveness. Search for the type using e.g. @Ground and then select your Ground-type Pokémon with the highest CP and the right moves/attacks. You can do this for the 3-Pokémon slots.
3. Battle one Grunt X times. When you get the Research Task to “Battle X Team GO Rocket Grunts”, you can lose to one Grunt X times and it will count towards completing the research. X can be any number.
4. Battle in X Raids one time. When you get the Research Task to “Battle in X Raids”, you can do that in one raid. When the raid starts, go back into the lobby. The task will count as one raid. You can repeat that for the number of times as needed by the task. X can be any number.
5. You can easily join a raid remotely via your ‘Friends’ tab. To do this, sort your friends with the ‘AT A RAID’, see the raids your friends are in, and select the one you want to join before the time gets to 30s. It will take you to the raid and you can participate remotely.

Power-up Tips

1. Do NOT power up all your Pokémon. You need Stardust to power up Pokémon. This is one of the rarest resources in-game to get considering the amount of stardust you need per Pokémon. Therefore, focus on powering up your most relevant Pokémon for battles.

Trading Tips

1. If you need Lucky Pokémon, trading is the only way to get them. Ensure you find a trading partner. You can trade a maximum of 100 Pokémon per day. You can get this done in under 3 hours. Plan your trading and what you want to trade. You will want to trade away Pokémon with bad IV that you do not need for the GO Battle League.
2. If you are participating in big events (e.g. GO Fest), make sure you contact your Lucky Friends ahead and plan your trade during the event. Such events allow more than two (2) special trades per day.

Buddy Tips

1. Grind XLs using the Pokémon as your buddy. If you are looking to get more XLs for a certain Pokémon, use the Pokémon as your buddy. However, you are more likely to get XLs if the Pokémon is powered up to at least level 31.
2. Get Buddy Hearts quickly. You can speed up earning the three (3) Buddy hearts for “Battle together” by making a battle team that includes your current Buddy Pokémon. Go into battle against the Pokémon team leaders (i.e. Blanche, Candela, or Spark) and then quit the battle as soon as it starts.
3. You can get put a maximum of 20 Pokémon through the Buddy process per day. If you are looking to have more Buddy Pokémon, you can change your Pokémon up to 20 times per day. You can get as many Buddy hearts as you can. However, it is better to get at most 8 Buddy hearts (3 buddy treats, 3 ‘battle together’, 1 play together, and 1 snapshot) per Pokémon per day if you want to rotate 20 Pokémon per day.

Shadow Pokemon

1. Do NOT Purify GOOD Shadow Pokémon. As professionals know, a 0% shadow Pokémon is better (attack-wise) than a 100% non-shadow of the same Pokémon type. If you are wondering which ones NOT to purify, they are any shadow legendary, shadow pseudo-legendary, and any shadow version of the Pokémon you usually get recommended to use during a raid or Gym battle.
2. Remove Frustration quickly during Team GO Rocket events. Frustration is a Shadow Pokémon Charged Attack that can be removed during special events. You can quickly remove this by going to your “ITEMS” tab, clicking on “CHARGED TM”, and then searching for @fru. It will show you all the Shadow Pokémon with the Frustration Charged Attack. Clicking on each Pokémon will help you forget/remove the Frustration quickly.

Egg hatching Tips

1. Turn on Adventure Sync. Go to the game’s settings page, click on ‘General’ and you will see a button beside ‘Adventure Sync’. Turn it on and make sure it stays turned on. It helps the game track your distance walked even when the game is closed.
2. Incubate a lot of Eggs, especially during reduced Egg hatch distance events. There are events where you can hatch Eggs by walking 1/2, or 1/4 of the required hatch distance. Doing this will help you hatch a lot of Eggs at the same time rather than one after the other.

Stardust Tips

1. Use Star Pieces, especially during boosted Stardust events. There are boosted Stardust events where you can earn 2x, 3x, or more Stardust per Pokémon caught. There are also events where Pokémon with higher stardust base catch value are featured. Using Star Pieces during these events will help you earn a lot of Stardust.
2. Use a Star Piece when you are about to hatch a lot of Eggs. If you incubate a lot of Eggs during a certain event with reduced hatch distance, make sure you time the hatches properly. Pop a Star Piece, let the Egg hatch, and gain more Stardust.
3. Use Star Pieces, especially when doing a lot of Team GO Rocket grunt battles. This can be when you find yourself in a place where there are a lot of Grunts at different PokéStop or during special events that feature a lot of GO Rockets Grunts. Defeating a Team GO Rocket member gives more Stardust.
4. You can earn Stardust by feeding berries to Pokémon in a Gym. This works for Gyms that are occupied by Pokémon from Trainers that are in the same team (i.e., Red, Blue, or Yellow) You can feed 10 berries per Pokémon during certain time intervals. Without using a Star Piece, you earn 30 Stardust per berry fed.

Experience Points (XP) Tips

1. Use Lucky Eggs, especially during boosted XP events. There are boosted XP events where you can earn 2x, 3x, or more XP per Pokémon caught. Using Lucky Eggs during these events will help you earn a lot of XP.
2. Use a Lucky Egg when opening Gifts from friends that you are about to hit another level of friendship with. You get 2x XP for every new friendship level you get to.
3. Use a Lucky Egg when you are about to hatch a lot of Eggs. If you incubate a lot of Eggs during a certain event with reduced hatch distance, make sure you time the hatches properly. Pop a Lucky Egg, let the Egg hatch, and gain more XP.

Candy XL Tips

1. Grind XLs using the Pokémon as your buddy. If you are looking to get more XLs for a certain Pokémon, use the Pokémon as your buddy. However, you are more likely to get XLs if the Pokémon is powered up to at least level 31.
2. Get XLs via trading. Any trade involving a Pokémon caught over 100 km away from where you caught your Pokémon will get you a guaranteed XL when traded.
3. Always use a Mega Evolved Pokémon that either matches the Pokémon type in Raids or the Pokémon types in the Wild. Mega evolved Pokémon (especially a maxed-level Mega evolved Pokémon) will get you additional XLs when you catch a Pokémon that shares typing with the Mega evolved Pokémon. Use a Mega Evolved Pokémon every time you are either raiding or catching Pokémon.

Field Research Tasks Tips

1. You can know which PokéStop you have already completed its Field Research Task. Before spinning the PokeStop, the top left corner of the PokéStop shows nothing. After you spin it and then complete the Field Research task you got from the PokéStop, it will show a small binocular with a checkmark beside it. You can see this on the top left corner of the PokéStop. This is helpful when you are hunting Field Research Tasks during Field Research-themed events. You can focus on spinning the PokéStop whose Field Research task you have not received and completed. Please note, for PokéStops with a Grunt, you will need to defeat the Grunt first before you can receive a Field Research task.
2. You can stack up to 100 Field Research task encounters. Once you complete a Field Research task that grants a Pokémon encounter, open it, feed the encounter a Pinap or Silver Pinap Berry, and then flee the encounter (top left flee icon). The completed task will stack above your other Field Research task on the “TODAY” tab. You can catch the stacked encounters later.

Route Tips

1. Walk at least 6 routes per week. This is currently the only way to get the Cells you need to evolve Zygarde to its full form. It is not guaranteed that you will get Cells. However, you are guaranteed to get in-game items like Rare Candy, Stardust, XP, TMs, etc.

General Pro Tips for Pokémon GO Players

1. Be up-to-date on upcoming events. Doing this helps you plan for future events. There’s always an event during the week and weekends. You can stay up-to-date by following in-game news (the ‘TODAY’ and ‘EVENTS’ tab). The TODAY tab shows the current event while the EVENT tab shows upcoming events. You can also stay updated by checking the official Pokémon GO site, visiting Digancy.com, and Pokémon GO-related sites every day/week, or following some Pokémon GO YouTubers.
2. Make use of the Campfire App. You can download it either via Play Store or App Store. Download it, sign in with your Pokémon GO credentials, and get familiar with the app. The app has a lot of beneficial features from finding raids battles to participating in local community ambassador-hosted events.

I hope these Pro tips for Pokémon players are useful to you! If yes, consider sharing it with the other Pokémon GO players you might know. Also, if you know that some very useful tips are missing, I will be adding them in time.