The gates of heaven (or hell to some) have opened – Pokémon GO heaven, that is. Expectedly, many Singaporeans are going crazy since the mobile game launched on 6 August.
If you are playing Pokémon GO, you will find that it’s heaps of fun. However, the game, as we’ve realised, provides limited guidance on catching Pokémon, collecting items, evolving etc. Basically, there is very little advice on how to ace the game. And because we noticed many people making noobie mistakes since the launch, we’ve decided to come up with this list of tips and tricks.
1. Ignore the first three Pokémon you see if you want to catch Pikachu first
When you download the game and launch it for the first time, you will definitely see three Pokémon – namely Bulbasaur, Charmander and Squirtle. We saw too many people getting so excited at seeing their first Pokémon that they quickly try to catch one of the three.
But do you know that you can actually choose to catch Pikachu – probably the most famous Pokémon of all – as your first one? When you start the game and see the usual three Pokémon, just continue walking. As you walk along, you will see that the three will ‘disappear and appear’; let the three do so for three times. By the fourth time, Pikachu will pop up alongside the three.
2. Don’t just be obsessed with finding Pokémon and forget about collecting freebies at Pokestops
We hear a lot of people complain about running out of Pokeballs. Hey, Pokestops are there for a reason – to collect free Pokeballs and other goodies.
3. A Pokestop with falling pink confetti indicates a lure has been used
You might have noticed that some Pokestops appear different from others – they have pink confetti falling from them. The pink confetti essentially means someone has used a Lure module at that Pokestop; Pokémon will be attracted to that stop for 30 minutes. The benefit is not limited to the Pokemon trainer who uses that Lure; other Pokemon trainers in the area stand to gain too. So in a nutshell, if you see such a Pokestop, go near it!
4. Walk or run in a straight line to hatch your eggs
Hatching eggs requires you to walk or run a certain distance (2km, 5km or 10km) to hatch them. Some of you might have thought of making use of your daily jog to hatch the eggs. Sure, if you can kill two birds with one stone, great. Just don’t run in circles. Apparently, Pokémon GO does not register the distance walked/run unless it’s done in a straight line.
And in case you are wondering, driving would not help add to the km needed for your egg hatch. The distance is counted only if you are going at less than 10 miles per hour.
5. Don’t hold on to those extra Pidgeys
Once you have played for some time, you will realise that Pidgeys and Rattatas appear very often. By all means, catch them but don’t hold on to all of them. Transfer your extra Pokémons with lower CP (Combat Power) to Professor Willow. In return, he will give one species-specific candy, which will come in useful to power-up and evolve your Pokémon.
6. Don’t be too eager to evolve every Pokémon
This is in a way related to our point no. 5. If you have too many Pidgeys, don’t evolve them all even if you have sufficient candies to do so. You are simply wasting your candies if you do so. Just evolve the one with the highest CP. As for the rest, transfer them for candies. Keep those candies to power up your Pokémon instead.
7. Increase your chances of catching a Pokémon
As your trainer level goes up, you will find it increasingly difficult to catch Pokémons. You can tell the difficulty level of catching a Pokémon by the colour of the shrinking circle. Green means easy, yellow means moderate, orange means hard and red means very hard.
When you encounter the difficult Pokémons, you can use some items to help you. Feeding a Razzberry to the Pokémon will help lower the difficulty level by one colour, but it is only good for one attempt. You can also switch to using Great Balls or Ultra Balls to increase your chances of catching Pokémons. But keep them only for the difficult Pokémons as these balls are not as easy to come by as the normal red Poké Balls.
