Across the world, new Pokemon GO players are joining in by the minute and wouldn't you like some tips to stay ahead of the curve. Here are some basic pointers to bear in mind when you start playing the game.
1. Save your battery
Pokemon GO consumes a lot of battery, but it has a battery saver mode. You can go to settings and turn the battery saver mode on. Then you can begin walking with the game running and with the top of the phone pointing to the ground. This will turn the screen black with just the Pokemon logo showing, but you'd still get the notification if a Pokemon is around.
2. How To Get Pikachu as your starter Pokemon
When you begin playing, you will instantly see Charmander, Squirtle or Bulbasaur floating around the map waiting to get caught. But if you resist the urge to catch them and let go of your first 3 Pokemon, you get a chance to catch Pikachu.
3. Turn the AR off while catching Pokemon
AR or Augmented Reality is a cool and fun feature in the game that lets you click Pokemon's picture with the real world in the background. But beware, it makes Pokemon jittery. If you turn the AR off, you can catch it with greater ease.
4. Tap on the failed Pokeballs to recover them
Many times, when you will throw the Pokeball it will miss the Pokemon and roll away. However, as it is rolling away you can click on it and recover it. That way you'd always have more Pokeballs in your bag.
5. Pokestop refreshes in every 5 minutes
Pokestops help you in procuring items such as Pokeballs, the health potion, and recoveries. Once you spin the wheel and get the items at a Pokestop, you can always visit it again after 5 minutes. This helps a lot if you are near a Pokestop for a long time.
6. Know where the Pokestops are
If you want to know where the Pokestops are located in a particular area, there is an easy way to do that. Niantic, the company that developed Pokemon GO, created another game called Ingress just before Pokemon GO. All you need to do is to look at the Ingress map and see where the 'portals' are located. Those are the locations where you are likely to find Pokestops when playing Pokemon GO. You can download the Ingress app and sign up in under a minute.
7. Use Nearby to catch Pokemon
On the bottom right of your screen, you'll see a small menu which indicates which Pokemon are nearby. If you open it, it will show you Pokemon with footsteps. If you are near the Pokemon you will see one or two steps. If you see three steps under a Pokemon even after walking for a bit, you should change direction.
8. Got too many duplicate Pokemon?
At times, you will be only able to catch Pidgey, Ratatta or Zubat. If you have got too many of these you can simply transfer them to the professor by clicking on them and scrolling down to the transfer button and earn a candy. Although, you need to take care that you only transfer the ones with lower combat power (CP) ratings.
9. Level Up rewards
When you level up, you will get some kind of reward. Below is the list of all the rewards that you get until level 20.
10. Colors of rings surrounding the Pokemon indicates difficulty
When you're catching a Pokemon, you will see that on the screen, a ring is shrinking in size. The color of that ring indicates how difficult the Pokemon is to catch. Green is easy, Yellow is medium and Red is hard. You can use master Pokeballs to catch difficult Pokemon.
11. Train your Pokemon at your team's gym to Earn XP
When you reach level 5, you will be asked to join a team of your choice (Blue, Yellow or Red). Once you join the team you can visit any gym to train your Pokemon. That will earn you XP and it will also strengthen the prestige points for your team.
12. Dodge when opponent animation shows yellow
When you're fighting a battle in a gym, you should dodge just when a yellow animation shows up around the opponent. Also, when a newer opponent shows up, you should dodge twice.