Pokémon GO has finally arrived in India after months of waiting. The game, which was first launched in July, was released in India today and is now available at the Google Play Store and the App Store.
As HuffPost India reported yesterday, Niantic labs, makers of Pokémon GO, have partnered with Reliance Jio to bring the game to India. As part of the partnership, select Reliance Digital stores will also act as Pokestops or Gyms.
India actually stood 4th in terms of APK downloads on Android just a couple of days after Pokémon GO's official launch. Later, when the newer version came along, many people stopped playing it as any update required reinstalling the game. Here are a few tips to get you started.
1. Save your battery
Pokémon 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 on, with the top of the phone pointing to the ground. This will turn the screen black with just the Pokémon logo showing, but you will still get the notification if a Pokémon is around.
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2. How To Get Pikachu as your starter Pokémon
Once 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 three Pokémon, you get a chance to catch Pikachu.
3. Turn the AR off while catching Pokémon
AR or Augmented Reality is a cool and fun feature in the game that lets you click Pokémon's picture with the real world in the background. But beware, it makes Pokémon jittery. If you turn the AR off, you can catch it with greater ease.
4. Tap on the failed Pokeballs to recover them
Often, when you throw the Pokeball at a Pokémon it will miss 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 an extended period time.
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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. Just before Niantic developed Pokémon GO, it had created another game called Ingress. 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 Pokémon GO. You can download the Ingress app and sign up in under a minute.
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7. Use Nearby to catch Pokémon
On the bottom right of your phone screen, you'll see a small menu which indicates which Pokémon are nearby. If you open it, it will show you the Pokémon with footsteps. If you are near the Pokémon, you will see one or two steps. If you see three steps under a Pokémon even after walking for a bit, you should change your direction.
8. Got too many duplicate Pokémon?
At times, you will be only able to catch Pidgey, Ratatta or Zubat. If you have 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. However, 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. Colours of rings surrounding the Pokémon indicates difficulty
When you're catching a Pokémon, you will see that on the screen, a ring is shrinking in size. The colour of that ring indicates how difficult the Pokémon is to catch. Green is easy, yellow is medium and red is hard. You can use master Pokeballs to catch difficult Pokémon.
11. Train your Pokémon 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 Pokémon. 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.