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Pokemon Go Turns One: Tips and Tricks for Newbies and Pros Alike

Pokemon Go Turns One: Tips and Tricks for Newbies and Pros Alike

By Pranay Parab | Updated: 5 July 2017 13:12 IST

Highlights

Pokemon Go has changed a lot over a year
There are several new Pokemon for players to catch
Gym battles have been revamped too

Pokemon Go has evolved a lot in the one year since it launch. The game was barely a pre-alpha test release when it went viral. This brought in a host of server issues, with the game being unplayable for a significant amount of time each day. However, things have improved a lot since then and it's a much more well-defined game today, and we've collected a list of things you should know if you're planning on getting back to the game after a while, or picking it up for the first time.

Raids
Pokemon Go Raid Battles are a new feature of the game. This is where you team up with your friends and attack certain gyms together. The catch is that you’ll be facing an ultra-powerful Pokemon, such as a 25000 CP Tyranitar. Winning these battles earns rare rewards.

Technical machines
Beat raid bosses and you get technical machines (TM) as one of the rewards. This allows you to change your Pokemon’s attacks. You can check out a list of best moves to see if you need to change your Pokemon’s attacks. Quick TM will change the fast attack, and Charged TM will upgrade the charged attack. Note that you can’t choose the new attack you’ll get after using a TM, so wear your lucky t-shirt and hope for the best.

Mechanics still unclear
A lot of Pokemon Go’s mechanics are still unclear. You can find debates and discussions around basic game elements such as curveballs and how many berries you can feed Pokemon even today. Your best bet is to stay up to date via online communities such as the Pokemon Go and The Silph Road subreddits.

Evolution items
Evolution items give you the chance to evolve certain Pokemon into forms that are otherwise locked. For example, you need a Sun Stone in order to evolve a Gloom into a Bellossom, instead of a Vileplume. If you visit a Pokestop every day for seven consecutive days, you get an evolution item via the Pokestop. That’s a handy tip for those who want to fill their Pokedex.

Eevee and Tyrogue evolution tips
One of the most important things you can do is try to fill your Pokedex, which means that you try to catch at least one of every Pokemon available right now. Catching a new Pokemon grants you a big XP boost, which is important if you’re trying to level up. Some of these Pokemon are rarely seen in the wild and short of relying on blind luck, the only reliable way to catch them is to evolve them. Tyrogue and Eevee can evolve into multiple Pokemon, so if you want to fill your Pokedex, you need to know how to evolve them into the Pokemon you don’t have.

For example, Eevee has two more possible evolutions apart from Flareon, Jolteon, and Vaporeon. These are called Espeon and Umbreon. Once you have enough candy, you need to change the name of an Eevee to Sakura if you want to evolve it into an Espeon, and name it Tamao to evolve it into an Umbreon.

Tyrogue can evolve to Hitmonchan, Hitmonlee, or Hitmontop. This simply depends on the Pokemon’s best stat, which you can find out by evaluating the Pokemon. If Tyrogue’s HP is its best trait, it’ll evolve into an Hitmontop. If attack is its best stat, it evolves into Hitmonlee and if defence is its top stat, it evolves into Hitmonchan. Check online to find all evolutions before spending your candy.

Pinap Berries
Pinap Berries can be used when trying to catch Pokemon. They’re like Razz Berries, as they help increase the chances of you catching a Pokemon. But if you catch a Pokemon after feeding it a Pinap Berry, you get double the amount of candy, which can be extremely useful if you want to evolve the Pokemon.

Shadow bans
If you cheat in Pokemon Go, you’ll be shadow banned. This means that the game will continue to work for you, but you’ll only see common Pokemon such as Rattata spawning around you. Some players have been cheating by using GPS spoofing services and bots to catch Pokemon without moving an inch. Niantic now shadow bans such players, apart from marking Pokemon caught via cheats with a slash. These Pokemon don’t give you candy when you return them to the Professor and may not be very effective during battles.

Bugs
The bugs are still there with crashes, freezing during raid battles, and the dodge function not working properly sometimes during battles being some of the prominent ones. Niantic has listed several of the bugs and there are more on Reddit as well. For regular players this can get very annoying and it’s quite sad that Niantic still hasn’t fixed all of these.

Even now, Pokemon Go continues to be very popular and Niantic is continuously adding new features to the game. We can safely say that this is the game Pokemon Go should have been at launch — one with few crashes, some bugs, and a whole lot of fun features.

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