Badges in Pokémon Go refer to achievements that can be earned by a player for meeting certain goals/milestones. Some examples of these achievements include capturing a required number of Pokémon or winning a certain number of battles or even walking a certain total distance. There are many different Badges to earn in Pokémon Go.
Earned Badges and requirements for unearned badges are displayed in the Trainer's profile.
The following chart contains the Badges (Achievements) and requirements needed to acquire each one. Some can be achieved by traveling and capturing Pokemon, while others can be earned by Battling at Gyms.
Training in Pokémon Go refers to the act of Battling one's Pokémon at a friendly Gym. The defending Pokémon will be owned by either the person Training or by a Teammate. The purpose of Training is to win the battle in order to earn XP for your Trainer and Prestige for your Gym.
How to Train at an Enemy/Neutral Gym In order to Train at a Gym that is owned by another Team, you must first defeat that Gym until has Prestige. Once a Gym loses all Prestige it will become Neutral. To capture the Gym, simply deploy one of your Pokémon to Defend the Gym. The Gym will then change into the color of your Team.
How to Train at a Friendly Gym
Once a Gym is captured by your Team, visit the Gym and choose your best Pokémon to use in battle. Using Moves and Dodge the goal is to deal damage to the defending Pokémon to reduce its HP to zero.
After successfully winning the Training battle, you will earn Trainer XP and Prestige for your Team's Gym. The more Training a Team does at a particular Gym, the faster that Gym will Level Up. Higher Level Gyms are generally more difficult for opposing Teams to capture.
Training Tips
- Train against defending Pokémon with lower CP to maximize total XP and Prestige Gains.
Each Pokémon Go player has a Trainer, which serves as his or her own unique avatar. This player controlled Trainer can be created and customized at the start of the game. After choosing an outfit and username, Trainers can then begin exploring the real world.
During a Trainer's Pokémon Go journey there are many things that he or she can do. These include, but are not limited to the following:
There are many other things to do and goals to achieve in Pokémon Go. Keep exploring and gaining XP to find the rarest and most powerful Pokémon in the game!
Leveling up your Trainer is the best and fastest way to progress quickly through Pokemon Go. As your Trainer reaches higher levels, he or she will be able to capture much more powerful Pokemon. In order to Level up fast you will want to gain the greatest amount of XP (experience points) in the shortest amount of time.
The key to leveling up quickly in most MMOs is to simply focus on actions which award the most XP per hour and avoid actions that reward little to no XP. Leveling up in Pokemon Go is no different.
Need some help gaining XP? Check out the Pokemon Go Leveling Guide!
How to Level Up Fast There are many different ways to gain XP in Pokemon Go. Some in-game actions and achievements award you with minimal XP, while others will grant you a high amount of XP. Here are the five best ways to gain experience points and Level up quickly.
#1. Capture Pokemon Well this is a pretty obvious one, especially due to the fact that "Gotta Catch Em' All" is the Pokemon franchise slogan. However, capturing Pokemon is one of the best and most efficient ways to gain XP. You will gain experience points for skillfully throwing Pokeballs (Eg. Nice throw, great throw, excellent throw) and capturing wild Pokemon.
Not only will you gain a set amount of XP for capturing Pokemon, if the Pokemon is new you will get an added XP bonus! Even better, this added bonus is substantially more than the standard XP award you get normally. Capturing new Pokemon is most effective for lower level players, as the XP requirement for each Level up is much less in the early stages of the game.
#2. Hatch Those Eggs! Carry around those Eggs you find at Pokestops, walk a total distance of about one Kilometer (0.621 miles) and your Egg will hatch into a Pokemon. You will gain XP for hatching the Pokemon, regardless of the species and if the Pokemon happens to be new you will gain the added XP bonus for obtaining the new Pokemon!
#3. Evolve Pokemon Capturing Pokemon will award you with Candy. Each species of Pokemon needs a specific amount of Candy before it can be evolved.
Acquiring Candy for Evolution can take some time, therefore the XP reward is much greater than that of a standard capture. Make sure to try and evolve as many Pokemon as you can. You will not only strengthen your Pokemon team, you will also be rewarded with a great deal of XP.
#4. Train & Battle at Gyms Now Gyms are not as easy to find as Pokestops, but when found are great areas for gaining XP. Do your best to find friendly Gyms, especially if you are a newer Pokemon Go player. Friendly Gyms allow you to train your Pokemon without having to deal with the (usually more powerful) opposing Teams' Pokemon. Your Trainer will gain XP for each defeated Pokemon.
If you stumble across a Gym controlled by another Team, you can still battle, but winning these battles is oftentimes more challenging. Check the Gym first to see which defending Pokemon you are up against. If you have the CP and/or Pokemon Type advantage go ahead and initiate the battle. You will gain XP for each Pokemon that you defeat!
#5. Visit Pokestops As you travel you will find a variety of Pokestops to visit. These locations will give you Pokeballs, Revives, Eggs, etc. Most importantly, visiting Pokestops will give you some XP. It should be noted that you will not get tons of XP from Pokestops. However, you can visit a lot of these in a short period of time and the XP really does add up, especially for beginners with lower Trainer levels.
If you are looking to Level Up quickly, the best way is to gain XP as efficiently as possible. Make sure to minimize idle time, including looking at your Pokedex, checking your Inventory, customizing your Trainer, etc. In other words, if an action won't award any XP, try to best to avoid it.
#6. BONUS TIP (Gain 1,000XP per minute!): Collect as many Pidgeys, Caterpies and Weedles as you can. Next make sure you have a Lucky Egg (With doubles XP for a short period of time), which you will get as a Level Up reward after reaching Level 9. You can also purchase a Lucky Egg from the Shop for Pokecoins.
See the video below for a good explanation of how to gain 30,000XP in 30 minutes:
The reason you want to focus on capturing these three Pokemon is that they are easy to find/capture and only require 12 Candy each to Evolve. Once you have collected enough Candy for each of these Pokemon (try to get at least 15 evolutions worth) you are ready to Evolve them.
Use the Lucky Egg and immediately begin evolving those Pidgeys, Caterpies and Weedles. You will gain a lot of XP for the evolutions plus that XP will be doubled because you are using the Lucky Egg buff!
Not sure how many Pokémon or Candy you need to maximize the use of your Lucky Egg timer?
Check out this great evolution calculator created by Zach Cowell:
It is common to jump 2-3 Trainer Levels just by using this trick once.
Another very popular tool to maximize the use of your Lucky Egg is the Pidgey Calc!
The Pidgey Calc will calculate the Time Spent evolving x number of Pokemon, the total XP gained, and how many Lucky Eggs you should use to evolve those Pokemon.
Generally players will evolve Caterpies, Pidgeys and Weedles, but the calculator allows you to add the quantity/Candy of any Pokemon.
Go to Pidgeycalc.com to use this useful tool. You may switch between English, French, German or Japanese languages.
Capture New Pokemon, Hatch Eggs, Evolve Pokemon, Train & Battle and Visit Pokestops. If you follow these simple steps you will level up very quickly.
As you progress and Level Up your Trainer in Pokemon Go, Pokemon will become easier to capture. Certain Pokemon will be difficult captures at first, but will eventually become Medium and then Easy captures. Gaining Trainer experience will be very important in creating a powerful Pokemon Team. Here is some additional information about Eggs, Capturing, Trainers, Speed Limits and CP.
-When trying to capture a Pokemon you can throw the Pokeball straight or throw a type of curveball.
- To throw a curveball, you can shake the ball on the screen and then flick your finger to either side of the screen. If done correctly the ball will swerve in the direction you flicked it and end up hitting the Pokemon.
-Even if you throw a Pokeball at a Pokemon there is a chance that it will bounce off the Pokemon. Pokemon can also dodge accurately thrown Pokeballs by jumping during the encounter.
-Wild Pokemon movements are randomized and are not affected in any way by a Trainer’s actions. In other words little to no artificial intelligence found in Wild Pokemon.
-There is a speed limit in Pokemon Go. Once the game realizes you are moving too fast, distance will not count towards achievements or Egg Hatching. In Ingress You can't hack, deploy, or damage resonators at and above the speed of 20 - 30 MPH. A similar mechanic will be included in Pokemon Go.
-Eggs and Pokeballs can be found at Pokestops. In regards to a % drop rate at Pokestops, Testers approximate an 80% Pokeball/ 20% Egg split.
-Pokemon hatched from eggs generally have higher CP than those Pokemon caught in the wild. This is another incentive to collect and hatch Eggs in Pokemon Go.
- Increasing your Trainer Level will make capturing Pokemon easier.
-Players with higher Trainer Levels will capture Pokemon with higher CP. Even the same species Pokemon will have greater CP if a Trainer’s Level is higher.
-Pokemon can only have two moves, however Pokemon of the same species can have two different moves. For example, one captured Rattata may have growl and bite, while another may have scratch and tackle.
-The average player will use approximately 1GB - 2GB of data per month (playing a few hours per day). Find out the Best Ways to Reduce Your Data Usage.
-You can have many Eggs in your Egg bag, but you can only carry two eggs around at one time. This is meant to prevent players from hatching all of their Eggs at one time.
Thank you for reading. Feel free to leave a comment below!
The first bit of Pokemon Go Alpha gameplay has been leaked from Niantic's SXSW Gaming Panel. This video begins with John Hanke confirming the following:
"They are distributed all around the world, Pokemon have different habitats. Some like water, some like mountains, there are a lot of places they like to live so you will have to go to quite a variety of places to catch them all"
Check out the Leaked Gameplay Footage below:
In addition to Hanke's comment, we have learned some more information about Pokemon Go's gameplay and mechanics.
Player Profiles: From the footage shown, every player will have a profile and his or her own avatar. The on screen information will include Trainer Level, username and appearance (which looks to be customizable). Trainers can gain experience points through capturing Pokemon and actually level up themselves.
Capturing Pokemon: The footage showed a player attempting to capture a wild Ivysaur, however no battle preceded the capture attempt. It remains to be seen if battling wild Pokemon will be even be possible in Pokemon Go.
With a swipe of a finger, the user attempted to manually capture Ivysaur by throwing Poke Balls its way. The throw attempt Missed the first time and the Pokemon broke free on the second throw attempt.
The user then switched to using a Master Ball and caught the Ivysaur. The player gained 110 XP for the capture (100 XP for a successful capture and 10 XP for a "nice throw")
Note: Before the capture attempt there were three Ivysaur icons in the bottom right of the screen. This could possibly mean that the Trainer has three attempts to capture the Pokemon before it runs away.
Poke Balls: All four Pokeballs were shown in the user's Items window, each providing a greater chance to capture Pokemon.
Poke Ball - A device used for capturing wild Pokemon Great Ball- A good high-performance Poke Ball Ultra Ball- An ultra-high performance Poke Ball Master Ball- The best chance of capturing a Pokemon.
CP: In the video, Ivysaur had the following labeled above its head "CP 535". CP stands for Combat Points. The higher the CP the more powerful the Pokemon. Pokemon with greater CP are more difficult to catch.
Crystals: Used for evolutions. Collect enough evolution shards to fill up your Pokemon's crystal.
This footage is still from the Alpha stage, but I do like what I have seen so far. Please let me know your thoughts in the comments below.
