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Steven Hsieh

The Definitive Guide to Power Leveling for Pokémon Go

So you’ve just caught your 10th Pidgey and are now inching slowly towards your next trainer level. But now what? Skip the grind! This guide will arm you with techniques to level quickly and efficiently.

This is a more advanced guide. Checkout our Definitive Starter’s Guide if you’re a beginner.

Why leveling is important

Higher level players have an increased chance of encountering rare pokemon, which are just intrinsically more powerful. As your player level increases so does the CP range of your captured pokemon. Consider the following example:

At level 1, your captured Pidgey had a CP (combat power) of 10. At level 10, captured Pidgey will have CP ranging approximately from 10 to 150 — potentially 15X stronger than your first Pidgey.

To succeed in gym battles, you’ll need all the CP you can muster. Motivated yet?

Pro Tips:
  • Leveling up also increases your chance of encountering new pokemon, which provides a large 500 XP bonus.
  • Maybe hold off on naming your Pidgey and getting attached. You’ll be constantly trading in your older pokemon as you encounter stronger versions of the same species.
  • For the same reason as above, save your Stardust until you plan on participating in gym battles.

Experience Bombs

There are a few noteworthy events that grant large xp bonuses: “Capturing a new pokemon” or “Evolving a pokemon” yields 500 XP. Hatching an egg gives 200, 500, or 1000 XP depending on the distance.

Here’s the simple recipe for setting off an Experience Bomb™!

  1. Consume a Lucky Egg which provides a 2x multiplier to all experience gained in a 30 minute window.
  2. Go HAM! Trigger as many large XP events as you can within the window.
  3. Watch your experience spike through the roof. You might hopscotch a couple of levels early on.
  4. Walk with extra swagger.
Pro Tips:
  • Lucky Eggs are hard to come by. As far as I know, they don’t drop from Poke Stops and are only acquired as rewards for achieving certain levels. Hoard them and use them effectively.
  • Fight the urge to evolve your pokemon as soon as you can. Instead delay it so can you evolve multiple pokemon during the same XP multiplier window, each yielding a whopping 1000 xp.
  • Evolving pokemon always gives you 500 xp, even if you’ve evolved that species before — so common pokemon are good candidates for multiple evolves.
  • Don’t transfer all your common pokemon right away! Stage 1 pokemon are cheaper to evolve than later stages. Evolving a Pidgey requires 12 candies, while evolving a Pidgeotto requires 50 candies. So if I had a budget of 50 candies, I would opt to evolve Pidgey 4 times for a total of 4000 xp, as opposed to evolving Pidgeotto once which would only yield 1000 xp.
  • Save all your Incense and Poke Stop Modules. You’ll want to activate these immediately after consuming a Lucky Egg. This will cause pokemon (hopefully new species) to flock to you within your XP multiplier window.
  • Poke Modules and Incense effects seem to stack. Maximize your XP gains by using both during this multiplier window.
  • Aim for extra pokemon capture bonuses. They add up are also affected by the Lucky Egg.
  • Attacking gyms also provide decent XP, even if you don’t defeat all the members. Have a stock pile of Potions and Revives ready so you can continuously participate in gym battles during the multiplier window.
  • You likely have picked up additional Egg Incubators from Poke Stops. Group eggs with same distance requirements together so they hatch at the same time. Each hatched egg will give you 400 XP during the multiplier window. Imagine what an army of incubators can do.

Shop Around

Many people will call me crazy for suggesting buying items from the shop with cold hard cash. Well they’re not wrong… I’m running around the park at night flashing my phone like I’m exorcising. If you’re willing to spend money, a little can go a long way.

1) Buy Lucky Eggs. The entire power leveling strategy hinges on these and they’re hard to come by. Here’s the shop prices:

  • 1 Lucky Egg — 80 coins
  • 8 Lucky Eggs — 500 coins (62.5 coins per egg)
  • 25 Lucky Eggs — 1250 coins (50 coins per egg)

2) Buy enough Egg Incubators so that you have 9 total. 
 Pokemon Eggs are a common drop and you can only carry 9 at a time. Egg Incubators can only be bought one at a time for 150 coins.

Checkout our comprehensive starter’s guide.

This guide was originally published on www.pokemongoprotips.com