Top Ten Tips for Playing Pokemon Go

July 6th, 2016, a day that will live in infamy for some as the day Pokemon Go was released and the niche anime became mainstream.

While some say the game has lost its steam, others are plowing ahead and making the game a part of their lifestyle. People are walking marathon distances weekly, exploring new parts of their cities, and making friends with the unlikeliest of compatriots.

There have been numerous cheats introduced by savvy players - many of which will get you banned - but for those of a higher moral caliber, legitimate tips are aplenty.

Here is a list of some of the best tips for making your game play more effective, fun, and poke-profitable.
The Top Ten
1 Don't power up your Pokemon until after you evolve them

While the order of evolving or powering them up won't affect the resulting CP, there's a definite reason to evolve first. Let's say you evolve your Pikachu into a Raichu and have some candy left to power it up into a formidable battler. If the Raichu has a weak moveset, you will probaly be wasting your candy to improve the CP of a creature that'll get its butt kicked in the gym. You're better off evolving another Pikachu and hoping it gets a strong moveset, then power it up to the max.

I Play this Game and I Had a cp 870 Vaporeon and now I powered IT up and its 1250 or something.

2 Level up faster by hosting a "Pidgey Party"

Collect all those annoyingly common Pidgeys, Caterpies, and Weedles and transfer them until you have hundreds of candies. Collect these specifically because they only take 12 candies to evolve into their first form. Once you have a few hundred, or more, candies, start keeping those creatures in your backpack until you are filled up. Crack open a lucky egg and start rapid-fire evolving those collected Pokemon, collecting 1000XP each, until your time runs out. You can evolve about 60 Pokemon during the 30 minute window. Select your Pidgey, evolve once, transfer for the candy, select the next Pidgey... Repeat.

3 Practice your curveballs

Catching a Pokemon with a curveball lands you an extra 10XP. Since you collect 100XP per creature (at a minimum) it's basically a collect 10 and get one free situation.

4 Throw your ball into the center of the catching circle

While it's a good strategy to throw your Pokeball when the catching circle is smaller, it's more important to land your ball inside that circle rather than bouncing it off the Pokemon's head. Hit inside a large circle and you'll get a "nice. Medium circles give you a "great" and small circles land you an "excellent." All of which give you additional XP for the capture.

5 Catch everything - within reason

While it's important for your XP to capture everything you come across, don't waste your Pokeballs trying to capture an evolved form of a common creature. Unless you are swimming in Pokeballs and you don't mind wasting some (100 stardust is 100 stardust) conserve those balls for rares and collecting those common types.

6 Hatch all your 2.0km eggs first

Since you have an infinity incubator, always have an egg inside it to hatch. Unless all you have are 5 and 10km eggs, keep cycling thru your 2km eggs to free up space for the bigger and better eggs.

7 Throw away your potions and revives

Unless you make a habit of battling at every gym, get rid of all your potions and revives to make room for Pokeballs and raspberries. Since you can only collect every 21 hours anyway, stock up on potions and revives just before it's time to battle but dump them the rest of the time.

Unless you battle a ton, you'll likely use way more balls and berries than potions. Make some room in your limited bag space.

8 Notice and research Pokemon "nests"

Always seem to be finding the same Pokemon at the same couple places at the same times of day? That's what is called a "nest". You can research where others have found spawn points and when certain types hatch so you can improve your chances of catching something rare.

Where I live there was a Pinsir nest at one pokestop. Now they changed it with an Nidoran male I think

9 Research your Pokemon's IVs

Each Pokemon has Individual Values (IV) that determine how strong it can get. If you have two of the same Pokemon with similar strengths, use an online IV calculator to determine which one is actually your better catch. Dump the other (unless you have enough candy to keep them both) and focus on the one with the higher IVs.

10 Choose your battles carefully

While it can be fun to battle down a popular gym in the heat of a crowd, doing so will only give you a small window of time to place a Pokemon defender and collect your coins. Then you're sitting there waiting for 21 hours to collect 1 gym again. Instead, look for your own team's gyms and try to add a defender to the pile. Then look for a couple of quiet gyms close together that you can battle down in a short enough time to collect on multiple gyms before they get taken by an enemy team.

True this. Do not do something you will instantly regret the next minute.

The Contenders
11 Save Candies for Generation 2 Pokemon
12 Rename your Eevee before evolving to get the evolution you want
13 Go to a location with a lot of people near water
14 At the beginning of the game when the three starters appear, walk away from them 3 times and you will encounter a Pikachu for your first Pokemon
15 Don't evolve Pokemon until you have a lucky egg
16 Spend money to level up faster
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