Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/08/12/handy-pokemon-go-tips.html
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Does anyone understand the gyms?
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The whole “strap your cellphone to your dog” thing is kind of not great advice because the game has to be active and running on your phone. So the screen must remain unlocked and trying to keep the game going while playing with the dog seems like more trouble than it’s worth. But if this works for some people then go for it
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As far as I understand, the main benefit is getting pokecoins (you have to manually collect once every 24 hrs) if you have left a pokemon of your’s at the gym. The level of the gym determines how many can be left there. Level is determined by prestige points, which I believe are gained by successfully defending the gym (no action on your part) or by winning battles against pokemon in your team’s gyms.
If you battle your own gym, you only get to battle with one pokemon. But if you lose, your pokemon doesn’t faint, just loses all its defense (so no revive needed, just potions). If you battle an opposing gym, you get to pick as many pokemon as the gym has. But if you lose, your pokemon faint, and a revive is needed.
That’s about as far as I’ve gotten with my understanding of gyms.
Some of these sound really useful, but others… like the secondary power pack? How many hours a day can you play?
I’m a read-the-manual kind of guy, and it’s really frustrating there’s no documentation. Why do you even have to “figure out gyms?”
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Actually when battling a friendly gym, not having your pokemon faint is a huge pain in the ass because you can’t use a revive item. A revive will heal 50% of a pokemon’s health, which comes in really handy for high HP pokemon later on and saves you from having to use more potions. I’ve taken to sometimes battling an opposing gym and throwing pokemon with 1hp at it on purpose so that i can later revive.
Great design choices by Niantic indeed.
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Someone must have an iPhone… for those of us on Android-powered phones, especially those a couple years old, it doesn’t take long to need the backup battery pack… 
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Meh, I have so many of the super potions it isn’t an issue. But then again I don’t battle that much.
I don’t battle much either but it’s relatively easy to burn through them quickly. I get more of the revive items than healing potions so those come in pretty handy and not being able to use them after battling a friendly gym is irritating.
Gyms are a little complex, but not too hard to sort out if you read a tutorial. The basics are:
If your team holds a gym you can train by battling to raise the prestige enough to add one of your Pokemon. If another team holds the gym you can battle it to lower prestige until it’s neutral, then take it for your team and add one of your Pokémon. There are video tutorials on battling that show how to dodge/attack that can help.
The key is that once you’ve put a Pokémon in a gym, go to the store, hit the little shield badge to start the timer and collect some coins. The timer lasts 21 hours. At the end of that timer you can collect dust/coins for each Pokémon holding a gym. If your first few were kicked out, it has no effect - you can add more to gyms. After that 21 (I think?) hour timer is up you can continue to add more to gyms. Once you’ve got a few in, go to the store again, hit the shield, and you get 10 coins & 500 dust per Pokémon holding a gym.
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The big benefit for me is the 500 dust/Pokémon holding a gym. Once the timer’s up I grab as many local gyms as I can, since if I can quickly grab four, that’s 2000 dust, and that stuff’s precious. The coins are definitely nice too for grabbing more incubators, since hatching gets 500 dust (and occasionally something worth keeping).
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This is a younger person’s game. I take my dog for a walk for 30 minutes a day and play a little and maybe catch 3 if I’m lucky. At the park, the kids are roaming around on their bikes for hours since they’re out of school for the summer. They dart from place to place seeking them out or they camp out for a while with a lure module. They play for hours and I’ve seen several of them either with portable chargers or they recharged while using the lure. The 20-somethings are driving all their cars to parks and camping out with lures while blasting the music they listen to these days and not getting off my lawn, but I’ll stop and catch a few from the lure.
I will never be a Pokemon Go master, but I can afford expensive microbrews, so I that’s nice.
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When I go out and am keeping the game running for hours, after about 4-5 hours my iPhone is close to dry unless we’re driving between spots and I can charge in the car. Between the constant GPS/cellular activity, the constant updates of graphics hitting the GPU, and the game’s internal grinding on the CPU, it’s just an epic battery drain. We have a couple battery packs now and have used them regularly.
so your pokemon have to be in that gym for the entire length of time, then?
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You didn’t know any of them? Not even “obey the law”?
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No, you just need to get them in at the end. Even if your original one’s out it makes no difference. Usually I just get one in a gym to start the timer and then wait until the timer’s up to load them up, though if there’s a weak gym/open slot while I’m out I’ll pop something in just in case.
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I keep getting revives, and potions are so rare. Right now I have 260 revives, 5 potions, 4 super potions, 5 hyper potions and 20 Max potions (I got those as Level 25 reward last week and haven’t used any). I haven’t used any potions or revives for half a week. It’s maddening. My backpack is filling up with near-useless revives when all I want are a few more potions.
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I leave my phone plugged into the charger at work all day and play continuously as I work. There’s a pokestop in the lobby of the building within range of my desk, so I just leave pokemon go open and spin the pokestop every 5 minutes.
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I delete the revives once I have more than 50, since they’re wasted space. You can batch delete and drop 20 or so if your backpack fills up - revives are the first thing I clear. I nuke the default weak potions too since it only heals 20 which is pretty much useless compared to the super/hyper-potions.
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