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Pokemon Go is a game without a manual, and although players don't necessarily need one to simply go outside and "catch 'em all," there are often a lot of things novice trainers don't consider when playing the game that they might regret later on.
One of the biggest tips is to save your stardust for high-IV Pokemon because you need stardust to increase your Pokemon's combat power, or level, in the game. So, if you spend all of your stardust on Pokemon you won't use in raids, you won't have as much stardust to invest into something good when you eventually get it.
Powering up a standard Pokemon from level one to the maximum level of 50 takes about 500,000 stardust. But lucky Pokemon, which you obtain from lucky trades with friends, have a 50% stardust discount, meaning it takes about 250,000 stardust to max them out.
I tend to conserve my stardust for hundos -- Pokemon with perfect stats. But I've also maxed out several low-IV Pokemon, purely for the fun of it. For example, I have a shiny nundo Squirtle that's level 50 only because Squirtle is undeniably the greatest Kanto starter.
A nundo is basically the opposite of a hundo; it's a Pokemon with IVs of zero across all three stats -- attack, defense and HP. But a nundo is technically rarer than a hundo because they can only be caught in the wild without a weather boost.
Maxing out a nundo is more of a flex than anything, but I wouldn't recommend doing that if you're not sitting on millions of stardust. As noted in a previous column, I am building a tag to get 100 Pokemon to one power up away from being maxed out, so when level 100 eventually comes out in the game, I'm not spending millions of stardust foolishly trying to get through new level requirements.
In order to prepare for the future, you have to optimize your resources, and one of the most efficient ways to do that is through using the tag tool, which allows you to organize and filter your Pokemon into groups.
Most smartphones have a text replacement feature, which you can utilize to your advantage in Pokemon Go to save time searching through your inventory. I use it to switch out of my 20 buddy Pokemon every day.
So, instead of searching for the name of each Pokemon individually, I tap "bb" on my keyboard, which brings up my tag of Pokemon I'm working to make a best buddy and allows me to save a lot of time.
It takes 300 buddy hearts to get a Pokemon to best buddy status. A lot of people opt to not use the buddy system simply because the endeavor takes several weeks to complete.
There is a way to naturally excite your buddy Pokemon without spending money to buy a poffin -- an item used to instantly excite your buddy that doubles the amount of hearts you get from activities like walking, taking snapshots and battling with your Pokemon. The process involves a secret point system and a 30-minute timer, but it's too complex to thoroughly explain here. Several YouTube channels have videos breaking down how to do it, if you're interested.
Turning adventure sync on in your game's settings is important because it will allow the game to keep track of your walking distance while it's closed or running in the background, which will help you hatch eggs and earn weekly rewards.
Patience always pays off in this game, so I don't recommend spending a lot of money on egg incubators to try and hunt shiny or high-IV Pokemon that way, but to each their own if you enjoy doing that.
The best tip I would offer to any new players or anything thinking of creating an account is to simply have fun. There are so many aspects of Pokemon Go that can make it fun for everyone -- from health and wellness to social connection and competing with others.
Mirror Staff Writer Matt Churella is at 814-946-7520 and mchurella@altoonamirror.com