Pokemon Go: A Beginner’s Guide

If you’ve never played Pokemon before, or you simply can’t remember what it’s all about, then the excitement that has recently spread around the world regarding Pokemon Go may have gone slightly over your head, leaving you feeling just a little bit confused and segregated from every other person playing it. So, do not fear – help is here! Here at B**P, we’re set to get you all clued up on everything you need to know about the app, and soon you’ll be impressing your friends with your new-found skills.

First, it’s the easy bit. Go onto your App Store and download the Pokemon Go app, free of charge.

Once you’ve signed up, you’ll be introduced to the game by Professor Willow, but unfortunately this isn’t a particularly useful tutorial.

Then, you get to choose your first Pokemon, and you get a choice between Charmander, Bulbasaur and Squirtle. These will appear in front of you, but it may help to know that there is a now commonly known hack that can get you a Pikachu. So, if you walk away from the three Pokemon you’re given to begin with, three or four times, a Pikachu will appear to capture as your first Pokemon. However, this won’t be particularly powerful nor will any Pokemon be until you reach higher levels.

From this point onward, it is recommend that you just catch as many Pokemon as possible and visit many pokestops to acquire XP and raise your trainer level. Pokestops are real world locations where you can stock up on pokeballs (used to catch Pokemon), potions (used to heal Pokemon) and various other items.

Again, however, a number of these items won’t be available until higher levels, hence why it is best of to gain XP and level up as quickly as possible.

Once you reach level 5, you can visit a gym. These are other real world locations similar to pokestops, and here you choose a team. Your options are valour (red), mystic (blue) and instinct (yellow). You can either fight to claim the gym for your team or, if it is already owned by your team, you can train there to raise the gym’s level and ultimately make it harder for your team to be defeated, even having the option to place one of your own Pokemon there to defend it further.

As well as this, after catching a few Pokemon you may begin to notice that you get candies for each one. These are used to power up and evolve Pokemon, which can be done by selecting a caught Pokemon and clicking evolve. Each strength level of Pokemon require a different amount of candies to evolve, so for example a Caterpie only needs 12 whereas a Magikarp demands a hefty 400.

Now you’ve reached the double digit trainer levels you should be catching those higher XP Pokemon, which are worthy of spending those hard-earned candies on. Before you know it, you’ll have a strong team capable of defeating those high level gyms.

Hopefully this should be enough to get you a good head start in the game, so what are you waiting for? Go catch ’em all!.