#exp grind

Events:

Always keep an eye out for current and upcoming events, especially those that boost experience (although nowadays they are rare). Even if the event isn’t explicitly related to an experience boost, it might still present a more efficient chance to gain experience. For example, they just boosted incense spawns again so incense is now a great tool to supplement catching a ton of Pokémon quickly when you can’t be out and about or nothing is spawning nearby.

Current Event: Thanks to the 2x catch experience bonus until the end of the year and the rework on catch experience, catching Pokémon is the best way to grind exp on your own - especially if you can get some excellent throws (they now net you 2k exp on catch). With a lucky egg, you can also turn that 2x bonus into a 4x bonus and rocket up to 40.

So, catch as much as you can between now and the end of the year, and when you can’t play, plan ahead by thinking about how upcoming events or bonuses could be most efficiently used.

Friendship:

Even with a double catch exp event, friendship bonuses remain the largest source of experience: 100k for best friend, and 50k for ultra. By coordinating with a friend if you can communicate, or by planning ahead if you cannot, you can use a lucky egg before acquiring these bonuses and walk away with a giant lump sum of experience. 

The safest way to do this (even with someone with whom you can communicate) is to ensure that when you are 1 day from your bonus, you have a gift from them and they do NOT have a gift from you. This means that you will be in control of when the friendship bonus pops because it will not do so until you open your gift from them. This is how you set up multiple bonuses for a single lucky egg - pop the egg and then open all the relevant gifts. If you are able to communicate with the person, it is good practice to give them notice and plan together when you will do the bonus so that they can lucky egg as well.

*In the weeds: little details, with big impact*

Setting up so that you have one day left before bonus and only you have a gift means that 2 days away from bonus you are HIGHLY reliant on the other person to open one of your gifts and send (or have already sent) you a gift. Sometimes people aren’t very engaged in gift giving or have other friendships they are already working on, and may not send you the gift you need. At that point you have to weigh the risk of not getting the friendship bonus in time (if they never send you the gift) versus the loss of exp you may face if you aren’t in charge of when the bonus happens and as a result cannot use lucky egg. Just something to be aware of! Also beware that when in a shared PoGo community, if you raid or trade with that person, it will progress your friendship. It’s a good idea to keep a list of who you have bonuses ready for so that you can avoid these interactions until you are ready to activate bonus.

So, right now it would be a good idea to look through your friends list and make note of any friends you have that have ultra/best friend bonuses attainable by the end of the year. You can mark them with a specific nickname so that they are easy to sort and identify over the next month as you prioritize getting and sending gifts to them. If you can communicate with them, reach out so that you can prioritize leveling the friendship together and make plans for using lucky egg on the bonus. If not, do your best and try to take control of when the bonus happens to ensure you get lucky egg bonus.

Mass Evolution:

A popular and effective, but intensive, strategy is mass evolution. Evolving a Pokémon earns 500 exp (and a bonus 500 exp if it is a new dex entry). As a result, you can pop a lucky egg and then evolve as many Pokémon as possible within the half hour to net 1k per evolution and as much as 50-70k+ total experience, depending on the speed of the phone and player. The effectiveness of this method is that it makes consistent, predictable use of a lucky egg and only requires unwanted Pokémon and candy - making it popular with free-to-play players. The drawback of this method is that it is intensive in terms of planning time and storage space required. 

In advance of a mass evolution you need to have 60-some(+) Pokémon ready to evolve and you need to know which Pokémon they are so that you can efficiently move from one to the other when evolving. For those unconcerned about PvP options, maintaining a living dex, etc. simply searching “evolve” is enough prep, but those more concerned about PvE and PvP relevance or keeping a living dex will need to go through and determine for which species they are comfortable burning candy and which specimens of that species they are going to evolve. That’s up to your own priorities and discretion, but it would help to mark those Pokémon or make a list for reference. Nothing is worse than trying to mass evolve and then losing time because you didn’t mark which weedle you were saving to max and mega evolve or which eevee was going to be your great league umbreon.

Between mass evolutions you need to acquire the candy and Pokémon necessary for the next set of evolutions. The best Pokémon to mass evolve are always where the candy cost is lowest - ie, the lowest evolution stage of a species with naturally low evolution cost and little use in your relevant metas (Raids, Gyms, Rocket, PvP, etc.). Examples of this are the birds, bugs and normal types of most generations like pidgey, wurmple, and patrat. Still, these aren’t the only Pokémon worth mass evolving. Any Pokémon for which you have the extra candies to evolve is worth doing, but the Pokémon discussed above are worth prioritizing catching in the wild (or even pinapping) for the purpose of evolving. It is a good idea when clearing out unwanted Pokémon to do a quick accounting of how many evolutions of that Pokémon you could do based on how many candies you have. Then, hold onto enough individuals of the species to do that many evolutions. 

We still haven’t discussed when is the best time to mega evolve, and as always it depends on events. Right now, because of the double catch exp event, your lucky eggs would likely be better spent on catching if you have the balls and Pokémon storage. If not, it might be time to clear space with some sorting and evolving! HOWEVER, on Dec. 29th between 6 and 7pm local time the bonus hour will feature  double evolution experience! So if you did mass evolution during that hour, for the whole hour, with 2 lucky eggs you could easily get 200k+ exp. That would be an exceptional time for mass evolution.

This also highlights events that don’t give bonus experience but can still play a role in efficient leveling: the two prior bonus hours on Dec. 15th and Dec. 22nd grant double catch candy and double transfer candy respectively. You can use these prior bonus hours to prepare for the big event on Dec. 29th by getting more candy for evolutions!

That’s A LOT to take in, so let’s break the whole process down by examining a single, relevant species. In the Northern Hemisphere, the Season of Celebration brought along boosted snover spawns so we are seeing a lot more of our frosty tree friend. He has niche use in both great and ultra league, and a brand new mega evolution, so you might want to hang on to one for great league and one to max for both ultra league and mega evolving. Beyond that he isn’t a raid showstopper so you won’t be making a team of abomasnow like you might mamoswine. Any candy and specimens you acquire beyond the needs of those two snover would be perfect for mega evolving. So, you mark your useful snover (maybe even favorite so they don’t accidentally get shipped off) and start tracking your snover candy. Let’s say you have 125 candy: snover’s evolution cost is 50 candy so you would save 2 additional snover to evolve down the line. The rest you would transfer once an appropriate time arrives - like the event on the 22nd. If you are out of space, transfer right away because you’ll make more candy getting out there and catching than you will sitting around for an event. Once you acquire 150 snover candies, you would save 3 snover and so on as your candies increase. Then when it’s time to sort and mega evolve your snover will be ready to go! That’s the mindset to adopt if you want to mass evolve efficiently!

The Mega Evolution Process Summarized:

Identify good fodder species (low evolution cost and low use).

Acquire candies by catching and transferring while saving enough individuals for the number of evolutions you are able to do.

Before a mass evolution, identify and mark or make a list of all the Pokémon you intend to evolve.

Pop a lucky egg and do the evolutions as fast as possible, preferably during an event that boosts evolution exp like the bonus hour on Dec. 29th.

Dailies:

No mobile game is complete without dailies, and PoGo’s recently got a boost! Back in March daily bonuses for first catch of the day were tripled, meaning now for days 1-6 of a streak trainers get 1500 exp and 500 exp for first catch and first stop spun respectively. Then on day 7 trainers get a whopping 6k exp for first catch and 2.5k for first stop. That’s 20.5k exp a week just for popping in to catch one Pokémon and spin a stop each day!

Now don’t forget events! The daily bonuses for first catch also get doubled meaning that until the end of the year you’ll get 39k a week for daily bonuses. On day 7 alone the catch bonus becomes 12k and combined with the spin bonus and a lucky egg, on the last day of your streak you could earn 36k in just a moment! Save your mass evolutions, friendship bonuses or even just some pokeballs for catching till then and you can follow that massive burst of exp with your usual grinding methods!

Completing a research task each day can be harder, but will earn you 3k exp on your seventh completion (doesn’t need to be a steak). Raids are a valuable source of exp as well if you can pull daily tier 5’s at 10k each. But even if not, it’s worth it to raid something daily because if you don’t, that daily free pass is gone. Remember you can pair your raids if doing them at once is more convenient - ie. by saving your free pass from the day before you can complete a raid, pick up your new free pass and complete a second raid all in one day. Do what fits your schedule!

So, make sure to play at least for a moment each day to catch one Pokémon and spin one stop. You’ll secure 36k exp each week for minimal effort - and gain much more if you lucky egg your final bonus on day 7 (just make sure to make good use of the egg afterwards)! Otherwise just research and raid when you can.

Research:

Speaking of daily research, there is a whole other set of research you should be a little more patient and deliberate in completing: special and timed research. These are the multi-step, 3-piece bundles of research tasks that give a nice little set of rewards after each step. If you can stand it, save completed sets of research that reward experience until you are using a lucky egg for another activity. Then at the start of the egg you can quickly tap through your rewards and enjoy the double bonus. This is especially powerful when you are on the next to last step of a research. In most cases the final step is autocompleted, meaning you can get double experience for both steps at once! This strategy is a little harder to pull off with timed research due so be a little more lax in saving those - after all, double rewards on one step is rarely worth abandoning the entire rest of the research. In that case move fast and if there final two steps give experience, consider saving them for an egg once you’ve secured task completion.

So, don’t forget to make progress on your special and timed research tasks and save collecting steps that reward experience for when you are planning on using a lucky egg! Then burn through your research with time to spare for your usual experience grinding!

The Legacy Challenge

Even if you reach level 40 before the end of the 31st the race isn’t done! You’ll earn your Legacy 40 medal but you still won’t acquire the exclusive avatar item, Gyarados Hat, along with some choice item and Pokémon encounter rewards. To get those rewards you need to finish the timed research Legacy 40 Challenge which also expires after the 31st! The steps are below, and include catching at minimum 30 Pokemon and doing 3 raids, so if you’re pushing though to 40 in the final days or hours, know that you’ll need to grid through these steps fast if you want to get the rewards in time.

Step 1 of 4

Power up Pokémon 10 times

Catch 15 Pokémon

Make 5 Nice Throws

Step 2 of 4

Catch 15 different species of Pokémon

Transfer 10 Pokémon

Use 15 Pinap Berries while catching Pokémon

Step 3 of 4

Make 3 Great Curevball Throws Stardust

Win 3 Raids

Give your Buddy 10 treats

Step 4 of 4

Autocompleted!

The fight doesn’t stop at 40! Be prepared to rush through these steps before the new year if you want to get the last bit of bling that shows off your legacy achievement!

Postscript:

Thank you so much if you took the time to read all this! It was a ton of info and will take time to digest and put into practice, so be kind on yourself if you find yourself revisiting for a refresher. I hope it helps you and brings more joy, excitement, and success to your gameplay! If you enjoyed a peek into the nitty gritty fun of min-maxing and meta in PoGo try checking out these resources I use to stay informed:

Leek Duck - Great graphics and up to date event info!

Gamepress - Analysis and meta discussion on the existing dex and everything on the horizons!

And don’t forget to get involved with your local community through social media and especially discord! At Silph Road you can find any local discord groups or even get to work on starting your own if there aren’t any yet.

Good luck and stay safe, fellow trainers!