Pokemon Go: 21 Pro Tips From People Who Spent the Whole Weekend Playing It

Fortunately, none of us are playing in a vacuum: There are already dozens of localized subreddits, themed Facebook groups in every imaginable language and country, and workplace Pokémon Go Slack channels - well, at The Washington Post, at least. The denizens of our #pokemon_go channel have been playing and posting obsessively since the game came out last week. So we polled them on their top tips ... and ended up with the following!

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- Finding Pokémon
The floating leaves that appear as you walk around mean that Pokémon are in that vicinity and that you may encounter some if you head over there. - Shelly Tan

The tracker in the bottom right corner tells you how close nearby Pokémon are - each footprint is approximately 100 meters. Keep an eye on this as you walk to see if the footprints increase or decrease. If they decrease, you're going in the right direction. - Shelly Tan

You can find pretty much every type of Pokémon everywhere, but they do tend to be densely populated in their own "habitats" - e.g. water Pokémon near ponds, lakes, rivers, etc. Supposedly, fire Pokémon congregate near gas stations. - Shelly Tan

Incense and lures both attract Pokémon to you: The difference is that a Lure is attached to a pokéstop and can be used by players near you, while an Incense follows your location and can't be shared. Both can be purchased in the shop or gained through level-ups. - Shelly Tan

Take the bus to hit a ton of pokéstops. - Tauhid Chappell

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- Catching Pokémon
Turn the AR slider off when trying to catch Pokémon. It makes it easier since you don't have to move your phone around to "find" the Pokémon: A generic screen will show up instead, and you only have to focus on throwing the ball. - Gene Park

Pokémon are easier to catch if you wait until the colored circle is smallest. - Daniel Hoerauf

The colored circles have different meanings, too: Yellow and red indicate that Pokémon are harder to catch; green indicates they're easier. - Kiki Simpson

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You can put spin on a pokéball before you toss it by dragging it in circles. - Victor Weiss

Once you catch a Pokémon don't move your camera, because it freezes the game and you have to restart. Noob mistake on my end. - Tauhid Chappell

- Training and evolving your Pokémon
Be aware of your Pokémon CP, or combat power - it expresses how likely that Pokémon is to win in a fight. You can arrange your Pokémon display by CP so you can see who's the strongest at any given time. - Gene Park

You need candy and stardust to train Pokémon. Stardust can upgrade any Pokémon; candies are specific to individual types. You can trade in Pokémon for candy of that type, so capture them all, even if you have duplicates. - Chris Nguyen

When you have extra Pokemons, you have the choice to keep them (which doesn't really do anything) or you "transfer" them to hot Professor Willow. Willow will then give you one "candy" for that type of Pokémon, which you need (along with stardust) to feed to the Pokémon to upgrade them, or evolve them. It doesn't matter how strong that Pokémon is, you just get a single candy. So when you get new candy, feed it to the highest CP Pokémon - there's no point spreading it around. - Gene Park

You should power-up your Pokémon before you evolve them. You don't want to get stuck investing in a Pokémon who evolves to have a bad moveset. - Tim Wong

You might also want to wait until Level 9 to evolve your Pokémon. Once you hit Level 9, you'll get something called a Lucky Egg, which gives you double experience points and evolves all your Pokémon like crazy. - Oleg Gogovykh

- Hacking 'Lures'
If you enjoy meeting new people and making new friends, start a Lure module at a pokéstop! - Darpan Shah

If you pop a Lure at a pokéstop, Pokémon will just show up there as opposed to you having to walk around. So yeah, Lures are basically people here at work wanting to catch Pokémon while they're stuck here. - Gene Park

Work in an office where there are enough nerds to coordinate a Lure placement schedule. - Abby Ohlheiser

- Preventing battery and data drain
You can enable Battery Saver mode in the settings. Once it's on, hold your phone facing down while you're walking. It turns off your screen and slows down GPS refresh, but it still vibrates when a Pokémon appears. - Chris Nguyen

Turning off AR can also save battery a bit. But it'll be less fun. - Oleg Gogovykh

Stay on Wi-Fi as much as possible. - Jason Wong

© 2016 The Washington Post