For those who are taking Pokemon Go to the highest level, I will leave here some advice. I have played Ingress for almost two years and some of the pokestops where I live I actually took the pictures and logged the locations :).
1. The most important thing to help you catch better and rare pokemons in Pokemon Go is to level up as a trainer. The fastest way to level up is to catch Pidgeys. Pidgeys cost only 12 candy to evolve, and you will get 500 exp per every pidgey that you evolve. Farm pidgeys, a lot of them. When ready (You must have 130`+ pidgey candy), then eat a lucky egg (this will be given to you when you level up. I forgot the level but I think it was either 8 or 9) and start evolving all your pidgeys. You will get 1000 exp each time. Do the same with the rattatas, zubats and other trash you might have collected. With this technique you will get the highest experience boost of your life. This is the fastest current way to level up in Pokemon Go.
2. If you have limited egg incubators, use your infinite incubator for your 2km eggs. Use the incubators that “expire” only for the long km eggs. This way you are mazimizing your egg hatching capacity.
3. If you want to know what are all possible attacks for each pokemon, check this guide of the Best Pokemon Go moves per pokemon.
4. Should I increase CP before evolving or after? The answer is, It DOES NOT MAKE a difference. It is a bit complex to explain and I might do a post on this later. Look, what you need to really try to find, are pokemon that have their “max cp” bar almost fully complete. Remember that the higher trainer level you are, the higher max CP each pokemon can have. Also the higher the evolution of the pokemon, the higher CP it holds. This means that at the beginning you shouldn’t worry at all about anything. Don’t waste Candies or Stardust in powering up pokemons until you are level 13-15 or so. Once you are those levels you will for instance find a Pidgey level 250 in the wild. This pidgey will have the max CP to almost the max. When you evolve it, you will get an almost maxed out Pidgeoto!
5. Pokestops are in places of interest. They have been logged by Ingress players. They took the pictures and put all the funny descriptions you see! We know where all the stops are. You can actually register on Ingress, and check the “Ingress intel map” to see whee all “portals” are. Those portals are what niantic has taken to Pokemon go and made them “pokestops”. They were logged through the hardwork of hundreds of thousands of Ingress players. If you want to know more about Ingress and how it helped Pokemon Go, read this article “What Pokemon Go owes to Ingress“.
6. You can name your pokemons in ways that will really help you. The best way I have found is to signal what are the attack kinds of each best pokemon you own. Let’s put an example. Check Golbat moves in the List of best Pokemon moves per pokemon I made. Now, imagine you have a goldbat with Wing Attack as a standard move and Air Cutter as Special. Lucky you! Those are the best “flying” attacks for a Goldbat. So I have named this Golbat Golbat FlFl+ (This means the best goldbat with 2 flying attacks). Then I have another Golbat that has attack Bite and Air Cutter. Hence one is Dark type other is Flying. This is my Golbat DaFl+ etc…
7. What is the best investment for your money if you want to do an in app purchase? I personally think it’s incubators. Max out on incubators so that you can hatch many eggs at a time. Lucky eggs can be massively helpful also if used smartly. (Like when you do a pidgey boost, or when your 9 eggs are about to hatch). And of course, permanent effect upgrades like a bigger bagpack or a bigger pokemon carrying capacity are also immensely valuable.
8. This is too much, but if you have the means… the best gear we used in Ingress was a Power Bank with 2 usb entries. On one you plug your phone so that it charges, on the other you plug a portable 3g wifi dongle to access remote locations. Theoretically your phone should already be able to access the 3G (and if it does then you don’t need this step). However, the antenna for the 3G portable internet is usually better than the phone so if you experience 3G connectivity issues with your phone, then this technique can be helpful.
Have fun with the game!
One bit of caution regarding your naming conventions based on their moves. This is great for you, but if you put one of these Pokemon in a gym, everyone battling it will know exactly what to use to counter it. So if you plan on using one in a gym, make sure it has a less transparent name!
Hi Justin! Please do let me know if you have prove of it being otherwise… but as far as I know your custom Pokemon nicknames are not visible by anyone else, not even if they are on a gym. So don’t worry you can still use a similar technique. Not sure if they plan to change this in the future though. Thanks for your comment.
Custom names are not visible in a gym. It appears with the Pokemon type name only, always.