Brontoforumus

I think the level changes based on prestige. When you first take over a gym it's a lower level? I honestly don't know because I haven't tried to take one yet.

It can, yes. That 2000/4000 up there is how much XP the gym has, which goes up as people of that team train there. As the gym gains levels, more pokemon can be put in it to defend it.

Right, but the earlier image showed it as lvl3, so can it lose levels as well as gain them?

Yes.

Prestige is a gym's HP.

If a gym is unclaimed, anyone can drop off a defender pokemon there. That makes the gym level 2, with 2000 prestige. Since it's level 2, it can have two defenders, so anyone else can drop off another mon to defend it. A player can only have one mon at a given gym at a time.

Any player -- including someone who's already defending the gym -- can battle there. If the gym is occupied by the team you're on, battling there gains prestige. You get one guy, and the more mons you KO with that guy, the more prestige the gym gets when you're done. You can heal up and try again to pump up the gym's prestige.

At predetermined levels of prestige, the gym levels up, allowing another defender to be placed there.

If the gym is controlled by another team and you battle there, you get a standard six-mon team to battle through as many defenders as you can. The more mons you KO, the bigger the hit to the gym's prestige. And if you rob it of enough prestige that it levels down, it kicks out one of the defenders, making it easier to sweep the gym completely. If you drop the opposing gym's prestige to 0, you turn it to an unclaimed gym, and can place a mon there to claim it.

Once per day (or so, I think it's 21 hours), you can claim a Defender bonus. That's 500 stardust -- used to power up mons -- and 10 pay-to-win ingame coins per gym you have a defender in when you claim.

So yes, leveling up and down is constant.

"Twenty years and they still won't LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE!"

The area I work is a busy downtown metro with a lot of corporate offices. It's full of Zubats. Venomous vampire bats in the corporate sector? They just need ties and they're qualified to work there.

Not to ruin the fun with the Westboro thing but as far as I've been able to tell you can only see your own mons' names, everyone else's just shows the generic pokemon name.

SMT Go approaching inevitability here.

beatbandito wrote:Not to ruin the fun with the Westboro thing but as far as I've been able to tell you can only see your own mons' names, everyone else's just shows the generic pokemon name.

I'm still okay with it, the screenshots with nicknames intact are easier for me to find than the actual church-location gym.

PokeVision is a site that lets you punch in a location marker, and it'll scan the Go API to tell you where the nearby Pokemon are. No more do you need to wonder where that mysterious silhouette on your radar will spawn!

Problem is, as more people find out about it, their servers are getting pummeled about as much as the Go servers themselves. (And yes, I realize that by telling you about it I am part of the problem.)

Has anyone else been getting an issue where after using a razz, or possibly whenever you open the bag during an encounter, all thrown balls will sparkle and curve as if you put english on it?

Now that I'm high enough level that I get a slew of different items instead of all pokeballs at every stop I'm going to quit long before I spend money on wasted throws.

beatbandito wrote:Has anyone else been getting an issue where after using a razz, or possibly whenever you open the bag during an encounter, all thrown balls will sparkle and curve as if you put english on it?

Now that I'm high enough level that I get a slew of different items instead of all pokeballs at every stop I'm going to quit long before I spend money on wasted throws.

I've heard something like "once you're a high enough level facing high-CP 'mons, stuff starts curving on its own" - I've definitely started experiencing actual difficulty catching CP10 derps that used to be cakewalks because Niantic decided that more experienced trainers would have a harder time catching weak shit pokemon for... reasons?

The sparkle and curve is the curveball effect. If you hit a Pokémon with the ball, you have a greater chance of capture.

You can do this at any time you want. At higher levels it can happen regularly but it also sometimes automatically happens when you use berries.

There seems to be little rhyme or reason on timing.

I always just assumed it was my phone's shitty touchscreen.

In addition to Pokevision, where you can tap the map to ping the Go servers and display any mons in the area, a few Redditors are tracking Pokemon nests on their own map. It's pretty sparse outside of major population centers right now, but presumably will be filled in later. I don't care how many there are out there, I'm not driving to Castle Rock to catch Bellsprouts.

nosimpleway wrote:In addition to Pokevision, where you can tap the map to ping the Go servers and display any mons in the area, a few Redditors are tracking Pokemon nests on their own map.

Sparse, but really useful. I convinced Sharkey to come with me to the nearest nest just to see how legitimate it was, and there were Jynx everywhere. Then again, map or no map, there were also people everywhere, so we only got one each. I'd still trade Pokevision and these maps for the in-app one to work again.

nosimpleway wrote:In addition to Pokevision, where you can tap the map to ping the Go servers and display any mons in the area, a few Redditors are tracking Pokemon nests on their own map. It's pretty sparse outside of major population centers right now, but presumably will be filled in later. I don't care how many there are out there, I'm not driving to Castle Rock to catch Bellsprouts.

Oh hey, there's a Charmander nest nearby, I should see about going ther-no wait, it's in New Jersey, nevermind.