At the end of 2020, Pokemon Go announced that you’d finally be able to go beyond the level 40 cap all the way up to level 50. I started playing Pokemon Go in the beginning in 2016, but I didn’t really seriously start playing it until 2018, and I started a second account and played them both at the same time. My primary account was ahead of my secondary, but it didn’t take long for it to catch up and have pokemon teams just as powerful. After a few months, both accounts were essentially mirrors of each other.
By the end of 2020, my primary account was able to hit level 40, but my secondary account still lagged behind. In order to reach level 40, you need a total of 20 million XP in the game. I think my primary was at 25 million at that point? And my secondary may have been at 18 million.
With the increased level caps set, you’ll now need a total of 176 million XP to reach level 50. In fact, the gap between level 49 and level 50 alone with 30 million XP. With these requirements and my current progress, I resigned myself that it would take years upon years to actually get there.
In the end, it only took 2 years and a month.
Both of my accounts hit level 50 last week after a long 7 months of being stuck on level 49. In addition to needed XP to gain a level, you also have unique level requirements, like hatching some amount of eggs, or defeating some amount of rocket members. Level 49 requires you land 1000 excellent throws on Pokemon, which is very time consuming and annoying if you don’t manually play so often. I was able to grind them out with the most recent Electric event, though.
So, if it took me more than two years prior to 2021 to gain 20 million XP, how was I able to get more than 150 million in just two years? Overall, 3 main factors contributed to my XP, but a few other things also changed how I played.
First, as the level cap was raised, so was the XP you gain for doing various things in the game. Catching Pokemon gave you a little more. Spinning stops gave you a little bit. Defeating Raid bosses gave you a little more. And, most notably, excellent throws now gave you 1000xp. Before, I think it was 200xp.
Second, additionally, evolving Pokemon now gave you 1000xp, too. Throughout the weeks, as I caught a lot of Pokemon, if I could evolve them, I would put them into their own group. There are many Pokemon in the game, and many of these Pokemon are not useful in battles. Because of this, I’d just throw them away to make room to catch more. But, if I have a lot of candy for those Pokemon, may as well make them useful by evolving them for the XP. When you use a Lucky Egg, you’ll get double XP for the next 30 minutes. AND! I logged into a single account using both of my phones. I could evolve double the amount of Pokemon and get double the amount of XP. In 30 minutes, I could get about 750 thousand XP. I caught enough Pokemon that I could do this every 2 or 3 weeks.
Thirdly, the absolute best way to get XP in the game is through friendships. After 7 days, 30 days, and 90 days, you’ll increase your friendship level for 10 thousand, 50 thousand, and 100 thousand XP. Use a Lucky Egg to double it. Making friends in Pokemon go wasn’t easy to begin with, but it became very easy when they introduced Remote Raids. Other people built match making apps where you friend each other to do raids. After hosting MANY MANY raids, I continue to send gifts to people and increase friendships. Every 2 or 3 weeks when I did evolves, I would get the XP from friendships, too. After one of these sessions, I would routinely make around 1.5 million. One night, I made more than 5 million.
Those were specific things I did to significantly increase my level, but overall, my play style is much different than it was prior to 2021 and the game has changed a lot, too.
The main way my play style changed was using these two things:
The Pokeball Plus was released in 2018 with the release of Let's Go Pikachu / Eevee, and meant to be used as a controller, but you could also connect it to Pokemon Go. When connected it will automatically spin stops for you. Also, when you're near a Pokemon you can click the button to try to catch it. Well, if you buy those rubber protectors above and shove a coin or two over the button, the button will automatically be pressed down and it will automatically catch a Pokemon.
With these two Pokeballs, I can turn on Pokemon Go, turn on the Pokeballs, and it will automatically capture Pokemon as I drive around town. This is an amazing efficient way of getting a lot of Pokemon very quickly and catching a lot of Pokemon that I wouldn't have caught otherwise. It's not a 100% catch rate, but it's still doing a lot more work than I would have to do manually, and it frees me up to focus on driving and moving around.
As time goes on, the radius that allows you to spin stops was increased and the overall number of pokemon that spawn has increased, too. I'm catching far more Pokemon than I ever had before.
It didn't take too long for both of my accounts to go through level 41, 42, 43, etc. Once I hit the mid-40s, I would take about a month or two or three to make it to the next level before I finally hit level 49. Each time you gain a level past 40, you have the option of saving your stat sheet, so I saved all of these images when I could. Here are my past few levels as a comparison.
Maybe they'll increase the level cap again in the future, but I doubt it. There's no real benefit of having your character reach level 50 compared with level 40. Once you hit level 35, you can boost your individual Pokemon to level 50, so it doesn't matter what level you are.
Lately, I've been playing Pokemon Go more casually and only focusing on certain events. Part of the reason it took me 7 months to gain a level was because I was barely playing the game. It's always fun to explore around town playing Pokemon Go, but with one less goal overall, it is one less reason to play, and that's a good thing. I can focus on other stuff instead.