The first step for everyone in Pokemon Go is to find and capture a variety of different Pokemon in the wild, but after reaching level 5, you can pick a team and take on gyms as well. This is a very important part of the game, and while it may seem time consuming to level up your gyms, we have a strategy that should help you quite a bit.
The gym system in Pokemon Go is a little confusing, but most every gym by now in the game is taken over by one of the three teams of Valor, Mystic, and Instinct. If it’s a rival team, your goal is to defeat it enough times to lower its prestige completely and leave it open for you or someone else to take over instead. For the purposes of this guide though, we are focusing on gyms that your team already has control of.
Once you come across a gym that is of the same color as your team, your goal is going to be to increase the prestige of that gym, which you can do by battling it yourself, even if you have one of your own Pokemon placed in it.
Your first thought would be to take one of your strongest Pokemon and letting them take down as many Pokemon as they can, since you can only use one in this situation. However, we’ve noticed something else while playing involving levels.
Rather than take one of your stronger Pokemon with higher CP, pay attention to what level CP Pokemon are in the gym and actually pick one lower than that if you can. At least pick one in similar range to the first few battles you’d face in the gym, and pick one with a type advantage. Even just beating that first Pokemon and being knocked out will help to level up the gym pretty quick.
By doing this with a lesser Pokemon, evidently that looks good for your team, while using a stronger Pokemon will reward less prestige and XP overall. This may change some depending on the gyms themselves and Pokemon used, but it has worked exceptionally well in my time with the game so far with leveling up gyms to many tiers, allowing other members of my team to jump on board with the additional spots.
- This article was updated on March 8th, 2018
