High level, what the heck?

So let's start by setting up a few definitions.

Pokemon Go is basically played at three levels:

• Starting game
• Intermediate game
• End game

High level would indicate the end game.

Starting game

From trainer level 1 through level 19.

This is where you learn the ropes, make all them stupid mistakes and make the next level before you can blink.

Intermediate game

From trainer level 20 through level 29.

Beginning with level 20 one important aspect of the game changes. Every hatched egg is equal. From here on you will hatch a pokemon at pokemon level 20. Implicitly this means this is where you start collecting pokemon for gym battles.

In reality you'll have your first decent combatant somewhere between trainer level 23 and 26. From level 25 you should aim at maxing out one new gym pokemon each level, giving you maybe half a dozen really good pokemons when you hit 30.

During the intermediate game levelling up slows down, but you still collect less stardust per level than needed to build a good line-up for gym battling.

The intermediate game is also where you get the best output from power-levelling with lucky eggs.

End game

The end game is what this blog is about. It starts at trainer level 30.

Three important things change in the game beginning at level 30:

• You get access to max revives. These cut the bag-space cost for reviving kicked out pokemons in half.
• No pokemon you catch will ever be of higher level than 30
• Every time you catch a specific pokemon in a group of players, that pokemon will have exactly the same specs for every player at trainer level 30 or higher.