Downing a gym defender instantly

I've heard all kinds of strange statements about how to do this, and now I've found the source of the strangeness. It probably works, but it's way more complicated than needed.

If you want to kick out a gym defender without giving the defenders a decent chance to feed it a berry, this is how you do it.

Be at least three players. That much is correct in the linked article. For this example I'll assume exactly three. Skip the crap about 2/9 of full health. The game draws a new combat instance whenever those who drop out of combat reenter as long as the original combat is still running.

And now for the action:


All attackers pick a lineup that will wipe the first and second defender in the gym.

All attackers join combat.

As soon as you verify that you are indeed three attackers in the fight two players give up and drop out of combat.

The remaining attacker inflicts little or no damage to the defender. Dodging is a good way to achieve this.

The two players who dropped out enter combat together, verify that they are indeed both in combat and one drops out.

The remaining one of those two does marginally more damage than the first attacker to remain in combat.

The third attacker enters combat and go all out.

Watch your screens. Make sure all three attackers win at aproximately the same time.

All three attackers enter combat with the next defender and win that fight, or else you'll face the wrath of error 29 and be locked out of the gym for ten minutes.


That's it.


Two players can try this stunt as well. Enter combat and kick the first defender down one notch. The first win won't generate a warning to the player owning the defender,

Leave combat after your win.

Reenter combat, one drops out and joins again. Syncronise the end so that you both win at the same time. Continue into the next defender and kick it down a notch. Rinse and repeat until the gym is cleared.


Is this abusing a bug in the game? I would say so, but, and this is an extremely important but, Niantic support has yet to acknowledge the existence of any bugs in the game. The madness with three percent of the playerbase receiving only two items from pokestops comes to mind.

In a game entirely free from bugs, there are none to abuse. Hence the method above has to be ascribed as a feature.

Changing meta game due to raid boss

With the switch from kyogre to rayquaza as the legendary raid boss a change in the meta game is both clearly visible as well as rather obvious.

I'm talking the gym raiding part of the game rather than the boss raiding one.

Since kyogre made short work of your lineup the problem with a general lack of potions and revives got further aggravated. Unless the lobby got filled you were likely to leave the boss raid with less material for gym raiding than what you had when you arrived.

Rayquaza is a push over and on average you should end up with a surplus of hyper potions and revives.

Indirectly this means you'll have more material with which to start hulking into gyms, which translates into a devaluation of the golden razz berries for gym defence.


In short:

Two weeks ago berry feeding gyms meant running the attacker dry on potions and revives.

Now stubbornly hacking into gyms, especially if you're two or three attackers, means depleting the defender's berry storage.


The change is brutally clear when opposing teams meat before a boss raid, two attacking into the gym and one defending it. The number of casual attackers is visibly increased since they have the potions and revives to afford joining into the fray. This in turn accelerates berry depletion since the defenders go down that much faster.

In the end it means it's harder to defend other gyms since you're running even lower on golden razz berries.

And back up

Game back in action when I checked 22.25 pm.

Down hard

As of 9.10 pm (actually a little earlier) Pokemon Go is down hard. I have absolutely no clue when it'll be back online.

Package deal February 2018

And we have yet another package deal, or three of them as usual.

Special Box, 480 coins:

• 3 incence
• 2 incubator
• 6 star piece

Great Box, 780 coins

• 4 incubator
• 3 lucky egg
• 6 premium raid pass
• 8 star piece

Ultra Box, 1480 coins

• 8 incubator
• 6 lucky egg
• 12 premium raid pass
• 20 star piece

The Special Box looks like a piece of junk at a first look, and it does indeed offer the worst discount. It does, however, have one specific kind of user -- a bicycling rural player. 3 incence plays perfectly with three of the six star piece. While you're slowly biking around you're also likely to put the two incubators to good use.

It's a fair deal, nothing more, but it's not the piece of junk it looks like at a first glance. Well, unless you live in the city. Then it's pretty much a waste of coins.

The Great Box and Ultra Box basically mimic each other. Opening your wallet a little wider gives you a 80 coin discount and 4 star pieces as a bonus. Anyway, if the Great Box is a good deal, then that automatically means the Ultra Box is a slightly better deal, so I'll settle for analysing the Great Box.

The player behind this key board, ie me, hates lucky eggs. They hold negative value for me as I have to discard the crap when they enter my bag. Other players still want their XP though. So the lucky egg part either runs at negative value or a positive one. For the sake of simplicity I'll assign a zero coin value to lucky eggs.

Four incubators sets you back 600 coins. Most of us do prefer to cycle through our eggs in the hopes of grabbing a good 10 kilometre one. Hence incubators always have a value.

Six premium raid passes also come with a 600 coin price tag. You tell me you avoid boss raiding at all costs and I'll start wondering why you're playing the game in the first place.

This is 1200 coins worth of items for 780 coins, which means the package deal is well worth it. Add eight star pieces for four hours of fun with 50% extra star dust and you have a really nice deal. Those star pieces will see good use during the coming community day if you're buying exactly one Great Box.

If you're doing the Ultra Box, then 20 star pieces can seem a little excessive.

Here's a nice trick. You probably dumped every egg in your inventory into an incubator. Keep watch on them. When you're 'soon' hatching just fire off one star piece and enjoy a few thousand extra star dust for no extra effort.

All in all we're looking at a perfectly good setup of package deals. I've seen better, and discarding lucky eggs was a minor downer for me, but in the end I found them to be of good value.

When burning through berries is good

Normally you'd avoid burning through a gym defended by berries, but sometimes you want to keep at it for reasons having very little to do with actually taking the gym down.

We're talking the idiot defence.

While most hardcore players will laugh off ten berries spent, ten berries per gym and day will deplete even the most imbalanced of bags. Say someone with 400 golden razz berries or something like that.

Sure, you have those who spend a significant amount of money and time on the game, but unless you can sustain five bossraids per day, every day, a cost of 40 golden razz berries per day is simply not sustainable.


So, the idiot defence. The definition doesn't apply to defending a gym just prior to a boss raid. At that time just defend everything inside until the boss spawns if you deem those two extra balls important.


With the main exception of chansey basically nothing below 2000 CP should be defended.

As for maxed out, or nearly maxed out pokemon, here's the list:

• Gyarados -- anything electric, but specifically raikou destroys this defender
• Tyranitar and aggron -- machamp does extremely short work of these
• Rhydon and golem -- exeggutor is likely to down just about anything when Solar Beam goes off

And the list of dubious defenders:

• Dragonite -- mauled by articuno
• Scizor -- anything fire, primarily moltres chops this one down

The dubious defenders at least have a chance at inflicting some damage before going down.

The shortlist will cost the defender two golden razz berries for every revive or main potion used. The cost in time for forcing a berry is neglible.

Your main problem as an attacker is that you're likely to run the defender out of feeding slots in less than fifteen minutes at a marginal cost since you get to spin the gym three or four times.

Why persist with attacking, and even prolonging battle if possible? As I said, the cost in potions and revives is neglible, but if you're doing this against a gym defended by multiple players while, for example, having a coffee at a coffee house, you could easily squeeze out thirty berries in a little over half an hour. Those are berries you don't have to care about when it counts later on.

While this won't push the really hard core oppnents out of the game, the semi casuals will have their golden razz berry storage effectively depleted in a few days.