I don't remember lugia being this easy

Usually the kind of thought expressed in the title is a matter of our minds playing tricks on us. In this case, however, you're absolutely correct.

The lugia boss raid is a perfect example of what happens when a game evolves.

A number of things did indeed happen since you fought lugia last summer.

To begin with, you have collected a lot of stardust and converted them into more powerful pokemon overall. You might even have levelled up from levels where your pokemons couldn't reach their full potential.

More importantly, since electric type attacks were attractive back then due to the number of gyarados and vaporeon in the gyms, the arrival of zapdos was a great event. Overnight we received a huge boost over jolteon, and three months later raikou entered the scene. You're likely to have invested stardust into those pokemon.

EX raids had us scrambling for larvitar candy to turn into tyranitar, something further boosted by tyranitar boss raids. In the background players either pumped up a gengar or an alakazam to use as the starter mon for the promised EX raids. Then when those raids finally materialised boss raiders got their hands on mewtwo which is doing a much better job than alakazam.


All in all it means you're likely to be able to retire your golems from raid duty. And even if you don't, whenever the weather is partly cloudy they pack more of a punch.

You and your fellow boss raiders hit lugia a lot harder than you did the first time around.

Lugia makes a return

So we're getting the defender bird back again. I won't go into if lugia is anything to have or not, but it's the legenadry we'll be stuck with for a couple of weeks.

There are some camel dung -worthy recommendations out there, so I'll run through a shortlist of pokemon to have in a line-up. OK, the content in the linked to article wasn't all bad, but a far cry from good enough.

The extremely short version:

• If it's good enough to bring to a mewtwo raid it's good enough against lugia

That said we have quite a few more options.

Raikou, zapdos and jolteon bring an electric punch which you're not interested in for a mewtwo raid.

Of these raikou is the best pick if you have one. Stick to Thunder Shock / Wild Charge. There was a mild aroma of burning camel dung coming from the article. 

You're working with Wild Charge, which is a two bar attack, so there is absolutely no reason to walz around with a 2.3 second lockdown Volt Switch as a charge attack for an extremely minor increase in primary attack dps at a double cost -- decreased energy gain and stripping yourself from even a theoretical chance of dodging an incoming attack.

Zapdos and jolteon are secondary and tertiary picks.

Tyranitar is the second most attractive attacker after raikou. I personally prefer Crunch over Stone Edge for this fight since Bite quite frankly sucks at building energy and I stand a huge risk of going down with an 80 point energy bar. Still, in theory Stone Edge will do more damage during an infinitely long fight.

As usual start with a glass cannon. A gengar or alakazam configured for mewtwo raids is your best pick. Jynx works as well.

Disregarding the allure of camel dung you're going with Psycho Cut as a primary move both for alakazam and mewtwo. A slow, energyinefficient and not very effective primary attack is a bloody awful recommendation, so steer clear of Confusion. Shadow Ball, however, remains the correct pick.

Don't forget the rocky balls. Golem remains a good attacker if you get party cloudy weather, and so does omastar if you're lucky enough to have one with the rock type legacy primary move.

Kyogre, rayquaza and dragonite are all viable picks if you lack the really good attackers.

While Blizzard is a better pick than Hydro Pump for kyogre I'm not entirely convinced you can count on firing one off before your kyogre takes a dive. Waterfall is awful when it comes to building energy. In other words, it might not be worth it spending your CTM that way since any kyogre you're planning to bring into the fight probably comes with Hydro Pump.

If you're less than eight people I recommend you to check the individual capacity of the present players. Lugia remains a beast to take down. Think kyogre with extra bulk.

New to the extreme end-game, gym raider, raiding

I won't go into how you hulk into a gym on your own. That has been covered in detail before and isn't really part of gym raiding.

For a raid you'd expect to be

• 2
• 3 - 4
• 5 -6

players attacking more than one gym during one raiding session.

The two player attack is basically more or less the same as going alone with the main difference that the time needed to down a gym is cut in half and the cost in potions and revives cut to between a third to 40% compared to attacking alone.

The reason for the large rebate in potions and revives is that several defenders never get to fire off a charge attack at all.

For undefended gyms just shave off the first defenders, usually a blissey followed by snorlax or chansey. One attacker doesn't participate in the ousting fight but rather continues into the next defender.

For partially defended gyms, ie an occasional berry fed to the defender, both attackers got to work on the same defender, including the ousting fight.

Heavily defended gyms either have to be given up, or you'll need to restort to taking each defender down in two fights to either kick defenders out or at least force defending players to feed berries between each fight.

Moving between gyms after kicking defenders down one notch is another viable tactics. When the warning signal goes out a defending player needs to locate which gym is under attack and feed the defender a berry before it's gone. Quite often this takes more time than what's needed to enter fight number three and finish it.

Do keep attackers super effective or neutral against the current defender.

Three of four attackers can kick out each defender instantly, but you may not want to do this for some reason. In that case two attackers should keep going on the first defender in the gym while the remaining attacker(s) continue and hurt defenders further in the gym.

For heavily defended gyms you might need to keep every attacker rolling on the first defender to either push the cost for feeding golden razz berries into the unsustainable zone or kick defenders out by virtue of running defending players out of feeding slots.

Attacking mons are preferably super effective or neutral against the current defender.

Five or more attacker should normally avoid kicking defeners out instantly. It's more efficient to just brute force through the gym. Two or three players hammer the first defender into obvlivion and the rest make forays into the gym. It quickly becomes unsustainable to keep up coordinated feeding even if you're several defending players trying to keep the gym up remotely.

In the scenario where defending players do a comparatively decent job at feeding it might be a good idea to either send an attacker or two to the next gym, or simply shift gym altogether. In all likelyhood you've consumed a lot of feeding slots, and the second gym can't be defended at all.

Personally I prefer to just keep smashing into each gym. The cost for feeding a gym attacked by a full raid team is insane, and by the time you hit gym number three or four some of the defending players start depleting their berry storage.

This is basically attacking player motivation rather than pokemon motivation. For more players it's simply too scary to watch fifty berries drop to under forty in less than half an hour. Don't forget that many players actually use golden razz berries for catching raid bosses. They don't have berry supplies anywhere as large as the players who stack up on berries with a focus on gym raiding.

Also, while it's fun to know that one defending player in your team sits on 300 or more golden razz berries, that player can only feed each defender ten berries, and even a maxed out perfect blissey will see those slots consumed in under ten minutes.

Attacking mons are either sweepers or machamp. Using machamp against gardevoir is perfectly viable for a full raid. More often than not you won't find out what charge attack a defending pokemon has.

Boss raids

Notably a gym defended prior to an attractive boss raid usually can't be downed. You should expect players on site dropping the occasional berry into the gym without any semblance of coordination. The sheer number of berries fed into the gym will normally make it impossible to take it down.

Multistepping the gym also becomes impossible since attackers are just about everywhere in the gym, and you can't count on managing the synchronized endings of fights needed to kick a defender out in one go.

In this scenario either skip attacking the gym altogether or aim at maximising the cost in golden razz berries.

New to the extreme end-game, gym raider, gym oddities

Let's have a look at some gym oddities.


A fun one. Sometimes when you try to join the very last fight in a gym and the defender goes down before you can join battle the entire screen goes blue and you look at the data for a CP 9999 hitmonchan. Exit game and restart.


A stupid one. When you open a gym to see what's inside and leave it the entire game freezes. Exit game and restart.


A crippling one. More often than not, if you refuse to join the fight after you kicked a defender out of the gym, then when you try to enter combat again you'll get an error 29. It lasts for ten minutes during which you can't attack the gym. You either:

• wait ten minutes
• wait for the first defender in the gym to be kicked out

If you're raiding this means you have to tell your group that the fist defender needs to be shave out of the gym, or you'll have to do something else for ten minutes.

An misinformative one. You try to assign a defender to a gym and fail because 'the gym is currently under attack'. Next time you're busy kicking out that lonesone blissey, and when you finish the first of three fights you notice that it goit company by a snorlax.

It's got nothing to do with 'is currently under attack'.

When the first defender is kicked out a ten minute timer starts during which new defenders cannot be assigned to the gym.

Observe 'first'.

When you kick out defender number two the timer doesn't reset to a fresh ten minutes but continue to blithely tick down. Ten minutes after you kicked the first defender out it's perfectly possible to assign new defenders to the gym. This means you could be busy kicking defender number four out when the gym suddenly starts to get repopulated.

Wait. It's even crazier. If, for some reason, the ten minute timer counts down to zero before the gym is entirely cleaned out, then whenever a defender does get kicked out a new ten minute timers starts.

New to the extreme end-game, gym raider, berry feeding

Feeding mechanism

You can feed any pokemon in a friendly gym you're standing close to
You can feed any pokemon remotely in a gym when you have assigned a defender

Nanab berries are best for adding motivation. Razz berries and pinab berries give the same amount. Remote feeding a gym that is 'far away' will cut the motivation increase by 75%, but remote feeding a gym that is just out of range for normal interaction will yield the full value.

In either case you can only feed ten unique pokemon per half hour, and only ten berries per pokemon.

Observe 'unique'. If your snorlax in a gym gets kicked out after you fed it ten berries in rapid succession and are unable to feed it any more, it's still the same pokemon. Assigning it to a different gym won't allow you a new round of ten berries until that half an hour has passed.


There are basically two kinds of berry feeding.

• Trash bin
• Defence

Trash bin

Trash bin feeding is basically getting rid of your surplus standard berries for a small amount of stardust, badge XP and a shot at an extra candy.

My advice is to target gyms you're not standing in and keep track of your feeding slots. Especially if you're on the hunt for candy.

A newly assigned defender that has lost one fight can be restored to almost full motivation the first time you feed it three standard berries.

Unless you feel confident that a gym you have assigned a defender into won't come under attack any tie soon I'd advice you to avoid trash bin feeding the primary defenders in it.

That said I usually go through the gyms I have defenders in during evenings if I have a large surplus of standard berries. If they've lost marginal motivation I remote feed them exactly one berry each and make certain I have four or five feedings slots free in terms of the number of pokemon I can feed during one half an hour period. The yield is around 100 motivation.

Defence

This is where golden razz berries come into the picture

There are primarily three types of defensive feeding

• Preemptive
• Boss raid defence
• Gym defence

Preemptive feeding is done when the gym is peaceful but important defenders have fallen low enough in motivation to be kicked out after one lost battle. You decide wether to drop the gym entirely or ready it for future attacks.

Preemptive feeding is speculative. See it as an insurance. If the gym doesn't come under attack you lost a golden razz berry. However, the reason it never came under attack might just have been your feeding one or two defenders.

Boss raid defence is what happens the last twenty minutes or so prior to a legendary raid boss. It goes on for a full hour prior to an EX raid. The team that owns the gym pours in golden razz berries while just about everyone else hulks into the gym.

It's horribly expensive in terms of berries and a lot of fun. You're usually better off feeding everything in the gym. Maybe allow some moronic insertion of pikachu with a funny hat or crap like that to be kicked out. Defend the remaining five and assign something useful after ten minutes.

Gym defence is the reaction to a gym raid. Two or more players attack the gym and those in control try to stave off the attack.

Focus on blissey, chansey and snorlax. Especially if you have the opportinuty to have friendly players arriving on the scene. They can replace secondary defenders if you manage to keep the gym up for ten minutes.

Unless the attackers multistep the gym, in which case you're unlikely to be able to defend it anyway feed a berry every second combat against two attacker (or a solo player for that matter). Against four or more players you need to feed after every fight or you're going to see defenders drop out during the chaos.

For all practical purposes a gym attacked by a full raid team can't be defended remotely. The cost in potions and revives is neglible for the attackers, and there will be fights going on all over the gym simultaneously while two or three attackers continuously tear down the first defender in line.

Never feed every defender in a gym if you're defending a cluster of gyms. The attacking team will simply check when six feeding slots have been used and tear down the next gym while you watch in frustration. Even if you're spreading your defensive efforts your are, literally spread thin. What was once the ability to feed a specific defender 20 berries drops to 10 since one defending player ran out of feeding slots.

Also, make sure you can afford the cost in golden razz berries. We usually see either very few berries being used or well above fifty when we attack groups of gyms. Obviosuly it's not a single defender feeding all 50, but still. At one occasion we attacked through upwards to 200 berries. With that kind of numbers you'll run anyone but the most deidicated player dry on berries.

Don't forget that you want a minimum of golden razz berries left for actually throwing after raid bosses should something especially juicy pop up on your screen.

The first golden razz berry, or first group of berries fed into gym is the most important. My experience is that about half of the attacks cease immediately when prime defenders return to full motivation.

Next, very short article will be about gym oddities.

New to the extreme end-game, gym raider, gym defence

Gym defence is a matter of defenders, design and traffic density. While the article, and the one it links to, is a little dated, the main points still hold true.

Since the last article covered the bare bones defenders we'll have a closer look at design.


Whenever I'm bolding something it means it's the best pick whenever more than one is viable.


Design is a function of traffic density. Or at least it should be. I've read all kinds of crap stating that the same design is optimal for every gym, and that design being you should avoid motivation decay at all costs.

Lot's of camel dung being smoked there.


For an extremely low traffic density gym just assign whatever is in your recent list and you plan to transfer anyway. It's been a few days since anyone was here, and maybe within a week someone will visit the gym and kick you out.
Actually you want to avoid dropping your cared for chansey here. It'll drop to zero eventually, and what's worse, you risk getting it locked in.


For a standard low traffic density gym, which usually includes even central gyms when night is closing in, you can apply the numbers game and search for CP 1000 to 1999 pokemon to insert. I personally can't be arsed to do that. When the attack comes at five o'clock I'm usually asleep anyway.
These gyms are the only ones where the mainstream moronicity is applicable.


For a high traffic density gym you use maxed out defenders of top quality. These are also more or less the gyms gym raiders are truly interested in.
You expect the gym to come under attack with a depressing regularity.

Basically it means that a blissey and at least one of snorlax and chansey should be assigned to the gym. Preferably all three.


Sandwiching

The dilemma with these three defenders is that machamp is the preferred attacker for all three, which is the reason you should consider sandwiching in defenders which are problematic for machamp.

Clefable and gardevoir are your best bet since machamp is ineffective against these and they are supereffective against machamp with STAB for Dazzling Gleam to boot.

However, a maxed out example of the latter could be out of your grasp, and you may already have put in a lot of resources into vaporeon, lapras, steelix or donphan since before the release of the generation three pokemon.

Maybe you're pushing a milotic. If so I recommend you to stick with Waterfall / Surf despite the information given elsewhere. Reason being that attackers are far more likely to hulk into your water type defender with an electric type pokemon, read raikou, than using an exeggutor. The main culprit here is the overabundance of gyardos in gyms, and grass type pokemon simply doesn't compete when it comes to shredding gyarados.

Of these I recommend that you keep lapras out of the gyms until rayquaza vasnishes as a legendary raid boss.

A Counter / Play Rough donphan would do the job.


Observe that sandwiching only helps with cutting down attackers who walz right through the gym, and only if they're two or less.


Bulking up

If your local meta is defined by shaving then sandwiching won't help much. You're better off either bulking up och going for the throat.

Bulking up is primarily effective where you very seldom see more than two players attacking and shaving a gym.

This means dumping vaporeon, lapras and, surprisingly, wigglytuff into the gym.

If you're using your brain instead of smoking camel dung you're running with a Pound / Play Rough or Dazzling Gleam setup for wigglytuff. Wigglytuff is a fairy / normal type pokemon, so it's doubly moronic to suggest that you pick Feint Attack as your primary attack.

STAB pumps Pound to the same level as Feint Attack, and since there is very little reason for an attacker to swap out machamp (due to doing neutral damage to wigglytuff) and start digging up a steel type pokemon, you don't want a dark type attack which is ineffective against fighting type pokemon, which is why Feint Attack sucks.

Why not have a steel type pokemon in the standard attacking party? Well, this is the bulking up meta, and you're having vaporeon in every gym, and steel type attacks are patently crap against water type defenders.


Going for the throat

There are comparatively few gyms where you play, but pokestops are everywhere. This means all players are starved for potions and revives.

In this meta you want to pump out as much hurt as possible.

You'll be assigning some previously rather dubious defenders to gyms for this reason, and dragonite with Dragon Tail / Outrage is your best friend here. Despite battles taking next to no time this pokemon is worth pouring golden razz berries into in this meta.

Slaking suddenly starts to look like a decent defender since Play Rough is easy to miss, and it will wipe out the attacking machamp. Notable drawback is that it must be fed a berry between fights to do any damage at all.

Gardevoir and Espeon can be used for the combination of Confusion and superior attack stats. Tyranitar negates Espeon though.

If you're lucky enough to have a legacy Exeggutor with Confusion, just give it Seed Bomb as a charge attack and it's ready to go.

A Waterfall / Crunch gyarados will inflict a surprising amount of damage to the attacking electeic type poekmon during the very few seconds the fight lasts. If you're currently out of dragonites you can afford assigning to gyms this might be an option.


All in all I'd aim for a combination of sandwiching and going for the throat. Save vaporeon for relative outlier gyms.

Feed berries every second combat unless you're feeding a slaking or there is intensive agressive traffic into the gym. In that case either give up or pour in a berry every fight. Otherwise you'll end up losing defenders further into the gym as staggered attacks take down defenders inside the gym simultaneously.

The first golden razz berry is your greatest deterrent. My experience is that it immediately kills off half of the attacks. For the rest you're likely going to need coordinated feeding, which means you need to be in contact with a second defender who can take over when you're running out of feedling slots.

More on berry feeding in the next article.

New to the extreme end-game, gym raider, defenders

In the end your defenders pretty much define who you are when it comes to gym raiding. For most players the defenders are their outward face. They are the pokemon other players see and associate with your player nickname.

I won't go into the fun defenders, the ones you use to build a thematic gym. We do that from time to time. It's enjoyable, a lot of giggles and laughs, but it's not really gym raiding.


A real defender is as maxed out as you can have it. Just forget the crap about keeping your defenders at low CP in order to minimize motivation decay. That's for fire and forget gyms. If you're interested in low motivation decay then you're not really interested in defending the gym in the first place, and thus you're probably not a gym raider.

Sure, you could have both. Defenders you use for contested gyms and "defenders" you drop into isolated gyms and don't see until several days later because no one else visited the gym.


At level 38 you should have amassed stardust and candy enough to max out two of the prime defenders in the game.

• Blissey (Zen Headbutt / Dazzling Gleam)
• Chansey (Zen Headbutt / Dazzling Gleam)
• Snorlax (Zen Headbutt / Heavy Slam) There is a better legacy charge attack, Body Slam

Until you have the resources needed to max out multiples of these you're going to need secondary defenders. Aim at a total of six defenders since a dozen maxed out pokemon should be perfectly doable at level 38.

Remember the last article. You needed six attackers as well.

I'd go for three of these:

• Vaporeon (Water Gun / Aqua Tail or Water Pulse)
• Milotic (Waterfall / Surf)
• Donphan (Counter / Heavy Slam)
• Steelix (Iron Tail / Heavy Slam)
• Lapras (Frost Breath / Ice Beam) There is a better legacy fast attack, Ice Shard

If at all possible aim at maxing out one tertiary defender as well

• Gardevoir (Confusion / Dazzling Gleam)
• Clefable /Zen Headbutt / Dazzling Gleam)

The tertiaries are all about screwing machamp over.

Now you should have six or seven defenders to drop into gyms.

After that the slow hunt for more blissey, snorlax and chansey starts. Unless you've been lucky enough to chunk up on snorlax or chansey candy you're in for a grueling grind.

Next article is about gym defence. Defence, not defenders.

New to the extreme end-game, gym raider, attackers

Unless you're happy only assigning defenders to gyms someone else tore down, in which case you're not a gym raider at all, then you need an attacking line-up in order to be able to assign anything at all.

First of all we need to define the term gym raider.

It's not a solo player. Don't get me wrong here. Many of the best players I've met out there are solo players, but they aren't gym raiders. They simply lack that aggregated skill set.


A gym raider is a player who attacks gyms together with other players of the same team and more often than not defends conquered gyms together with those players. The attacking part is vital. Gym raiders who don't defend gyms just tend not to stay in them for very long.

Note the plural. Gyms as well as players. If you're three players walking down to that lonely gym every day you're not raiders. You're making certain that gym stays in your posession.


So, let's move on to the bare bones minimum attacking force. You want to at least be able to fill out one predefined attacking team now when we have access to this nifty party beta.

Talking about parties. I know it sucks, but you just have to wipe that party from time to time and create the same one placing it last since Niantic, in their divine wisdom, decided to list the parties in the reverse order you get access to them when you want to use them.

You want that party to be the first one to show up when you swipe left. More on why in a later article.


Six pokemon, with 15 attack stat if possible. Bolded are best.

• Machamp (Counter / Dynamic Punch) x 2
• Dragonite or Rayquaza (Dragon Tail / Outrage) x 1
• Zapdos (Charge Beam / Thunderbolt) or Raikou (Thunder Shock / Wild Charge) x 1
• Two more attackers

The six pokemon above are needed. Just get them maxed out.

Why those?

Gyms nowdays are populated by blissey, snorlax and, quite often, chansey. Add tyranitar, aggron, lapras and rhydon. Fighting attacks rule the day. I personally run with a third machamp as one of the two extras. Avoid flying type pokemon since machamp is ineffective against those. So no dragonites and gyarados as your targets. Also avoid fairy type pokemon like clefable and gardevoir. You'll get wiped out.

Dragon type attacks are largely unresisted. More often than not, when in doubt, attack with a dragon. Both dragonite and rayquaza come with superior attack stats combined with good to decent bulk. Dragontypes are an expensive but perfectly decent option when you're cleaning out dragonites in gyms. Sure, you'll take a beating, but you'll also make quick work of the defender without resorting to digging up that ice type attacker.

An electric type attacker is sweet to have for the ever present gyarados and vaporeon in gyms. Electric is also largey unresisted whenever your dragonite/rayquaza runs into problems.

The two extras depend on your local meta game. Where I live that chansey is almost always inserted into gyms together with the mandatory blissey and snorlax, and players here have learned to pump up their defenders. Thus I run with a third machamp.

For some obscure reason rhydon got extremely, and golem quite, popular locally, so I've been running with an exeggutor (Bullet Seed / Solar Beam) as the last party member since it absolutely destroys rhydon and golem. Now we're seeing more and more fairy type pokemon, so I'm thinking of swapping that one out in favour of an aggron (Iron Tail / Heavy Slam) or metagross (Bullet Punch / Flash Cannon).

Another place might see good use for a kyogre or gyarados (Waterfall / Hydro Pump). Maybe you're overdosing on plants locally, in which case I could see a use for moltres or entei (Fire Spin / Overheat)

No matter what, your local huting ground will have it's own idiosyncracies. The two last slots are for handling those. You want those two attackers. Don't cheat on them.

Max out that attacking line-up. You can go play the threshold game for boss raiding for all I care, or use level 33 attackers for rarely encountered defenders. But don't cheat on your primary attacking line-up. Level 40 they go. It's six pokemon for crying put loud.

Sure, as you collect more stardust and recall dinging level 40 yourself with a sense of nostalgica, you'll wind up with a plethora of maxed out attackers, but then you're hardly new to the extreme end game any longer.

Next article up will cover the bare bones defenders.

New to the extreme end-game, gym raider, bag

This is the first in a short series of articles about the new extreme end-game gym-raider.

Let's have a look at one archetypical player -- the avid gym-raider. Let's combine that archetype with a player who is also new to or closing in on the extreme end-game.

Level 38. That's the holy grail. It's the last level where the game gives a player any potential long-time benefits. At level 38 you can push a pokemon to level 40, and, well, that's it. From here on it's just about grinding for better material in terms of the number of attractive pokemon you have available.

Bag-size: 1500. This is the by far most powerful upgrade you can get in the game. Just max out your bag to minimise problems with how many items you have of one type. Upgrading your bag takes priority over anything else you can shop for coins.

Pokemon Storage: The number of pokemon you have plus 100. 1500 is nice to have, but it's not vital. However, under no circumstances do you want to sit with a really sought after pokeon caught without room to collect it. Players with Gotcha or Plus should aim for plus 200. You're likely to clean out your storage after a finished session rather than discarding low-grade pokemon on the go.


Pokeballs: Whatever ensures you don't run out of them. This is highly individual.

Pots and revives: 150 or more of each. You'll burn through them at a depressing rate if you go gym-raiding. Observe that the basic potion doesn't even count towards the number 150.

Golden Razz Berries: 100 or more. Defending a gym is expensive.

Other berries: Whatever floats your boat. I personally go for zero with the exception of Pinab Berries which I want around 20 of. Use friendly gyms as trash bins for excess berries. Target defenders of a kind where you want candy. Do overfeed them if you have a surplus of berries. You still get 20 stardust and a small chance for a candy.


Anything else is optional. Sure, I keep a minimum of premium raid passes, star pieces, lures and so on. but they're not actually needed for gym-raiding. These are items that make my gaming more enjoyable. Arguably star pieces and rare candies do help to a very large degree to keep your line-up top notch. As for lucky eggs. Use them until you hit 38. After that they cease to have any functional value what so ever.


I like massively overpowered legendary raids. They resupply my storage of revives and hyper potions. My stash of golden razz berries and rare candies, however, isn't impacted by the number of boss-raiders during a given raid. Note though that if you're prone to enter a boss-raid with the minimum players required you're likely to pay in terms of potions and revives rather than gain from boss-raiding.

For this reason I spend less time spinning stops and gyms in order to resupply on potions and revives.

I dislike going below half a dozen premium passes, but again this is individual. A healthy supply of lure modules and incense, a dozen or more of both, makes me a happier player. While I'm currently overdosing on star pieces I'd rather avoid going below half a dozen. Always having access to three hours worth of 150% stardust is the minimum for me.

When it comes to TM I discard down to 20 for Fast TM. I could probably discard down to 10 (as in I really ought to do that). You usually burn through your Charge TM quicker, so I have yet to discard those.

I personally try to stay below 100 rare candies, but I have full respect for those who want 245 candies. That gives you the opportunity to max out anything you just caught given enough stardust, which is 225000 star dust for a level 20 pokemon. And before anyone jumps in and says that you need 248 candies -- you can't catch anything without collecting three candies.

Observe that this is only true for pokemon you want to max out in their current form. There is a cost for evolving as well.

While stardust isn't something that takes up space in your bag it's still a limiting factor. I basically refuse to go below 225k stardust in order to be able to pump up anything I collect given enough candy to do so.

I keep one each of the evolve items. They will probably never see any use, but I can waste five bag slots.

Lucky eggs are a waste of bag space for me. I keep five as a gimmick since that's the number of lucky eggs I have left as level rewards. There is no rationale behind this, but hey, it's a game. You're supposed to have some fun. And yes, I immediately discard 25 lucky eggs when I shop the current big-pack.

Next article will be about the bare bones minimum for attacking gyms.

Full raid team

And we're talking gym raiding here, not boss raiding.

Standing six level 40 mangling a gym might be considered a minor overkill, but we got some interesting data anyway.

Berryfeeding is basically noticeable for blissey only. For other defenders the time it takes to leave the gym and reenter it is usually too long for the defender to survive the third combat. Ie the berry feeding player would need to feed a berry betwen each combat and still find out that sometimes a second combat had already occured.

Downing a gym including decent versions of the three big ones, 3.2k snorlax, 3.0k blissey and 1.3k chansey is quick work. Extremely quick work if it's not being fed berries. At no occasion was it possible to spin the gym before attacking it and spin it again after we had populated it fully. Ie time between first attack and last assigned pokemon is below five minutes.

The time used is so short that trying to three-step defenders to kill them in one go is a waste of time unless you verify that someone is actively berryfeeding a blissey at 3.1k or something like that, and even then brute forcing a fully motivated blissey is a matter of some fifteen seconds of time.

The total cost for downing a fully populated and fully motivated gym is aproximately one hyper potion per attacker. Sometimes one revive as well.

It's more efficient to burn through with your machamp than switching to a saner attacker. Gardevoir, gyarados, of dragonite just didn't matter. Despite your being not very effective they go down prior to using a charge attack anyway.

Have fun gym raiding out there.