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.