If you’re a newcomer to the walkathon delights of Pokémon Go and you’re struggling to get your best, but weaker than the rest, Pokémon into a gym to earn some valuable Pokémon Coins, don’t fret none, because there’s always a way in sooner or later. The reality is that the game’s developer, Niantic, want you to have a chance of getting into the game, so it’s developed a clever system that allows newbies to get into a gym as well as the keeno early players that are now level 20+ third dan black-belt ninjas at the game.
The game essentially gets more difficult to level-up and it becomes harder to power up your Pokémon the further into the game you get, so it gives at least a little sporting chance to anyone just starting to play. However, the other thing to bear in mind is that there’s also a fair number of other newbies around, so not everyone you face off against will be indestructible 1,000+ CP monsters. If that isn’t enough comfort for you, you might also be pleased to know that at its absolute simplest, getting into a gym is just a case of strolling up and placing your Pokémon inside to collect your coins.
Read our guide on how to level-up fast in Pokémon Go to help you raise your game across the board.
Getting your Pokémon in a gym the easy way
As with all things in life, there are easy wins and there are more hard faught battles in Pokémon Go. By far the easiest way to get your Pokémon in a gym to cash in on the 10 coins you can collect every 21-hours from the shop (tap the insignia in the right hand corner of the screen in the shop to collect your booty) is to find one that is already affiliated with your chosen team colours and has a free space all ready and waiting for you. You can tell this by tapping on a gym in your colours and checking for the little add Pokémon button in the bottom left of the screen.
Surprisingly, a free space comes up more often than you think, so you just need to check gym’s wherever you go and be ready to move fast to get one of your up-and-coming champion Pokémon in. Once you spot a space, get close enough to the gym, tap the add button and choose which of your characters you want to leave in. While it’s tempting to put your strongest Pokémon in, you might want to reserve them for tougher battles ahead and put your third or fourth best in.
While you can also pick up easy wins by finding completely unoccupied gyms, this is almost unheard of nowadays with the sheer volume of Pokémon Go trainers out there now. However, Niantic may well be inclined to release new gyms to make things interesting in the coming months, so watch this space for updates.
Training your way into a friendly gym
This is a little tougher and does sort of rely on you building up the CP and HP of your Pokémon to be able to win a one-on-one sparring session with your fellow team colour gym inhabitants. As this is just a single Pokémon round (one of your guys versus each of the fellow team Pokémon played individually in a row), you need to be comparable in terms of CP in the very least to stand a chance of winning.
Start by scouring your local map to find a gym controlled by your team. Tap it to open the roster screen to see who and what is inside – scroll left and right to see your friendly competition. If the lowest CP Pokémon has the same strength as your best then tap on the fight button in the bottom right of the screen. This will start a training match and at this stage it all comes down to how quickly you tap the screen to get your hits in. You can mix this up with your super move by pressing and holding the screen when your power bar maxes out, and you may want to try to dodge any of the oppositon’s super moves, but you should stand a good chance of picking up the win.
As you get more and more powerful, you may be able to beat the first two, or three gym buddy Pokémon to earn even more gym points, which will unlock extra places that much quicker. However, as you can only put one of your Pokémon in any one gym, it isn’t really necessary to develop as a player. When you do rack up a win you’ll add points to the gym tally and when you reach the threshold displayed a new space will become available for you to take up.
You might have to repeat this procedure a few times to get enough gym points to unlock a new space for one of your own Pokémon, so having a good batch of potions, super potions and, later on in the game, hyper potions to be able to top up your HP after each battle. One of the most important points is that the amount of gym points you get is proportional to the CP difference between your Pokémon and the opposition. If you match a lower CP against a higher CP and win you get way more gym points, so it’s worth swapping in the right Pokémon before you start; one that’s just a little weaker than your opposition works the best.
Battling your way to controlling a gym
This is essentially the same as training, but instead of just taking one Pokémon into battle, you get to take six. In most situations it’s best to take your best six into the action and hope for the best. Essentially, you keep tapping, super moving and dodging for all you’re worth to beat as many of the other team’s Pokémon as you can. If you set up your team weakest-to-strongest, that will match things up better and help you max-out your gym points impact.
As you take off points from the opposition gym, you’ll need to revive and potion resuscitate your Pokémon to be able to repeat the process to keep removing points. If you can bring it down to zero then you’ll have a free gym to move into with one of your characters and you’ll be able to cash in on your ten coins.
Keeping a Pokémon in a gym for as long as possible
This is no easy feat, but it is achievable in two very specific scenarios. The first is simply that you have such a powerful Pokémon and you manage to occupy a gym that also has fellow teammates that are super powerful, so it becomes incredibly difficult for other team players to successfully attack. It will require a fair amount of management with training to keep the gym points healthy, but it can be worth it to be able to get enough of a coin revenue stream to be able to buy the glorious lucky eggs on a semi-regular basis, which will help you to level up fast.
The second scenario is you manage to find a gym that is so far off the beaten track that you can occupy it pretty much as long as you want, because not enough other players can or do pass by it. They’re rare, but if you find one they’re little gold mines. If you can string all of this together, it’s possible to get a few Pokémon in a gym at the same time, and if you can do this at the right time in your countdown cycle then you can collect multiple coins. Right now I have three fairly decent Pokémon in gyms, one of which is a hidden banker, so I picked up 30 Poké coins today, so it is possible to slowly catch up with the early starter high level power players out there. Just keep on working the angles and you’ll be a gym king before you know it.
