Team Mystic Is For Garbage People: How To Play Pokemon Go

Create A Throwaway Email Address

Within days of this game coming out, the whole internet exploded with stories of "POKEMON CAN READ YOUR EMAIL, WE'RE ALL GONNA FUCKING DIE!" Fortunately, that ridiculous panic turned out to be total bullshit. The problem, though, is that I've seen insane stories of gaming networks being hacked for real, so I know that's a legitimate possibility. So instead of assuming that they don't have access to every facet of your life, right down to your DNA, let's just play it safe and assume that they do.

As with any game or software which requires an email address to log in, I always create a throwaway email address. That way, if someone breaks into it, who cares? If the game company spams me with "important information" that I will never give even a fraction of a shit about, so be it. I'm not going to be reading that email anyway. So the first thing I did was set up a new gmail address, which is pretty simple:

Well, maybe. Sometimes it takes a couple of shots before landing on a name that hasn't already been taken. Let's try another.

Well, shit. Ummmm ...

Booyah! Now, we're off to the races, baby! Now, just fire up the game, and let's get to catching Pokemon right in their stupid Pokefaces.

Before You Even Pick A Nickname, You Get To Catch A Pokemon!

Right off the bat, you're thrown into the game. Three Pokemon will appear, and you'll be able to catch only one of them as your starter. TIP: If one of those three are not Pikachu and you are an obsessive freak who cannot survive without a Pikachu, you can still get one. Walk or drive away from those three starter Pokemon without tapping on one of them (don't battle any of them). After you get far enough away, they'll despawn and respawn within your reach. Get them to do that four or five times, and they'll finally respawn with Pikachu added. Here's "ThatDudeSly" doing it on his YouTube channel:

All you have to do to initiate your first battle is touch one of them, because Pokemon are notorious for reacting to touch with hatred and violence. The only way to stop them is to cram them into a ball that's a fraction of their size. To do that, just hold down on a Pokeball, and then flick it toward the Pokemon. If you hit it, the ball will capture it, and now you are officially an enemy of animal rights activists forever.

Since I don't like to walk or drive or leave my house for any reason, ever, I caught my first one in my living room:

Every time you catch a Pokemon, you will get 100 stardust, which is a very important form of currency which you'll need in order to level up your enslaved animals. You'll also get experience points for yourself as a trainer. The higher your level, the more likely you are to encounter more powerful Pokemon with higher stats. TIP: If you want more XP, you can swirl your Pokeball around before you throw it, and if it hits, you'll get a "curve ball" bonus. You'll also get more XP by hitting that shrinking circle with the ball. The smaller the circle, the more bonus points you'll get. Personally, I usually just scream in a blind panic and throw my phone, so I haven't really mastered that part yet.

Always remember to rename your Pokemon. Not only does it give the game a more personalized feel, but it helps if you can name them something which helps you remember what attacks they have. Once you have a shitload of Pokemon, that gets kind of hard to remember.

There are a few things you need to know here. Things I didn't understand until I looked them up. That number at the top (CP) stands for "combat power," and not "cock puncher" as I originally thought. It basically represents how powerful your Pokemon is -- how hard it can punch another Pokemon in its Pokecock. The lowest power you can have is 10, and most of the ones you catch in the first few trainer levels are going to be super weak like this. I'm going to explain how to make them more powerful, but don't waste your items on these beginning catches. Remember, the higher your level, the more naturally powerful Pokemon you'll find. You'll want to save your items for leveling up those.

It doesn't make much sense to waste a bunch of items leveling up weak Pokemon like Sack Back or Dick Magnet, when you could be sprucing up your more powerful ones, like Metallicat or Butt Gerbil.

Tapping "Power Up" will give you a permanent increase in hit points and CP. Tapping "Evolve" will change your Pokemon into its next, more powerful version, and also increase its CP value, hit points, and possibly change or upgrade its special attacks. There have been arguments about which do first -- do you level first and then evolve, or do you evolve first and then level? Those who have tried both methods have said that they've seen no difference, and then were immediately called racist and homophobic slurs. But not at real-life PokeStops, because though everyone loves to hand out a good insult online, nobody likes receiving an old-fashioned ass-kicking in meatspace.

You'll want to check out the attacks of each Pokemon you catch, because two of the same Pokemon can have different special moves. For instance, I have two snakes which at first glance don't look all that different:

But if you scroll down to their attacks and stats, you'll see that Tubesteak is much larger than Skin Flute, while Skin Flute's "Gunk Shot" is more powerful than Tubesteak's "Sludge Bomb."

Also notice that the more powerful your Pokemon, the more resources (stardust and candy) it needs to level up further. My rule of thumb is to keep the highest CP-value ones, as well as any that have high-damage attacks, and then just transfer away all duplicates. Doing that will permanently delete the Pokemon from your list, and the professor will give you one candy of that Pokemon type in exchange. Because that's the way we'd do it in real life. "Thanks for the snake. Here's a piece of snake candy."

So let's go back to that very first battle, in which you caught Bubblefarter. After you capture your first Pokemon, the professor will ask your name, so ...

Have Several Thousand Nicknames In Mind

Due to the sheer amount of people playing this game, your nickname of "Donglord_NutJammer" is probably going to be taken. Right now, this game has been installed on more phones than Twitter, and try to remember how hard it was to come up with an original handle when that beast got popular. You'll have to think of something original, like I did:

Well yeah, of course I do.

Of course it's not. OK, let's get a little more original. Maybe pluralize it.

Goddammit. OK, how about I just use my favorite band from the '90s that isn't Faith No More?

Absolutely.

GODFUCKINGDAMMIT! OK, screw this.

After the professor patronizes you and causes you to throw your phone at your nearest child, he'll tell you that it's time to walk around and catch Pokemon. Finally! Now it's time to do the fun stuff, baby ...

... unless you live in the country or on the edge of a small town. In that case, you'll have to walk or drive into the middle of town, where the actual Pokemon are. Even if you're not near heavily-populated areas (where most of them spawn), you'll still be able to catch some. It'll just take way longer for them to show up. So while we're waiting for Pokemon to spawn close enough for me to catch, let's go into the menu so I can explain a few things that I didn't know when I first started out.

The Menu Screen Is Actually Really Important

You see that little Pokemon ball icon on the bottom of your screen? Tap or lick that. It'll bring you to this menu:

The very first thing you'll want to do is drop a sweet elbow from the top rope onto the "Settings" icon (in the upper right), and turn all of that shit off. I usually leave "vibrate" checked so that I know when a Pokemon appears. But all of that music and other bullshit will suck the soul clean out of your battery.

You can try the "battery saver" option if you want, but when I used it, it made the game freeze up way worse than it already does (which is already enough to make you suplex a child in frustration). All it appears to do is black out the screen when you're walking and not looking at the phone. I've also found that when you're in a battle, if you turn off the "AR" button in the upper right, it seems to save a little battery as well. That turns off the camera, and just throws in a generic video game background during battles. Though that does take some of the fun out of trying to make them appear on your crotch.

Back at the menu screen, you'll see "Pokemon" on the left. You'll be doing a lot of stuff in here, so familiarize yourself with it. This is where you can do all of your renaming, powering up, evolving, or transferring shitty duplicates to the professor in exchange for more candy. Which, now that I think about it, sounds super creepy. You'll also get information about CP and attacks, as well as a little map which shows where you caught it. Since I fear movement, most of my maps are of my front yard. To access all of that stuff, just touch a Pokemon however inappropriately you want, and you'll be taken to its menu.

While on the screen with all of your Pokemon, you'll notice an icon in the bottom right which looks like a little clock.

If you touch, tap, lick, or dry-hump that, you'll be able to sort your Pokemon by criteria like combat power, hit points, favorites, etc. Sorting it by number will group them up by type (because each type is assigned a number). This is helpful for figuring out which ones to transfer and which ones to keep, because you can get a side-by-side comparison, much like buying endangered species for pets on the black market. Just line up all of the Amur leopards you have, and let me pick the one I want, dammit. I have a secret society to impress.

From your giant list of Pokemon, you can swipe right to see a list of any eggs you've found. You won't have any right now, but will likely end up getting some from PokeStops eventually. When you do get one, just go back into that egg screen and click on one. It'll give you the option to incubate the egg. Do that. You hatch them by walking however far the egg tells you. So if it says "2 km," it means you have to walk two kraken marmalades. It's some weird British measurement system. Even if you hatch a shitty Pokemon, you'll still benefit from it, because it gives you a lot more candy and stardust than a normal catch.

Back at the menu screen, tap the backpack labeled "Items" right in the face. Here, you'll find different crap that does different crap. The one that's of the most use to you right now is "Incense." Using that will attract Pokemon to you at a higher rate than normal. It only works on you, though, so if you're walking with a friend, they'll have to just eat a dick. Though you can just sit there and let the Pokemon come to you, it's more effective if you walk. Just smash your face into the Incense icon, and then touch it again on the next screen to use it. You'll be surrounded by a pink version of the Smoke Monster from Lost, and it lasts 30 minutes.

Back at the menu screen, do you see that icon called "Shop"? Unless you genuinely have extra money floating around that you desperately need to get rid of, ignore this, because ...

PokeStops Give Free Items And Eggs That Hatch Into Pokemon

If you're a weirdo who likes to walk around and do actual work to get your Pokemon, you're going to benefit from doing it in more populous areas. Even in my tiny little town, the business and courthouse district has all kinds of PokeStops.

When you tap on one of these while within range, a little window will pop up with the name of the building, landmark, or monument on it inside of a disc. Swipe across that disc to spin it, and it'll start puking out items. Just touch those when they fall out to collect them.

This is a good way to refill your Pokeball supply for free. You'll usually get at least three per stop, and you can spin that disc every five minutes. One note, though: If you just stand there at one stop and spin it over and over, it won't give you nearly as much stuff than if you walk from stop to stop. Pokemon really hates the lazy as well as the disabled. On the upside, there is a reason to just stand there, and that reason is the lure module.

In that first not-photoshopped-at-all image of the PokeStop spinny disc thing, you'll notice that right above the sex shop circle is a small blank white box. If you tap that box, it will give you the option to attach a lure. That lure will act like an incense, except 1) it's stationary, and 2) it benefits everyone. The Pokemon come to the stop instead of to you, and you can just stand there and catch them like the lazy bastard you are. You can tell when someone has already used a lure module, because the stop will have pink dots shooting out of it like Alan Carr's aura. I'd post a screenshot, but the servers went down 8,000 times today, so here's a screenshot of a Pokemon I caught earlier instead:

Gyms Will Earn You Coins, So You Can Buy Shit

Gyms are where you can battle other Pokemon, both of friendly and rival teams. When you reach Level 5 as a trainer, you can join one of the three teams: yellow, blue, or red. These mean absolutely nothing, so just pick one.

Wait, don't pick one yet! Once you pick a team, that's that. You can't take it back. There's one situation I can think of when you'd want to choose one team over the other. If you walk around town and notice that every gym is owned by the same color, there's a good chance that tons of people have chosen the same team. In my town, that team is blue. (Fuck blue -- yellow rules, you hippie pukes.) If you want to station one of your Pokemon at a gym that your team occupies so that you can collect free coins every 20 hours, this would be the easiest way. You can then use those coins in the shop to buy stuff, like more Pokeballs while giggling at that word.

You can still do friendly battles to help increase your gym's prestige ("level," for those of us who aren't insufferable colon polyps), and after those same-team battles, you don't have to worry about healing your damaged Pokemon. It's basically "Pokemon Gym: Easy Mode." I'd show you a screenshot of what the gym interface looks like, but the servers were down again. Here's another Pokemon I just caught while sitting here, typing out this article:

If you're battling against another team -- say some piece of shit blue team owns the gym, and the far superior yellow team wants to take it over -- each time you defeat one of their Pokemon, it takes down some of the gym's levels/prestige. Once that gym's number reaches zero, the gym becomes neutral, and you can take it over. Since the server is still crashing every five minutes, here's all of the Pokemon I've caught so far (minus the insane amount of duplicates I've sold off):

I'd tell you how the battle mechanics worked, but ... well, the server went down. So here's New Zealand's version of Layne Staley explaining how to do it:

If the servers stop crashing for long enough, I'll try to upload a picture of myself taking over a gym and leaving "Anal Probe" to guard it, so all the little kids have something to ask their parents when they finish playing.

EDIT: I just found out that other players can't see the names you gave your Pokemon. Uninstalling.

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