Apart from scouring your local area for Pokémon, or the world if you’re being naughty and “spoofing”, there’s other things to do in Pokémon GO. One such thing is battling and capturing Gyms, putting to work the very Pokémon you’ve captured and added to your collection.
This brings you into contention with other Pokémon GO players, with the player with the stronger Pokémon usually coming out the victor and bringing the Gym under the control of the team they’ve attached to. By holding a Gym, players assigned to it will receive free Pokécoins, continuing to do so if they successfully defend it from other players.
The last thing you want to happen is to get the boot, so we’re going to share some tips to make sure that your Gym becomes your permanent haunt.
It’s important o make sure you have plenty of Pokémon in your possession before you go battling in Gyms. Once you’re over the trainer level of five, you should e allowed to enter, but won’t get far without Pokémon exceeding a certain CP limit, even more so now the game is out a few months and stronger Pokémon guaranteed.
Defending a Gym
Once you’ve chosen wat team you’d like to join, find yourself a Gym attached to it and see if a position is available; unclaimed Gyms are rare nowadays. Within the members, you should see a crown in the upper left corner, which means there’s room for one Pokémon.
With your place in the Gym now sealed, it’s time to choose a Pokémon of your own to defend it with, thus improving the overall defense and notoriety of the Gym. It’s important to choose your strongest Pokémon, as those attacking will not be bringing their Weedles. The more attackers you defeat the more room that becomes available, constantly improving the gym. Once all the gym members are beaten, then the gym will be susceptible to a takeover, which, of course, isn’t good.
If you happen to find yourself unable to join a local gym due to lack of space, you can still send your Pokémon there to train against members, giving you a nice dose of points.
Capturing a Gym
Unfortunately, sometimes there’ll be no Gyms available for you to join. This means you’ll need to go into raider mode and take a Gym from someone else. This is a little more complicated and takes a bit of work before being successful.
You’ll need a very strong Pokémon capable of taking heaps of punishment as the Gym you plan to attack will have various members ready to defend it. With that said, strengthening the Pokémon in your possession is essential and should be an issue if you’ve been capturing various Pokémon since downloading the game. This should give you a healthy stash of Stardust and Candy, which you can use to evolve and level up the Pokémon you plan to use when capturing a Gym.
You can pick up candy by bringing unwanted Pokémon to Professor Willow and exchanging them. When you have the Pokémon you want to capture a gym, you can boost their stats, even more, using a Power Up, making them even more deadly in battle. Make sure to evolve a Pokémon before adding the Power Up, as it could turn out to be a waste due to a different move set coming into the fray.
