Safety First!

You probably have heard stories about people getting injured while playing Pokémon GO. Some folks have walked into traffic. Others have crashed their cars playing while driving. And some people have actually walked off cliffs! It's easy to get caught up playing Pokémon GO, but you still need to pay attention to your environment. Stop walking if you are searching for Pokémon. Stop walking if you are catching a Pokémon. If you need to look at your screen, you should stop what you are doing and just be safe.

Safety can mean many things though, besides not walking off a bridge:

• First and foremost — always be aware of your surroundings! Keep to areas you know are safe for playing Pokémon GO, and pay attention to strangers around you. You may be hunting Pokémon, but someone there might be hunting wallets and purses. If you are going into a strange area, make sure you walk with friends.

• If you're going on a long hunt in the sun, apply sunscreen. If it's winter, consider touchscreen gloves to protect your hands.

• If you're crossing the street, make sure you pay attention to the cars — do not assume drivers will see you and stop.

• Don't enter private property. Don't assume a property owner is okay with you hunting Pokémon on their front lawn.

• Make sure don't get dehydrated if you are going on a long hunt. Bring drinks and snacks.

• Always wear bright colors at night. If other people can't see you, they can't avoid you.

• Have backup battery power. The last thing you want is a dead cell phone when you run into an emergency.

And last but not least — NEVER play while driving a car or riding a bike. No Pokémon is worth it!

How To Get Pikachu As Your Starting Pokémon!

In the Pokémon Anime, Ash starts with Pikachu. So the creators of Pokémon GO put a little Easter Egg in the game so you can start with Pikachu, too.

We are sharing this information with you early in the book because it's very easy to miss. This might be beyond folks at this late stage, but maybe you're thinking of starting a second account? Or, maybe you're helping someone start their first account?

Okay, first things first. You have to be starting the game at the very beginning. When you start playing Pokémon GO, you are presented with three choices of Pokémon: Charmander, Squirtle, and Bulbasaur. These are the same three choices players had at the beginning of Pokémon Red and Blue back in 1998.

You have to ignore these Pokémon! Don't catch any of them. Instead, head outside and go on a nice long walk. Walking in circles won't count. GO's internal GPS needs you to walk far away from your starting point. After about 200 yards or so, the three starting Pokémon will pop back up in a new place tempting you to catch them. You have to ignore them again, and keep walking farther away. After another 200 yards or so, they will pop back up again. You still have to ignore them, and keep walking. You need to keep this up. Rinse and repeat about four times in total.

Eventually, Pikachu will pop in with Charmander, Squirtle, and Bulbasaur, and you can catch Pikachu!

We started a new account just to test this out, and it works great! This is not a myth! We went for a walk and it took only a half block for Pikachu to pop up. One thing we also learned is that if you ignore Pikachu and keep walking, Pikachu will not pop up the next time. We were goofing around taking screen captures and forgot to capture Pikachu. The next time only the three main starters popped up. We had to ignore the main starters four more times before Pikachu eventually popped up again! Phew!

Good luck capturing your very own Pikachu!

Map View Screen

The Map View Screen is where you will spend most of your time, so you should get comfortable with it.

The avatar walking in the middle is you! The game map always tries to keep you centered and walking in the direction you are actually moving in the real world. The map view GPS might show you in the wrong location when you first start the game, but the game's GPS will eventually match your real-world location. Tall buildings and trees can throw off the GPS at times.

The map you see is the real world around you, taken directly from Google Maps. The compass is in the upper right corner. The red arrow always points north, so it's easy to always know which way you are going. Clicking on the compass toggles the viewing direction in Map View. You can switch between a north-viewing direction and auto-rotation, which follows your viewing direction. You can also slide your finger across the map to change your perspective, and you can pinch the screen in or out to zoom the map in or out.

The pulsing circle under your avatar is your "Action Circle" or "Action Radius." To interact with anything in the game, you must bring it within your Action Circle by walking to it. The maximum distance it reaches is roughly 120 feet.

In the bottom right corner is your Nearby Screen, showing you the three nearest wild Pokémon to you. Touching it brings up the full Nearby Screen, which we will discuss elsewhere in this book.

The bottom left corner has your profile icon, your name, and your level. The level bar fills as you get closer to your next level. Tapping the profile icon will take you to your Progress and Achievements Screen.

Last is the Pokéball in the bottom center. Touching it will take you to the Main Menu.

The map might also display Pokéstops and Gyms, which we will cover in the next few pages.

Progress and Achievements Screen

The Progress and Achievements Screen is a great place to keep up with how you are progressing in the game.

Your name is at the top and your full avatar below. You can swipe left and right to rotate your avatar around and see your backpack.

Under that is your level, plus how much XP (experience) you have, and how much XP you need to reach the next level.

The gold Pikachu button on the bottom left shows you how many Pokécoins you have. Clicking on it will take you to the Shop. Your start date and the Team you chose is also shown.

The X button will return you to the Map View Screen. The blue button with the white lines on the bottom right will take you to your Journal and allow you to re-customize your avatar.

Your Journal will show you the last 50 things that have happened to you in the game, such as Pokémon caught, Pokémon missed, Eggs hatched, Items you received at Pokéstops, etc. This is a good place to go if you missed something occurring in the game. We've had Eggs hatch that we didn't see animation for. Or you can check if you actually received items from Pokéstops.

You can also scroll down further and see all of your Achievements. There are a lot of fun awards here.

You'll get awards for how far you've walked, how many Pokémon you have in your Pokédex, how many total Pokémon you have caught, and how many Pokémon you have evolved. You can see how many Eggs you've hatched, how many Pokéstops you've visited, how many Gym battles you have won, and how many times you have trained at your own Gym.

The next 14 Awards are all for catching certain kinds of Pokémon, and the last two are specifically for catching CP 10 Ratatas for Youngster and how many total Pikachus you have.

Everything you could ever want to know (or brag to your friends) about can be found here on this screen!

Sightings Screen

When Pokémon Go was first released on July 6, 2016, players could hunt down Pokémon using the Nearby Screen, which worked like the classic kids' game "Hot & Cold." Pokémon on the Nearby Screen had little footprints over their heads representing how far they were away from you:

• No footsteps meant a Pokémon was 0m to 40m away

• One footstep meant the Pokémon was 40m to 75m away

• Two footsteps meant the Pokémon was 75m to 150m away

• Three footsteps meant the Pokémon was 150m to 225m away

If you were tracking a Paras in a big field and it was two footprints away, you would pick a direction to walk to hunt it. If it switched to three footprints away, you knew you were going the wrong way. It was fun and it worked.

But a few weeks after launching, Niantic removed the footprints over the Pokémons' heads on the Nearby Screen. They claimed that it was causing too much stress on their servers. The screen was renamed the Sightings Screen, and just showed you Pokémon within 200 meters of your location. The Pokemon order meant nothing whatsoever. This left players with no way to efficiently track Pokémon. Technically-gifted fans wrote programs and apps, such as PokeVision, PokeMesh, FastPoke, etc., as a stopgap measure. Niantic tried to shut down these programs as they too place demands on their servers. Niantic even banned players suspected of using them! This was bad as many of these players were paying customers just trying to figure out how to hunt down Pokémon.

Niantic promised to repair/replace the broken Nearby Screen and rolled out a beta in San Francisco in early August 2016. In the beta version, the Nearby Screen shows Pokémon near Pokéstops if they're actually near those landmarks. But if a Pokémon is not near a landmark, you're still out of luck. You have no idea what direction to walk in.

As we write this book, there is still no working Pokémon tracking system in the game — outside of San Francisco. Most players are just hoping they blindly stumble into a wild Pokémon, while others are using one of the Pokémon tracking programs that Niantic frowns upon. We sincerely hope Niantic has something in place as you read this, because this function has been broken for far too long.

Buddy Pokémon

In mid-September 2016, the Buddy Pokémon option was added to Pokémon GO.

You can pick your favorite Pokémon from your collection to become your buddy, opening up unique in-game rewards and experiences. Buddy Pokémon appear alongside your avatar on your profile screen, adding helpful bonuses such as awarding Candy for walking together. You also have the ability to change your Buddy Pokémon at any time.

Unfortunately, your Buddy Pokémon does not follow your avatar around like Pikachu does in Pokémon Yellow. We hope Niantic will add that in a future patch.

When you assign a Pokémon as your buddy, it will collect Candy for you. If you assign Pikachu as your buddy, it will collect Pikachu Candy. Rattata will pick up Rattata Candy. Evolved Pokémon will pick up the base Candy for their line (for example, Blastoise will pick up Squirtle Candy).

You have to do a lot of walking to get Candy, so be prepared for the grind. Weaker Pokémon lines such as Caterpie, Weedle, Pidgey, and Rattata will give you one candy for each km you walk. The Charmander, Squirtle, and Bulbasaur type lines will give you about one candy for every 2km you walk. And rarer Pokémon near the end of the Pokédex, such as Lapras, Snorlax, Vaporeon, and Dragonite, will give you one candy for every 3km you walk.

So if you choose Snorlax as your buddy, you will have to walk 1.9 miles to get one piece of Snorlax Candy. That's a lot of walking! But considering how rare some of these Pokémon are in the wild, we think it's a great idea to help you power these guys up for Gym battles!

Pokédex and Pokémon Screens

The Pokédex Screen

The Pokédex is where you can learn all about the Pokémon you have caught.

Each Pokémon corresponds to an individual number. This goes all the way back to the Pokémon Red and Blue! There were 151 Pokémon in Red and Blue, matching the number in Pokémon GO. These original 151 Pokémon are considered Generation I Pokémon. The Gold and Silver games added more Pokémon, which were considered Generation II. This has gone on for 20 years, and we're up to Generation VII Pokémon now.

If you encounter a Pokémon at least once, there will be a shadow of that Pokémon in the Pokédex where it belongs. See #35 on the example Pokédex Screen? We have seen Clefairy, but haven't caught Clefairy. The Pokédex won't tell you much except the number and name, and how many times you've seen it. If you have caught that Pokémon, you get to see a lot more information.

You can also see the numbers in the Pokédex of Pokémon you haven't seen yet. On the example screen, we haven't seen #005 or #006, which are Charmeleon and Charizard.

The Pokédex will show you how many of a particular Pokémon you have seen and caught, as well an average weight and height for the Pokémon. It will also show you what type of Pokémon it is, such as Fire, Psychic, or Ground. It will also provide you with a little more information about that Pokémon. In addition, if the Pokémon has an Evolution, you can see it there. If you have not seen the Evolutions, though, it won't tell you anything about them. For example, if you have seen Charmander, but not Charmeleon or Charizard, then you will see question marks and shadows for those two.

If you want to see exactly how many Pidgeys or Ratatas you have seen, this is where you can find out!

We also have a huge Pokédex in the back of the book for you!

The Main Pokémon Screen

The Pokémon Screen is one of the most useful screens in the game! You can see all the Pokémon you own, and sort them in many different ways. There is also a tab in the upper-right-hand corner that takes you to your Eggs Screen.

In the bottom-right-hand corner of your screen, you will see a "#" button. This allows you to sort your Pokémon in various ways. You have six options when sorting Pokémon:

• First is by "Recent," so you can tell what you have caught lately. Also, if you opened an Egg and didn't realize it, the recent screen can help you figure that out! We also find this handy for calculating IVs on new Pokémon (we'll cover this later in the book).

• Next is by "Favorite." All those Pokémon you "starred" previously can now be sorted together, so you can see them all at the same time.

• Sorting by "Number" will show you the Pokémon in the order they are in the Pokédex.

• If you want to know who your biggest Pokémon are, you can sort by "HP" — Hit Points. This might come in handy if you want to put your beefiest Pokémon in a Gym.

• If you just want to sort them "Alphabetically," you can do that, too. This makes it easier to "clean up" your Pokémon Bags and trade Pokémon you no longer need to Professor Willow for Candy.

• Finally, you can sort by "CP," which will rank your Pokémon by their "Combat Power." This is handy for Gym battles.

When you tap on an individual Pokémon, it will bring up a screen for that specific Pokémon. You can find out all kinds of information about each Pokémon: CP (Combat Power), HP (Hit Points), the Type of Pokémon it is, as well as its height and weight. You can also find out how much total Stardust you have and how much Pokémon Candy you have. There is a pencil next to each Pokémon's name. You can rename your Pokémon here by tapping the pencil image.

Candy is used to both power up and evolve Pokémon. Candy is specific to each line of Pokémon. For example, you can evolve Dratini into Dragonair, and then Dragonair into Dragonite. Both of these evolutions require Dratini Candy. Candy is named after the lowest evolution in the chain. You will need 25 Dratini Candy to evolve Dratini into Dragonair, and you will need 100 Dratini Candy to evolve Dragonair into Dragonite. This is discussed more later in this book.

When you scroll down, you will see the Pokémon's two attacks and its attack strength. The first attack is the Base Attack. The second attack is its Special (Charged) Attack. The number after each attack is the Attack Power. Power is simply a base statistic, not the damage it does. Pokémon attacks are effected by the Attack Power, the Pokémon's Level, and the Pokémon's Base Attack Power. Don't let the Power of a particular move fool you, though. Generally, moves with higher power will have slower attack speeds. The attack Speed and Damage Per Second (DPS) formulas in Pokémon can get pretty complicated. You can find them online if you're interested.

Lastly, in the bottom-right-hand corner is a button that brings up options for Favorite, Appraise, and Transfer Pokémon.

Transfer allows you to sell Pokémon to Professor Willow for some Pokémon Candy. We discuss this in a later chapter. Appraise will bring your team's Leader, who will rate your individual Pokémon. No two Pokémon, even with the same name, are equal. We discuss this later in the book as well.

Clicking on Favorite will put a Yellow Star in the upper-right-hand corner of the Pokémon Screen. Besides the cool star, it also protects you from accidentally transferring a great Pokémon to Professor Willow in exchange for Candy. Always "favorite" really good Pokémon to protect them!