As Pokémon GO was developed, many quality of life features were introduced to make the experience more pleasant. Suffice to say, PoGo came a long way...
- There is an item cap (350 to start, although it can be upgraded up to 5,000), and once you've hit the maximum, you won't be able to collect any more. However, if you level up, complete research, collect weekly walk distance rewards, or beat a raid boss, the game temporarily allows you to exceed your max item limit to accommodate the item prizes.
- Similarly, egg storage is partitioned into two halves: normal storage for finding any kind of egg type, and bonus storage specifically for eggs from weekly distance bonuses or beating GO Rocket Leaders when the normal storage is completely filled. With how often eggs are given, and how the only way to get rid of excess eggs is by fully incubating them, the extra space from bonus storage is often players' only way of keeping the rare eggs from GO Rocket Leaders.
- Pokéstops and Gyms can be found at just about any real life landmark. Everything from parks and local businesses to churches and local government buildings tend to be eligible to become Pokéstops. The Pokéstops hand out a random assortment of items and/or Pokémon Eggs every time you visit, keeping you well stocked up, and have a short cooldown time of about five minutes so you can use them frequently.
- In September 2018, Level 40 players from a handful of countries can submit stops, with it going worldwide on November 13, 2019. In addition, the formerly Ingress exclusive Operation Portal Recon was retooled into Niantic Wayfarer in October 2019, and opened to Level 40 GO players over the following month, allowing reviews for new potential stops and gyms.
- Raids:
- You can get a free raid pass every day by spinning a Gym photo disc, if one isn't already in your inventory. If you view a hatched Raid Boss, it'll automatically give you one without needing to spin the disc, disregarding inventory limits or photo disc cooldown so you can immediately challenge the boss.
- Raid Days allow players to get up to 5 free passes in order to fight and capture the featured mon. This is a boon for players who lack the required amount of coins to buy Premium passes or forgot to turn a gym disc in order to get one.
- If you encounter a shiny Pokémon as the result of winning a raid, it has a 100% catch rate, so it will not escape if you make a successful throw. The only way you can fail to capture is if you move too fast, too far away, or miss every throw.
- The COVID-19 pandemic and the quarantines set up to contain it altered the way the game can be played. In order to keep things playable under quarantine, several features were implemented, such as a guaranteed Field Research task each day, free Remote Raid Passes each week, and GO Rocket balloons that brought the fight to the player. These conveniences were well-received, and many players were sad to see some of them get slowly phased out near the end of 2020.note Of the changes introduced, only the daily task, daily mon, daily gift and GO Rocket balloons remain, with Remote Raid Passes still remaining buyable in the Store. Due to player outrage for its removal (no wonder due to its usefulness), the extended player reach for PokéStops and Gyms was also made permanent.
- When Buzzwole, Pheromosa, and Xurkitree made a worldwide debut during the GO Fest Finale event, players were given Beast Balls instead of Premier Balls, significantly increasing the capture rate when encountering them as Raid Bosses (although, sadly only during the event was this a mechanic). And for any players unlucky enough to still not be able to capture the beasts, or players who couldn't participate in the raids at all, they all appeared alongside Nihilego in the special research story, with 0% flee rates and unlimited capture attempts.
- Certain events, such as Season of Light in 2022, allow players players to have two Free Raid Passes from gyms. This allowed players to tackle more raids without having to worry about buying premium passes.
- You can get a free raid pass every day by spinning a Gym photo disc, if one isn't already in your inventory. If you view a hatched Raid Boss, it'll automatically give you one without needing to spin the disc, disregarding inventory limits or photo disc cooldown so you can immediately challenge the boss.
- Despite what some people would have you believe, there is no limit on the number of players that can catch a particular iteration of a Pokémon once. If a rare/powerful Pokémon disappears after other people catch it, it's because it timed out and de-spawned. This helps prevent hostility among players and potentially reckless behavior trying to snag it first.
- One of the items the player starts with is a limitless-use egg incubator, ensuring that they will always be able to incubate at least one egg. Additional incubators with a three-use limit allow the player to hatch multiple eggs at once, with one-use incubators sometimes given out once a day at stops during certain events.
- Golden 7km Eggs exist for this purpose. They can only be obtained from gifts sent by other players if you have space for one. They have only two varieties of Pokémon available to hatch: regional forms and babies. Given how hard getting baby Pokémon normally are, this takes a LOT of the frustration of trying to get specific ones out of the process. Some events even add more rare Pokémon into that mix.
- With none of the original five Evolutionary Stones in the game (and thus, no Fire, Water, or Thunder Stone), the original three Eevee evolutions are randomized. Fortunately, it only takes half as many Eevee candies to evolve one compared to a standard two-tiered Pokémon (25 instead of 50). There's also an Easter Egg that lets you pick the evolution you want, but this only works once for each of the Eeveelutions. After that, it's always random.
- When battling an opposing gym, you always get to use up to six Pokémon no matter how many the gym contains. Each Pokémon you defeat will decrease the opposing Pokémon's "Motivation" (happiness level and CP)note . Through simple Zerg Rushing, you can take down a high-level gym with Mons individually far less powerful. This prevents any one team from holding a gym with no effort on their part, though in turn this makes earning daily defender bonuses more difficult.
- The Buddy Pokémon update allows you to assign any Pokémon in your roster as a buddy that walks along with you. Doing so adds a distance counter (between 1 and 5 km, or 20 km for legendaries), which earns a candy every time you reach that goal. The distance required is based on the egg group of the Pokémon in question, being 1 km for 2 km eggs, 3 km for 5 km eggs, and 5 km for 10 km eggs, and evolved forms collect candies at the same rate as their base forms. The starters are an exception, requiring 3 km per candy instead of 1. This makes earning candies for rare Pokémon much easier. Magikarp, Swablu, Meltan, and Wailmer in particular benefit from this, as they all require 400 candy to evolve (and Meltan can only be caught for a half hour a week and requires Pokémon to be sent to the Switch games to activate the chance) but only need to be walked 1 km per candynote .
- Feebas, Happiny, Bonsly, Woobat, and Eevee benefit from this too, since not only will you be gathering candy, you'll also be fulfilling the "walk X km with your buddy" requirement needed to evolve them as a substitute for the Friendship mechanic.
- Galarian Farfetch'd and Galarian Yamask benefit from this even more so, since Galarian Farfetch'd needs you to make 10 Excellent throws while it's your buddy and Galarian Yamask needs you to win 10 raids. While both tasks are difficult, they're comparably more doable than their requirements for evolution in the main games.
- Taking down an opposing Gym gives a brief period where only the player(s) responsible can place Pokémon in the now-vacant Gym, preventing other players who did not contribute from stealing the spot.
- At the launch of the raid system at 2017 up to early 2018, raid bosses, especially legendary raid bosses such as Mewtwo and Moltres, were so far away that they're very difficult to throw at, and several have erratic movement patterns. An update made it so most Pokémon are close enough that they're hard to miss.
- The Pokémon that Ditto hides as are always Com Mons, so that people would not get disappointed should they catch a very rare Pokémon only for it to be a Ditto in disguise. Also, Ditto disguises cannot be shiny and when a disguise has a shiny released, Ditto will no longer use that disguise. This was implemented after several players got very angry upon seeing their shiny mons become a normal Ditto.
- Nanab Berries lessen the chance that a Pokémon will go into their jump/attack/evade animation while the player is trying to catch them, a welcome addition as the extra animations are a huge annoyance, since the Pokémon can and will do one of these actions as a Poké Ball is being thrown at them.
- Pokémon encountered as a reward for completing research tasks have a 0% flee rate, meaning that a player can use a Pinap Berry on it and take as many tries as necessary to capture it. This includes Pokémon encountered as rewards for completing a seven-day Research Breakthrough. To go through an entire week of completing tasks, only to have the legendary Pokémon flee after a failed throw, would be cruel even by the standards of infuriating game design choices.
- The Adventure Sync function allows the player to progress walking distance-related tasks like hatching eggs or getting Candy from their Buddy while the app is inactive, so you don't need your phone out all the time, especially in areas with sparse Pokéstop distribution.
- Acquiring any form of a previously unregistered Pokémon will register its base form as well. This counts for Shadow, Purified, Clone, Shiny and multiple-form mons such as Castform, Cherrim, Deoxys or the regional formsnote .
- Shiny forms even go a step further and also register all regular and Shiny forms of the caught Pokémon's current stage, provided all Shiny forms are available in the gamenote and the player has seen/caught themnote .
- Snowy Castform can be found not just in snowy weather, but foggy weather too, allowing players access to this type of Castform even if they live in a place that doesn't snow.
- With the Gen IV update, new lure modules were added to the game, to easily get certain types in countries and zones where certain ambiences aren't that much frequent. Downplayed, since they are worth 200 Pokécoins each, but luckily you can also use modules activated by another player:
- The Mossy and Glacial Lure Modules allow players to get more Bug, Grass and Ice types, but its most important feature is to allow Eevee to evolve into Leafeon (for Mossy modules) or Glaceon (for Glacial modules).
- The update also added the Magnetic Lure, which increases the amount of Steel and Electric Pokémon that can be caught, as well as allowing Magneton to evolve into Magnezone, Nosepass into Probopass and Charjabug into Vikavolt.
- In 2021, with the addition of the Gen 6 mons, a new Lure, the Rainy Lure, was introduced, in order to allow players who live in areas where it doesn't normally rain to catch Water, Electric and Bug types more easily, as well as allowing the evolution of Sliggoo into Goodra in 2021.
- Abra normally immediately flee if they break out of a Pokéball (as in the mainline games). When Abra was made the star Pokémon of the April 2020 Community Day, however, their flee rates were brought down slightly so they wouldn't always immediately escape after one failed catch. Thus catching any (especially shinies) during the event would be less of a hassle.
- At its release, evolving Meltan into Melmetal was a massive slog; it requires 400 Meltan Candy to evolve, and the only way to get Meltan Candy outside of external methods such as Research Tasks, Buddy system, or Trading is to catch Meltan. Catching Meltan can only be done with the use of a Mystery Box, which is first obtained by sending a Pokémon from GO to Pokémon Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee!. The Box can only be activated once per week, you must transfer another Pokémon to Let's Go to enable opening the Box, and once opened it only lasts for 30 minutes. This entire process was eventually updated to be much less of a hassle (as the only alternative for 100% Completion in Pokémon HOME is trading); while the Let's Go requirements are still in place, the Box now recharges every 3 days instead of every week, and it now lasts for twice as long, making it significantly faster to get Melmetal.
- Since Community Day was introduced in 2018, each December has a whole weekend dedicated to the year's featured Pokémon, giving a second chance for players who missed out on getting a Shiny or exclusive move. From 2019 onwards, the Community Day mons from the previous year are also featured as well, allowing players who weren't around during the events to be able to obtain mons knowing these new moves. And from 2021 onwards, due to the absence of the 2018 CD Mons in the 2020 CD, certain events allow players to evolve their mons and get these exclusive attacks outside of these events.
- In the event you win a raid or defeat a Rocket Grunt/Leader and the game or phone unexpectedly shuts down before you can catch the Pokémon, you can still go back and catch the Pokémon you were given and the main rewards earned will still be given to you, provided the raid hasn't finished yet or the Grunt/Leader/Boss hasn't left yet.
- Due to the high amount of mission chains present in the game that can unlock Mythical Pokémon, newcomers are required to reach the seventh stage of a chain in order to unlock the next, in order to prevent them from being overwhelmed. So, in order to unlock the Celebi mission chain you must reach rung 7 of the Mew mission chain, in order to unlock Jirachi's mission chain you must reach Celebi's rung 7 and so on... Meltan is the only exception, as it just requires the Kantonian gold medal (registering 100 Pokémon from Kanto) in order to unlock its chain.
- The introduction of the Daily Incense allows people to catch different mons just by walking during 15 minutes. Upon its introduction, this also included the Galarian formes of Articuno, Zapdos and Moltres. In addition if the player has next-to-no balls on their inventory, the Incense automatically gives the player 30 Poke Balls. You may need something better if you intend to catch these Galarian legendaries, though.
- Some new features such as Mega Evolutions and Daily Incense require the completion of a dedicated mission chain. This allows players to familiarize themselves with the systems without much effort. Thankfully there's no time limit on when these chains can be completed.
- In regards to catching Pokémon, there are Daily Tasks that involve catching them with either a Nice, Great or Excellent throw. These involve throwing a ball inside the circle, with the higher difficulties requiring a smaller radius to hit. To help reduce frustrations, landing a Great throw will also advance a Nice task in case you accidentally get the timing wrong; likewise an Excellent throw will also advance the other two tasks as well.
- If you haven't completed "Let's GO Meltan", Niantic has you covered with Field Research: the missions "Win a Level 3+ raid" nets you either Omanyte or Kabuto, "Win 5 raids" nets you Aerodactyl and "Do 3 great throws" has a chance of rewarding either Anorith or Lileep.
- When taking pictures of your buddy, Smeargle (or some other Pokémon if there's an event) may randomly photobomb the image. The game will save a copy of the photo with the photobomb and a copy without, in case you were aiming to capture a scene with your buddy.
- If you plan out a new Pokéstop for Niantic Wayfinder or scan an existing Pokéstop, the game has an "upload later" option so you don't need to use up limited cell data to upload it on the spot.
- Selecting the Master Ball while in an encounter creates a dialogue prompt that confirms if you want to use it or not, to help minimize the number of accidental Master Ball uses on Com Mons.
- Becoming Best Friends with a trainer gives you 100,000 experience- the most you can get at one time. While there's no way of knowing when this will happen, especially if your friend logs in irregularly, the good news is that if you do make a Best Friend, you'll get an opportunity to use an experience-doubling Lucky Egg (if you have one) before you accept the 100,000 experience.
