Pokémon GO Guides & Tips

Pokémon GO turns the neighborhood outside your door into the setting for a real-time Pokémon adventure. You explore on foot, spot Pokémon on your phone's map, and toss Poké Balls to catch them, all while visiting real landmarks that double as PokéStops and Gyms. Trainer Hub is a fan-made guide site built for people who want to understand how the game actually works, from your very first catch to the finer points of team building and competitive play.

What kind of trainer are you today?

Maybe you just installed the app and aren't sure what a PokéStop even does. Maybe you've been playing for a while and want a refresher on how catch mechanics or type matchups work. Trainer Hub is organized so both readers can find what they need quickly: plain-language explainers for newcomers, and deeper mechanical breakdowns for players who want to optimize.

Start here

How to Play Pokémon GO: A Complete Beginner Guide

A complete beginner's guide to Pokémon GO: the main screens, how catching works, Gyms and raids, spinning PokéStops, and how to keep progressing.

Quick start

Pokémon GO Quick Start Guide

A condensed Pokémon GO quick start checklist covering setup, catching, PokéStops, and early priorities for brand-new trainers.

Walkthrough

Your First Day in Pokémon GO: A Step-by-Step Walkthrough

A step-by-step walkthrough of a realistic first Pokémon GO session: setup, your first catches, PokéStops, and what to focus on early.

Core guides on this site

Beginner guide

If you're brand new, start with our complete beginner guide, which walks through the basic screens, how catching works, and what to do in your first few sessions. Prefer a faster read? The quick start guide distills the essentials into a short checklist, and your first day in Pokémon GO walks through a realistic first session step by step.

Once you're comfortable with the basics, our guide to core mechanics like CP and IVs and our page on advanced mechanics for experienced trainers go deeper into how the numbers behind your Pokémon actually work, so you can make better decisions about who to power up and who to pass on.

Mechanics

Pokémon GO Core Mechanics: CP, IVs, Catching and Evolving

A plain-language explainer of Pokémon GO's core numbers: what CP and IVs actually mean, how catching works, and how evolving and candy fit together.

Battle

Pokémon GO Battle Rules: Type Effectiveness, Fast and Charged Moves

How battling works in Pokémon GO: type effectiveness, the difference between fast and charged moves, and how energy and timing fit together.

Advanced

Advanced Pokémon GO Mechanics for Experienced Trainers

Advanced Pokémon GO concepts for experienced trainers: weather boosts, dodge timing, energy management, and how to think about raid and PvP teams.

Beyond catching: collecting and battling

Pokémon GO is more than catching the same species over and over. Our collecting guide covers shiny Pokémon, Pokédex completion, and regional exclusives, while a dedicated page explains Field Research and Special Research tasks and how they fit into a normal play session. Curious about a specific Mythical? Our Deoxys guide covers its forms and how raiding it tends to work.

Collecting

Collecting in Pokémon GO: Shinies, Pokédex Completion, and Regionals

How collecting works in Pokémon GO: shiny Pokémon, filling out your Pokédex, and understanding regional exclusives, explained without hype.

Research

Field Research and Special Research Explained

How Field Research and Special Research work in Pokémon GO: daily tasks, stamps, storyline quests, and how they fit into everyday play.

Mythical

Deoxys in Pokémon GO: Forms, Raids, and Moveset Strategy

How Deoxys works in Pokémon GO: its four forms, what raiding it generally involves, and how to think about movesets for each form.

Events and competitive play

Events & Battle hub

Pokémon GO runs on a calendar of recurring events, and matches in the GO Battle League reward players who understand team building and timing. We cover that side of the game on our events and competitive hub at op.pokemon-tcg.com, including how community events generally work, how the Battle League ranking system is structured, and how to find other trainers playing near you.

Events

Pokémon GO Event Types Through the Year

A field guide to Pokémon GO's recurring events: Spotlight Hour, Raid Hour, Community Day, focused days, seasons and the big premier events of the year.

Battle

GO Battle League Competitive Guide

An overview of competitive play in the GO Battle League: how matches work, what cups are, and how to start taking PvP more seriously.

Community

Local Pokémon GO Leagues and Community Battle Nights

How local Pokémon GO leagues and community battle nights usually work: formats, choosing a CP league, keeping score over a season, and welcoming newcomers.

The Trainer Hub database

Open the database

Quick-reference pages for the things you look up mid-session: every type matchup with GO's own multipliers, what the weather boosts, how raid tiers compare, what hatches from Eggs and what each item in your bag does.

Type chartEvery matchup, GO multipliers

All 18 typesStrengths and weaknesses

Weather boostsWhich weather helps which type

Legendary & MythicalWhat the labels mean

Raid tiersDifficulty and group sizes

EggsDistances and hatching

ItemsWhat everything in your bag does

How we keep this useful

Pokémon GO changes over time. New features roll in, older ones get adjusted, and specific numbers get rebalanced fairly often. Rather than chase every change, we focus on explaining the systems that tend to stay stable, so a guide you read today should still make sense months from now. For anything that shifts frequently, such as which Pokémon are appearing in raids this week, we point you back to the in-game announcements as the source of truth.

Playing at your own pace

There's no single "right" way to enjoy Pokémon GO. Some trainers play a few minutes a day while running errands; others build their whole week around raid hours and league matches. This site is written for that whole range of readers, so a five-minute catch-up between meetings and a long evening spent on team building both have a place here.

Everything on Trainer Hub

The full list of guides is just below. Welcome to Trainer Hub, and good luck out there.