Love this thread idea. In order of least to most:
- Battling gyms.
No in game benefit at all. I only do this when a research line forces me to. Your standing still, locked out of doing anything else in game. The animations take way too long, it can glitch and kick you out and all for no benefit.
- Leaving pokemon in gyms.
Marginally better than #1. The biggest problem with gyms is that, after clearing one out, they are very easy to lose since you only put one pokemon in to defend it. On the other hand, if someone on my team cleared a gym, I feel obligated to help them defend it long enough for them to get coins. The coins themselves, for me, are nearly worthless. 50 cents a day, considering what I make per hour working, is not even worth the time to load the gym, choose a defender, and click out.
- Sorting out item bag.
This doesn’t take long. I have set values for all the items, it only gets a little tough when I build up too much rare candy or rare xl candy (then there’s the tough decision on where to dump it).
- Levelling up Megas.
I always forget about this, and only have 7 or 8 at max level. I only ever do it at the cost of free and usually only remember to do 2 a day.
- PvP
I do enjoy PvP and spend a fair amount of time hunting for PvP mons, powering them up, researching good teams, etc. But I don’t actually do that much PvP. The trouble I find is connection issues, so I only do PvP when I have time to focus on the gameplay and am on wifi. The rewards of PvP are actually pretty meh. I try to get past lvl 20 for the free elite TM but the real benefit is stardust. Pokemon encounters are random, so raid passes and time would be much better spent on raids - where you get to choose the reward.
- Hatching eggs.
I always have an egg hatching. I’m pretty good about that. But is there any real benefit of hatching eggs? The 10k pool is pretty decent right now. But everything else is just in the way. As soon as an egg starts hatching I get visibly annoyed, because it’s in the way of game play, and even the trick to speed up the animation only cuts the time in half. And sometimes, I don’t even get a hatch notification and end up getting an undesirable egg because I didn’t know I had a slot open. The only real benefit of hatching eggs is the stardust, as the odds of getting something good from an egg are far too low to consider of value.
- Opening/sending gifts.
It’s a bit tedious, but there are some benefits. Lucky trades are appreciated and I like to build up to best friends/help people gain XP. Then they also added Scatterbug to make this more worthwhile. I take some level of pleasure with picking a postcard for a friend and pairing it with a good sticker (that matches aesethically) and I think the postcard book could prove useful, in the future, to remember past events or trips friends took etc.ive only cleared that out once, so it’s a bit of a mess.
- Daily raid.
I have to put this somewhat low, although I do find raids fun, because I do not use all of my daily raid passes. Time is money, and the time to find a raid, get enough people (if needed) and wait through the lobby time is money wasted unless the rewards are there. Despite some raid passes being free, it’s not always worth the time to use them. That said, when raids are fun they can be very fun. Raid hour and raid days are high points of the game for me.
- Sorting out pokemon storage/ checking IVs
I like collecting things, and there is something relaxing about organizing my collection. That said, I don’t let this build up as a mess. I IV check and transfer immediately upon catch and seeing the in game IV has become so second nature that I transfer a lot of pokemon subconsciously. It needs to have a 15 somewhere. For raid IV/ Collectable pokemon, I’m looking for two 15s and everything over 10 or shiny. That takes seconds to determine. For PvP IVs, there are usually specific pokemon I am hunting and I will take a few more seconds to decide on those, but most of the time that 15 defense and high HP/low Atk, so easy to spot.
- Field Research/Spinning pokestops
Much better than eggs for dust, rewards, and pokemon. I trash a lot of research tasks because I don’t care for the reward, or the ask is much too great for the slim reward. But that control on what you are getting and the ease of finding them/time spent make this better than eggs or raids. I don’t mind that a pokemon is very low level if it has the right IVs, then it is worth the cost to power up. I have maxed from level 15, I have even maxed from level 2.
- Interacting with Buddy.
I don’t enjoy this, it’s very tedious. But I do it all of the time. It is nice to add a ribbon to my very best pokemon (see:collection) as well as powering them up. But there are benefits and this fits nicely with other aspects of the game. Buddies help you win raids (get stronger), gain candy and XL candy, catch pokemon. I do battles with leaders, PvP, raids, and rocket grunts as a means of getting the buddy hearts for battling. My technique is to be buddying 10-11 pokemon at a time and then target 6-9 hearts per. Definitely the berry, photo, play, and 3x battle hearts and sometimes the walk, bonus, or new stop one.
- Catching Pokemon.
Always be catching.
Kinda same feeling for gift opening/sending. Even though I manage to skip some of the animation on opening, it feels like it takes forever to go through them all.
Those are the worst! Not much better 'mon than the 2km (anymore) and take more than twice as long. At least the 2km are quick and can help with those “hatch X eggs” tasks.
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