Pokemon Go is love. Pokemon Go is life. Pokemon Go will destroy your phone’s battery life. While you’re out and about trying to catch ’em all, here are a few things that you shouldn’t do.
Image: Supplied
Trespass
Pokemon Go trainers: please don’t walk into the police station. That was the slightly-tongue-in-cheek advice from the Northern Territory Police, Fire and Emergency Services this morning on Facebook, after some individuals apparently decided that to get up close and personal with one Pokestop, they had to get inside the Darwin Police Station. NT Police’s advice: “For those budding Pokemon Trainers out there using Pokemon Go – whilst the Darwin Police Station may feature as a Pokestop, please be advised that you don’t actually have to step inside in order to gain the pokeballs. It’s also a good idea to look up, away from your phone and both ways before crossing the street. That Sandshrew isn’t going anywhere fast.”
Use All Your Battery
With Augmented Reality and GPS Pokemon GO is an absolute killer on your battery life. We watched the power drain on a Galaxy S6 faster than it could charge on its wireless pad. Enable the game’s power-saving mode (which doesn’t interfere with GPS), carry a portable charging pack, stay near a power point, keep a charger in your pocket, – whatever you need to do. If you never want to have your phone go flat mid-Pokeball launch, be prepared.
Let It Consume Your Life
Repeat after me: “There is a life outside of Pokemon Go, there is a life outside of Pokemon Go, there is a life outside, outside, outside there are Pokemon, Pokemon Go is outside.” Your quest to become the very best that no one ever was doesn’t have to be a lonely one of social isolation. Organise group walks with friends, join a team with workmates, have real life meet-ups at your local virtual gym — Pokemon Go may be your life now, but it doesn’t have to take over, not in a bad way at least.
Walk Into Traffic
Any kind of game that gets you outside into the real world has the associated risk that, y’know, you’re in the real world. The real world has roads and traffic lights and cars. When you’re outside, tracking around the city and walking to different Pokestops and gyms, please be careful. We don’t want you to get run over. I can say from personal experience that even in the last day of walking around staring down at my phone I’ve had two close calls — not with traffic, but once accidentally walking into the middle of a crowd of tourists taking a photo near the Opera House, and once walking into a puddle of water on the footpath that I wasn’t scanning ahead for. You get the idea — pay a little attention to your surroundings.
Spend Money On It
Pokemon Go is a free game to download and play, but you can Pokemon Go isn’t pay to win, but it is pay to skip — TotalBiscuit actually makes a great definition between the two. Basically, you can use Pokemon Go’s in-game Pokecoin currency to buy items like Pokeballs, incense, lures and other gadgets that make it a little easier to play the game. But you don’t need to spend money on it, for two key reasons. Firstly, you can get most or all of those items at any Pokestop, and you can earn in-game currency by installing your powerful Pokemon at a gym to control it.