I saw that in the 2 gyms I went to yesterday. I tapped on the gym and it may showed me 1 really powerful pokemon and wanted me to fight. Didn’t take long for me to lose. And they are blue gyms, same as me.
The number of slots in a gym is based on it gym level with each level representing one slot. When it’s your team’s gym you train there and by winning you add experience to the gym when you get enough it levels up and adds a slot. Conversely when you battle a opponent’s gym and win they lose experience and once they lose enough drop a level and lose a slot. Once you are out of slots the gym is free for someone else to take over.
So one thing I realized yesterday which I haven’t seen mentioned anywhere else regarding the coins you receive for holding a gym (for those that don’t know, every, I believe, 23 hours you have a pokemon in a gym your team holds you receive 10 pokecoins).
When you first put a pokemon in the gym, go to the “shop” and up at the top is a blue shield icon. This tells you the number of pokemon you have in gyms generating 10 coins each period. What I haven’t seen mentioned is that you receive 10 coins immediately upon putting a pokemon in the gym and then 10 coins every 23 hours thereafter. I probably missed out on a good 50 coins before I realized that.
Hope this helps some people.
Thanks all. This has been very helpful. Since all of mine are still pretty weak it’s not worth it to go up against these monsters I’m seeing in the gyms.
I have to say that having a historic marker and poke stop 20 feet from my desk at work is very convenient. 
The thing that’s hardest to grasp, conceptually, is you don’t battle in a friendly gym to benefit yourselfk you do it to benefit the gym and the players who have Pokemon there. And you benefit those players by beating them. The only reasons to fight in a friendly gym are if you (or a friend) have a Pokemon in that gym and you want to protect it by raising the gym’s prestige, or you don’t, but you think you can raise the gym’s prestige enough to open up another slot you can fill with one of your Pokemon.
And it’s often easier to defeat a rival gym completely (especially if you have friends with you) than to open up a slot on a similarly powerful friendly gym.
And really, the only reason for fighting in any gym (besides just having fun) is if you think you can keep one of your Pokemon there until the timer runs out in your store. If you just pressed the button and have 20 hours left before you can collect stardust and coins, any fighting you do will benefit your team, but not you directly. You get a few XP for fighting, but not enough to make it worth while.
Heh, 20+ hours holding a gym is never gonna happen around here. They are all very hotly contested.
I was around one last night that was changing team control every 10 minutes or so. There was a very brief moment where I was actually able to store a pokemon in there for the first time ever. I put my best guy, who was around 550 CP. He was knocked out within seconds of installing him. Still have to face guys who are all 1200-1500+ CP at every single gym. People are nuts for this game. I feel like I’ve played “a lot” and am still only level 14 with my most powerful guys being in the 500-600 CP range. Not even close to strong enough to put up a real fight.
People are misunderstanding the 21-hour thing. (And it is 21, I’m almost positive.) You don’t have to hold a gym for 21 hours.
Say you have never placed a Pokemon at a gym, and there are five gyms within a reasonable travel time off one another. You defeat a rival gym and are able to place a Pokemon at one of them. You have to decide how many of the other gyms you’re likely to get to and be able to place a Pokemon there before someone kicked you off that first gym. Maybe you see a friendly gym down the block that has an open spot, do you decide to walk down there and put a Pokemon in that gym too. All the other gyms have powerful Pokemon that you have no hope of defeating, so you go into the store and press the bonus button after placing your second Pokemon, and get 20 coins and a bunch of stardust. Then you notice that a third gym was defeated by other players and is completely open! You place a Pokemon there Becker anyone else can. You realize two other gyms are being contested you see the explosions and smoke at the gym on your map) so you hang around and put Pokemon there as well.
Now you have Pokemon at five gyms! Woo hoo!
But it doesn’t do you any good. Even if you find you’ve leveled up in the processes and can now find Pokemon that will let you take over every gym in town before anyone kicks even one of your Pokemon out of a gym (unlikely), it won’t do you any good because you can’t get any more bonuses from gyms until 21 hours after you pressed that button.
So if people do kick you out of those gym spots, you don’t care. You don’t run back and try to reconquer what was yours. You wait until 21 hours have (almost) passed and THEN you go back and look for gyms you can put Pokemon at. Until then, you hunt Pokemon, or go home and take a nap.
I just got my first 10 coins when I found an open gym. I lasted all of 10 minutes.
I’m rural, so I’ve not even tried the game. (I never was much into the original games, either. I need STORY in my JRPGs, damnit!) I just assume I won’t be able to find anything nearby.
Still, from what I’ve heard, I don’t get the server strategy. Why doesn’t it just do syncronizing updates instead of constantly hitting the servers? You could cover a pretty large area with rather small amounts of data. Have the site location, then more-or-less randomly place the Pokemon when you get there, simulating them moving around. Then, later, upload the results of the fights and stuff.
I just don’t get why a Pokemon you catch or fight should possibly not process. If the server’s not ready, wait and try again. Use cryptography to keep out cheaters.
Thanks all for the information on how gyms work. I cashed in a bunch of Weedles for a 550CP Beedrill which makes me feel slightly less newbie (though, like others, I look at gyms and see 900+ CP critters). At least I’ll have something nominally better to defend a gym with than taking up a slot with a 65CP Pidgey.
Too bad you weren’t at the Thomas Edison Memorial Dildo today. The gym there was being held by the yellow team with a 10 CP Kakuna, a 23 CP Magikarp, and the big bad was a 37 CP Caterpie. I just about died laughing. They held it for at least a half hour, maybe more.
I can see the gym/dildo from work, so I just had to swing by there after. i was really hoping the grounds would be swarmimg with Voltorbs and Electabuzzes, but sadly, it was not to be.
What is this you’re referring to? I mean I’d heard he was a bit of a prick but that seems a bit extreme.
Every Gym has a Prestige ranking.
The amount of Prestige determines the gym level, and how many Pokémon can be housed there:
Gym Level 1 / 0-2000 Prestige / Pokémon: 2
Gym Level 2 / 2001-4000 Prestige / Pokémon: 2
Gym Level 3 / 4001-8000 Prestige / Pokémon: 3
Gym Level 4 / 8001-12000 Prestige / Pokémon: 4
Gym Level 5 / 12001-16000 Prestige / Pokémon: 5
Gym Level 6 / 16001-20000 Prestige / Pokémon: 6
Gym Level 7 / 20001-30000 Prestige / Pokémon: 7
Gym Level 8 / 30001-40000 Prestige / Pokémon: 8
Gym Level 9 / 40001-50000 Prestige / Pokémon: 9
Gym Level 10 / 50001-60000 Prestige / Pokémon: 10
When you click on a friendly Gym, you will be given the opportunity to add a Pokémon if the Gym level is high enough to support an additional Pokémon.
If you battle at a friendly Gym and win, you increase that Gym’s prestige. Do that enough times and the Gym level will go up, and then you can add a Pokémon of your own in the newly available slot.
The prestige increase is a factor of the ratio between the CP of the challenging Pokémon and the defending Pokémon. The more even the battle, the more it’s worth, and if the attacker has less CP than the defender, a win is even more fruitful.
Specific ratios available on request.
Yes, please!
And did you mean to say that a Level 1 gym can house two Pokemon?
It looks even more dildo-ey when seen straight-on, as in not looking up from the bottom. The site is on a hill, but my office is on a high floor of my building, so I see it from the side. It looks like a tapered dildo, and as the light-bulb shaped thing on top is white… Anyway, sorry to be gross in a Pokemon thread! It’s just kind of a running joke.
And building on the above discussion about how you don’t have to beat the big bad to take a gym, just lower its prestige - 2 of the 3 gyms by my house are being guarded by fairly low-level fire Pokemon - a 510 CP Flareon and a 751 CP Magmar. Fire is weak to water, so a lower-level water guy with water moves should do well.
Using type weaknesses and strengths to your advantage can take you pretty far. Just note that a Pokemon’s move(s) might not be the same type as its own type. For example, my Starmie’s quick move is Water Gun, but its charge move is Power Gem, which is a rock type.
I found a wild Beedrill. Used every ball I had and he kept escaping. What determines when they will escape? Do I not even bother going after better ones until I get more powerful?
I believe it’s their CP versus your level. More powerful ones may require special pokeballs (I don’t know it’s that’s literally requires or just as a practical matter so you don’t use fifty regular balls waiting on that 1% chance) and you can use razz berries to lower their resistance to being captured.
It’s CP was 204 so nothing completely outrageous.
How many balls did you use? Maybe a bad string of numbers from the random number generator?