Pokémon Go is an unabashed hit. Nintendo, parent company of the 20-year-old franchise, saw its stock skyrocket upon the launch of the most recent game. People love the augmented reality version, but they don’t just want to play it—they want to win.
Since technology is hackable and humans are always looking for cheats to get ahead, the internet is already buzzing with tips on how to game the game for all you wannabe Ash Ketchums.
A true Pokémon fan will go that extra mile for Pikachu—and they can. Polygon paced around their office for 40 minutes to find the hack that leads you to the yellow mouse:
When Professor Willow tells you to go choose your starter, the initial trio will spawn on the in-game map. Typically, clicking on one initiates a battle, resulting in you obtaining your first Pokémon. If you don’t select a Pokémon, however — if you just keep walking away instead — the three will disappear, then respawn in front of you.
This is a little tricky to work out, since the game’s camera keeps the trio on screen with you for most of the time, and its GPS still isn’t the most accurate. But if you manage to ignore Charmander, Squirtle and Bulbasaur four times, they’ll come back with another friend in tow.
There are plenty of hacks to be used along the way once you get going. When catching an egg, don’t just flick you finger to toss the ball toward the Pokémon. Instead, “move your finger in small circles on your screen when touching the ball. That will make the ball rapidly spin and when you feel comfortable, throw the ball towards the Pokemon. That will send a curve ball towards the Pokemon and will increase your chance of catching it,” a user on Ownedcore, a gaming forum, revealed.
Not everything in Pokémon Go is fun and games, though—the hunt has driven people to dead bodies and armed robbers. For those who want to avoid such possibilities, there are ways to catch ’em all without moving at all.
When it’s time to hatch the eggs, old-school hacks like attaching rubberbands or clips to lock the D-Pad on the Gameboy so your character keeps walking forward obviously won’t work anymore. Augmented reality requires your phone to physically move for eggs to hatch. If you think driving your phone around fast will help, it won’t. Niantic, the creator of the latest game, has placed a limit on the speed you can hatch eggs at. Here’s where another childhood toy will come in handy. Fish out your old looped model railroad track, lay your smartphone on one of the cars, and let your babies hatch, RocketNews24 wrote. Basically, sticking your phone to any rotating surface should do the trick. YouTuber Rusty Cage stuck it on a bike wheel, taped it to a spinning record, and even hung it from a fan.
Outside the house, train commutes can be used to cover multiple pokestops with little manual labor. Danielle Blakkan, a 26-year-old research assistant who commutes to Palo Alto from San Francisco, shared an observation that all West Coast players will benefit from: Caltrain, the commuter train that travels at 79 mph, is too fast to get any pokestops, but the Valley Transportation Authority (VTA)— the 20 mph lightrail in San Jose— is just the right speed. In fact, a slow cab ride will do the trick, too.
My Pokemon Go hack – play while I’m riding in the backseat of an @Uber/@lyft. Sorry not sorry.
— John Melas-Kyriazi (@jmelaskyriazi) July 11, 2016
Or you know, use your pets:
Taking laziness to a whole another level, a cheeky player asked the reddit community if strapping his phone to a DJI Phantom drone to fly into pokestops was cheating. (Hint: YES.)