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Pokemon Go Guide: When to Evolve and When to Power Up

This article is over 8 years old and may contain outdated information

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We’ve shown you how to train your Pokemon in Pokemon Go, but when should you do the two actions that allow you to make your Pokemon stronger? Power Up and Evolve are two actions that can’t be taken back, and they require a lot of resources that might take you awhile to gather. So, we’re gonna show you when to evolve and when to power up your Pokemon in Pokemon Go.

Luckily, the real answer to this question is: whenever you want. Seriously, I’m not backing out on this guide by just being lazy here. The CP level (click here for an explanation on that very important part of the game) will be the same if you evolve first, or use Power Up to raise the CP. For example, if you have a CP 50 Bulbasaur and evolve him to an Ivysaur then spend your Stardust and Candy powering him up, he will end up at the same level as a Bulbasaur that was powered up first, and then evolved.

So, with that out of the way, let’s dive into this a bit more as there are some cases where you should do certain things first. When to evolve is the real question, as Pokemon Go changes evolution in a big way. Each Pokemon in Pokemon Go has randomized movesets, with some being much more powerful than others. When you evolve they get randomized again.

What this means is, if you plan to take a Pokemon and evolve them, you should probably get it out of the way first. Afterward you should make sure that they have some good moves, ones that do a lot of damage, for instance. If they end up with terrible moves you can back out early and not waste Stardust and Candy using Power Up on them.

This is freeing in a lot of ways, but can also be stressful. This will happen if you evolve your Pokemon and end up with bad moves over and over again. It’s important that they have good moves if you plan to use them to battle at a gym, whether attacking or defending.

So, in short, evolve whenever you want, but if you’re really getting competitive you probably want to do it early.


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