Your Daily Pokémon GO Task Checklist

Let’s get back to basics! With Pokémon GO constantly changing and evolving, there are a wealth of daily tasks you can do in Pokémon GO to optimise your game play. Depending on your play style and your goals, different parts of this daily routine will suit you!

Daily Streaks

Catch & Spin

First things first, catch a Pokémon, and spin a Pokéstop or Gym. With the daily Pokémon spawn, catching can happen even in the most rural of locations (with internet signal). Spinning can be a bit trickier as it requires access to a point of interest (POI) – a Pokéstop or Gym. If you catch a Pokémon every day for 7 days consecutively, you will build up rewards until you complete your 7-day streak. The same applies for spinning a Pokéstop or Gym every day.

• There are no requirements on which Pokémon species or which specific Pokéstop must be caught/spun to count as a first-of-the-day bonus.
• The bonuses reset at 12:00 AM local time.

These bonuses are added to the base amount you would usually receive on a particular catch. For example, if the first Pokémon you catch for the day is a Pidgey (assume curveball + great throw + first-ball catch for 210 XP and no weather boost for 100 Stardust), you would receive 710 XP and 700 Stardust.

Note: Hatching an egg doesn’t count as a catch!

It appears that a gym at which you have a Silver/Gold Badge and team control (doesn’t need to be defended by your own Pokémon) will give out more streak rewards than a Pokéstop.

Complete a Research Task

Each day you are given a ‘free’ research task at midnight, and you can obtain additional research tasks by spinning PokéStops. Completing a research task earns you a daily stamp, you can only earn one stamp per day, and on your 7th stamp, you are given your research breakthrough box. This contains access to an encounter with a Pokémon, as well as items, XP or stardust.

The Pokémon featured varies month to month, and the items can also vary. Typical rewards may be an Evolution Item, Pokéballs, stardust, XP, Ultra Balls or Rare Candy. The rewards are random and will vary breakthrough to breakthrough.

Walk a Route and Collect Zygarde Cells

• Walking a Route a day will count towards ‘Daily Route Play’ progress, with streak rewards of Stardust, XP, Barries and TMs
• You can collect 3 Zygarde cells a day
• Earn a buddy heart

Battle Team GO Rocket

Team GO Rocket balloons will come to your location once per 6 hour time period (during events times may vary). These time periods as as follows:

• 00:00 (12:00am) – 5:59 (5:59am) local time
• 6:00 (6:00am) – 11:59 (11:59am) local time
• 12:00 (12:00pm) – 17:59 (5:59pm) local time
• 18:00 (6:00pm) – 23:59 (11:59pm) local time

The balloon can only appear once per time period, and will disappear approximately 20 minutes after it first appears. While it is on the map it will follow you if you are moving, until it vanishes. Each time you battle Team GO Rocket and defeat them, you can earn a mysterious component. Once you have collected 6 of these they will form a Rocket Radar, allowing you to find Arlo, Cliff and Sierra, the Team GO Rocket leaders, and battle them.

If you have a rocket radar your next balloon will be a random Team GO Rocket leader, and will continue to be a leader until you either deactivate the radar, or use it by defeating the leader. Team GO Rocket grunts and leaders can also be found on PokéStops.

Claim Your Free Item Box

Every day in the shop you are given a free item box containing a small amount of items, such as Pokéballs, Great Balls, Ultra Balls, Revives, Potions etc. This is totally free and is marked as such in the shop. If left unclaimed, the items will remain the same in the item box until it is claimed.

Open & Send Gifts

You can open a maximum of 30 gifts per day (during events this may vary). Gifts may contain 7km eggs (if you have an open egg space in your egg storage), stardust, XP, and a variety of different items, from Rare Candy, to Pokéballs, Potions etc. Gifts are a great way to keep your items stocked up!

You can carry a maximum of 20 gifts in your item bag at one time (during events this may vary), and send a maximum of 100 gifts per day. You can obtain gifts by spinning PokéStops and Gyms, you will receive a gift to send if you are not carrying the maximum amount.

When opening gifts, pin postcards to make progress on your Vivillion medal.

Mega Evolve a Pokémon

With the Mega system, you can Mega evolve Pokémon without using Mega Energy once you have spent the initial cost, after a specific cooldown period. Each Pokémon you have mega evolved now has a Mega Level. You can increase the Mega Level by mega evolving your Pokémon additional times. 

You can check with Pokémon you have previously mega evolved by using the search string ‘mega 1-3’. To keep building up your levels, you can use this search string to check with Pokémon you can mega evolve for free, and evolve them.

This is great for Pokémon you know you are not currently needing as a Mega with the current raid bosses. For example, if Mewtwo is in raids, consider keeping your Dark and Ghost type Megas to evolve for raids, but instead evolve Lopunny to keep building their Mega Level, knowing they are weak to Mewtwo, and therefore you won’t need them for the raid.

Earn Hearts With Your Buddy

Each day at midnight your Buddy Hearts reset, meaning you can earn more to increase your friendship level. Levelling up your friendship with a Pokémon means it can bring you items or Gifts to send out to your friends, it can help you catch a Pokémon by sending a missed Pokéball back to the Pokémon it bounced off, follow you on the map, get a CP boost in battle and more.

The easiest interactions you can complete with your Buddy are to feed it 3 berries to make it appear on the map, take a snapshot of it, and play with it. These can all easily be done from the comfort of your own home when you log in.

You can also use it in battle, walk with your Buddy, spin a new Pokéstop or Gym, and if your Buddy brings you a gift, you can gain a ‘bonus’ heart.

There are four different Buddy Levels:

You can swap out your buddy 20 times a day, so you can work on increasing your buddy level on more than one Pokémon at once.

Snapshot Encounter

By taking a snapshot of a Pokémon, you get 1 encounter per day from Smeargle. The Pokémon doesn’t have to be your buddy, but you can often tick taking a snapshot of your buddy and the enounter off the list at the same time.

It is fairly quick to get Smeargle to photobomb you, and they will only photobomb you on the first photo of the session, so if Smeargle doesn’t photobomb you on the first photo you take in AR mode, exit and re-enter to try again. You do not have to use AR+ mode for this, and it is a simple and fairly passive option for an easy platinum medal if you need more.

PvP Battles

If PvP is your thing, you can complete 5 full sets of battles in the GO Battle League each day, a maximum of 25 battles (this may vary during events). Completing all your sets each day will be your best way to increase your ranking and therefore rewards, as you will have more opportunities for wins over the whole season.

If the GO Battle league isn’t your thing you can battle with a friend 3 times to receive rewards such as Stardust, Rare Candy, TMs and Evolution Items.

PVE

• Claim your free daily raid pass. You can get one free raid pass per day in Pokémon GO, but you can only carry one at a time in your item bag. You must use the free raid pass in order to obtain another. Tier 1 raids are an easy solo for every trainer, and Tier 3 raids are often fairly accessible solo raids now too. Even if you raid a less exciting Tier 1 raid boss, it is a free chance at a shiny or a hundo (or a shundo!), and you can get another free raid pass again tomorrow. If you can organise to raid a Legendary each day with your local community in person, awesome!
• Participate in max. 5 remote raids
• Put a Pokémon in a gym. Not always simple depending on the area you live in, but whenever possible, try to put a Pokémon in a gym in order to earn free Pokécoins. You can earn a maximum of 50 coins per day, and have a maximum of 20 Pokémon defending a gym at any time.

Trading

• Take advantage of your Special Trade. You trade complete one Special Trade per day (may vary during events), so if you have pals you can trade with, take the opportunity to re-roll Pokémon IVs when you can.
• You can make up to 100 trades per day (including your Special Trade), so if you are lucky enough to have someone you can meet with regularly, or play with family, get those trades in.

Daily Incense

Use your Daily Incense for a chance to encounter a Galarian Bird. If you have 30 or fewer total Poké Balls, Great Balls and Ultra Balls in your Item Bag when you activate your Daily Adventure Incense, you will be automatically granted 30 Poké Balls. This is great for a 15-minute walk on lunch break at work if you get the opportunity.

Other

There are plenty of other tasks you can complete each day to make the most of Pokémon GO, so here are some quick-fire options!

• Feed berries to a Pokémon defending a Gym for Stardust and a chance to earn candy for that Pokémon.
• Enter any local Showcases if they are running, for a chance to win premium items.
• Connect GO Plus + to record sleep data to receive a maximum of 2500 stardust, a sticker and 2 buddy hearts.
• Use the Mystery Box to spawn Meltan to your location for 60 minutes.
• Use the Coin Bag to spawn Gimmighoul for 30 minutes.
• Send a Postcard from Pokémon GO to a Pokémon Scarlet or Violet file on Nintendo Switch (limit of 1 per day). A 5th-day bonus of a Golden Lure Module is rewarded to Trainers who gift multiple Postcards to a Pokémon Scarlet or Violet player.

Small note

To reach level 50 you need to have 35 platinum medals. Lots of the daily routine tasks will help towards platinum medal progress slowly but surely. One of the easiest medals to work on is the ‘Cameraman’ medal, which is tied to how many surprise GO Snapshot Pokémon encounters you have had. Here are some other medals that you will progress through with average daily play:

• • Gym Leader – Defend Gyms for 15,000 hours
  • Idol – Become Best Friends with 20 Trainers
  • Berry Master – Feed 15,000 Berries at Gyms
  • Gentleman – Trade 2,500 Pokémon

Have we missed anything? What do you consider to be an essential daily task in Pokémon GO? Let us know in the comments!