"Report: 25 days to level 20+ by just playing in gyms (F2P & raids)"

#PokemonGO: Hi all! This is actually a repost, as my former post obviously got filtered/deleted by automod.Anyway, a while ago Reddit's MrDNL asked "Could you build a decent team without ever catching a wild Pokemon?"TLDR: Yes - it is! And this is a story of how I made sure this is indeed true!OP set a simple set of "rules". If you live in a city with an active PoGo community, could you have a solid PoGo team of Pokemon without ever catching wild Pokemon, not counting the starter that game's tutorial actually makes you catch. Even a way to do it was proposed - turn initial 40 Pokestops, get to level 5, hatch a few eggs for a full 6-mon set, and then just start raiding with the local players.Well, soon enough comments started, both pro and against the possibility, but some useful info also came to be. First was - you need only a single mon to join the raid (or any battle), so no need to hatch anything, you can start raiding with your lone starter. I personally proposed that maybe we could as well make this a gym-only idea, to the point of 40 Pokestops actually being 40 unique gyms (that failed unfortunately, due to level 5 requirement).Anyway, the game was on, we knew roughly what we wanted to prove and how to achieve it, so... let's see how it went!I started with spinning pokestops, as proposed, and 3 hours later (15 min playtime at most) I was level 5.2 weeks later I was almost at level 17, with Machamp, Exeggutor, 3x Suicune, and yes - 7x Tyranitars! Had 9 normal raids (all caught), 5 legendary raids (caught 3 of 5), and 460+ coins.On day 21 I was level 20.On the 25th day I finished taking notes, and I was almost level 21. My final stats at time of writing the report were:Level 20, 5.000 XP short of level 21 (255.000 total); 20 Gyms discovered; 550+ hours defending gyms; 3 Fast TMs, 60 rare candies, 25 gold berries, one unused free pass + 5 premiums; 50 machop and 160 larvitar candy; 20.000 Stardust; 470 coins (950 total coins earned); 24 total raids done - 12 "normal" raids plus 12 legendary raids; caught Charmander (starter, 1/1), and 18 raid bosses (!!) - Machamp (2/2), Golem (1/1), Exeggutor (1/1), Raikou (3 of 6), Suicune (3 of 6), Tyranitar (8/8). A success!What we can really conclude from all this, would be that a person can start playing today, and in 2-3 weeks of very casual gameplay they can be around level 20 with a solid team for (and from) raids and gyms. And there's no better time to do it than now, as the holiday season has just started (Halloween, Thanksgiving, Xmas, New Year = events). Thus there's really no reason not to join this game as a new player even now. But new players should know the secret sauce - first find a friend to introduce you to the local Pokemon Go community, in real life, face to face. From there on, if community is nice, you and your avatar will flourish quite fast, and you can enjoy playing from the day one! And keep an eye on the Road ;)Read the complete report "Reddit Pokemon Go project - gym only account", with many more details and screenshots on the link below:http://ift.tt/2zzL19E you've enjoyed it, and please - write comments below if you have any questions about it, I'd be glad to help anyone on a similar task! :) via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2mfU36B