"The race to Gold - analysis of current local gym PvP"

#PokemonGO: Less than 3 days ago a unique opportunity for Gym PvP appeared in our town - a new gym. I should add a little bit of background: We are a town of 40K on the coast in the UK. We had 25 gyms - one of them behind a paywall (National Heritage Castle grounds). The hard-core players in our town have 24 (or 25) golden badges. A new gym therefore offers a unique opportunity for bragging rights - who is first to gold.There is a friendly rivalry between Mystic (myself) and Valor. We all come together (including Instinct) for gym raids. We are all salty as not a single hard-core player got an EX pass for our first ever invite in town. A messenger group is our main way to coordinate gym raids - but also to exchange banter, point out rare spawns - or news like a new gym.So Thurdsday late afternoon someone picked up the new gym and posted it on our channel. Several players immediately flogged to the gym. It is on my way back from work - so I arrived around an hour after it was first spotted. At that stage it was in the hands of Valor. Nearly an hour later I had my first 75 wins on my badge, was well past bronze - but only succeeded to kick out the very first Pokémon - well - that was worth it - after all it was my arch Valor Nemesis. At least 2 other players attacked around the same time. I had to stop to get home for dinner and my battery was flat - but returned later that evening. Weather is really unfriendly - but the new gym is a pub - so I just went in for a pint to battle - and after some 30+ more wins I finally took it over. It didn't last long - 107 wins total in the day for 4 coins. It certainly isn't a good way to gain coins. But BXP - well - yes !!Next day - the gym is still less then 24 hours old and I manage to be first trainer in town on silver. My arch nemesis at this stage still far behind me - so he asks me - can you write up an article how to best do Gym PvP.What we want to achieve:GymBXP neededBronze500Silver4000Gold30000And the different ways how to get Badge XP> I will analyse them one by one and also explain how I generated the BXP per hour - and possible caveatsActivityBXPBXP per hourDefending a gym1 BXP per minute60Feeding berries10 BXP per berry200-1200Raids1000 BXP per raid83Fighting Pokemon1 BXP per 100CP defeatedvariablePlacing a Pokemon100 BXPvariableThere have been rumours you get BXP by spinning. I tried it - fed 49 berries for 490 points to a virgin gym. I then did spin it around 15 times - I never managed to reach the bronze badge and concluded this was just a myths. I can't rule out that you get <10 BXP if you spin a gym the very first time (to get the initial badge) - but you surely don't get BXP afterwards.Defending a gym: This is the bread and butter BXP. You get up to 1440 BXP if you stay a total of 24 hours in a gym undisturbed. This is the best way to gain BXP in a gym that isn't much battled. It takes 8 hours 20 min to get to bronze (6 hours 40 min if you deduct the 100 BXP for placing your pokemon), 2 days 18 hours and 40 min to reach silver and 20 days, 20 hours to reach gold. The problem is - the gym is currently fought after - so it will change ownership multiple times per day. The best you can therefore do - try to take it late night, try to take it early morning. So far it changed faction well after 2am in the morning. So, this isn't an easy way to get BXP. Still, they add up over time.Feeding berries: Each berry gives you 10 BXP, you can feed up to 10 of them each 30 minutes. This means 20 berries an hour if you are on your own in the gym, 120 if the gym is your team and full. This adds up to 200-1200 BXP each hour. It is 3-20 times faster than just holding the gym. The main limiting step is supply. Feeding 120 berries an hour will quickly destroy even your largest stockpile.Raids: With 2 possible raids a day you gain the equivalent of 83 BXP per hour. This is more as the points you gain from sitting in the gym. The main problem here is knowing when gyms happen and being flexible enough to do them. Also 2 raids a day means you have to pay for the privilege at least every other day as free coins and passes can't sustain you.Fighting Pokémon: Fighting Pokémon is even faster as feeding berries as long as you manage to take down at least one 2000CP Pokémon per minute. The main problem here are resources. And with this I mean enemy Pokémon. You want an active opposing faction that fills the gym quickly and with high CP Pokémon. Even better if they defend using Golden Razz.This leads to placing Pokémon. The 100 BXP is a nice bonus if you take the gym. More or less it is 100 minutes defending free. Or to put it in a different way - you gain if you are kicked out and can place a Pokémon back in as long as less than 100 minutes have passed.So, what is my strategy? I work Monday to Saturday nearly half an hour away from the gym. Luckily the gym is on my way to work. So, I try to take it in the morning on my way to work and then again on my way back. I then aim to take it a third time in the late evening. I try to feed 10 berries after taking it. And another 10 berries half an hour later and I assume I stay 50 minutes total in the gym. Raids will be the exemption as I have to be lucky if one just happens in the morning and it means to have the time doing it - or if one happens in the last hour of the raiding day when I'm back.This strategy should give me 480 BXP each time I take the gym. 100 placing a Pokémon, 200 feeding berries, 50 defending and I assume a further 130 from battles. Three times a day makes 1440 or the equivalent to defend it round the clock without anything else. Off course this is just the base plan. Day by day it will vary.So here is my progress after nearly three daysSourceBXP%DetailsDefending126912%21 hours 9 minutes and countingBerry feeding283028%283 berries fedRaids200020%2 Groudon raidsPlacing Pokemon9009%Placing 9 Pokemon in the gymFighting Pokemon322632%185 battles won, approx. valueTotal10225100%approx. valueI use the fantastic website http://ift.tt/2l4l1gM from /u/QOAL to calculate my approximate progress. The total according to the latest screenshot is 10225 +/-184. Some useful bits to know when using the side: a) never place a Muk in a gym. It overflows the progress bar ... b) you can force an update of the defence time on your badge if you visit a gym. This update is instantaneous - as long as the last update was more than 5 minutes ago. I never have seen this mentioned here and never yet got around to publish my own research regarding updating the defence time.At the moment the biggest contributor to my BXP is fighting. A lot of this is thanks to day 1 and my arch Valor nemisis defending the gym with lots of Golden Razz - and a 3500+ CP Dragonite followed by a 2700+ CP Gyarados next. The relative amount of points from fighting will drop over time. It seems on average every Pokémon fought had 1730CP - not bad.Berry feeding is the second largest contributor. Right now, I'm down to 95 Golden Razz with nothing else. I try to spin as many stops as I can - but they go faster as I can get new ones. I'm now at a stage where I hardly ever use them for anything else but feeding for this specific gym.Raids are in third place. This was a surprise to me. I got lucky today as one egg appeared just after I took the gym in the morning and I managed to get enough support to do a Groudon raid at 10 am on a Sunday. Normally this isn't a time where it is easy to get enough players in our town. And adding to this - a second Groudon raid appeared just 2 hours later while I was checking the status of the gym and feeding berries. You take your BXP when you can.Defending makes a meagre 12% of the total right now - despite me defending the gym for approx. one third of the time overall since it appeared. I have some fellow Mystic trainers who not only cheer me on but also place Pokémon in the gym for defence or feed berries to keep motivation up which keeps us in longer. On average I stayed in the gyms just over 2 hours. I didn't manage yet to stay overnight.Placing Pokémon not unsurprisingly adds the smallest amount of BXP - still a useful source of extra points. I think I took the gym 7 out of the 9 times - could be 8 as I wasn't keeping tab well enough.A few more words to good (bad) strategy. The use of Golden Razz is an interesting one in regard to strategy. First - each Golden Razz adds 10 BXP for feeding. It also gives you extra time to defend - which means further BXP. The draw back is - the gym isn't taken over - this means you can't get BXP for fighting yourself. In addition it gives more BXP for the trainer attacking it as for the trainer feeding the Golden Razz. I therefore don't feed Golden Razz if I have other berries and if I assume I can take back the gym in the next hour. This still leaves certain times (late night, when I'm at work, ahead of a raid) when it makes sense to feed Golden Razz. It certainly keeps away casual players. This normally would be a negative for me, but I don't see this an issue in our town right now as the new gym is away from the main hunting grounds and there are 24 other gyms that casuals can take.Defending Pokémon: A high level Blissey is the best to keep the gym. But it also means it might not be taken. Well - right now this seems not to be a deterrent at all. Technically you could thwart your opponent best by placing a sub 100CP Pokémon in the gym as it yields zero BXP. But we are English and Gentleman - well - technical I'm German but I live here for >20 years.This leads to multi-accounting. This actually hurts most your own team mates as it takes their valuable spots. It also helps the opponent as it means he can fight a full (nearly full) gym. I'm a solo player with a single account - but stuff happens ...Spoofers can be an issue - and we have our own problems with a few - but they so far stay clear. After all - too much effort for too little gain.The social aspectWe are a small community and the social aspect is likely the most important part. It was great to see so many trainers turn up on a Sunday morning for a raid they would normally ignore. We spend the second raid with some drinks inside the pub that is the gym and we already have plans to start a pub crawl on the day the first one is finishing the golden badge.There are likely three players who take it seriously - but multiple others cheering on, watching, helping their team in their own way. In the end having fun together is really what it is about.And I hope some aspects from this post are useful for anyone else trying to get gym badges up - even if this seems counterproductive right now. I took the gym twice more since starting the write-up - and even got a third Groudon raid in the same place. I wasn't aware you can do three raids in the same gym on a single day. Certainly, my first - and some welcome 1000 unexpected BXP. So all in all I did now nearly 12K BXP in the first 72 hours. I will slow down from here - but certainly a good start. via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2COTFDX