Pokemon Go is now available for iOS and Android. (Niantic)
Some of the most difficult Pokemon to catch in Pokemon Go are those that are incredibly far away from the player. Trainers will often use over a dozen Poke Balls trying to get their hands on these creatures, but especially if you don’t live near too many Poke Stops, Poke Balls are way too valuable an item to waste like this. So is there any better way to catch these distant Pokemon?
A trainer on the Pokemon Go subreddit posted a pretty helpful tip today that should help in catching these elusive creatures. The first thing you’ll want to do is turn on Augmented Reality mode if it isn’t on already. This is the feature that uses your phone’s camera to show the Pokemon in the real world, as opposed to a generic grassy background. A lot of players turn that off to save battery or make the app run faster, but for the purposes of this trick, you’ll want to switch it back on for a few minutes.
Then all you have to do is position your phone so that the far away Pokemon is at the bottom of your screen. From there, throw a Poke Ball as you normally would, and it should become significantly easier to catch the Pokemon without having to lob a ball far into the distance.
Aside from switching on AR, another method some players have used is to throw the Poke Ball from the bottom left of the screen. Use the edge to help you throw the ball completely straight; this should help guide your throw to go far into the distance, and the ball should curve slightly to the right to hopefully hit the Pokemon.
Weirdly, it appears that Pokemon have been appearing far away from the player more often since the game’s recent update. A lot of trainers have speculated that the capture rate has also been altered so that Pokemon escape more often than they used to, though there has been no definitive proof of this.
When trying to catch a particularly difficult Pokemon, take a look at the Pokemon’s level, the color of the ring around it, and what kind of Poke Ball you’re using. For more information, check out this calculator that figures out your precise chances of catching a Pokemon based on the aforementioned information.