As I mention in the month in review for May, I was very close to level 48.  I had completed all the tasks and just needed a bit more xp to get myself over the top and to the next level.

So it is probably no surprise that I made it to level 48.

Level 48 has arrived

Pokemon Go gives you a nice little summary of what you did over your last level.

The level 47 summary

However, as with every level based progression, once you hit a new level the process starts all over again as you set your sites on the next level.  To get through to level 49 I will need to earn 25 million xp.

The first bar for level 49

25 million xp is a lot of xp… at least in the wider perspective of the early game.  You only needed a total of 20 million xp to go from level 1 to 40 back in the day.

On the flip side, the game does hand out xp a bit more freely than it did back in the early game era.  On reaching level 48 I had accumulated 121 million xp, so what is another 25 million? (Or 55 million to get to level cap?)

And, as with so many games, you can grind xp if you really want to.  I am not fond of grinding… nor buying advancement through the cash shop… so I try to play strategically.  I aim to get the most out of things like lucky eggs.

This is something that annoys my wife.  While she is not at all a gamer, she plays a lot more Pokemon Go than I do.  He stats show she has caught double the Pokemon I have and spun double the Pokestops that I have… yet she is still 5 million xp away from level 48.

Also, she still has one task to finish.  Again, I optimized to get the 8 weeks of walking 25km.  Granted, I achieved it mostly by just keeping my phone in my pocket at all times to record my steps as I wander about the house during the work day.  I am one of those “walk and think” people.

However, with the path to level 49 my minimalist style might come back to haunt me, because there are four tasks you must accomplish before you can level up.  It isn’t just xp.

The level 49 gating tasks

Going down the list…

• Make 10 trades with Pokemon caught at least 300km apart

I think I have this one nailed.  Or, at least my wife and I can knock this one out together.  I stocked up on some Pokemon when we were in Hawaii last, so I can trade her one caught there for one she has caught locally… or vice versa… and that should do it.  We’re over 4,000 km from Kauai, so Pokemon we caught there should do the trick.  Piece of cake.

• Obtain 50 Lucky Pokemon in trades

This one is going to be more difficult… but manageable.  When you trade gifts with people who are max level friendship with you there is a chance they will become a “lucky” friend, then your next trade will yield a lucky Pokemon.  I have a dozen friends lined up already as lucky friends.  getting to 50 will be some work, but there will be plenty of time to get there.

• Send 500 Gifts to friends

This one is the gimme of the bunch.  I currently have 200 friends on my friend list and I send out 10 to 20 gifts daily.  And I need to keep doing that to get more lucky friends setup for the previous task.  So this one will get done through my normal game play without any real need to have a strategy.

Medals are like achievements in Pokemon Go, and this is where my optimized effort is going to catch up with me.

There are 70 possible medals, if I counted on my fingers and toes correctly, each of which you can get in bronze, silver, gold, and platinum levels, those being the level of achievement.

So, for the Breeder achievement… look, I don’t make the names, they do… for hatching eggs… Pokemon hatch from eggs… you knew that, right… you get your bronze rank at 10, silver at 100, gold at 500, and platinum at 2,500 eggs hatched.

According to the achievement counter I have hatched 2,825 eggs, so I am into the platinum zone.

However, for some of the easy ones, like visiting 50K Pokestops or catching 50K Pokemon, the platinum level for each… I am well below par, ringing in at  about 30K for each.  There are a good dozen catching related medals where I am sitting at silver or gold level.

That is why, as the image above shows, I only have 21 platinum medals.

My wife, however, who is out and about and catches all the Pokemon and spins all the Pokestops… she is in the platinum zone for all of those.  She has 30 platinum medals.

So she only has to get five more while I am fourteen shy of the goal.  And getting the “easy” ones that involve catching or spinning Pokestops… well, I am 20K behind on those.  If I get in 50 catches and spins a day… an astonishing number for me on a weekday… I am 400 days away from those platinum medals.

400 days is a long time.  I have to have a strategy if I am going to beat that.

There are five Pokedex related medals that I am close on… as in being one to five Pokemon away from platinum.  But the missing Pokemon are all legendary versions that only come out at special events.  It might be a long time before I get all of those lined up.

I have a few I know I am going to be able to get fairly soon.  Defeating Team Rocket Go grunts is close, as is purifying tainted Pokemon.  But getting to 35 is still going to be an effort.

So that is my next task in Pokemon Go.  My wife senses her advantage here and I suspect she will get to 49 before I do… and then we’ll have the last set of tasks required to get to level 50.  But we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.