Here's How to Get Your Pokémon to Over 1,000 CP in 'Pokémon Go'

If you've been playing Pokémon Go for a while and haven't yet devolved into a quivering mass, wheezing out the location of a Snorlax and bashing your skull for a Pinsir, you've probably figured out that your Pokémon need to be strong to be successful. That means raising them to high Combat Power, or CP — the strength of your Pokémon.

Like any game with a ravenous user base, there are tools and charts all over the internet filled with info on the game mechanics and statistics. One Reddit user, Kyurun, calculated all the CP levels Pokémon need in order to guarantee a CP over 1,000 in its final evolution, using the Pokémon Go toolkit. Without 1,000+ CP Pokémon, chances of taking over and holding an enemy gym are pretty slim; Kyurun even used the example of 2,000+ CP Pokémon, which is bonkers.

Here's what Kyurun calculated:

So, taking Abra, the first Pokémon listed, you'd need to get its CP up to 526 in order for its final form, Alakazam, to have between 1,000 and 1,691 CP — in other words, a real bruiser.

Now, when Mashable's Sam Haysom tried this tactic with his Drowzee, the evolved form Hypno was off by a few points. That's because, as Kyurun points out, the Toolkit isn't 100% accurate. You have to get down to calculating individual values, or IVs, using a calculator like this one.

This is when your Pokémon Go gameplay starts to turn into a hobby rather than an app you play on the toilet. Since each individual Pokémon can have different stats, even when compared with another of the exact same type, you need to pay attention to those levels in order to predict where that CP level will go after evolving. But since you can't see those actual IV levels, you have to use an aforementioned calculator and input the values you already have — like combat power and health.

Again, that's a ton of effort and goes far beyond casual gameplay. But if you want to be the very best — like no one ever was — you're gonna have to step it up.

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