Teams are an important part of Pokemon Go, so if you feel like you chose the wrong one early on, you might want to know how to change teams.
How to Change Teams on Pokemon Go
You only get one chance to select a team for your account early on in Pokemon Go, so if the team you select ends up being a choice you regret, you’ll be glad to know that there’s a way to change your team later on.
Unfortunately, that’s less easily said than done. Still, if you’d like to change your team in Pokemon Go, you can follow the instructions here:
- Make sure you are logged in to the correct Pokemon Go account
- Press the red and white Pokeball icon in the middle of your gameplay screen
- Tap on the shop icon in the middle of the Pokeball menu
- Scroll down to the upgrades section of the shop
- Purchase a Team Medallion for 1000 Pokecoins
- Next, go back to the Pokeball menu and enter your items bag
- Scroll down till you find the Team Medallion in your bag, and activate it.
From there, you’ll be taken to a selection screen that allows you to pick a team in Pokemon Go again. You’ll want to be sure you’re happy with the choice this time though, given that those Team Medallions cost 1000 coins each, or 20 days’ worth of Pokecoins if you’re a free-to-play player.
That is a hell of a lot of coins, and a huge investment for anyone who is free-to-play because 20 days is the absolute minimum amount of time you can earn coins to buy it, if you get less than 50 on a single day, that’ll be an extra day of effort you need to get there thanks to that cap.
Is It Worth Changing Teams in Pokemon Go?
Depending on your situation, it might be worth considering changing Teams.
Teams in Pokemon Go are one of the largest indirect influences on your gameplay, so change there can be important. While they don’t immediately impact your gameplay – they make no difference to what happens when you throw a Pokeball at a wild Pokemon, for example – they do potentially change how well you can earn Pokecoins though.
This is a significant concern because earning Pokecoins in Pokemon Go is a major part of playing when you’re free-to-play, ideally, you want to earn a regular 50 Pokecoins a day, which requires you to control a Gym for around 8 odd hours and then lose control of it on a daily basis. You only get the coins when the Gym changes hands after all.
That means that for the ideal Pokecoin income, a free-to-play player wants to be on a team that has enough players to hold the gym for a few hours after they take it. That team also needs to not be totally dominant in the player’s area, or they might end up preventing other teams from taking the Gym back.
Without losing the gym at some point, you are never awarded the earned Pokecoins.
Ultimately these bits of information combined mean that you want to be on the middle-of-the-pack team in your area usually. The dominant team might struggle to lose Gyms which slows their income, while the weakest team may struggle to take and hold them at all – they would still get some Pokecoins when the gym is lost in that case, but not necessarily the full 50 daily limit of them.