If you’re in the Pokemon Go world, you likely know that October 15th is bringing a new set of levels to the game. The max rank goes from 50 to 80 and with it, the challenges and rewards currently in place will go away. Does this matter? Eh, not really. Did I want to try to hit level 50 before the reset? Absolutely. The only problem was, I needed a platinum medal to get past level 48 and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to do it.

The closest one I had was the mega evolution medal. My problem was that I didn’t really participate in mega raids when they first came out so I didn’t have enough candy for a lot of them. A while back, I started paying attention and catching up, but I was still one short. A new mega had been introduced to finally make platinum possible (the platinum only recently became achievable), but I missed my shot at finishing because I didn’t have enough candy for one more: lopunny. (Yeah, I caught a shiny!)

So, I started searching online and found that lopunny would finally be returning to mega raids on September 23rd. I just needed one raid to finally claim my medal and rush to level 50. I knew the challenges would be difficult, but I wanted to try. The game introduced the XP celebration, remote raids were allowing 10 a day (and on some occasions, 20), and there were friendship level-up bonuses I could capitalize on. Not to mention, there were several events that granted a lot of XP. Getting 4x the amount of XP for every evolution you did with a lucky egg on was massive. After banking about half the XP I needed for level 50 during the eternatus raid mayhem, I figured I should go for it. So, on day 1 on the drop, I jumped into Poke Genie, got into a raid and finally secured the bag!

I was elated! I told my husband that I was sorry and I needed to buckle down on this task. Back in the day, there was a time where level 40 was the cap and when they added 10 more levels, I hunkered down and got 40 before the change. I was going to do it again for 50, but it was going to be harder. The challenges for level 50 required a lot of time (or so I thought). And frankly, the biggest pain was going to be getting all that XP.

So, catching 5 legendary/mythical pokemon? Easy. I had a meltan box, popped it and finished that immediately. Getting level 10 in the battle league? Easier than it seems. Each card is five battles before you get your rewards. One win in each round gets you a level. The annoying thing is just finishing a card. Even if you get more than one win per card, you only get 1 level. That’s at least 50 trainer battles. Annoying, but doable! Also, the achievement didn’t show any progress on it. It just cleared from my list once I hit level 10. Team Rocket leaders? I thought that would be harder. But I had a lot of gyarados that I leveled up, gave double attacks to, and with some trial and error, I finished it quickly. Excellent throws were going to be the problem, but I actually started to get the hang of it. As you can see, three of the tasks were completed pretty quickly.

The more I played, the better I got at excellent throws. I wasn’t concerned with catching anymore. I just wanted excellent throws. I was able to get anywhere between 60-100 excellent throws a day and I was surprising myself! Luckily, there were events going on that included some big, slow pokemon that I could get excellent on relatively easily. This wasn’t without challenges though. As I would raid, there were issues happening in the game. Raids were glitching and I couldn’t finish them sometimes which wasted my passes. I’d just sit there tapping furiously and hoping my team could finish the fight. Lmao, I just realized I was playing music while raiding so you get to watch my glitch with The Weeknd.

I was running out of balls and nanab berries repeatedly, but my progress was steady! I was sending updates to my mom and brother every day, inching closer to the finish line. What started feeling like an impossible task became more tangible every day.

As I got closer to the finish line, I started to wonder if I would hit the excellent throws or the XP first. It turns out, the excellent throws were the first to be crossed off the list, but the XP wasn’t far behind!

And then the moment came. Countless raids, hundreds of evolutions, friendship levels, adding random people from Facebook who were in the same boat as me so we could spam gifts and get XP (even some generous level 50 players offering to help and letting you open gifts whenever)… we finally got there!

October 6th, I became level 50! And now I have a cool jacket to show that I did it before the reset, lol. Yeah, it is dorky that I grinded for it, but it was an achievement I was excited to obtain and something that felt special to do. I’ve slowed way down now knowing the update is around the corner. But getting that jacket and celebrating with some froyo was worth it.

So what’s coming in the update? Well, level 80 is the max, and from what I’m reading, I’ll likely be starting the update at level 70 and working through the new challenges to level through those ranks. I will need more XP to actually get 80, but it seems like I can hit a few of those 70 levels through challenges alone. What will they be? I guess we will find out soon enough!