It is almost unimaginable: Brandon Tan, a player from Singapore, has now reached 1 billion XP in Pokémon GO. His journey there is impressive.
Who is Brandon Tan? This name should be familiar to many trainers. He is considered the best player in Pokémon GO as he has the most experience points worldwide.
Now the trainer from Singapore has reached an incredible milestone. He gained one billion XP. That is 50 times more than the path to maximum level 40. Many players haven’t even reached this, yet Tan has 50x more experience points.
The path to one billion XP
How did Tan achieve this? In a video on YouTube, the trainer explained his path to one billion. He took a whole hour to describe the individual stages leading to the billion.
The trainer reached level 40 back in October 2016. That is particularly early, as it should be noted that most XP were still gained through evolutions. Raids were not there yet, and they at least brought 20,000 XP each.
After reaching level 40, Tan really got started. Only 5 months later, on March 8, 2017, he already had 100 million experience points. That is level 40×5.
After this milestone, Tan leveled up even faster. Raids were introduced in the summer of 2017, and it became even easier to earn XP. In May 2018, Brandon Tan surpassed the half billion XP mark. At that time there was no friendship feature yet, which brings most XP to this day.
With the introduction of friendships, Brandon Tan was also able to level up faster. In June 2019, he already reached 900 million XP. For the last 100 million, Tan took a bit more time. In September 2019, he finally reached 999,999,999 XP. That is the maximum. Pokémon GO cannot display one billion in the game.
What did he level up with the most? The main factor for Brandon Tan was definitely the raids. The trainer has completed over 14,000 legendary raids to date. There were days when Tan casually did over 50 raids, especially when there were good raid bosses.
He also mentioned that friendship levels were important. Tan already has 361 best friends. This means, if he always had a lucky egg activated, alone 72 million XP just for leveling up to best friend.
Here are his statistics: Many of his medals are spectacular and perhaps unmatched so far. Some of them are presented here:
- 14,150 kilometers were run in total
- 695,900 Pokémon have been caught
- 100,600 evolutions have been conducted
- 30,200 eggs have been hatched
- 613,500 PokéStops have been spun
- 14,400 legendary raids have been completed
- 344,800 berries have been fed in gyms
- 33,900 field researches have been completed
- 55,500 Pidgeys have been seen and 39,800 of them have been caught
- 62,100 Rattatas have been seen and 42,500 of them have been caught
- 1,700 Kyogres have been seen and only 258 of them have been caught
Brandon Tan is in criticism – Why?
Here he was banned: Many players view the story surrounding Brandon Tan somewhat critically. In September 2018, the trainer was banned by Niantic for 30 days, as he offered catching services for other players.
Tan allowed other trainers to pay him to catch legendary Pokémon for them. This did not please Niantic, so they banned him for 30 days.
There are speculations: Some trainers repeatedly accuse Tan of not only playing his account, but also having other trainers play it. However, there is still no evidence for this.
Despite all the speculations and negative comments, reaching one billion XP is a huge milestone. He is the first known trainer to achieve this goal.
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