Do you play Pokémon GO? Have you ever tried to find good advice on how to decide which Pokémon to keep and which to throw away? If your answer is no, please go away, and stop bullying me! But if you’re a Pokénerd like me, hang in there because I have a ridiculously methodical process for culling my Pokéherd. If you like it, feel free to use it. Or you can just use part of it to make your process easier.

Here is my culling process:

First, put everything in a “Working” tag. Pokémon GO doesn’t let you select all of your Pokémon at once, so the easiest way is to search for “0*,1*,2*” and tag them, and then search for “3*,4*” and tag them.

Open the Working tag, and search for “Shiny”

  • Put one of each species with the best Regular IV in Keep tag
  • Put one of each species with the best league IVs (only if over 98%) in Keep tag
  • Put 9 of the remaining highest level in Free Agent tag.
  • Put the rest in Recycle Bin tag.

Search for “Costume”

  • Put one of each species with the best Regular IV in Keep tag
  • Put one of each species with the best league IVs (only if over 98%) in Keep tag
  • Put 9 of the remaining highest level in Free Agent tag.
  • Put the rest in Recycle Bin group.

Search for attacker Tier 2 or higher (See PoGo Search META Tiers)

  • Put 6 of the best regular IVs in the Keep tag
  • Put the rest in Recycle Bin tag.

With the rest:

  • Keep one of each species evolution with the

    • best regular IV for Living Dex/Master League,

    • best Little Cup IV,
    • best Great League IV,
    • best Ultra League IV
  • Put the rest — you guessed it — in Recycle Bin tag.

Now, you’re Working tag should be empty.

Go to the Recycle Bin tag and search for “Year2016-2018”

  • Put all of them in the Free Agents tag.

Search for any Tier 2 or higher (See PoGo Search META Tiers)

  • Put the best 9 in the Free Agents tag.
  • Put the rest in the 2x Transfer tag.

Transfer the rest of the Recycle Bin or tag them 2x Transfer to save them for the next 2X Transfer Spotlight hour.

I scan every single Pokemon with Poke Genie before I start this process and rename them before I start culling. I use MacroDroid to run a macro that automatically renames them.

I haven’t updated the META tier lists on PoGo search in a while, so the latest new releases haven’t been added, but I will update those soon.