Pokemon Go’s Big Leveling Update Has An Unexpected Consequence for All Players

After months of anticipation, speculation, and leaks, the massive leveling update has arrived in Pokemon Go. Since initially revealing the big change to player levels, Niantic has shared details about the new max levels and new rewards. However, it wasn’t exactly clear just what would happen when players logged into the game after installing this massive Pokemon Go update. But late in the day on October 15th, trainers found out what the rebalance would mean for their player level. And we also encountered an unexpected and incredibly frustrating consequence.

In Niantic’s messaging about the Pokemon Go level change, it noted that trainers above Level 25 would go up by “at least one level.” So, myself and many other longtime players were surprised to hop in and realize just how big the rebalance jump would be. I was Level 38 on October 14th, but logged into Pokemon Go post update to find I had reached the former cap, Level 50, in the most anticlimactic way possible. A friend who was formerly Level 46 shot up to Level 70, which means those new level-up tasks kicked in for him at once. But on top of the surprising jump up towards the new Level 80 cap that many players experienced, the leveling update had another frustrating result: way, way too many items.

Players Have to Mass Delete Level-Up Rewards Due to Overfull Pokemon Go Storage

One of the most exciting elements of this leveling update in Pokemon Go, in my opinion, is that leveling up will sometimes automatically increase storage. Given that running out of space for items and Pokemon is one of the main reasons most players wind up shelling out money for Pokemon Go, this was a surprising move from Niantic. The increases aren’t huge, but it does mark a shift towards free expansion for item and Pokemon storage. But of course, that extra 50 slots for items couldn’t compete with the influx of items that came with this initial rebalance update.

When logging in to Pokemon Go after the leveling update, you are hit with your new trainer level at once. And that includes receiving the backlog of rewards for every single level you just jumped. If you recall my personal example, I went up from 38 to 50. That’s 12 reward levels worth of items and goodies. All at once. The screens showing off new rewards just kept going. And while that’s a nice boost of serotonin at first, many players spotted the problem immediately. Those new items take up space. A lot of space. So those newly expanded inventories? Way, way overfull immediately.

It might seem a little weird that players are complaining about too much free stuff. But when your bag is full in Pokemon Go, you can’t spin PokeStops. Many research tasks ask you to maintain a streak or spin a certain number of PokeStops, so having an overflowing inventory can bar progress. And we’re not talking about dumping 50-100 PokeBalls to make room, either. My inventory after the update was sitting at 1640/1050. That means I’m either waiting months to spin a PokeStop, or I’ll need to trash nearly 600 of the free items I just received. Which makes it feel a bit more like being gifted a task, not a set of useful in-game items that I and other players can actually keep and use.

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There is one workaround to still be able to spin at least one PokeStop per day. As many helpful players have been pointing out on Reddit, you can still spin a PokeStop with a full inventory if you still need your Daily Raid Pass. Still, that’s just one stop per day, which is going to make hitting certain goals pretty tricky without mass dumping the new influx of rewards.

Of course, the overflowing storage issue is a unique one-time consequence of the update. Now that player levels have been re-adjusted for the new system, trainers will once again receive rewards at more reasonable and manageable rates. Even so, I don’t think many of us had this on our bingo cards for things to worry about with the new Pokemon Go leveling system.

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