How to Maximize Your Daily Incense
It turns out, I was wrong about the Daily Incense in Pokemon GO. I always thought that the Daily Adventure Incense was pretty simple. It would just spit out one Pokemon every minute, meaning you could ever only get 15 Pokemon total. But no, it’s more complicated than that. It turns out, you can get a lot more Pokemon out of a single Incense.
The way the Daily Adventure Incense works is simple. It lasts for 15 minutes, and the more you walk, the more Pokemon spawn. The spawn rate is pretty simple. Every 30 seconds, the game checks to see if you are 50 meters away from where the last Pokemon spawned, and whether that Pokemon is still there. If the Pokemon isn’t there and you have moved 50 meters away from that last spawn, then a new Pokemon appears. Theoretically, you could get 30 Pokemon from a Daily Adventure Incense, if each Pokemon could instantly be caught. But because the game checks to see if the previous Pokemon is still there, that makes things impossible.
Instead, you need to catch every Pokemon as it spawns, in order to maximize the number of Pokemon you can get. A Pokemon despawns after about 30 seconds, but you can catch a Pokemon in less time than that. Depending on the Pokemon that spawns. If you use a method like quick-catching (which allows you to both catch a Pokemon and flee from the encounter, skipping the Pokeball catch animation), then you can easily get 25 Pokemon from a single Incense. The best I’ve managed is 24, but mostly because you can get a lot of spawns that are a pain to catch, such as Granbull and Spritzee. Having a lot of Great or Ultra Balls helps a lot. You want to catch each Pokemon as soon as possible, so you can move on to the next one.
The real important thing though is movement. Because the game doesn’t measure twists and turns. It measures a straight line, 50 meters away from the previous Pokemon. This means that you definitely want to walk in as straight a line as possible. And preferably at a swift pace, in order to cover each 50 meters more easily. Technically, the best and most consistent way to do so would be to be a passenger in a car, but while in a car, you have to keep your speed limit low, as you can’t catch anything at all if you are moving too fast. A single, long, straight road is your best bet, while walking at a brisk pace. A bicycle would also work, if you are capable of riding and quick-catching at the same time.
So, basically, you want to walk fast and in a straight line, and catch each Pokemon as quickly as possible so the next one will spawn.
Unfortunately though, your chance of seeing a Galarian Bird is still rather low. I haven’t seen one in a long time, and that is despite daily usage. And, to make matters worse, I’m kinda running out of Pokeballs, since none of the long, straight roads where I live have Pokestops on them. Annoyingly, where I live, Pokestops appear in clusters, not nice and neatly down main roads.
Still, by catching every Pokemon I see and sticking to a straight path, I’ve gone from seeing 15-16 Pokemon per daily incense to seeing at least 20. It’s definitely worth doing, if only for a slightly greater chance at those ultra rare, ultra hard to catch Legendaries…