Okay, so let me tell you what happened the other day while I was playing.
Trying to boost my buddy
I finally caught this pretty decent Pokémon, right? Had good stats, looked cool, the whole deal. I was super excited to make it stronger because I wanted to use it for battles. So, I went to its screen, saw I had enough candy and stardust, and tapped that ‘POWER UP’ button.
Nothing. Well, not nothing. I got this message popping up: ‘Trainer level too low to power up’. At first, I was like, huh? What’s that mean? I tapped it again. Same message. I thought maybe the game was glitching or something.
Figuring it out
So I started poking around. I looked at my trainer profile, saw my level there. Then I went back to the Pokémon screen and looked closely at that arc thing above it, the CP bar. I noticed it was already pretty full, almost near the end for where my current trainer level allows.
It kinda clicked then. It wasn’t a bug. The game literally wouldn’t let me power up the Pokémon anymore because my own trainer level wasn’t high enough to handle a stronger Pokémon yet. It seems like there’s a cap, you know? Your Pokémon’s strength is tied to your own level.
- I checked some other strong Pokémon I had.
- Yep, same deal for the ones that were already high CP.
- The lower CP ones? I could still power those up a bit.
The Grind is Real
So, what’s the solution? Simple, but also kinda annoying: I just gotta level up myself. More catching, more spinning stops, more raids, more everything to get that sweet XP. There’s no shortcut around it if I want to max out my best catches.
It makes sense, I guess, as a way to keep things balanced. But man, seeing that message when you’re all hyped to boost your new favorite Pokémon is a bit of a downer. Just means I gotta get back out there and grind some more levels. The journey continues!