Key values for motivation

The new gym system brought with it the new concept of motivation which lowers the CP of a Pokémon if it stays too long in a gym. This article tries to summarize what is known about motivation and corrects some misconceptions.

Table 1 summarizes a few key values for motivation

Decription Value Maximum motivation 100% Minimum motivation 20% Initial Motivation 92% Able to feed a berry 100% - was <96% before v0.69 Message x needs a tread(1) 35-36% Motivation loss defender <3000CP 1.11% each hour Motivation loss defender ≥3000CP 10% each hour Motivation loss each battle 26.67% Kicked out of gym <20%

Table 1: Key values for motivation

(1)needs confirmation and more exact value

Values explained

Why such strange numbers? The 1.11% motivation loss per hour means it takes 72 hours (exactly 3 days) for the Pokémon’s motivation to decay from maximum value to minimum value. 26.67% is the equivalent of 1 day of motivation loss – this means you lose the same amount of motivation with a lost battle as with 1 day of not feeding berries. Each day that the gym you attack hasn’t been fed any berries save attackers one gym battle.

Now you have to wait only 2 hours 40 minutes and 5 hours 20 minutes instead of 1 day and 2 days for a 3000+ CP Pokémon to save a battle.

Feeding berries / increasing motivation

Some trainer only feed berries for the 20 star dust per berry. Some for the 10 badge XP per berry. But the original idea of feeding berries is to restore motivation. Table 2 displays the amount of motivation gained when feeding a berry. You can only feed up to 10 berries in a half hour time window. This is a rolling time window. Thanks to iastatethrow and his very good research how to get the maximum stardust from berries.

Berry Razz, Pinap Berry Nanab Berry Berry 1 0.12 0.15 Berry 2 0.048 0.06 Berry 3 0.024 0.03 Berry 4 0.012 0.015 Berry 5 0.0096 0.012 Berry 6-10 0.008 0.01 Total 10 berries 0.2536 0.287

Table 2: Motivation gain from feeding berries

Feeding berries means that the first berry will gain a lot more motivation compared to the following berry. The only way to get a Pokemon quickly back to 100% is to feed it a Golden Razz Berry which will bring it back to 100% in an instant.

Each Pokémon keeps a tally in the upper right corner

This allows you to check how many berries this Pokémon already got while in this gym. This count is for your berries as well as the berries fed by other trainers. It’s important to know is that the 12/15% for the first berry are a personal value. Two different trainers feeding one berry each will increase motivation a lot more than one trainer feeding two berries.

The berry count is also personal to that specific Pokémon. If Pokémon A gets kicked out of a gym and replaced by a different Pokémon B then the count of how many berries are fed in the last half hour starts at 1 again. This reset doesn’t work if you place Pokémon A back in again.

Raids and motivation

Motivation stops decreasing when an egg appears on top of a gym. It is currently unknown if this is a feature or a bug. You can feed berries while there is a raid egg on top of the gym but this will trigger the Pokemon to start losing motivation again – even while the egg is on top of the gym.

I will update the article once distance feeding of berries is possible again to investigate the effect this has.