Is this the ultimate Pokemon Go troll or just a genuine mistake?

Trainers continue to climb through levels in Pokemon Go by gaining as much XP as possible. However, it looks like some are getting robbed of 100,000 XP, with the only question being is this intentional or just a mistake?

Avid trainers will be familiar with the gifting feature in the Pokemon Go friends. You can send and receive gifts daily to each of your friends (there is a limit of how many) and earn XP in the process.

It can take a while but as you climb through the friends’ tiers you can actually pick up a lot of XP for not a lot of effort. If you send and receive a gift to one friend every day for a 90 day time period then you can earn a massive 163,000 XP. If you do this across numerous friends and use a Lucky Egg when ascending through the tiers then there is a lot of XP to be had!

That’s a lot of XP to miss out on

The final milestone of “Best Friends” earns both you and your friend 100,000 XP, so understandably it is well worth having. What if only one of you get that final bonus, though? And all the worse, what if it is intentional as nothing more than a cheap troll?

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Well that’s exactly what’s been happening for numerous Pokemon Go trainers across the world. When sending that final gift to each other to reach Best Friends, the XP is only received after opening the final gift.

Now, a lot of trainers use this method to farm XP and therefore once they achieve Best Friends with someone, often remove them from their friends list to make room for someone else. The problem with this is, if that trainer hasn’t opened that final gift they will miss out on that 100,000 XP.

There are numerous reasons why this might be. Firstly, they may not have got round to opening it. Secondly, a lot of trainers like to increase their friendship levels while using a Lucky Egg to double the XP earned.

There are likely instances where this is intentional but given no reaction can be seen from the trainer removing the friend from their list, it does seem a strange way to try and annoy someone.

Can you add back the same friend and get the XP?

This issue has led some trainers to question whether they can ever get the XP they missed out on. The evidence suggests this is possible, but it can’t be guaranteed.

You would also need to know the Trainer Code of the friend you’re trying to re-add, which is only likely if you can contact them elsewhere or know them in a different walk of life.

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If you can re-add them then your friendship progress should be as it was, although this can’t be guaranteed as per the Niantic Help Twitter account. Anecdotal reports also suggest friendship levels will remain the same upon re-adding.

One story did confirm it was nothing more than a mistake. The trainer in question found the deleted friend and was subsequently awarded their XP.

A lot of trainers will never know if they were the victim of one of the more unusual Pokemon Go trolls, but the chances are most of these instances are nothing more than mistakes where the other trainer is making room for another friend.