Pokemon Go trainer that held a gym for 1300 days defeated by a cheater
Niantic / The Pokemon CompanyA Pokemon Go trainer that managed to hold onto a remote Gym for over three and a half years has finally been defeated after sharing their achievement online.
Gyms are a familiar sight for anyone who’s ever played Niantic’s popular mobile app Pokemon Go. They appear at buildings of interest on the map, and trainers can leave their strongest creatures in them to defend, earning Pokecoins in the process.
Typically, a Pokemon will remain in a gym anywhere from a few hours to a few weeks, depending on how strong it is and how popular the location is – but one very impressive trainer has managed to last an incredible 1332 days in a gym.
NianticIn a post on the Pokemon Go subreddit, user BootsMade4Walking shared a screenshot of their Ninetails sitting comfortably in an “extremely remote” gym with a grand total of 1332 days and 7 hours spent defending it.
How did they manage to last so long? Well, the gym was located in Blue Mountain Observatory, a building run by the University of Montana. It’s so remote that no Go players had visited in the three and a half years since they placed it there.
“It is about 20 miles into the wilderness,” they wrote. “The roads are closed most of the year because of snow so hiking is the only way up there. I was up there working on the fire tower adjacent to it when Lolo was burning in 2017.”
They explained that the gym was originally nominated by a player of Ingress, an augmented reality game created by Niantic before Pokemon Go was released, and that “to my knowledge [only] 3 players from either game have been there ever including myself”.
Unfortunately, just a few hours after posting their achievement to Reddit, the trainer’s Ninetails was defeated by a ‘spoofer’ – someone who cheats by altering their location to trick the game – who recognized the location of the gym in the background.
BootsMade4Walking had even hidden their in-game display name in the screenshot in an attempt to keep their hold on the gym, but it wasn’t enough to stop the spoofer.
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Despite this unfortunate turn of events, they did manage to hit their goal of reaching 1331 days in the gym, with the trainer explaining: “In Ingress, which I play much more, there are events called NL-1331 meetups, so my goal was to hold for 1331 days.”
We don’t imagine they’ll be hitting 1331 days in a gym again any time soon, but this is certainly an achievement worth celebrating!
If you’re looking to up your gym game, here are the best Pokemon to defend gyms in Go.