The Fastest Way To Catch Pokémon: With Route Optimization

Everywhere around us, people are hunting down Pokémon.

With the explosive popularity of Pokémon Go, people can’t seem to stop themselves.

They're hunting Pokémon at funeral homes, while on the toilet, while driving, and in hospital rooms. One man caught a Pokémon as he stood on the side of the road after he had been pulled over by the cops. Another caught a Pokémon while his wife was in labor. And police in Missouri claimed that suspected robbers lured in victims with the possibility of Pokémon.

Pokémon — the Nintendo-owned franchise which became extremely popular in the late 90s — is making a comeback. Last week, Niantic Labs (an offshoot of Google, in cooperation with Nintendo and the Pokémon Company) released Pokémon Go — an app for iPhone and Android that has since been downloaded an estimated 7.5 million times in the United States alone.

Pokémon Go uses your phone’s GPS and clock to detect where and when you are in the game and make Pokémon “appear” (through your phone screen) around you. The goal is to catch as many Pokémon — powerful creatures that can look like dragons, dinosaurs, rats, snakes, and birds — as fast as you can. As you move around in the physical world, more Pokémon will appear depending on where you are and what time it is.

So what do you do when you gotta catch ’em all??

We’ve come up with the fastest, most efficient way to start your collection: by running a list of known Pokémon locations in San Francisco through Routific.

Better grab your bike and extra pokéballs because this tour is going to be a long one!

Want to follow the above route? You can download the run sheet here.‍

Thanks to Curbed for listing 99 Pokémon sightings in San Francisco!