Gym increases Spawn rate?

I had a very interesting day today while playing GO.
I went to a popular gym that is on the shore of the lake in my town and is also famously known for periodically spawning Dratini. Today Valor had it for a majority of the day and they were repping some scary looking monsters. It was a group of teenagers and they had taken it with 1420 Dragonite. They had two other 900's in there.
The group watched as I had walked over and started taking it down, and one girl ran over and yelled "Hey what the hell are you doing! Leave that alone! I'm increasing Dratini's spawn rate!"

I told her to chill out and explain to me what she was talking about, and she said it had been "confirmed" that pokemon that are featured as the most powerful pokemon within a gym increase the spawn rate of the stage one pokemon of that featured one. I knew I could take that Dragonite down, but I decided to let it live and wait it out to see if it was true( For an hour I stayed and found no Dratini even though that gym area naturally spawns Dratini but it's incredibly rare).

I had never heard this ever, and considering I just got home and checked the website, I see no threads talking about this. However I will say this... I do definitely remember catching my first Magmar and Electabuzz near gyms that did feature them. Can anyone on here confirm this information? I kind of want to test it with my own pokemon at an unpopular gym.

I mean, I've never heard of this being a thing.

I almost wanna call instant shenanigans on it simply due to the fact that you were taking down that girl's Dragonite. I'm thinking she was just trying to get your Gogoat, buddy.

I can affirm that I've never witnessed an increase spawn rate of the Pokémon currently defending a gym.

Hiidoran said:

I mean, I've never heard of this being a thing.

I almost wanna call instant shenanigans on it simply due to the fact that you were taking down that girl's Dragonite. I'm thinking she was just trying to get your Gogoat, buddy.

I can affirm that I've never witnessed an increase spawn rate of the Pokémon currently defending a gym.

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Man I will feel like such a derp if this rumor is complete hogwash, I was originally really excited to take down that Dragonite, plus the player who put it up ,I see her name around the gyms all the time (I'm pretty sure she was the girl who screamed at me previously) and I really wanted to take it down. :/

I've never heard of this either but I can believe she wasn't lying, just misinformed. That's the kind of rumour which would spread very quickly and isn't at all unreasonable to believe, but unfortunately it probably isn't true based on there being no current evidence for it at all. I'd be interested to try experimenting with this some time but for now it probably isn't true :(

Squirrel said:

I've never heard of this either but I can believe she wasn't lying, just misinformed. That's the kind of rumour which would spread very quickly and isn't at all unreasonable to believe, but unfortunately it probably isn't true based on there being no current evidence for it at all. I'd be interested to try experimenting with this some time but for now it probably isn't true :(

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I'm pretty sure you're right, she was most likely misinformed... especially considering she had Dragonites and Dragonair's in all of the nearby gyms.
However, I did not like her attitude nor how she yelled at me (also yesterday I was showing a couple of new players how to fight gyms and she rudely snapped at them as well me), then on top of that her player name is one I see at the top of gym ranks all of the time. I almost just want to hunt down her gyms and take them down purely out of spite. lol

Mister Coffee said:

I'm pretty sure you're right, she was most likely misinformed... especially considering she had Dragonites and Dragonair's in all of the nearby gyms.

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If she has that many Dragonite and Dragonair then maybe she was onto something... Are you sure they're all hers? If so I think this theory could actually be worth testing because even the most tryhard players of all aren't at that level yet.

Squirrel said:

If she has that many Dragonite and Dragonair then maybe she was onto something... Are you sure they're all hers? If so I think this theory could actually be worth testing because even the most tryhard players of all aren't at that level yet.

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I am absolutely positive that she had a 1420 Dragonite and two 800+ Dragonairs. Considering I see her around these gyms all of the time and I know there are about two confirmed Dratini spawn points, I'm pretty sure she caught and raised them here in my town.

Mister Coffee said:

I am absolutely positive that she had a 1420 Dragonite and two 800+ Dragonairs. Considering I see her around these gyms all of the time and I know there are about two confirmed Dratini spawn points, I'm pretty sure she caught and raised them here in my town.

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Alright that's very cool to hear - I think I'll try out an experiment later and see if we can test this out. To my knowledge no Geodude or Clefairy spawn around the area I live so I'll try taking over the gym and leaving one of those in it and see what happens. If I find any of those in the wild then we can probably call it successful! Will definitely encourage anyone else to do this too so we can get some good results going.

Squirrel said:

Alright that's very cool to hear - I think I'll try out an experiment later and see if we can test this out. To my knowledge no Geodude or Clefairy spawn around the area I live so I'll try taking over the gym and leaving one of those in it and see what happens. If I find any of those in the wild then we can probably call it successful! Will definitely encourage anyone else to do this too so we can get some good results going.

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Alright! I'm interested in doing a little experimenting!
I just want to say that I did let her keep the gym because the rumor sounds probable, and I think I mentioned this earlier but I caught my very first Magmar and Electabuzz near gyms that featured them (both of which are incredibly rare around here).
I probably wont be able to really experiment with this until this next Thursday. I might try to go back to that gym on my way to work today and see if that girl's Dragonite is still up, maybe there are some Dratini hanging out over there.

Think I'll make a blog post a bit later to try and advertise this experiment - hopefully we can get a decent number of people taking part and we'll get some conclusive results. It's exciting if it's true because I need a way to farm Poliwiggles!

It would be very cool if that were true! Definitely worth experimenting!

Okay, I have to bump this thread again because I got into another situation today where some high school kids are insisting that this rumor is positively true and that I'm messing up their whole spawn rate machination, however this time it was from some kids on my own team. I told them I had searched all over Google and found absolutely no conclusive evidence that confirms this suspicion, and at this point I just want to be left alone to enjoy the actual process of fighting and stealing gyms. This time the kids insisted they had done it successfully with Gastly, Dratini, and Chansey. One kid said he even caught 15 Dratinis in a 30 minute time span using this method.

So out of needing to put this myth to rest, a friend of mine and I decided to go out tonight when the kids are all gone, steal a Gym and are going to try this method a few times with multiple monsters. I will try to update tonight if any of the results are promising or utter hogwash.

Mister Coffee said:

Okay, I have to bump this thread again because I got into another situation today where some high school kids are insisting that this rumor is positively true and that I'm messing up their whole spawn rate machination, however this time it was from some kids on my own team. I told them I had searched all over Google and found absolutely no conclusive evidence that confirms this suspicion, and at this point I just want to be left alone to enjoy the actual process of fighting and stealing gyms. This time the kids insisted they had done it successfully with Gastly, Dratini, and Chansey. One kid said he even caught 15 Dratinis in a 30 minute time span using this method.

So out of needing to put this myth to rest, a friend of mine and I decided to go out tonight when the kids are all gone, steal a Gym and are going to try this method a few times with multiple monsters. I will try to update tonight if any of the results are promising or utter hogwash.

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I sure hope it isn't just a rumour spreading around your local area but make sure you let us know what happens, very curious to find out what you see. Good luck! What Pokémon are you going to try with, something that doesn't naturally spawn in the area or something that does?

Squirrel said:

I sure hope it isn't just a rumour spreading around your local area but make sure you let us know what happens, very curious to find out what you see. Good luck! What Pokémon are you going to try with, something that doesn't naturally spawn in the area or something that does?

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Alright, so my friend and I tried a couple of things and with what we were able to pull off, we think the spawn rate rumor (based on the little testing we did) is still inconclusive.

My friend and I intended to try to take over two different gyms that are both known to rarely spawn Dratini. So basically the overall goal was to hunt as many Dratini as we could by placing our own Dratini and Dragonair into these gyms.
However the first gym that we went to which we intended to do most of our hunting at was already taken over by our own team and was holding an incredibly beefy Slowbro. My friend and I both did not have Dratini or Dragonair that could outrank the Slowbro so we decided to not try to mess with the gym.
However, before we completely gave up on the Gym, this occurred right before we left...

Slowpoke and Slowbro do spawn in my town, but they are both incredibly rare, so at first glance, this seems to give some merit to the rumor. Though this was the only situation in which this occurred while my friend and I tried this experiment.

We eventually made it to a completely different gym on a different side of the lake and it is also a well known spawning point for Dratini. We were able to steal away the gym from Valor, and we hosted a Dragonair and Dratini in the gym. We both put on an incense and we sat there for 30 minutes waiting for something to happen.
A group of other GO players rolled up to our spot and were incredibly polite especially after we explained to them what we were trying to do. This group of people told us that they had never heard of this rumor ever but after hearing us explain it, all of the members of the group started having recollections of catching incredibly rare pokemon near gyms that hosted the pokemon they caught. They walked over to a pokestop not to far away from the gym we were sitting at and we made a deal to holler at one another if anyone of us found any Dratini or Dragonair. One girl in the group managed to catch a Dratini at the stop with a lure and incense, but I personally did not think that it counted due to the stop being so far away from the gym and that it spawned due to the girl's incense. My friend and I decided to call it a night once all of our lures ended. We said our goodbyes to the nice group and they tyold us that they would be more than happy to experiment more with the rumored spawn method and would be sure to tell others to try the same.

There still might be some possibility to this rumor, but I need to do more testing and I promise to post more screenshots of any spawns that might seem related to a gym's influence.

That's interesting to hear but a shame about the iffy results - I guess longer sessions would be a lot more useful for this kind of thing. I tried to look out for this effect whilst I was out yesterday around the gym and honestly I can't say I saw any difference at all. There was a Clefable in the gym for a lot of the day but I didn't end up finding a single Clefairy (which don't spawn naturally here so not too surprised), and then when we took over the gym and added in a Vaporeon there wasn't a single Eevee spawn whilst we were there (Eevee do spawn here so that makes me think the effect does't work). It's still worth testing more but right now I'm thinking that this probably was just a rumour, unfortunately!

there is probably a higher spawn rate because the more people in an area the more pokemon spawn

bullcable said:

there is probably a higher spawn rate because the more people in an area the more pokemon spawn

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This is actually a very good point - from what I recall, Pokémon spawn rates are directly related to cellular activity in the area. If all of these people are gathering around to try and catch these Dratini but it's an area where they naturally spawn, it seems like it's just the increased overall spawn rate kicking in to make it seem like there are more Dratini but in reality it's just more Pokémon spawning in general and they happen to be Dratini as he spawns around there?