Catching Smeargle in Pokemon Go should be an easy process but is proving a little frustrating for some.
The process is simple enough and doesn’t require much in the way of skill or cunning, Trainer can even do it without leaving their home.
It essentially involves Trainers using the new Snapshot feature to take a lot of pictures of your chosen Pokemon.
This can be done by looking over whichever Pokemon you have selected and clicking the camera button in the right side of the screen.
But now that Trainers have had some time with the new features, they’ve found new tips to try out when catching Smeargle.
It has now been confirmed that Smeargle will generally copy whatever moveset the Pokemon you have chosen to snap currently has.
This means you have a certain amount of control over how your Smeargle will turn out.
But having tried to catch Smeargle a lot, some Trainers are getting fed up at their bad luck.
What is supposed to happen is for Smeargle to photobomb one of your pictures and then appears on the map screen.
Trainers should then be able to catch it and add it to their collection, along with the moveset of the Pokemon it photobombed.
But there doesn’t seem to be a surefire way to guarantee a Smeargle, although there are some handy ways of speeding up the process.
One of the first things to do is to turn off AR+, as this will make the process faster.
When taking pictures of your chosen Pokemon, it appears that the pictures you take with pulse multiple times in the lower right-hand corner if Smeargle has decided to photobomb.
This is another way to keep an eye on how you’re doing with catching the last Gen 2 Pokemon to be added to the game.
But when it comes to how many pictures to take and how many times to rotate to a new Pokemon, there doesn’t seem to be a winning formula.
One things that Trainers have found is that they are able to exploit a bug right now to change what moves Smeargle can learn.
Niantic has confirmed that TMs can be used on Smeargle so that it learns moves that aren’t a part of the usual loadout.
This is being removed very soon by Niantic but they’re warning Trainers not to do it this week.
“Trainers, while Smeargle should only able to learn moves by using Sketch during a photobomb, a bug is allowing you to use TMs and is displaying a New Attack button,” Niantic confirms.
“These will be removed in the next update. Any changes to Smeargle’s moveset before the update will be preserved.”
Here’s a list on how to use the new Snapshot feature in Pokemon Go:
- Tap on the Pokémon you want to take a GO Snapshot of in your Pokémon Storage.
- Tap the camera icon in the upper-right corner.
- If you are using AR+, slowly pan your camera over a flat, open surface (like the ground or a tabletop). A shimmery effect with yellow footsteps will appear once your device has detected your environment.
- Tap on the shimmery effect to place your Pokémon on the flat surface.
- You can move around to find the best angles for your shot. Tap your Pokémon, and it will strike a pose. You can also brush your Pokémon to get its attention.
- Once ready, tap the camera icon to take your GO Snapshot. You can take multiple shots, and they are saved to your device’s memory.
Trainers are also being warned that storing all the pictures you’ve taken is a bad idea and that storage could become a problem for some.
Others are fed up with the process, having failed to nab a Smeargle yet for their collection.
“I have done this over and over again for three days now. I am not spamming,” one user writes.
“One photo at a time different species of Pokemon each time. I have no idea how many photos by now as I have photo saving turned off — well over 500 for sure.
“Several hours each day doing this. There are just some people that are not able to get this to work.
“Maybe it is just really, really bad luck and RNG but it is annoying and disappointing. I have a help ticket pending trying to get an answer if it is really working as intended or not.”