How To Get An Egg In "Pokemon Go"

It’s been less than a week, and humanity has already entered into the era that future historians will refer to as “The 'Pokemon Go' Age.” If you’re still figuring out how to play everyone’s new obsession, you may be wondering how to get an egg in "Pokemon Go." For the most part, finding and hatching eggs is quite simple — you just need to put on your walking shoes and get moving.

Eggs provide a way for you to collect Pokemon outside of the usual method, so it’s worth collecting them when you can. You can find eggs at Pokestops, which are usually located at landmarks and other significant public places. When you find a Pokestop, you can activate it by swiping the circle on the screen, making it spin. As it spins, it will release Pokeballs, eggs, and other rewards. (You won’t find eggs at every single stop, so if you don’t get any at first, keep hunting.) Tap on each of the items to collect them.

To see your eggs, touch the Pokeball icon on the bottom of your screen, and then tap the Pokemon button. On the upper right corner of the screen, you’ll see a tab labeled “Eggs.” When you tap that, you’ll see all of the eggs you’ve collected.

Here’s what you’ll see at a Pokestop, before and after swiping the circle:

So now that you’ve got eggs, what do you do with them? The simple answer is “Walk, walk, and then keep walking,” but there are a couple steps to complete first.

When you look at your eggs, you’ll see that each one is labeled with a distance — two, five, or 10 kilometers. That distance is how far you have to walk in order to get your egg to hatch and give you your fancy new Pokemon. The farther the distance, the rarer the Pokemon. (You can see a list of which Pokemon you can score with different distances here.)

BUT. An egg will only hatch if it’s in an incubator. Every player gets one incubator free that can be used an infinite number of times. If you want to be able to incubate multiple eggs simultaneously, you can buy new incubators in the game store, though each of these will have a limited number of uses.

To begin incubating an egg (and start your mileage counter for that egg), go to your egg screen and tap it. Tap “Start Incubation.” A menu with all of your incubators will appear. Touch the one you want to get the incubation going, and start walking! When you cover the distance specified by your egg, it’ll hatch and you’ll get a shiny new Pokemon.

You can see a demonstration of the whole process in this video from Trainer Tips. (The video is quite long, so if you only want to see how to get and hatch eggs, skip to the 16:20 mark.)

You should be aware that the game will only count distances traveled while walking or running. If you move more than 20 mph (i.e. get in a car), the distance won’t count. Of course, lots of players have already started brainstorming hacks to get around this issue. I have to admit that, although I’m a fan of good old-fashioned walking, the idea of strapping your phone to your dog and letting the pup run around the backyard, hatching Pokemon eggs all the while, is pretty genius.

Images: Michael Loccisano/Getty Images; Pokemon Go (2)