Welcome back! Feel free to skip over the ones you know and I hope this helps. Make sure to always check the in-game NEWS section in settings. GG
-
Fall, 2016: If you spin a stop and catch a pokémon everyday for 7 days straight you’ll get a weekly bonus of stardust and XP for the pokémon caught and the pokéstop you spin will give you bonus XP as well as tons of items including an evolution item. See #3.
-
December, 2016: Baby pokémon from gen2 got released in eggs. This also brought us packaged deals of items found in the shop that change from time to time.
-
February, 2017: Gen2 dropped with new features and items. Evolved pokémon now give you extra candy and dust when caught, nanab berries calm a pokémon down and pinaps 2x the amount of candy when you catch any pokémon. Evolution items were added and are found at pokéstops. King’s rock for poliwhirl and slowpoke, dragon scale for seadra, upgrade for porygon, metal coat for scyther and onyx, sun stone for gloom and sunkern.
-
Spring, 2017: Shiny pokémon started to roll out with magikarp and later pikachu. Not all pokémon can be shiny though. Your best bet to get one is on Community Day. See #12.
-
Summer, 2017: Gym rework took place and that started the whole raid scene. See #6 for raids. Gyms now act as pokéstops and only hold 6 pokémon because more gyms were added. Once you interact with a gym you will obtain a badge for it. The higher your badge is the more items you get from it. You can’t put the same pokémon in the same gym. Legendaries or mythicals can’t sit in a gym either. You only get 50 coins a day if you’ve been in a gym for about 8.20 hrs and you have to get kicked out to earn coins. We also have a motivation system. If your pokémon is low on motivation you can feed it any berry to restore its motivation. Golden berries fully restore their motivation. I recommend pokémon under 2,042. They lose motivation slower.
-
RAIDS ARE HUGE IN POKÉMON GO. A raid is a feature that let’s you battle against a powerful pokémon that hatches from an egg after an hour known as a raid boss. After it hatches you have 45min to attend. To attend you have to have a raid pass which you can get from the store but you get one free pass a day when you visit any gym. We have 5 types of raids. Tiers 1-3 can be done solo but you must have the right pokémon to defeat them if doing a tier 3 solo. Tiers 4 and 5 (5 for legendary bosses) can only be done with 2 or more trainers. I recommend you always have a large crew of about 8 strong trainers to be safe because you don’t want to lose your pass by time running out on you. If you win a raid you’ll be rewarded with items such as rare candy that can increase the candy amount for any pokémon by one piece, fast and charged technical machines (TMs) that can change your pokémon’s moves and golden razz berries that make catching pokémon easier and boost the energy of pokémon in your team in gyms. Make sure to join a raid group in your nearby area to know where to meet everyone for a raid.
-
July, 2017: The 1st ever GoFest event brought us a worldwide catch challenge, exclusive pokémon for those at GoFest and the beginning of legendary raids. GoFest is basically the World Cup of PoGo events hosted by Niantic. The legendary birds have all gone away since then but if you complete your field research in 7 days you’ll get articuno (June, 2017). See #13.
-
List of legendary raid bosses after GoFest are moltres, zapdos, articuno, lugia, raikou, entei, suicune, kyogre, ho-oh, groudon and rayquaza. Latios and latias are region locked and currently available. Mewtwo is strictly invite only through a lottery known as EX Raid. You get an invite by recently raiding at an EX gym and raiding once a day. See your local raid group for more info.
-
October, 2017: Gen3 started to slowly roll out with ghost and dark pokémon. A small amount have not been added due to them needing abilities to function.
-
November, 2017: We had a 2nd worldwide catch challenge that unlocked many bonuses and farfetch’d was released worldwide for 2 days.
-
December, 2017: Weather reflected by your area is in game now and it causes pokémon to have their their CPs, IVs and stats boosted up to 5 levels over your trainer level. The cap is level 35 if you’re level 30 or above. Depending on what the weather is on your device, certain pokémon will be WB (weather boosted) for that hour or more. WB pokémon also give you more stardust. New items added are star pieces which give you 50% more stardust for anything that earns you stardust and super incubators that hatch eggs 1.5x (67%) faster. AR+ introduced but only on. iOS. With AR+ you can actually sneak up close to a pokémon and take even more life like pictures.
-
January, 2018: The 1st Community Day was introduced with pikachu. CD is always on either a Saturday or Sunday once a month and gives us a greater chance of encountering the featured pokémon for 3hrs. During that window, shiny encounters of that pokémon, bonuses and its catch rate are all increased as well as its final form getting a new, exclusive move. Since then we’ve had dratini, bulbasaur, mareep and charmander. Larvitar is Jun 16th.
-
April, 2018: Tasks (or quests) have been added with mew being the 1st mythical pokémon added to the game and is obtainable through the special research task. Moltres was the 1st to be featured through the field research task. Details to obtain them and how tasks work are on the the game’s UI.
-
May, 2018: Zapdos is the current field research pokémon for May. Tickets for GoFest 2018 in July just went on sale and all quickly sold out.
-
June, 2018: Trading is now live and works through the friendship feature. Regice is a legendary raid boss for the tail end of June to July. Tyranitar learned the rock move smack down for 3hrs ln Community Day.
End for now but subject to change. GG
