Pokémon Go evolution is ridiculously hard, particularly with those in the bottom end of the Pokédex order. The next update could change that.
If you haven’t joined the Gyarados gang yet, you might want to listen up. Thanks to some data mining by AeonLucid’s PogoProtos, you might be able to buddy up with a Pokémon and gain evolution candy by taking it for a walk. A literal walk, similar to how you hatch an egg in the augmented reality game. The feature is apparently called ‘Pokémon Buddy.’
According to the data, your chosen Pokémon will appear alongside you in ‘medium size’, ‘big size’, ‘flying next to you’ or ‘on your shoulder’.
Evolving Pokémon is a heavy grind, a prime example would be Gyarados. The dragon Pokémon requires 400 candies to be attained, by evolving a Magikarp. Luckily with enough effort it’s not impossible as Magikarps are common, hence so are its candies.
However with the more elusive pocket monsters, you could be walking for a long time before you encounter for example, a Dratini. Even then, every Pokémon yields only three candy pieces.
A big part of the main line Pokémon game is training up your team to take on opponents in battle. Random battling could be coming in a later update, and training can be replicated with ‘Pokémon Buddy.’
The augmented reality phenomenon saw inspiring stories of people with disabilities conquering agoraphobia, and some claim to have even lost weight due to the game.
The data does not detail on specifics such as: how many candies you’ll get, how many steps needed, is there a limit and so on. Murmurs in the Pokémon world are saying a update could be released next week with the ‘Pokemon Buddy’ feature.
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