How to make the most of the Valentine's Day event

Greetings Trainers!

Pokemon GO's latest event has folks catching pink Pokemon, with a touch of sweetness; yes, it's double-candy season again! This applies to catches, hatches, and buddy candies, making now the prime time to stock up. Lure Modules also last for 6 whole hours while the event is going, to paint the town pink. Today's article will go over some basic tips to let you know how to best take advantage of this event, regardless of your goals. Maximize your EXP, get the most return on your coins, and of course, catch the most relevant seasonal Pokemon available! This includes considerations for the upcoming 2nd generation of Pokemon, which will be releasing some time in the not-so-distant future!

Table of Contents

• Event Details
• Pokemon you should stock up on right now
• Getting the most out of double candy
• Spending coins wisely
• Conclusion

Event Details (Feb 8th-15th)

As mentioned above, the Valentine's event rewards players with double candy on catches, hatches, and buddy candies. We'll discuss how to best take advantage of this in the section below. Additionally, the event has increased the rate that "pink" Pokemon spawn. Below is a list of "pink" Pokemon that have an increased spawn rate right now:

Such a pain

• Chansey
• Porygon
• Lickitung
• Exeggcute (confirmed)
• Slowpoke
• Slowbro
• Igglybuff (hatch)
• Jigglypuff
• Wigglytuff
• Cleffa (hatch)
• Clefairy
• Clefable
• Smoochum (hatch)

Also, theoretically Exeggcute, but I haven't seen any. I've also seen very few Chansey though, so this may be a regional issue... will update if I can confirm.

Edit: Exeggcute confirmed

Pokemon you should stock up on right now

This has more to do with double-candy season than it does the list of pink Pokemon, but here are my recommendations on Pokemon to give event-related priority to right now:

Porygon2 is coming! Also...
Porygon is rare

• Chansey
• Porygon
• Exeggcute (confirmed)
• Pidgey
• Weedle
• Caterpie
• Rattata (wynaut?)

The first few of those recommendations are obvious; Chansey and Porygon are rare, so why not catch as many as you can before they go back to being rare! That's true, but I have a specific reason for recommending Chansey and Porygon, as well as the others. Of course, any good Pokemon is worth catching right now, but I'm not going to tell you to stock up on Snorlax and Dragonite, because that's not really something you can do...

But Chansey and Porygon hold a lot of promise for later releases. Chansey is already super annoying to deal with in gyms, and come Generation 2, it will be getting an evolution: Blissey. Blissey will be an even better Chansey, but importantly, it will have a high CP (Max CP = 3213) to back it up. That means that Blissey will sit near the tops of gyms, and you won't get to knock it out right at the start. Every time you run through a gym, you'll have to beat a ****ing Blissey. Enjoy. But hey, at least you can make that power your own! You'll want lots of Chanseys both to increase your odds of getting a good one, and to stock up on candies for powering up your Blisseys in the future.

Porygon is more of a "could be good, might as well" mentality. Porygon also gets an evolution in Generation 2, creatively named: "Porygon2." Porygon2 will have stats similar to a Tauros or Venusaur, and as a normal Pokemon, will be difficult to take advantage of. If Porygon2 gets good attacks, it will be worth having one, so it's not a bad idea to stock up on Porygon candies now while you can. Also, if you're a completionist, now is the time to get a top-tier Porygon.

Getting the most out of double candy - Evolution sprees & Elite mons

The others on the list are more obvious. Exeggutor is great, so stock up while the going is good. But that could be said of any Pokemon (e.g. Dratini, Eevee, Lapras etc...). Famously, Pidgey, Weedle, Caterpie, and because they're so common, Rattata, are all evolution fodder for making the most of your lucky eggs (click here for more info).

It's tempting to therefore use your lucky eggs now, but don't be fooled! You don't need to actually go on evolving sprees right now, just stock up on the candies. You can get the most out of lucky eggs by waiting for the 7th day of your "first catch/stop of the day" streaks. Importantly, it's better to transfer Pokemon now while you get double candies, rather than hold onto them for an evolution spree. So unless you're going to evolve them (and then transfer them) within the event, it's better to just transfer everything you can and get the most of their candies.

When the event is over, those candies will still be there. So you can stock up on Pidgey/Rattata later, with the power to evolve every flying rat you catch.

Also, if you've got some crappy low-level Dragonite, Snorlax, or Crapras, now is the time (if ever) to transfer them. Take a good hard look through your box and decide "will I ever actually use/power this thing up?" If not, you might as well get double the candy for transferring it.

Spending coins wisely (tl;dr = incubators, but don't go crazy)

When it's double candy season, there are a few ways to spend coins. You can buy lucky eggs, which will allow you to better take advantage of evolution sprees for levelling up. You can buy incubators, to hatch as many eggs as possible during the event and thus receive double candy and lots of good-IV Pokemon; you also get to play the lottery on getting an elite hatch like Snorlax, Lapras, or Dratini with double candy. Or unique to this event, you could also buy Lure Modules as they last 6 hours right now, and that means you get even more total Pokemon for your Lure purchase. So, what's the best decision for you?

Well... obviously it depends on what you have in your bag already, and your schedule. The Lure Module idea is tempting, but 6 hours is such a long time that you're unlikely to take full advantage of the Lures unless you're a business trying to attract customers; or someone who should be working, but isn't 😛 . Still, if there's a time to be using your Lures, it's now! I wouldn't spend many coins on Lures, but if you wanted to get a couple to be nice to folks in the area, it's a good time to do it.

Lucky Eggs are a smart purchase to take advantage of the double candies, but theoretically you can buy Lucky Eggs whenever to take advantage of all the candies you're getting. Not to mention I'd actually advise on being patient and using one lucky egg per week if you can, just to make the most of them. So I wouldn't buy Lucky Eggs right now. You can buy them later.

Incubators are really the time-sensitive purchase of choice. You can only take advantage of the event through incubators DURING the event, not after. With the recent egg-redistribution (see end of article), I've gotten a lot more 2k eggs as well, which means you can cycle through eggs quicker with your infinite incubator. I'd say it would be best to hold off on buying an incubator until you have 10k eggs to plow through, or are willing to use them on 5k eggs and have plenty of 5k eggs. Since 2k eggs are so common right now, I don't see incubators being as important a purchase right now. Obviously you'll buy a few, but I don't think the Valentine's day event (with the increase in 2k eggs) will have people going crazy on Incubators and spending as much real money like the halloween event did. I'd still empty my current coin purse on Incubators though.

Conclusion

There you have it! It looks like it'll be a fun event, and I'm certainly in the spirit of things. I've got almost 1000 Pidgey and Rattata candies stockpiled now, and I'm holding onto 100 or so Pidgeys so I can do an evolution spree in a couple days. But after that, I'll be transferring every Pidgey and Rattata I get. To make room, I've also transferred every other evolution-fodder Pokemon I'd normally hold onto (e.g. Weedle, Caterpie, Nidoran), and I'm spending all my available coins on incubators; I have a few Lures sitting around anyways.

Cheers,

Let's GO!

A very welcome change

P.s. Egg distance re-vamp: Upon updating for Valentine's Day, Niantic also re-distributed what Pokemon hatch from what eggs, which is a most-welcome change. You can find the full details here, with notable changes including moving Onix, Pinsir, and Scyther down to the 5k egg class. That means fewer disappointing 10k eggs! Indeed, about half of 10k eggs now are quite welcome hatches. A number of Pokemon also were moved from 5k to 2k, which better reflects their utility in the post-CP update world (e.g. Bellsprout). And for some reason, Exeggcute, Abra, and Slowpoke were also moved to the 2k category, so look forward to hatching those mons easier; the 2k egg category has fewer total mons than the 5k category, meaning every 2k egg you get has a better chance of giving you an e.g. Exeggcute than a 5k did previously.