Pokemon GO
Long ago, when naught but Kanto critters roamed these streets, Pokémon GO was a much different game and Halloween was its first event. The game launched in July and had a whole lot of attrition in those early months, but Halloween was a punctuation mark, the first genuinely new thing to happen in the game and many people’s first chance to get some elusive Ghost Pokémon. Now that the game runs events on a more or less continuous basis, Halloween isn’t quite so game-changing, but the candy-centric holiday remains one of the biggest events the game has to offer. It started at the spooky time of 6:00 PM Pacific last night, so let’s get into what it’s offering.
Start/End Times: We’ve got over a week to work with here. When the event ends, we’ll be in the first moments of watching the US Presidential Election actually take shape. Friday, October 23, 2020, at 6:00 p.m. PDT to Tuesday, November 3, 2020, at 6:00 p.m. PST
Spawns: Ghost Pokémon run the day, not surprisingly. I’m seeing a ton of Sableeye, Misdreavus, Duskull and Gastly, and it looks like some of the rarer spawns will include Yamask, Litwick, Golett and Chimecho.
Bonuses: Candy time! We’ve got double catch and transfer candy, so if you’ve been sitting on extra legendaries, now is the time to transfer to get double the rewards.
Costumes: They’re interesting this year: we’ve got Sableye with a Litwick hat and Gengar in what I guess is a sort of patchwork, Frankenstein sort of thing? You can see them in the header image for the article, and you’ll need to head into a Raid to get Gengar.
Eggs: More ghost Pokémon hatching from eggs, naturally. Silph Road has the full list.
Raids: Ghosts are showing up to do battle out there: look out for bosses like costumed Kanto starters in Tier 1 along with Mawile and Misdreaveus, Banette, Absol, Costume Gengar and Alolan Marowak in Tier 3 and Darkrai spooking it up at Tier 5.
Galarian Yamask: Just moments after the game released Galarian Ponyta and Sirfetch’d, we’ve got Galarian Yamask making its debut in the game, available via special research.
Mega Gengar: Mega Gengar is also making its debut, allowing you to slowly fill out that nascent mega Pokédex, at least if you didn’t give up on the starters, Pidgeot and the like due to annoying energy requirements.
Research: We’ve got two research tasks this time around, in addition to field research from stops. The first is a Mega Gengar Energy challenge in Timed Research, available only if you completed the Mega Buddy challenge. The second is the now-annual Spooky Message special research, which we’ll cover in a separate post.
Field Research this time around is also capable of awarding Spiritomb, which has only been available through special research before. There’s a shiny variant on offer as well.
