(Photo: Niantic)
While your local area might be flooded with new Gen 2 Pokémon in the wake of Pokémon GO’s latest update, you might be finding that you’re missing a few key ingredients in pursuit of some specific evolutions.
That would be a set of “evolution items” that the game has pulled from the handhelds that are required to unlock final forms of specific Pokémon, most of them tied to Gen 1 originals. There’s Dragon Scale, which is needed to evolve Kingdra, Up-grade for Porygon2, King’s Rock for Politoed and Sloking, Sunstone for Bellossom and Sunflora, and Metal Coat for Steelix and Scizor.
Unfortunately, these are all officially the rarest items in the game. Rare to the point of absurdity, it seems, judging by some recent statistical analysis.
There are two ways to get any of these items. The first is that most players will get one as a result of their seven day PokéStop spinning streak. I say “most” because it is not a guarantee, and it is possible to get a seven day streak without getting one of the items. So best case scenario here, if you get one on every week, and you get exactly the items you need for those eight Pokémon with no superfluous drops, that’s a minimum of eight weeks of perfect streaks to get them all. A bit…much.
Edit: Confusion with the data had me believing that it was using PokeStop spins rather than PokeStop total items dropped. The rest of the article has been edited to reflect that.
In the week since launch, this seemed like a rare occurrence to say the least. Though players were originally thinking that perhaps the drop rate was as low as 1%, meaning one out of every 100 stops might get you an item, turns out it’s more like 0.3%.
(Photo: Niantic)
The data used to figure this out comes from a few sources, including redditors and PokemonGOHub with the final compilation of 23,000 items from stops, with stops usually giving 3-4 items on average, though sometimes more. In 23,701 items, 33 items dropped with fairly normal distribution between the different types. That's a 0.14% drop rate, or somewhere around one evolution item every 300 spins or so.
There are some who might say that between streaks and the fractional chance to get these items in the wild, that this distribution is fine and these items should be rare.
Perhaps, but I think there’s a difference between “rare” and “players can’t miss a daily PokéStop for months” rare or “players must win the lottery with spins multiple times” rare. Add into all this the fact that you probably will get more duplicates than you need, (i.e. five Up-grades but zero Metal Coats), and this goes from a rare set of items to something almost possible to see to completion.
I have been absolutely dying to upgrade my nearly perfect IV Scyther, yet I have no earthly idea if that’s even going to be possible because of bad luck alone. My first weekly item was an Up-grade for a Porygon, who is miles away from being able to be up-graded because of a lack of candy. Who knows what I’ll get next week, if I manage to remember to keep my streak alive. And I sure as hell can't bank on getting one from a PokéStop. If I have, at best, a 1-in-300 shot at getting a single evolution item, plus a 1-in-5 chance it's the right item, you can see how those calculations start to spiral out of control.
(Photo: Niantic)
I don’t know what the final solution is here, but up front, everyone should always get an evolutionary item from their seven day streak for a start. That’s a questionable enough mechanic as is, but to have a X% chance not to get one for literally no reason? Inexcusable.
Also, the chance of getting an item from a PokéStop needs to dramatically increase. At least triple, by my estimation.
Or, if Niantic wants to leave the system as is, at least let players choose which one they get as a seven day bonus while leaving the random spins random. That would help reduce variability and allow players to get at least those one or two Gen 2 evolutions they’ve been looking forward to owning for months now.
Point is, the current system goes too far. These items are too rare, and relying only on (still randomized) weekly bonuses and an absurd drop rate is more maddening than fun for everyone. There’s plenty in Gen 2 that’s going to take a while to achieve, finding rare monsters and evolving and upgrading them. But this Gen 2 evolution item scavenger hunt is too much right now, and needs to be toned down soon before more players get frustrated and quit.
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