Halloween Event Strategy Guide LEGACY

The first ever Pokemon GO Event is here!  

Between October 26th and November 1st, you'll find ingame:

• Double candy from catching, hatching, or transfer Pokemon.
• Buddy Pokemon earns Candy four times as fast.
• Increased spawn rates for "spooky" Pokemon:
  

Follow this GamePress strategy guide to maximize your gains for the duration of event.

According to the official announcement, your Buddy "will help you earn Candy four times as fast" for the next week.   How much faster your buddy will earn candies in comparison:

Normally	During Halloween	Notable Pokemon
1 km	¼ km
3km	¾ km
5km	1¼ km

Strategies for taking advantage of 4x Buddy candies:

A	Swap out to 5km Buddies like Snorlax or Lapras.   Their candies are rare in the wild and longest to obtain using buddies.  It takes 66 candies to power up a Pokemon from level 20 to 30.  That would usually require traveling a minimum 330 km to obtain the necessary candies normally with your Buddy, but only 83 km during the event.   By walking your Snorlax or Lapras buddy, you save almost 250 km off your walks for the candies necessary to power up from level 20 to 30.  This is your best option competitively speaking, if your Snorlax or Lapras are below their level cap.
B	Swap to Starter Pokemon - Bulbasaur, Charmander, Squirtle - and their families for the candies needed to fill evolve and fill out your Pokedex entries.   The starters are all relatively competitive Pokemon, just difficult to obtain unless you're lucky enough to have a nest nearby.  Obtaining the 124 candies necessary to evolve a starter to their final form only takes 93 km minimum during the event, a 282 km saving.
C	Swap out to 1km Buddies like Pikachu, Clefairy, and Jigglypuff for their super quick candies.   During the event, you can really stock up on candies by focusing solely on 1km Buddies.  Pikachu, Jigglypuff, and Clefairy require 50 candies to evolve, so by focusing on them, you can finally evolve them all.   It only takes 12.5 km for the candies to evolve a Pikachu, Jigglypuff, and Clefairy. Their evolve forms are relatively competitive, particularly the fan favorite Wigglytuff.
D	If you're solely looking for experience, take a Pidgey out for a spin.  It takes less than 3 km to evolve one Pidgey for 1,000 exp with lucky eggs. Catching and evolving Pidgeys is the fastest experience during the event. the The same is true for Weedle and Caterpie, if they're common in your area.
F	Fill the gaps in your Pokedex this Halloween. Fill the burning hole behind Magikarp in your Pokedex pocket with easy Buddy candies this Halloween. If you want to get a head start for Generation II (eta unknown), how about walking Porygon?

Keep in mind due to glitchy distance tracking, your actual time and distance travel may vary.

Use this table to get an idea how long it'll take to fully evolve your Buddy using only Buddy candies this Halloween:

When choosing a Buddy to walk this Halloween, keep in mind the opportunity cost of your choice. Any time you spent walking one buddy is time you're not spending with another.

Trainers have reported in the past a 42 km daily limit to total buddy distances. Even if your legs aren't worn out, your trainer avatar might!

Now that candy for catches and transfers are doubled, you may want to visit your local nests to stock up on those precious candies. While this may seem like a good strategy, note that since “spooky” pokemon crowd out other pokemon, you may not see as many of the nest pokemon as usual.

If you do plan to visit a nest, here are strategies you may consider:

A	You can never have too many eeveelutions in Pokemon GO. If you're lucky enough to have a confirmed Eevee nest in driving distance, consider pack some camping gear for the weekend. With 6 catch candies, 2 transfer candies, and 1 evolve candy for the duration of the event, 1 of every 3 Eevee you catch has the chance to be Vaporeon, Jolteon, or Flareon!
B	If you have been blessed with a Dratini nest, now is the perfect time to pay a visit. Since you now receive 6 candies per catch and 2 per transfer, you only need to catch 16 Dratini instead of 32 to get yourself a Dragonite. If you already have a Dragonite, those candies would be useful for powering up as well. Other pre-evolved forms of competitive pokemon would be worth catching as well. 7 Exeggcute, Jigglypuff, or Growlithe will net you Exeggcutor, Wigglytuff and Arcanine respectively. Seel may be another good option if you don’t already have a good Dragonite counter.
C	Because of the high candy costs of evolution, you may want to visit the nests of Bulbasaur, Charmander, or Squirtle for those precious candies. Bellsprout and Oddish nests may be good options as well since Victreebel and Vileplume are useful in this water pokemon meta.
D	Poliwag, Abra, Machop, Geodude, and Magikarp all take a large amount of candy to evolve to their final evolutions. If you don’t have them in your pokedex yet, this may be the perfect opportunity to quickly grab those last few candies.
F	If all you care about is experience, catching Caterpie, Weedle, and Pidgey can bring you closer to your next lucky egg session. Assuming you have at least one Pokemon candy right now, you can evolve 3 of every 4 you catch due to 6 catch candies, 2 transfer candies, and 1 evolve candy potentially per catch. Unfortunately, these pokemon may be harder to find during the event.

After exhausting yourself and your buddy from trick-o-treating. It's time to take a hard look at your Pokemon box and do a fall cleaning.

For this event, you get 2 candies for each Pokemon you transfer. It's the perfect opportunity to choose only your favorites, and get rid of the rest.

Because of double candies, it's not a terrible idea to splurge on extra incubators a little this Halloween.

One source of Pokemon candies is not doubled this Halloween. Normally, you receive one candy rebate per Pokemon evolution. This extra candy is not doubled during the event.

GamePress Research has confirmed that Gold Pokemon Medals gives a permanent 1.3x bonus when catching Pokemon of particular type.

If you have not yet reach the 200 catch Gold Medal threshold for Ghost, Psychic, Ground, Poison, Flying, Normal types Pokemon, take advantage of the increased spawn rates to get your gold medals this week:

Credit goes to Trainer Mopar_Madness for this trick!

You may have noticed that Pikachu, while a shoulder-type buddy, will happily walk on its own on its first walk.

Usually, it takes about 10 km before Pikachu would tire itself out and rest on your shoulder. This is because each Pikachu wants to find 10 candies on its own first before resting.

It's 10 candies, not 10km, for getting Pikachu to like you. Take advantage of that fact and quickly familiarize yourself with the entire Pikachu squad. It only takes 2.5 km with each Pikachu this Halloween!

Know a better way to take advantage of this event? Let us know and we'll add it to the guide!