We have a new update from Niantic, and our friends over at Pokeminers have been hard at work uncovering all of its secrets. While the update itself may not be extremely large, as can be seen in their Reddit post out lines, but it has a few very exciting implications! We'll sum it up here, but you can view the actual Reddit post below.
The Teardown
Elite TMs
For many, the greatest take-awake for this teardown seems to be the inclusion of a new item: the Elite TM. This special TM will apparently allow players to pick a move from a Pokemon's entire currently non-special/legacy moveset! This is potentially a huge Quality of Life update, as it gives players a way to finally take control over. Assuming this isn't changed before it eventual release, this is potentially huge, as it paves the way for even larger movesets for Pokemon moving forward. Also worth noting is the fact that while this isn't an extremely unique solution to the TM problem, it is one of the potential fixes that we included in our overview of the system a while back.
Still no sign of TMs for special moves, but hey; at least we're seeing some degree of improvement and forward momentum with the system! These seem likely as rewards for Go Battle League Season 1 performance, which might just sweeten some players towards the PVP scene a bit if correct. Either way, I'm sure that we're all going to be watching this one very carefully moving forward!
Sinnoh Celebration 2020
It was almost inevitable that we'd see a Sinnoh celebration, and it seems that it's finally happening! The datamine only shows a handful of research quests tied to the event currently, but the following predictions seem pretty safe all things considered:
- Increased spawn for Pokemon from the Sinnoh region
- Sinnoh stone increased availablity
- Raid bosses and/or egg hatches originally from Sinnoh
- An increase in Gible availability?
- The return of more Sinnoh legendaries?
Note that this is just speculation on our part, but a mix of some or even all of these bonuses seem likely given Niantic's track-record!
Valentines Day 2020
The latest in the traditional string of holiday-related events, Valentines is apparently coming back to us again! Previous years have seen a number of interesting events, including an increase in Luvdisk spawns with greatly increased stardust rewards, so this could very well be a worthwhile event, especially for those of us that are currently still trying to build a good team for the newly released and still rolling out Go Battle League!
Community Day Quests
This is a very expected part of the update. Community Day quests have been added to the game just as Niantic said, giving us the opportunity to vote for our favorite candidate on February 1. You can check out more information on this below!
And Everything Else
Pika Libre avatar item data, wafarer data, changes to profiles, etc. These are a bit less exciting in general, but the APK breakdown goes into all of these and much more, as you can read in the Reddit post below. Overall, it seems that Niantic is ramping up to make the remainder of Winter and the beginning of Spring eventful!
So what do you think? Are you excited for Elite TMs? Let us know your thoughts below!
