Pokemon Go Tour: Hoenn Event Guide

The Primals

Without a doubt, Primal Groudon and Primal Kyogre are the top priorities for this event. These absolute monsters have shown up with quite literally unprecedented power, and are definitely toppers for our current Attackers Tier List, with strong utility for events that will open up the Master League to their ancient powers.

In general, we recommend that players prioritize Primal Kyogre before Primal Groudon. Is this because Primal Kyogre more important? No, it’s because players who have gathered enough Primal Energy will be able to utilize their own Primal Kyogres to absolutely flatline poor Primal Groudon. For those looking for a bit of help, check out our Raid Guides for this titanic duo, and don’t forget that these are Tier 6 Raid Bosses, so be ready

The Deoxys Quartet

Deoxys in its various formes isn’t a super common sight in Pokemon Go, so a new chance to catch this mutated space virus is always welcome, though it’s going to be hard to justify spending passes on this while the primals are running around. Deoxys - Defense is the stand-out here, with genuine PvP utility that’s compounded by its general rarity due to the fact that it can’t be traded. Deoxys - Attack is the runner-up, but not because of its rarity. While once the hyper-glassy DPS monster of the game, it’s now basically worthless due to being vastly out-performed by a plethora of Pokemon. No, the real utility of Deoxys - Attack is the fact that it can be easily soloed! Need more XL Candy for your Deoxys - Defense? Don’t bother getting a 3+ person raid group together, just Mega Evolve a Psychic Type and solo Deoxys - Attack to farm down that candy! Just make sure that you’re ready, as players will need a solid attacker-base to secure a sure win.

So what about Deoxys - Speed and Vanilla Deoxys? Well, these two are just dex fillers. You can see if you can find a raid group that wants to take them down, but it’s probably best to just wait until their next appearance so that you don’t miss out on something more important.

The Hoenn Starters

This popular trio is always great to have, especially since they all have Mega Evolutions available. But it’s probably best to skip them unless you don’t have a raid group that can take down the Primals and don’t want to farm Deoxys.

As with most events of this nature, Go Tour: Hoenn will focus on “biomes” for their spawns At set periods throughout the event, the spawn-set will shift, changing up the event spawns. Players will be able to take part in Blistering Sands, Eerie Mists, Verdant Earth, and Ancient Shores biomes, each featuring the following spawns:

Blistering Sands

Eerie Mists

Verdant Earth

Ancient Shores

The Priorities

Blistering Sands

The top priorities here have to be Torchick for Mega Blaziken and Bagon for Salamence/Mega Salamence. These are outstanding Pokemon that have a lot of general utility for a lot of players, and the chance to farm XL candy for them is great. Meanwhile, Nosepass and Baltoy evolve into Probopass and Claydol respectively, both of which have some utility in PvP, and Lotad evolves into Ludicolo, which has potential in select limited-format cups.

Finally, farming a few Numel and Aron can be useful for Mega Camerupt and Mega Aggron, though neither is super-high priority.

Eerie Mists

Ralts can turn into the monster that is Mega Gardevoir, and Meditite has Medicham, which is still a top-priority Pokemon for the Great League in particular, with Mega Medicham looming on the horizon. Beldum is also great due to the power of Metagross and should always be a priority for anyone lacking strong Steel Type coverage or a strong individual for PvP, while Absol is great if you need a good Mega Absol. Finally, Zangoose performs fairly well in the Ultra League given some circumstances, and it and Seviper are considered regional Pokemon, so picking up whichever you don’t already have is always nice.

It's a bit strange that they didn't count Sableye and Banette in this biome...

Verdant Earth

Mega Sceptile is one of the top-priority Mega Evolutions, so Treecko should be a goal for anyone who doesn’t have one, and the exact same argument can be made for Electrike and Mega Manectric. Roselia’s evolution, Roserade, is a fairly strong Pokemon that covers Grass and Poison, but it’s a bit overshadowed nowadays. It’s still good for coverage for players who don’t have full teams built, so it’s worth a mention here. Swabu is good because of Altaria’s PvP performance, so it’s worth farming here if you don’t already have one built. Finally, Mawile is a bit niche, but it’s semi-rare so trying for one or two good ones is nice.

Ancient Shores

We don’t have a whole lot here, truth be told. Mudkip is note-worthy for the performance of Swampert and Mega Swampert. Spheal is great because of Walrein’s performance in the Great and Ultra Leagues in particular. Wingull is a solid goal due to Pelipper's performance in the Great and Ultra Leagues as well, though it tends to do best in select limited cups. Finally, Barboach’s evolution, Whiscash, was once a staple in the Great League. But it's definitely fallen from grace as of late and doesn't really see much use in open Great League. Still, it has potential in limited cups, so trying for one with good PvP IVs can't hurt.

Universally Available

On this list, Tropius is definitely the must-have. It’s a very rare Regional Pokemon that has outstanding performance in the Great League, so it’s probably smart to catch every one that you may see. Meanwhile, Relicanth and Torkoal are a bit under-powered at the moment, but they have future potential and are both regionals as well, so picking them up to help future-proof your account is a good idea. May as well grab a Costumed Pikachu and Unown-H while you're at it.

Trying for all of these Pokemon is going to involve a lot of moving around, so may as well take advantage of the situation by incubating a few eggs along the way! We’ve got a number of different Pokemon hatching from different eggs, so here are the highlights to aim for:

2 KM

Treecko, Torchic, and Mudkip are all here, so those who are looking for a good specimen of any of these should be happy to find any 2KM eggs. Azurill is also here, but the 10/10/10 IV floor means that it won’t be good for PvP outside of trades. Still, it’s easy candy!

5 KM

Surskit, Gulpin, and Cacnea are the Pokemon on offer from 5KM Eggs, so this isn’t exactly a priority.

7 KM

Bagon and Beldum can hatch from 7 KM eggs collected during the event, and both are fairly high priority Pokemon. 7 KM eggs are actually pretty attractive prospects for the event.

10 KM

If you’re lucky enough to score a 10 KM egg, you can look forward to Torkoal, Tropius, or Relicanth; the three region-locked Pokemon that are being temporarily set free for this event, and they can all be shiny as well. This may honestly be worth slogging through 5 KM eggs to try for.

Ruby or Sapphire?

Unlike previous Go Tour events, current reports and press releases suggest that Go Tour: Hoenn will not have ticket-exclusive spawns. Instead, ticket holders will be in direct competition with one another every hour. The winners of these competitions will cause a Primal Surge, which will cause different effects depending on which team wins.

Primal Surge: Sapphire

Primal Kyogre will appear more frequently in raids, and the following Pokemon will appear in the wild:

Primal Surge: Ruby

Primal Groudon will appear more frequently in raids, and the following Pokemon will appear in the wild:

All-in-all, it doesn’t really matter which you pick, as neither team gets any real highlight spawns. Just pick up whichever medal you prefer to have on your account, or just go for whichever Primal you want to raid the most to help out your chosen team.

Shiny Jirachi

Players will be able to pick up the Masterwork Research: Wish Granted to be able to catch none other than the Mythical Pokemon of Hoenn; Jirachi! But not just any Jirachi, this will mark the debut of Shiny Jirachi! 

…but the ticket for Shiny Jirachi is not included in your Go Fest: Hoenn ticket price, and will cost an additional $4.99. And if we’re being completely honest, Jirachi is not a super-useful Pokemon, with its main claim to fame being pretty mid-tier utility in all three leagues. Picking it up here should really only be a priority if you genuinely love the Pokemon, want to future-proof (though its signature move is already in the game)  and/or are a Shiny collector.

We’ve got a mere two days to hit this event hard, but that’s actually fine this time. In general, the big priority is getting enough Primal Energy (and hopefully a good Kyogre/Groudon if you don’t already have them) to tear up future raids with the Super-Ancient Pokemon and a few Regional Pokemon while they’re available everywhere with the remaining bonuses being sort of water under the bridge. Honestly, we’ve had many chances to catch many of the Pokemon listed here in bulk, so a lot of players can feel safe just hunting down the big priorities and taking it easy for the rest of the weekend, though newer players will be able to take advantage of these great new spawns to bolster their teams