Walking for Mega Energy, Additional Catch Candy Now Active for Mega Evolved Pokemon

A new round of Mega Evolution fixes are now live, making Mega Evolutions even more viable than they have been up until now.

In what is probably best described as a "fiasco" since its beginning, Mega Evolution has been one of the single most controversial issues with Pokemon Go since its initial release. Issues with accessibility, sustainability, and monetization of the system have been hot topics within the Pokemon Go community and social media since the very start in late August of 2020. After a short time, Niantic issued an official apology for the issues and promised to address them in a future update. And now it seems that these promises have indeed been kept, as Mega Evolutions are now more accessible than they have ever been in the past.

The first, and arguably most important, part of this update addresses the issues of Mega Evolution sustainability and monetization; it's now possible to walk your Pokemon to obtain energy for them.

Players will receive 5 Mega Energy per Km walked in-game, with the hand-out period tied to a given Pokemon's candy distance. However, this only works for Pokemon that you have already Mega Evolved previously. So if you don't farm enough energy to Mega Evolve a given species initially, then it won't be farmable. While we don't have any information on the 5k and 20k distance tiers, the way that this system is built suggests the following energy gains:

Again; this is not yet confirmed, but it seems likely given the confirmed 1k and 3k Mega Energy generation rate.

What This Means

Mega Energy now makes buddy Pokemon far more important than they once were, as it's added a very real additional layer of value to the buddy system. However, this also adds a degree of opportunity cost.

Let's say for a moment that I'm currently attempting to max out a Dialga and am short on candy. Dialga is not currently in the raid rotation, so I can't go out and farm candy. So my two options for this are to use Rare Candy and/or walk my Dialga. However, Dialga can't Mega Evolve, so by walking it I'm not generating any form of Mega Energy. But then if I walk a Gengar that I have over 5,000 candy for, I'm generating energy but the candy is virtually worthless.

While this isn't a game-breaking issue, it is worth considering when picking a buddy Pokemon to walk.

The next issue stems from the fact that a Pokemon needs to be entered into your Mega Dex before you're able to walk it for energy. Because of this, it's generally going to be recommended that players spend at least a few raid passes on each relevant Mega Evolution as it arises, so hat they aren't stuck with no way to obtain the initial energy needed once that Pokemon leaves the raid rotation, such as is the case with Mega Venusaur.

However, fairness where it's due to Niantic on this point; they have given us events to obtain mega energy for select species on multiple occasions and have added mega energy to the research reward pool (albeit rare). They've also been relatively generous with remote raid passes, which also helps. but this brings up another issue!

Right now, we have Lugia with Aeroblast in the raid rotation. It's not game-breaking, but it's a Legendary Pokemon with a limited move that makes it very viable in the Master League, which gives it very real value. Now let's say that Niantic announces that Mega Gengar will be leaving raids next week. Those of us who did not gain access to the limited research that gave us a large pool of its Mega Energy now have a choice: do I spend my raid passes on Aeroblast Lugia, or do I unlock Mega Gengar so that I can walk it for energy later? Most of us do not have an unlimited cash fund to spend on Pokemon Go, so we still have a very real monetization issue to keep in mind.

But let's also look at the other side of the issue; so far, Mega Evolutions have all stayed for a month or more, which is far longer than our week to two week Legendary Pokemon runs as of late. In that time, it's completely viable to receive 50+ energy per run, so these Pokemon can be unlocked and farmable at about 4 raids completed. Now how many Lugia raids have most of us completed attempting to obtain the one single Lugia with high enough IVs to be worth raiding? Honestly, this is a bit of an issue, but it's just as easy to see it as an alternate option instead.

Just as advertised, active Mega Evolutions now have the bonus of granting additional candy for any Pokemon caught that matches one of their types or any completed raid.

...one additional candy per catch.

This is not boostable via Pinap berries, probably won't be effected by 2x candy events, and isn't even active yet despite what this screenshot shows. In the end, I only received 3 candy despite the shown +1, so it seems that it's currently broken. This will likely be fixed soon, so it won't play into the overall review of this system.

In short; this part of the system isn't really that useful. It has a lot of potential for Community Days, where 100+ catches of a given Pokemon could easily net an additional 100 candy, and it's also worth dropping a cheap Mega Evolution like Mega Beedrill or Mega Pidgeot before doing a few Legendary raids, as that extra candy can add up after a while. That aside, it's just a nice little bonus that doesn't genuinely add much value to the system.

Overall, this is definitely a step in the right direction, though the Gamepress team is actually fairly divided on these new updates. Opinions range from this being the minimum to make the system usable, to it still falling short of making the system work in a meaningful/interesting way that addresses the core issues. The overall consensus is that this is a start and we are excited, but also realistic about these features. In order to get a better idea as to what the team thinks of Mega Evolution and where it should go, please take a look at a few of our pieces on the subject:

With a system as divisive as Mega Evolution, we'd love to read about the Pokemon Go community's opinions on these changes. If you have a thought, please feel free to share it in the comments below. The team does read them, and they help us shape our future content.