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Trainers, hold on to your seats! The GO Hub team has just finished data mining the new update and found some incredible new additions:

Lucky Pokemon , a new type of special Pokemon that requires reduced Stardust amount to power up (official images suggest 50% discount)

, a new type of special Pokemon that requires reduced Stardust amount to power up (official images suggest 50% discount) New berry items in the static assets folder

Complete Celebi encounter, ready for worldwide release

New sorting options on the Friends list

A plethora of new fixes and small features

Lucky Pokemon

Let’s start with the Lucky Pokemon, as most players will be interested in those. According to the code base, particular Pokemon can be marked as Lucky, and as discovered by Chrales, the network traffic analyst from POGO Dev Discord, Lucky Pokemon require reduced amount of Stardust to power up! Check the Lucky Chansey image below (click for larger version):

Also, the Pokedex is now displaying the Lucky Pokemon label, which could potentially mean that this feature will be live soon. Very little is known about these Pokemon as of now, but apparently they require a smaller amount stardust to Power Up and they have the following features associated in the code base:

Custom background, animation and camera effects

Custom counter label, similar to Seen / Caught that appears in the Pokedex

Two values that indicate these Pokemon are connected with the trading system: .get_TimesLuckyReceived .set_TimesLuckyReceived



Overall, this is incredibly exciting and could change the way we think about Stardust a lot! We can’t wait to hear and share more about these Pokemon, but for now we have very little to share aside from the fact they’re coming.

We’ve talked with Chrales and he’s also not aware of any additional information at the time of writing this article. We’ll all experience it together!

Update July 22, 2018:

Por tu primer intercambio en Pokémon GO y el primer #PokemonGOfriend que te ayudó a llevarlo a cabo. Entrenadores, ¿qué Pokémon recibisteis en el primer intercambio? pic.twitter.com/hpDTocRsie — Pokémon GO España (@PokemonGOespana) July 22, 2018

In order to contain hype and clarify some of the things published in this article, Pokemon GO Spain tweeted an image clearly showing that Lucky Pokemon will require 50% of Stardust to power up. The image displays a traded level 20 Chansey that requires 1250 Stardust to power up, down from the regular 2500 amount!

A new berry raises

Surprisingly, a new Pinap Berry has been spotted in the APK’s static assets:

Our speculation is that the new Pinap Berry, probably called Silver Pinap Berry (not confirmed yet) will additionally increase the amount of Pokemon Candy received from capture encounters. It’s a perfect tie-in to Lucky Pokemon and a great way to remove some pressure from stashing Rare Candies. As of the time of this writing, there are no code references in the APK to the new item, just this curious sprite.

Celebi Encounter is ready!

You’ve read that right: Celebi is ready for the worldwide release. According to our analysis, the whole package is ready to ship at a minute’s notice:

animations – check!

camera action – check!

required fields – check!

Celebi Pokedex screen – check!

It’s all in NIA’s hands from this moment on, and we can’t wait to witness this beauty with our own eyes (image courtesy of Chrales, click for larger version, check out the Lucky label underneath Celebi’s name):

New features that were outlined in the official change log:

You can sort the Friends list and add nicknames to your friends

You can remove Gifts to remove clutter from your inventory

You can search for Traded Pokemon

Gifts can contain Stardust which is absolutely awesome

Some new features we found in the code base

Two new quest types

.QUEST_ADD_FRIEND .QUEST_TRADE_POKEMON

Badges for APAC (Asia and Pacific) partners:

.BADGE_APAC_PARTNER_JULY_2018_0 .BADGE_APAC_PARTNER_JULY_2018_1 .BADGE_APAC_PARTNER_JULY_2018_2 ... .BADGE_APAC_PARTNER_JULY_2018_9

A ton of new telemetry and logging features.

Parting words

With improvements to Friends list and the Gift system, Niantic is seriously banking on the social aspect of Pokemon GO. If Lucky Pokemon end up being exclusive to the Trading system, we could see some incredible changes in the way we play and perceive other players around us. The mystery of the new Berry is likely to be revealed soon, as will the Lucky Pokemon feature, but we can’t shake this feeling: trading could become very important in the near by future.