The Lunar New Year event was the first event to offer boosted Lucky rates. As such, it offered an opportunity to investigate how Niantic might handle such bonuses in the future. Curious as ever, Silph Researchers collected data on nearly 3,000 trades during the event and have now quantified the observed lucky rate boosts. Let’s dive in!

The Findings

For Pokémon under a year old, the Lucky rate was found to have almost doubled during the event, whereas Pokémon over a year old appear to have had their Lucky rate increased much more modestly.

The following table compares Lucky rates for Pokémon traded before the Lunar New Year Event (regular rates) and those traded during the event (boosted rates):

Age of Traded Pokémon Regular Lucky % Boosted Lucky % Total Event Trades Boosted 95% Confidence Interval <1 Year ⇄ <1 Year 5%

(1 in 20) 9%

(1 in 11) 2646 7.5% to 9.7% 1 Year ⇄ <1 Year 10%

(1 in 10) 16%

(1 in 6.25) 243 12.2% to 21.6%

Silph Researchers were not able to source and trade many two-year-old Pokémon during the event. Consequently, it was not possible to reach any conclusions on the potentially increased rates for these older Pokémon.

Daily Breakdown

Some travelers speculated that the Lucky rate may have changed over the course of the event. Fortunately, researchers recorded the date of each trade that they participated in, so we were able to test this hypothesis. The following table shows a day-by-day breakdown of the Lucky rate for trades involving two Pokémon less than one year old.

Trade Date Total Trades Lucky Trades Lucky % 2019-02-04 37 3 8.1 2019-02-05 159 12 7.5 2019-02-06 393 35 8.9 2019-02-07 135 10 7.4 2019-02-08 481 46 9.6 2019-02-09 417 41 9.8 2019-02-10 390 32 8.2 2019-02-11 222 18 7.8 2019-02-12 412 32 7.8

Looking back through this table, there are some small, expected variations in the rate. However, there is nothing compelling to indicate that Lucky rates were deliberately adjusted at any point during the boosted period.

Bonus Research

Spoink Event Shiny Rate

Shiny Spoink was also introduced at the start of the 2019 Lunar New Year event. To track its shiny rate, another group of Silph Researchers recorded their Spoink encounters. After encountering over 16,500 Spoink, researchers found that shiny Spoink appeared to be occurring at “full odds” in the wild, in other words:

1 in 450

with a 95% confidence interval of 1 in 329.8 to 1 in 636.5

Parting Words

The Lunar New Year festivities offered the opportunity to investigate and participate in a whole new kind of event. While the Lucky rate increases ended up being somewhat subtle, hopefully some travelers managed to make the most out of the boosts on offer. Until next time, we’d like to wish all travelers a prosperous Year of the Pig filled with good fortune and many Lucky trades!

– Scientist Gluglumaster and Scientist WoodWose –