The highly anticipated Generation Two is arriving this week for Pokemon Go, bringing more than 80 new mons for trainers to catch. hoothoots, totodiles, and chikoritas are going to be lining the streets soon alongside those pidgeys and magnemites infesting your town. Oh, and minor text fixes. Can’t forget those.
New items, features, and encounter mechanics
But the new mons aren’t the whole story -- far from it, in fact. No, it seems special items will be included with this update. Veterans of the series know that many of these items will include evolutionary stones and items -- very important now that more than just eevee (who will have two more evolutions) will have branching evolve trees.
Other items will include different types of berries, some of which make pokemon easier to catch while others will offer double candy when used. These appear to be normal drops from pokestops like any other item.
Also of note is a new encounter mechanic. While the details are a little foggy right now, it seems that many of the mons you attempt to capture will now have a new moveset. This may make it more challenging to collect some mons, and easier for others, it won’t be clear exactly what this means until rollout though. But the other side of the new encounter mechanic is that the trainer will have a more streamlined interface to access items -- good news given that the new berries and other items will be joining the fray.
But what of the legendaries?
Notably absent, however, is any word of legendaries for Generation One and, presumably, the Generation Two legendaries will also not be released right away. So plan on having suicune, raikou, entei, ho-oh, lugia, and celebi shaped holes in your pokedex alongside your mew, mewtwo, zapdos, moltres, and articuno ones.
There is also a notable lack of any mention of region locking any of the new mons -- or unlocking previously locked ones. Rumors abounded that there would be region specific ones for johto as well, but it remains to be seen whether or not this is the case.
What else to expect
Other updates included in the data, but without much detail, include genders for mons, new movesets, shiny pokemon, and avatar customization.
The coding for unown is also present in the game, so the mysterious critter could have a role to play too. And, of course, the minor text fixes that longtime fans love to see with each and every update.
