It’s been almost exactly a month since Pokémon GO released Gen 2 into the wild, and players are still trying to figure out one of the expansion’s biggest mysteries. Why are evolution items so rare?
The collection of evolution items, King’s Rock, Sun Stone, Metal Coat, Up-grade and Dragon Scale, are used to evolve seven Gen 1 Pokémon to Gen 2 forms (and one Gen 2 Pokémon to its final stage), but they remain so elusive in the game, that many players wonder if they’re doing something wrong to get them.
Evolution items are sometimes given as week-long PokéStop streak rewards, but you can just as easily not get one, as many players have gone several weeks in a row without them. It’s a pretty decent chance to miss, and I’m now just one for four. Elsewhere, PokéStops drop them randomly, but the rate appears to be somewhere between 0.3% and 0.4% for drops. Some players, however, have spun a thousand or more stops without getting an item.
What’s going on? Are evolution items really this rare or is there some trick to getting them?
Here are some of the more prevalent conspiracy theories, in ranking order of how much I’m likely to believe them:
- Certain PokéStops give out more items than others, or some stops may not give out items at all. I have heard this one from the very start, and at least anecdotally, I have heard many, many people claim that they have gotten the items from the same PokéStops on more than one occasion. This aligns with my own experience (I only spin about the same 20 stops near me, and have gotten zero in hundreds of spins), and seems like something Niantic could code. After all, some stops are programmed not to be Pokémon spawns, so why couldn’t some be designated “evolution item” stops?
- I have also heard a theory that time of day matters. Some players claim to have gotten evolution items at the same times during the day, but I have seen less impressive data to show this is the case, and it doesn’t seem like something that would make much sense. As a global game, I doubt Niantic rigged up some elaborate system of timed drops around the world, and if not, why not explain that even a little bit to players? This could be possible, but I doubt it.
- The last theory I’ve heard recently is that you are more likely to find an evolution item if a Pokémon that needs it is your buddy. This was recently being passed around The Silph Road, but so far it seems to be mostly anecdotal, without broader evidence to support it. There’s plenty of evidence contrary to it as well, from what I’ve seen, so this might be more wishful thinking than anything else. I think this is a good potential solution to the evolution item scarcity problem, but I don’t think this is actually what’s going on.
My ultimate, non-conspiracy theory? There’s no secret. The drop rates just suck. There’s a very-much-greater-than-zero chance of not getting an item at all from weekly streaks, and all the massive data collection points I’ve seen still point that 0.3-0.4% drop rate from stops. Sometimes you will just be unlucky and you’ll have a 0-0.1% rate instead. Others may do better than that.
It’s hard to explain why I’m so fascinated by how annoying this one issue is, but despite it being a relatively minor thing with only eight Pokémon evolutions depending on it, to me it represents that larger problems with Pokémon GO, that Niantic really, really wants you to grind an insane amount, which is dumb considering that its goal should be attracting and retaining a broad base of players. Instead, players are showing up to Gen 2 hoping to evolve their Steelix or Kingdra and are told to play for a month straight non-stop and maybe they have a shot at the item they need. It’s ludicrous.
It’s defeating to not get an item from a streak you went out of your way to maintain, or from your 3, 5, 8 hundredth PokéStop spin in the last month. It’s also defeating to get evolution items but have them repeat themselves or not be the one you’re actually looking for. So while yes, it’s minor, it’s also enough to make you set the game down in frustration when combined with the game’s other issues, and judging by my email inbox, I’m not alone in the thinking that.
My guess is that Niantic is planning an event where they will dramatically increase the drop rate of evolution items, or give them away as a log-in bonus or something like that. That will be fine, but the current system has got to go, as I don’t think players having a specific buddy at a specific place at a specific time while standing on their head is going to be the magic answer here. It’s just a bad system, and it needs to be fixed.
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