Niantic has just announced on Twitter that their new “Lucky Pokémon” feature is now live in the game. The lucky feature is something completely new to the game. When Pokémon are being traded, there is a small chance that they become a lucky Pokémon, in which case they become sparkly and have a golden background. These so-called lucky Pokémon will require less stardust to level up which means that they can potentially reach extremely high levels of CP that a normal Pokémon can only dream off. A lucky Pokémon can also be discovered by the Pokédex so you can keep track of how many lucky Pokémon you have collected.
Attention, Trainers! Lucky Pokémon are now available! Start trading with your friends today! #LuckyPokemon pic.twitter.com/D4wY3MEfB7
— Pokémon GO (@PokemonGoApp) July 25, 2018
According to Niantic, the longer a Pokémon has stayed in your box before being traded, the higher the chances are that the Pokémon will become a lucky Pokémon. Although according to the in-game professor, Professor Willow, the correlation between the time they stayed in the box and the chance of becoming lucky has yet to be researched.
The new Pokémon Go update also contains a slight update to the gift items that you can trade over. If you sent your friends gifts, you will now receive XP as a bonus to yourself. Gifts also have a chance of containing a small amount of stardust when opened.
All these changes clearly point in one direction and that is trading. Trading was only recently introduced in the game but it seems that Niantic is working hard to make trading a success and to make it an integral part of the Pokémon Go experience. All the newly implemented changes make trading Pokémon and gifting your friends more advantageous than they were before.
Increasing the chance of a Pokémon becoming lucky when they were in the box for awhile also ensures that players won’t just catch a whole bunch of new Pokémon and trade those away. Instead, players will be enticed to trade away Pokémon that they have had for a long time, making it slightly more emotional than it would otherwise be.
