Quest for a Wired, Nutty Ditto – Let’s Go, Meltan

To coincide with the release of the new Let’s Go: Pikachu and Eevee games on the Nintendo Switch, Pokemon Go received an update and a mini event. The update includes a quest that rewards you with a brand new Pokemon, exclusive to the Switch games and Pokemon Go – the weird thing known as Meltan.

Meltan first appeared after the Chikorita community day, replacing all the Chikoritas and other Pokemon who were roaming around. I actually saw one before the event ended, sitting between a couple of Chikoritas, and assumed it was just a broken placeholder or something, especially considering how damn tiny these weird things were. It wasn’t until after the event ended and everyone’s weird nut creatures turned into Dittos after being caught that it was announced that Meltan was a new Pokemon. The first of the generation 8 Pokemon. Oh and it’s a legendary Pokemon too, with an evolution called Melmetal.

The quest in Pokemon Go, named “Let’s Go, Meltan”, is a pretty standard set of special research tasks, but with 9 stages instead of 8. None of the stages are particularly difficult, it’s just… tedious.

The first stage is always something easy. Catching 10 Pokemon, spinning 5 stops and transferring 5 Pokemon are all there to ‘calibrate’ something, according to Professor Willow, which is then followed by similar steps like hatching eggs, making great throws and earning candies.

It isn’t until stage 3 that any tasks make any sense. Stage 3 also contains the second biggest roadblock by far: battling in two gyms, battling and two raids and catching a Ditto. Remember how I whined that I was stuck on the similar task in the Mew quest? Well I completed the Ditto part of stage 3 in Let’s Go Meltan in literally 10 minutes. I was idly throwing Pokeballs at a 600 CP Rattata I wanted, blissfully unaware that it was obviously a ditto.

So yeah, that was lucky.

There’s field research that rewards a Ditto (Let’s Go: Make an Excellent Throw) but this research is no longer available. We’ll come back to this later.

Stage 4 and 5 are more of the same. Catch some things and do some things. I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to evolve a Grimer because I’d literally just evolved an Alolan Muk (they look so cool), but thankfully Grimers are common enough during the Meltan event that I easily found enough. The 5 Pinaps from step 4 helped too.

Step 6 is the other major roadblock to the Meltan quest. Magnemites are common enough that 50 candy isn’t too hard to obtain and Exeggcutes are reasonably common even without the event. But Battle in 10 Raids will hold you back, depending on your area, level and how many passes you have. I was lucky. I had a day off work and 700 coins to be able to buy Raid Passes as I needed them. I’m also level 32 now, capable of soloing level 1 and level 2 Raids and capable of doing level 3 raids with one other person. Brother was lucky because he’s always driving around and has a lot of leftover passes from the Mew and Celebi quests. But you HAVE to use some premium passes simply because the event isn’t long enough to only use free daily passes.

Okay, to be fair, you don’t actually need to win the raids. If you can’t get people to do level 4-5 raids, you can use your pass, load in and then immediately leave. You lose the pass but it counts towards the task.

Once you’re past that 10 raid battles roadblock, the last few states are easy. Evolve a Drowzee, Evolve a Scyther, catch a Cubone (just one), then catch an Aerodactyl, catch two Lileep or Anorith and catch two Omanyte or Kabuto. Because of the event, these Pokemon are all either common or available in field research.

After all that, you can catch Meltan. While the game asks you to use AR mode, you don’t have to. You don’t get unlimited Pokeballs though, which means you can use an Ultra Ball and some pinaps. I recommend using a pinap berry. I really do.

Why? Because Meltan’s evolution, Melmetal, requires 400 candies. And Meltan, when selected as your buddy, only gets you one candy every 20km. The only other way to get Meltan candy is to own or know someone who owns Pokemon Let’s Go: Pikachu and Eevee.

Overall, it’s a nice quest. Not particularly hard but not too easy either. There’s one big problem with it.

You see, I finished the quest on the 23rd of November. Someone in the local raid group finished the entire Meltan quest in under a day. Needless to say, as impressive as that is, they have no life. And they’re also super lucky to be able to find enough raids to do and find a Ditto and all that.

The biggest kicker though? The event ends today. Which means the last few stages of Let’s Go, Meltan will be INSANELY hard to complete. Just how many Anoriths, Lileeps and Aerodactyls do you actually see in the wild? Very, very few. Unless you’re willing to hold on to the Let’s Go: Hatch 2 Eggs research reward, you might not actually see another Aerodactyl at all. Heck, I didn’t see ANY wild Aerodactyls during the Meltan event!

If you didn’t manage to finish the quest before today, it’s going to be very hard to complete it in the future. Which is a shame, really, because Meltan, as unimaginative as it is, is kinda cute.