Melty Meltan and Melty Melmetal
It’s only taken me, what, four months to get Meltan? I finished the Let’s Go Meltan quest back in November and it’s now mid February. During those months, very little of interest happened with Meltan. I managed to acquire three mystery boxes by transferring some Pokemon to the two people I met who had Nintendo Switches and, thanks to trading Meltans once a day with my brother and the Valentines Day double candy event, I finally managed to acquire Melmetal.
Melmetal requires 400 candies to evolve, joining the ranks of 3 other 400-candy evolutions Gyarados, Altaria and Wailord. The difference between Melmetal and the other three though is that Magikarp, Swablu and Wailmer are somewhat common, or at the very least are regular rewards from research. Unless you are willing to pour rare candies into a Metal, walk it 20km per candy or either own or know someone who owns a Nintendo Switch, there’s no real way to evolve a Meltan in any decent amount of time. Even if you have a Nintendo Switch, you still have a week cooldown on each Mystery Box and you only get 15-20 Meltans per box. You also need at least 67 Pinap berries to catch each Meltan with. Probably more though because Meltans are slippery little bastards.
When you do finally get enough candies, you’ve got to decide which Meltan to evolve. I have a high 870CP 93% one, a lucky one with an IV of 87% or a shiny one with an IV of only 66. The problem is, I also have a 95%, 350ish CP Meltan, but if I evolve that one, it will probably cost me half a Melmetal’s worth of candy. Which might take me even longer to get. I opted to evolve the high CP one and came out with a Melmetal with 2900 CP.
But in Pokemon Go, just how useful IS a Melmetal?
According to Gamepress, not very. His best charged attack is Thundershock, but there are better electric attackers in the form of Zapdos, Raikou and Electevire. There are also far better Steel-based attackers in the form of Metagross and Aggron, both of whom are far easier to obtain – at the very least you can walk a Beldum for candy every 5 or so kilometers, you only need 125 candy to evolve one, you can hatch them from eggs and they also reach similar levels of maximum CP.
I suppose you could put a Melmetal in a gym. I’ve put low CP Meltans in gyms for the sake of it (because I have a CP 69 one) but Melmetal will probably only last as long as said low CP Meltans, because its main weaknesses are Fighting, Ground and Fire, i.e. some of the most commonly used types around. Sure, a Metagross won’t hurt it much but I swear everyone’s got a Machamp or three. Melmetal doesn’t have many weaknesses but the weaknesses it does have are everywhere.
Really though, Meltan and Melmetal are Pokemon who are just there. A shiny thing in the distance, thrown in as a weird tie-in between the Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee games on the Nintendo Switch and Pokemon Go on iOS and Android. Meltan is just a.. a thing. It doesn’t have a cool backstory the way Mew or Celebi do, in fact, apart from the fact that a Mysterious Box attracts Meltans, it has been described in “ancient texts” and that they are curious creatures that absorb metal, there’s nothing else about them. Even their anime appearances so far have been brief.
Meltan loses even more points for having a really mediocre shiny. The only difference is that the head nut is slightly more bronze than gold and that its tail is blue instead of red. That’s it. I honestly think Metal could have had an amazing shiny had its colours been inverted, with a silver nut and a golden metal body, but Meltan’s shiny is nearly as bad as Gengar’s shiny. Melmetal isn’t much better in his shiny form.
The only thing going for Meltan and Melmetal is that they are the first Pokemon of Generation 8. Oh, and the fact that you can trade and evolve Meltan. That’s definitely unique.
Meltan and Melmetal are still a pain in the ass though.