Jump-Start Special Research – The Best Special Research Ever

For Pokemon Go’s anniversary, a new special research quest was released and frankly, I think it’s the best special research they’ve ever released. Like, seriously, this 6 stage quest is awesome.

First off, this quest is really fucking easy. The only hard bit is the fact that you have to make two new friends, one on stage 1 and one on stage 6, but there’s loads of ways to make friends even if you’re the only person around who plays Pokemon Go, and at some point you have to battle another trainer in the Great League in PvP – something that requires friends – but you don’t need to win or anything. Hatching eggs might also be a bit tedious if you have nothing but 7km eggs and only one incubator but it’s all doable.

Everything else is pretty damn simple. Sure, the task “Catch a Legendary Pokemon” sounds daunting at first but we’re guaranteed a legendary by claiming 7 days’ worth of research. This month for example, research breakthroughs will give you either a Latios, Latias, Groudon or Kyogre and they all count. Funnily enough though, Deoxys DOESN’T count because it’s a mythical Pokemon, something my brother found out when doing the special research on his ‘little’ account.

On top of that, most of these tasks are handed to you on a silver platter. On stage 2, you have a task to evolve a Dratini into a Dragonair. But the other two tasks – earn a candy walking with your buddy and take a snapshot of the Dratini you get for completing stage 1- give you 30 Dratini candy each! The last stage asks you to evolve a Dragonair into a Dragonite and the two tasks prior give you 60 candy each! Heck, finishing stage 2 gives you a premium raid pass, which you can then use to immediately do stage 3’s battle in a raid task.

The most amazing thing about this quest though? The rewards. The rewards are amazing.

I mean, the first obvious thing is that you get a fuckton of experience and a full Dragonite out of this. A guaranteed good Dragonite. With some candy left over to power the Dragonite up when you’re done. The free Raid Pass is also very nice, as are all the Lucky Eggs. I now have so many of them and will hoard them until the next double experience event. Or my next Best Friend. The experience gains are insanely amazing, since you can get 200,000 XP on the last stage alone! A HUGE boost for anyone, no matter what level they are!

More importantly though, you get a shiny Eevee. I kid you not, finishing stage 4 rewards you WITH A SHINY EEVEE. Literally one of the best rewards ever. Unless you’ve already used the Eevee-naming trick and want to get a shiny Vaporeon like I do. Then again, I might end up walking mine and getting an Umbreon.

This quest though isn’t going away. You have to log in to Pokemon Go to obtain the app before September, but after that, you can take as much time as you like doing the quest. Which means you can hold onto the research tasks and try and time them for other events and things like that, if you wish.

The only problem about it is that I didn’t know you could use Lucky Eggs and Star Pieces to boost the rewards further. I only remembered to do so on the very last stage, which rewards 100,000 XP for evolving a Dragonair and 100,000 XP for finishing the task overall.

Oof. So much wasted experience.