The Many Pros and Cons of Eevee and its Eeveelutions, at Least in Pokemon Go

Eevee is cute as fuck. If you don’t look at that tiny little brown fox/cat/dog thing and squee internally, then you have no soul. It’s adorable. It wants to love you. It’s also genetically unstable and can mutate violently and at random. But that’s fine because Eevee is adorable and squishy and huggable and wonderful.

Eevee’s evolutions, not so much. Really, the way you evolve an Eevee is kinda scary. The original trio of Eeveelutions, Flareon, Jolteon and Vaporeon, are all due to exposing an Eevee to a magical fire, thunder or water stone. According to Pokemon Red and Blue, Eevee evolves because of radiation from the stones. Leafeon and Glaceon are actually somewhat more worrying because all you have to do is be near a specific magical rock that sticks out of the ground. These stones must be very potent if they can force a Pokemon to evolve just by being near them. And potentially toxic to actual people as well if they’re giving off radiation.

I suppose at least Umbreon, Espeon and Sylveon have it somewhat easy. They evolve using high friendship, the day/night cycle and a fairy-type move if you want a Sylveon. Goodness knows how we’ll evolve other Eeveelutions later on, assuming we even get more of them. I think it’s about time we got a ground/rock, flying or ghost-type Eeveelution, right? Heck, a Dragon, Bug or Steel one would be nice as well.

A quick aside, does anyone else think Sylveon is creepy as heck? It has cold, dead eyes and those ribbons and bows are

That’s just in the main games though. In Pokemon Go, evolving an Eevee is a pain in the ass.

The easiest ones to evolve are Umbreon and Espeon, since you just have to have them as your buddy, walk them 10km and then evolve them at day or night, depending on which one you want. It’s pretty simple and quite hard to mess up, unless you end up evolving your Eevee at the wrong time. You’re also guaranteed both these evolutions as you have to evolve an Eevee into an Espeon then an Umbreon in the Ripple of Time special research.

If you want a Glaceon or a Leafeon, you have to buy a special lure module for 200 coins, use it on a Pokestop then stand near the Pokestop and evolve your Pokemon. If you want both, that’s 400 coins you need. There is a way to earn one free lure via one of the special research quests, but that’s one lure and you need to have all your Eevees lined up and ready to evolve, otherwise you need to wait on someone else to use a lure or spend coins.

With Jolteon, Flareon and Vaporeon, it’s a coin toss. All you can do is tap Evolve and see which Pokemon you get. Thankfully it only costs 25 candy to evolve an Eevee but you could still spend a long time trying to get the one you want.

There IS one way to guarantee a specific evolution, but it’s a one-time use only. You change the name of your Eevee to the names of Eeveelutions or trainers mentioned in the Anime. But like I said, it’s a one off thing and it’s quite easy to waste a name change on an Eevee that’s not very good. Out of all the Eevees I evolved in Pokemon Go with this method, I only have the one – a Vaporeon that knows Last Resort.

But the saddest thing is that Eevee is the cutest of them all. And apparently, according to Pokemon Yellow’s Pokedex entry, there are only a few Eevees alive. I suppose it’s because they all randomly mutate against their will.

Poor, poor Eevee.