The Problems with Lucky Friends

After the strange Incense Sentret event, me and my brother did what we always do. We traded a bunch of the Pokemon we caught for extra candy. After the very first trade though, because it was our first interaction of the day, something special happened. Amazingly, after months and months, we became Lucky Friends! This meant we could do a trade and that trade would be guaranteed lucky.

Because I had hatched two shiny Riolus, I decided to trade one to my brother. He traded me a shiny Mewtwo since he had a surplus of them. What happened next was basically a miracle.

I got a 100% lucky shiny Mewtwo.

Yep, it’s awesome.

Brother got a lucky shiny Riolu, complete with a second move already bought. But I definitely got the better deal.

But we hadn’t gotten a Lucky Trade in months. The last one we got was December 27th. When I traded a shiny Duskull for a shiny Houndour. This is despite constant daily interactions.

Simply put, getting Lucky Friends is rare.

Apparently the chance of getting a Lucky Friend is somewhere around 5% on your first interaction with a Best Friend. Normally this is caused by opening a gift from someone, but any interaction can trigger it. I’ve gotten Lucky Friends by doing raids with people, as well as trades. But most of the time, you won’t get one for a long time.

You also need to be Best Friends with someone for a chance to be Lucky Friends. That alone is a commitment of at least 98 days. Probably longer, because not everyone reliably opens gifts or interacts with others. Frankly, unless you’re part of a tight-knit group, opening gifts is the only way you can increase a friendship level.

But Lucky Friends only do one thing

Well, two things. The obvious thing is that they make a Lucky Friend’s name all sparkly. The other thing is that you get one guaranteed Lucky Trade. It’s just one trade though and, despite the guarantee of lucky Pokemon, is still limited.

Basically, you are getting a Pokemon that will have lower Stardust power up costs and a guaranteed minimum IVs of 12/12/12. Which is great if you want to trade a pair of Legendaries, so you can more easily power one up. But the cost to do the trade is still there, as are the limitations. You have to be within 100m of each other to do a trade.

It’s also worth pointing out that Pokemon can become lucky via completely random trades. My brother’s perfect (non-shiny) Mewtwo actually came from a random trade during a double candy trade event.

So lucky friends with long distance friends is pointless.

Right now, I have 5 Lucky Trades lined up. One is with a friend, one is with the local Pokemon nerd and one is with a guy who plays sporadically. I can’t actually trade with any of them right now. I have to wait until I meet up with them, which might be never.

It gets worse though. I’ve actually had a lucky trade with aabicus since March 10th 2019. But because we live so far away from each other, we’ll never be able to do a Lucky Trade unless we meet up in person.

But I also have a lucky trade with a guy from Singapore. I don’t know how I added the guy originally but he’s a Best Friend and now he’s permanently a Lucky Friend. There’s no way of me actually meeting up.

Lucky Trades are weird.

Really, when you think about it, it’s silly that the restrictions are still there for something that’s so rare in the first place. I mean, you still need to spend a small fortune to trade a Pokemon you don’t have (40,000 stardust for Legendaries and shinies) and you’re still not guaranteed that great a Pokemon. I got insanely lucky with my perfect Mewtwo, but a previous guaranteed Lucky Trade left me with a 12/13/15 Rhydon. Still good, but considering how rare these trades are, it seems weird that you can get a not great Pokemon.

Heck, I’ve traded a Dialga in a Lucky Trade that actually got worse. Dropping down to the lowest 12/12/12 possible stats.

Potentially the best thing to trade is a purified Pokemon for that double reduced cost in power ups. You can also trade Legendaries to make them cheaper to power up, especially rarer ones like Dialga and Palkia. The old best task used to be to trade a Shadow Pokemon for an insanely high chance of getting a 100% Pokemon

It’s made even worse by the fact that you can’t even communicate with someone internally what you want to trade. All the communicating has to be done either in person or via Discord, Facebook or the likes.

Maybe something should change?

I’m not saying that a Lucky Trade should be a guaranteed 100% Pokemon. But considering how rare a Lucky Trade is, there’s two ways I see it.

The first option is to keep Lucky Trades as they are but simply enable trading over long distances and reducing the stardust costs. Considering you need a 100 day commitment to get a Best Friend in the first place, it’s a massive task. And that’s not including all the gifts sent after reaching Best Friends to get a Lucky Trade.

But I also have a stupid option: make Lucky Trades even rarer, but guarantee a perfect Pokemon. I mean, if you want to make a Lucky Trade something genuinely special, and not a guaranteed thing of a random occurrence, then why not make it amazing?

Like I said though, it’s a stupid idea. Just give us long distance trades for Lucky Friends, please.