Pokemon GO’s Beyond GO Update and Speculations Overall

Both my two main games right now have massive updates coming up. Warframe has Deimos Arcana, which may already out by the time you’re reading this. Pokemon GO on the other hand is going to have a MASSIVE update with huge changes. Not only will levels increase to level 50, but we’re going to be seeing changes to the spawning and more. The more technical places like the Silph Road are all over this stuff, and there’s a huge amount to talk about.

And by huge, I mean huge.

We’re basically talking about a fundamental change to Pokemon GO. Level 40 has been the cap for ages, for both trainers and Pokemon. A whole 10 new levels will change pretty much everything. Pokemon will be able to reach massive CPs, but the grind to get to level 50 is… well, a mystery. A lot of interesting things, from level 40+ cosmetics to ‘XL Candy’ have been discovered by data miners, digging through the Pokemon GO app.

The spawning is also huge as well. We’ll apparently be moving towards a seasonal spawning system, with Pokemon being more or less common based on not just biomes and the weather, but the time of year as well. This is on top of the first of Generation 6 coming to Pokemon GO. Despite the fact that parts of Generation 5 aren’t available yet, and we still don’t have Kecleon.

What does this mean for the average Joe though?

Well, hopefully, this means more powerful Pokemon and better Pokemon spawning around you. But a lot of the information that the Silph Road spews up is speculation based on what has been data-mined and what we already know about. In fact, the average player might not even know about these changes until the last moment, because Niantic are pretty bad at informing players.

After all, as of writing, there’s an increase on trading distances. You can trade up to 50km away, instead of the normal 100m. I only found out about this because I’m subscribed to r/theSilphRoad. The people in my local raid group only found out because me and the local pokemaniac linked it in our Facebook chat, and even then, not everyone knows, because, well, Facebook groups aren’t the best way to share news.

The majority of players though are probably even more casual, and will only see these things if they pop up in-game. Sure, you can see stuff in the TODAY section of the research menu, but even that isn’t always obvious.

And of course, until the update comes out, it’s all still speculation.

Sure, this is stuff that people find buried in the game code. Well, not so much in the game code precisely, more located inside various folders and resources inside the app. But none of it is official until Niantic makes it official. Data miners have dug out new medals for example, but not all of them will be added to the game. And back when Meltan was new, its data was actually hidden behind Kecleon’s data.

There’s a lot of cool stuff on its way, definitely. However, what we see in sneak peeks and in data-mined stuff isn’t what we always get. After all, just look at Mega Evolutions. They turned out to be a right old mess. Most likely, we will probably have a massive grind ahead of us, with some sort of way to make money off all of it as ell. The path to level 50 is going to be incredibly slow and the new seasonal spawns will probably be very hit or miss.

So, uh, take all of this with a pinch of salt. And wait for all the confirmation posts on the Silph Road.