What’s The Point of Double Candy if there’s Nothing to Catch?

On the 12th and 13th of June, we had a small mini-event in Pokemon GO. The event was very simple: get double candy for catching Pokemon. There were some other bonuses as well, like a higher chance to get XL candy. But that only applied to level 40+ players.

Sounds great in theory. However, there’s a small problem here. There was nothing to really catch.

We had overlapping events!

This candy event started in the middle of A Very Slow Discovery. As you can probably guess, the Pokemon in this event are mostly Slowpoke. Sure, we get the release of Galarian Slowpoke, but the spawns are rather tame. We got lots of Slowpoke spawning, the odd wild Slowbro, Slakoth and Vigoroth (rarely), Gulpin, Psyduck and Grimer. While there are normal Season of Discovery spawns occasionally, most Pokemon you’ll see are Slowpoke.

That would be alright if raids were much better. Raids consist of similarly slow Pokemon like Slaking and Snorlax. Level 5 raids consist of the three Regis: Regirock, Regice and Registeel. Double candy and increased XL Candy are nice for Legendaries, but that assumes you can catch them. At least Galarian Slowpoke is in level 1 raids alongside a handful of nice Pokemon.

One event is super limited by another.

The problem is that the Slow Discovery event conflicts with the double candy event. If you have a double candy event, you need something good to catch. You either need a large number of a very small group of Pokemon that have some value; or lots of Pokemon to choose from. The best time we had a double candy event was actually over community days in the past. For Swinub Community Day, we had double candy and it was amazing, especially since Swinub hadn’t been that common before.

On the flip side, having lots of Pokemon available and not held back by spawns isn’t quite as good. But it at least means there’s a chance to find something cool. Events generally tend to change spawns in their entirety, and event Pokemon end up taking most of the space. Which means that the chance of something rare spawning is even smaller. Of course, this all does depend on the event. After all, having double candy during the Luminous Legends X event with Bagon and Dratini spawning would be amazing.

However, most events generally have rather boring spawns, and the cool stuff is limited to raids or eggs. And eggs don’t benefit from double candy.

There was a silver lining.

I mean, it’s a double candy weekend. What’s not to like? Sure, the spawns aren’t amazing, but double candy is always helpful. It’s also particularly helpful with the many “evolve Pokemon” tasks around. Evolving 3 Slowpokes costs 150 candy, but double candy helps make that less painful.

The double candy weekend was also great for one thing in particular: Opening a Meltan box. Doubly so if you are level40+. Meltan is guaranteed to give XL candy because it’s a mythical. And since you need 400 candy to evolve a Meltan into Melmetal, double candy means you need half the Meltans to do so.

I do kinda feel bad complaining about a double candy event. But did we really need double candy on all those Slowpokes?