Pokemon GO’s Mega Evolutions Aren’t So Bad Any More

When Mega Pokemon came out, no one was particularly happy. The time and effort required to actually get a Mega Pokemon was incredibly demanding. And to make matters worse, these Pokemon could only be mega-evolved for 4 hours at a time. Everything about the whole system felt incredibly wrong. But lately, Mega Evolutions don’t feel nearly as bad as they used to be. There’s been improvements.

One or two raids

The first and biggest change is the number of raids you have to do. Originally, you’d get 50-80 Mega Candy per Mega Raid you did. This meant that, for the early Mega Pokemon in particular, you had to do a good 3-4 raids in order to get the candy required, for one first evolution. These raids were also particularly hard and were level 6 raids. That meant that they were HARDER than Legendary Pokemon. Except, even if you beat the raid, you’d be rewarded with a non-mega Pokemon and a handful of Mega Candy.

These days, Mega Raids are level 4 raids. Mega Pokemon in raids still hit very hard, but you don’t need a full squad of level 40+ Pokemon like we used to. Some Mega Raids, ones with double weaknesses, can be done solo if you are a super hardcore player.

The best bit though? Right off the bat, you should get enough Mega Candy to be able to make a Mega yourself in only one raid, maybe two. Getting that initial amount of Candy out of the way makes Mega Raids a lot more accessible.

However there is one bit of a downside. If you don’t manage to Mega Evolve a Pokemon before it comes out of rotation, then you kinda have to wait until that Mega Pokemon returns to raids. That being said, the Mega Raids do rotate quite swiftly.

Walk your buddy

Now though, once you’ve done that one Mega Evolution, you can walk that Pokemon and slowly collect more Mega Candy. This is how I ended up with 700 Houndoom candy, because I was walking Hundoom as my buddy.

There’s also some other ways to earn Mega Candy. I haven’t done a single Mega Steelix raid thanks to a mini timed research quest. That got me enough for me to Mega Evolve my own Steelix not just one time, but basically whenever I want. Research tasks to get Mega Energy are becoming more and more common. In the recent Test your Mettle event, there were research tasks for Steelix and Scizor Mega Candy, and they were quite easy to find and do. In the past, we had special research that have out free candy for one of the Kanto starters, based on our selection. And, curiously, you can actually get some Mega Candy from Gyms. Turns out, if you spin a Gym, you get a chance to get Beedrill Mega Candy.

Just wait 7 days

The oddest change though is that, after your first Mega Evolution, you actually get a chance to Mega Evolve for free. There’s a 7 day cooldown period on the free Mega Evolutions, but the candy cost to do so is reduced dramatically too. Towards the end of those 7 days, you can Mega Evolve for as little as 10 Mega Candy.

We also have levels of Mega Pokemon now, that work very similarly to Buddy Pokemon. Mega Pokemon have levels, the same way Buddy Pokemon do, that unlock little perks. For Buddies, it’s small things like bringing gifts and helping catch Pokemon. For Mega Pokemon, you get three levels, with High Level and Max Level both reducing the cost to Mega Evolve a Pokemon even more. With a Max Level Mega Pokemon, you can get your free Mega Evolution in just 3 days.

Everything is a tad clearer now.

We’ve also had other Quality-of-Life changes too. One of the better ones is the silhouette that appears behind Pokemon you have Mega Evolved in the past, so you can be certain that you are Mega Evolving the right one. But the best part of all is that Mega Pokemon last 8 hours now. While yeah, it does kinda feel like you’re renting a Mega Pokemon, but you can at least see it wandering around. Mega Pokemon aren’t restricted to battle and that’s it, like they are in the normal games. You can walk a Mega Pokemon as a buddy and it’ll work exactly the same way as a normal buddy. So, really, we’re kinda getting more Mega Pokemon fun.

The system isn’t perfect. Ideally, I’d make the whole system a bit more personal, but Mega Pokemon are definitely a lot better to use now.