Thoughts on Lucky Trades

Pokemon GO is a bit weird when it comes to trades. Most of the main Pokemon games let you trade whatever you want. Pokemon Home also allows you to trade what you like. But Pokemon GO only allows for a Pokemon to be traded once, and treats Pokemon in a very different way, rerolling a Pokemon’s stats after the trade. This reroll means that you can, by sheer chance, get a Pokemon in return that has way better stats than it started with.

The stat reroll is mostly completely random, and goes across a certain range. As you become better friends with other players, the variation of those stats decreases, so you have less of a chance to get really bad stats. The cost of trading also decreases, based on whether you are a good friend or a best friend. However, there is a chance that a Pokemon may become Lucky when traded. Lucky Pokemon have a minimum stat level of 12/12/12 (12 attack, 12 defense, 12 hp), they get a nice sparkly effect on them and become cheaper to power up.

The chance of getting a lucky trade isn’t really known, but, if you trade a lot, then chances are you’ll get a few Lucky Pokemon, out of sheer good luck. And, rarely, the chance of getting a lucky trade can be increased, but it’s mostly only seen in a handful of events, most notably Chinese new year. Either way, it’s all still based on luck.

And then there’s the Lucky Trade.

When you reach Best Friends with something, that’s not really the end of line. By interacting with a Best Friend once a day, there’s a chance to get a Lucky Trade. A Lucky Trade means that, when you next trade with that particular player, both the Pokemon in said trade are guaranteed to be lucky. This means you can get a guaranteed good Pokemon with good stats.

However, there’s a catch, Becoming Lucky Friends with someone requires even more luck than just getting random lucky Pokemon from normal trades. The chance of becoming Lucky Friends with someone is insanely small, to the point that it can take months or years to happen. For example, I regularly send gifts to my siblings, daily in my brother’s case. However, in the last year or so, we’ve had a grand total of two Lucky Trades.

To make matters worse, there are friends that you can’t do anything about. aabicus and I have been Lucky Friends for the last three years or so, but there’s no way for either of us to trade. We simply live too far apart, and the chances of us meeting is vanishingly small. I have multiple people that I can’t communicate with in any way, all of whom I have unused Lucky Trades with. So they just sit there, permanently lucky, with no possible way of trading.

At the end of the day, it’s all just a load of random luck. But that luck always seems to go to the wrong places. Still, when you do get a lucky Pokemon, it is pretty cool. Shame that guaranteed lucky trades are so rare. But then again, they have to be, because otherwise they wouldn’t be lucky…