The Least Interesting Pokemon GO Event Bonuses

For events, there’s always some sort of little bonus. Sometimes the bonuses can be huge, like the x4 stardust and experience during the Paldea event in the season Adventures Abound. That bonus was insane, and I played a lot of that event to make the most of the massive boosts. Normally though, bonuses are a little calmer. In an event, you’ll probably get just one bonus, like x2 candy on catching Pokemon, or the more skill-based extra candy based on your quality of throw. But some bonuses just aren’t very good.

Increased Chance of XL Candy

I’ve seen this event bonus a lot, but I’m never actually sure if it’s actually working or not. The bonus itself is actually quite a good one, after all, you need a LOT of XL candy to power anything up. And the conversion of 100 candies into 1 XL candy is absolutely insane. But it’s not an obvious bonus and it’s hard to tell whether it’s even active. After all, the chance of XL candy isn’t very well known either. Sure, the higher the Pokemon’s level, the higher the chance you’ll get XL candy, but am I getting the bonus XL candy because of the level or the event? Most of the time, you’re just better off using a Mega Pokemon to help you out.

Bonus candy based on throws

In some events, you get extra candy based on the throw used to catch a Pokemon. A Nice throw will get you four candy, a Great throw five candy and an Excellent throw gives 6 candy. While this can be boosted with a pinap berry and is technically better than a flat double candy bonus, the problem is normally with the event it comes with. Sure, you can get extra candy for excellent throws, but good luck doing so on the likes of tiny Pokemon like Bounsweet or very jumpy Pokemon like Zubat.

Extra XP on spinning Pokestops

Spinning Pokestops gives you XP. Not a lot of XP, but a little. The thing is, for this bonus to be worthwhile, you need to have a x10 bonus on spinning Pokestops. And even then, it’s still not that great. While, theoretically, you could get huge experience by spinning new Pokestops, that’s not always going to be available to most people. After all, I assume most people have spun most of the Pokestops near where they live.

Extra sets available in the GBL

This one always confuses me because I don’t get why you can’t play as much GBL as you like. Normally, you can do 5 sets a day, for a total of 25 matches. For some events, namely GBL days, that amount is increased to 20, meaning you can do 100 battles in a day. It sounds nice, but really, GBL should be free to play whenever you want to play it.

Then again, playing PvP can be stressful, and it does give a lot of rewards. Still, it’s a weird bonus to have.

Unlimited Remote Raid Passes

This bonus is honestly just pure bullshit. We used to be able to do unlimited remote raids. Sure, you could only ever hold a maximum of 5 remote raid passes at once, but if you had the passes, then you could raid as much as you like. The unlimited raids got removed back when remote raid passes were nerfed and made much more expensive, so this bonus is just spitting in players’ faces.

So yeah, some events just have bad bonuses. At least Community Days always have good bonuses, although it’s been a while since we last saw an event with half walking distance on eggs. But you can’t go wrong with double (or triple) candy, double stardust and double experience.