The Worst Research Tasks in Pokemon GO

Research tasks in Pokemon GO are quite simple. You spin a Pokestop, you get given a task and you do that task for a reward. Rewards can be almost anything, from Pokemon encounters to balls and berries, and, after 7 days of doing tasks, you can get a cool research reward from Professor Willow or the strange robot girl who has replaced him. But not all research tasks are made equal. Some are alright. Some are utterly pointless. And some tasks are not even worth your time at all.

Difficulty is all over the place

The tasks required can vary between “stupidly easy” and “genuinely quite difficult, depending on events.” On one hand, you have stuff like “Play with your Buddy” or “Transfer 10 Pokemon”. On the other hand, tasks include “Make 3 Excellent Throws in a Row” or “Win 5 Raids”. However, not all tasks are equal. Normally, the “Make 5 Great Throws in a Row” task will reward a Spinda, but I’ve seen variations that give golden berries or stardust instead. Spinda research is hard to find, so getting the task but not the encounter really sucks.

There’s also always a “Make X Excellent Throws in a Row” research task. 2 Excellent Throws can nab you a dragon type. But I only seem to find the “Make An Excellent Throw” and that rewards you with one Pinap. Just a normal Pinap. Excellent throws can be both easy and hard to do (it really depends on the season and current events) but seriously, just one? I can open a gift for 2-4 Pinaps, spin a Pokestop for 1-2 and get 5 Pinaps for catching 5 Pokemon, via the green daily tasks. It makes no sense.

Lackluster rewards

The problem is, just spinning a Pokestop is better than these research tasks. Oh, I get a Pinap, opening a gift though has a chance of giving you two. A golden Razberry? You get way more by doing raids. But a lot of research isn’t even that good. Catching 10 Pokemon for 5 Pokeballs seems a tad silly, especially since you’ll have gotten 1-3 of them by simply spinning a Pokestop. Other research tasks offer more Pokeballs, for example, “Transfer 10 Pokemon” gives you 10 Pokeballs at least breaks even.

And even then, some encounters are still rubbish. Eevee, Pikachu, Jigglypuff and, weirdly, Snubbull have been plaguing easier tasks, while Magikarp has jumped all over the place, being a reward for “Catch x Pokemon”, that X ranging from 5 to 10. That being said, any 400-candy Pokemon is a good thing to see. You can never have too much candy for Pokemon like Magikarp and Swablu.

We see these tasks in Special Research too

I suppose, at least with special research, you know you’ll get a cool Pokemon at the end or something. But there’s still plenty of rough tasks. Powering up a Pokemon a bunch of times always seems to reward you with a paltry 100-1000 stardust, so you have to level up low level lucky Pokemon to not go negative on stardust. There’s also always assorted tasks to catch X amounts of Pokemon, only to give us some berries as a reward. And half the time you have to use those berries on the next step of the special research.

The biggest offender is always the “Do X every day for 30 days in a row” and those are genuinely dreadful. It’s a very obvious way to add filler content and intentionally slow players down. The problem isn’t even doing the task, it’s that, if you screw up once, you have to start completely from scratch.

Really, the best research is actually the green daily research task. Almost all green research tasks give basic resources, but don’t require spinning a Pokestop and can be completed relatively easily. Compared to normal research tasks, ones that don’t have encounters, green tasks are far superior. There’s a normal research task that gives you 1 Pinap for catching 10 Pokemon. But there’s also a very common green task that gives you 5 Pinaps for catching 5 Pokemon. It’s pretty silly.

But bad research also slips into event research as well!

As of writing, the 6th Anniversary event just finished, and a lot of the event research was “Do 6 of X”. X was anything from catching Pokemon, sending gifts or feeding berries to Pokemon. And the majority of these researches all gave out various Starter Pokemon. But I also stumbled into a lot of research like “Catch 6 Pokemon for 5 Great Balls”. Which is honestly pointless. You get more Pokeballs by spinning Pokestops than by doing these tasks.

Honestly, research tasks that aren’t encounters or Mega energy, they’re just not worth doing. And there’s so many research tasks that hardly reward your efforts. It’s just not worth our time…