Let's Fix: New Evolutions from Gen II

With Generation II just around the corner, new evolutions are added, and not just species in particular, new ways of evolution are also going to be added. To be honest, I thought Niantic will not add new ways of evolving Pokemon, and will stick with the candy method, because it is simple, and most people like it simple. In light of the data mine, new items are planned to be added in the game. I want to share my take on how they would do the new evolution.

Just a recap: Silph Road managed to data mine the new update last January 17, and it revealed new items seen in the code, specifically, Sun Stone, King's Rock, Dragon Scale, Metal Coat, and Upgrade. The article can be read here.

These items can be used to evolve certain Pokemon, as you can see below:

Gloom, Slowpoke, and Poliwhirl get new branched evolutions being Bellossom, Slowking and Politoed, respectively, while Onix, Scyther, and Porygon, originally with no evolutions, get a new evolution, being Steelix, Scizor, and Porygon2, respectively. Seadra's evolution tree extends, evolving into Kingdra. A new Pokemon, Sunkern, evolves into Sunflora using items as well

Originally, in the games, you use the Sun Stone to evolve the Pokemon. As for the other items, the Pokemon should hold the item, and must be traded while holding the item for it to evolve. Now, there is no trading yet, so there is little to no chance for Niantic to fully copy the method. Besides, Pokemon in Pokemon Go can not hold items, and there are no signs of it being possible in the near future, so how will they do it?

The first thing we should solve is how they would distribute these items. First thing you may think is Poke Stops. That would be great, but it would cause us to have many stocks of evolution items we may not even need. Sure, they may lower the drop rate, but on the long run, we would have large stocks of evolution items because we won't even need to constantly evolve these Pokemon. Another option is just selling it on the shop, which is much worse, especially if it's exclusively available on the store. It will surely make most of the players angry, especially those who are against pay-to-win type of games.

One good solution is make it a reward for catching certain number of Pokemon, like a bonus. For example, you get the 1 King's Rock for catching 25 Slowpoke and its evolution, and Poliwag and its evolution combined. Still, it's still too similar to the candy method. For example, Slowpoke needs 50 candies to evolve to Slowbro, so you need to catch at least 23 Slowpoke to evolve it, making the "certain number" requirement very passive, because you also need to catch Pokemon to get candies for it. Plus, it will make that requirement very hard for those who use the buddy system to evolve their Pokemon, especially with the rare ones like Porygon

The greatest solution I thought of is creating a new item that you can turn into one of the evolution items. It drops very low on PokeStops and only occupies one space in the inventory, so you don't waste spaces on certain evolution items you don't really need. Let's name the item, Evolution Box. You select it then you select which evolution item you want and proceed to evolution afterwards.The disadvantage is that it will displease players that are purists when it comes to Pokemon Go, wanting the game to work just like the core games.

Let's say Niantic chose a way to distribute the item. How will we evolve the Pokemon? As mentioned earlier, trading and holding items are less likely, so you may think of just using the item and you can already evolve the Pokemon. I thought of another solution. Using the items alone is just too simplistic. I say, we use the items, but there is still a candy requirement. Maybe the candy requirement is lower, because there is already an item required. For example, we need 25 Candies to evolve Porygon with Upgrade. Still, using items and items alone, with no candies, is still acceptable, but honestly I want a more creative evolution.

How about the other evolutions, like Blissey? It is a much easier question, but I'll be tackling that another time.*

For more information on these evolution items, you can watch Nick on Trainer Tips below and skip to 3:30, or click here. Heck, you can watch the full episode. If you like his take on Pokemon Go, you can subscribe to his channel on YouTube.

*EDIT: Since Gen II is already released, I won't be tackling it anymore because my idea is almost the same as the implementation, especially Espeon and Umbreon.