Niantic is finally preparing to unleash Legendary Pokemon into the real world

Just over a year after launching Pokemon Go, developer Niantic is finally preparing to unleash Legendary Pokemon into the real world.

This Tuesday, the Pokemon Go team published a blog post announcing a new update for the game, which is set to roll out this week. The details weren’t all that exciting, but as always, the Pokemon Go community was quick to tear the update apart to see what was inside.

 

 

What they found will have fans of the game as excited as they’ve been since Generation 2 arrived.

According to The Silph Road’s datamine of the 0.69.0 APK, Legendaries should arrive during or shortly after the Pokemon Go Fest set to take place in Chicago this Saturday.

A line of code in the update (“IsLegendaryOrMythic”) suggests that Pokemon Go can now distinguish between Legendary Pokemon (like Zapdos) and Mythical Pokemon (like Mew). Niantic has also added a warning message for players who try to transfer a Legendary Pokemon, an error message for players who try to drop their Legendaries at a gym and a new check to see if a Raid Boss is a Legendary.

New image assets have appeared in the code as well, including a Exclusive Raid Pass, a Legendary Raid icon featuring Lugia and a Lugia banner to mark a gym where a Legendary Raid has been won.

This doesn’t guarantee that the Mystery Challenge or “major global reward” referred to in the Go Fest infographic will be Legendary Raids, but with all of the code supporting Legendary Pokemon, it’s only a matter of time before some of the super rare creatures begin to make their way into the game.

In addition to the Legendary hints, the update also adds a QR code scanner, a special event badge for players who attend the Go Fest and some minor fixes for the health bar and heal animations.

 

Finally, here’s the complete official change log for the update from Niantic:

•Added icons to the Pokémon information screen to indicate how the Pokémon was caught.

•Added the ability for Trainers to spin the Photo Disc at a Gym after completing a Raid Battle.

•Added the ability for Trainers to send Berries to their Pokémon defending Gyms through the Pokémon info screen when they are not nearby. Motivation regained will be less effective through this method.

•Added the ability for Trainers to give Berries to Pokémon defending Gyms if their motivation meter is full.

•Improved Pokémon Collection screen search functionality.

•Fixed an issue where Trainers were unable to complete Raid Battles started before time expired on the map view.

•Fixed an issue where Pokémon are not properly returned to their Trainer after defending a Gym.

•Various bug fixes.

Here's how it will likely go down. After a series of limited time events during Pokémon GO Fest, players will theoretically unlock a new "mystery challenge" during the event. This will give the players in Chicago the opportunity to battle in their first Legendary Raids: with such a high concentration of top-level players, they're bound to go down pretty quickly. After that, success in those raids will unlock Legendary Raids for players worldwide. It seems that Legendary Raid Passes will also be handled differently than normal Raid Passes, but it isn't yet clear how that will work.

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