I must've blinked, because all of the sudden 2019 is well underway. That said, we've only recently hit the Lunar New Year, so to celebrate the Year of the Pig, Pokemon Go is throwing a zodiac-themed event. As The Pokemon Company announced today, the event is now live and will run through Wednesday, February 13 at 1pm PST / 4pm EST / 9pm BST. And in case you were wondering, yes, that does mean the previous event which featured Kyogre and Groudon raids is over.
Fittingly, the focus of the event is a hand-picked cluster of Pokemon corresponding to the 12 Chinese Zodiac animals. In order, those are: Rattata, Miltank, Electabuzz, Buneary, Dratini, Ekans, Ponyta, Mareep, Mankey, Torchic, Poochyena, and Spoink. These Pokemon will spawn more frequently for the duration of the event, and as an added bonus for the Year of the Pig, you'll have a chance of finding a shiny Spoink. You'll also get double XP for catching and evolving Pokemon, and whenever you trade Pokemon, they'll have a higher chance of becoming lucky Pokemon.
Double XP and increased spawn rates are all well and good, but as far as I'm concerned, the best part about this event is that it doubles as a Pokemon zodiac calendar. Evidently, I'm a Torchic. Ponyta is my favorite Pokemon on this list, but Torchic does evolve into Blaziken - who I remember being absolutely busted in the older games - so I think I can accept that.
We'll have to update our Pokemon Go shiny list with good ol' Spoink, but in the meantime, here's every other shiny you can get.
An AI's mission to 'teach' itself Pokemon Red is going as well as you think - after escaping Cerulean City after tens of hours, it went right on back
Pokemon Legends Z-A's visuals aren't "great" say former Nintendo marketing leads, but hope Switch 2 could allow Game Freak to "go back to the drawing board" and add more detail to future RPGs
