You’ve probably been there. You finally grind out those 100 Magikarp candies, feeling like a champion, only to realize your next big project—maybe a Galarian Slowpoke or a Primeape—doesn’t care about your candy stash. It wants more. It wants a bribe. Or a hike. Or for you to win ten raids while it watches from your pocket. Pokemon Go special evolutions have fundamentally changed how we play the game, moving us away from the simple "catch and click" loop of 2016 into something way more demanding.
Honestly, it’s a bit of a headache if you aren't prepared.
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Back in the early days, everything was linear. You caught a Pidgey, you evolved a Pidgey. Simple. Now, Niantic has leaned hard into "Adventure Effects" and specific buddy tasks that mirror the main series games' quirky evolution methods. It adds flavor, sure, but it also adds a massive layer of complexity that can stall your Pokedex progress for months if you don't know the specific triggers.
The Buddy System Bottleneck
Most of the frustration comes from the Buddy screen. If you're looking at a Pawmo or a Bramblin, you'll see a little dropdown menu under the "Evolve" button. It’s not just a suggestion; it’s a requirement. For Pawmo to become Pawmot, you have to walk 25 kilometers with it as your buddy. Not just walk 25km in general—it has to be active, on the map, sniffing the virtual grass while you do the legwork.
It's a grind.
But it’s not just walking. Some requirements are hyper-specific. Take Galarian Yamask. To get Runerigus, you don't just walk; you have to win 10 raids. That’s a lot of Premium Battle Passes or a lot of daily patience. It’s Niantic’s way of ensuring you don't just "complete" the game from your couch. They want you interacting with every single mechanic they’ve built, from the AR scanning to the local raid scene.
Then you have the "Environmental" evolutions. These are the ones that make you hover around a PokeStop like a weirdo. You need a Lure Module. But not just any lure. Magneton and Nosepass need a Magnetic Lure. Eevee—the king of complex evolutions—needs a Mossy Lure for Leafeon or a Glacial Lure for Glaceon. If you're a free-to-play player, these are the hardest to knock out because those lures cost 180 PokeCoins a pop unless you get lucky with Special Research rewards.
Eevee is Still the Complicated King
We have to talk about Eevee. It’s the poster child for Pokemon Go special evolutions. While the "name trick" (naming an Eevee "Kira" for Sylveon or "Rea" for Glaceon) works exactly once per account, the long-term methods are what catch people off guard.
Sylveon is the big one. You need to earn 70 Buddy Hearts. That’s not just a weekend project for most people. It takes days of feeding berries, taking snapshots, and battling in gyms. Espeon and Umbreon are even more fickle. You have to walk 10km with them, then evolve them while they are still your buddy. If you swap them out before hitting that evolve button, you’re just going to end up with another Vaporeon, Jolteon, or Flareon. And if your GPS flickers and the game thinks it's night when it's actually day? Enjoy your accidental Umbreon. It happens more than you'd think.
Why Regional Forms Change the Rules
Galarian and Hisuian forms threw a massive wrench into the works. Take Primeape. In the old days, you just gave it 50 candies and got a Poliwrath-adjacent angry monkey. Now? If you want Annihilape, you have to defeat 30 Psychic or Ghost-type Pokemon in battle while Primeape is your buddy.
The trick here—and this is something the game doesn't explicitly tell you—is that you don't have to use Primeape in the actual fight. You just have to have it "equipped" as your buddy. You can go beat up a Team GO Rocket grunt or a friend in a friendly PvP match, and as long as those Psychic types go down, you're making progress.
The Items Nobody Can Find
Let’s be real: the drop rates for evolution items are abysmal. Sun Stones, King’s Rocks, Metal Coats, Dragon Scales, and Up-Grades. You get one guaranteed from your seven-day PokeStop streak, but it's a 1-in-5 chance it's the one you actually need.
- Sunkern and Cottonee need that Sun Stone.
- Scyther and Onix are useless without a Metal Coat.
- Porygon is stuck in its basic form without an Up-Grade.
Then there is the Sinnoh Stone and the Unova Stone. These are the gatekeepers for some of the best attackers in the game, like Mamoswine or Chandelure. You can't just find these at stops. You have to earn them through Research Breakthroughs, Team GO Rocket Leader battles, or—most reliably—PvP battles against friends or the Team Leaders (Spark, Candela, and Blanche). If you aren't battling, you aren't evolving.
The Mystery of "In-Game Weather" and Time
Some Pokemon Go special evolutions are literally at the mercy of the clouds. Good luck getting a Sliggoo to turn into a Goodra if it isn't raining. You can bypass this with a Rainy Lure Module, but again, that costs coins.
Tyrogue is another weird case. It’s all about the stats (IVs). If you want Hitmonlee, its Attack must be its highest stat. Hitmonchan needs Defense. Hitmontop needs Stamina (HP). If there’s a tie? It’s a literal coin flip. You can’t change the stats, so you’re basically stuck with whatever RNG gave you when that 5km egg hatched. It’s frustrating because it’s the one area where the player has zero agency.
The Mega Evolution Outlier
Mega Evolution isn't permanent, which makes it a "temporary" special evolution, but the resource management is the same. You need Mega Energy. You get it from Mega Raids. Once you've evolved a Charizard into Mega Charizard Y once, the cost drops significantly, and eventually, it becomes free after a cooldown period. This is actually one of the few systems Niantic "fixed" to be more player-friendly, shifting it from a constant grind to a strategic cooldown mechanic.
Strategic Mistakes to Avoid
The biggest mistake players make is evolving too early. If you have a quest that says "Evolve a Feebas," and you evolve one before you reach that stage of the "A Thousand-Year Slumber" Special Research, you're going to have to walk another 20km with a new Feebas all over again.
Always check your "Special" research tab before pulling the trigger on a high-resource evolution.
Another tip: for "Win X Raids" requirements, you don't actually have to win unique raids. If you're struggling to find groups, you can sometimes find low-tier 1-star raids and solo them. It counts just the same as a 5-star legendary win for the purposes of evolution.
Actionable Steps for Efficient Progress
If you want to clear your backlog of unevolved Pokemon, you need a workflow. Don't try to do them all at once.
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- Tag Your Projects: Use the in-game tagging system. Create a tag called "Buddy Evolve" and toss every Galarian Farfetch'd, Pawmo, and Primeape in there.
- Sync Your Walking: Never walk a buddy just for the sake of it. If you have 5km to go for an egg, make sure your buddy is one that requires a walking distance for evolution. Stack your goals.
- The "Midnight" Trick: If you're evolving Ursaring into Ursaluna, you need a full moon in the real-world sky. This usually happens once a month during specific events. Check a lunar calendar; the game actually tracks this.
- Save Your Rare Items: Don't waste a Sinnoh Stone on a low-IV Porygon2 just because you're bored. Wait for the Community Day classics or a high-stat catch. These items are too rare to burn on "pokedex fillers" until you have your competitive team built.
The reality is that Pokemon Go special evolutions are designed to slow you down. They are speed bumps in a game that otherwise moves as fast as your car (or your bike, if the speed lock isn't triggered). By treating each evolution as a mini-quest rather than a button press, you’ll find the process much less annoying and a lot more like the actual journey of a Pokemon Trainer. Stop looking at the candy count and start looking at the "Requirements" tab. That's where the real game is played now.
Make sure your GPS is stable, keep those Lure Modules for 2x duration events, and always, always check the weather before you commit to that 100-candy evolution.
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