Massively on the Go: Pokemon Go’s April schedule is hopefully a joke

By
Andrew Ross
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While there’s always hope for a good April Fools’ Day prank, Pokemon Go’s April Schedule doesn’t have one listed, at least not yet. Unfortunately, Niantic’s made it kind of hard to get excited about April this year; very little information has been released. There’s no new Mega ‘mon this month, and the few potential new pokemon are expected to come from the much-hated and bug-prone Elite Raids.

Players have been mentioning their hopes for a Zorua event, especially since we’re currently in a Ditto one, but dataminers have found something unexpected.

This edition of Massively on the Go will dive into the info we’ve got so far as well as make some predictions, but it may be best to keep expectations low.

Research Breakthroughs are the same season-long, so we already knew that part. The raids, however, are just heartbreaking. Lugia’s the only vaguely useful one (mostly for PvP, outside the Aeroblast+ Shadow one), and it’s already been confirmed (since it’s out now) that it doesn’t have Aeroblast, making this largely a candy-generating rotation or shiny hunt. Incarnate Landorus isn’t bad, but outside of Master League, in PvE, it’s around the same power as non-legendaries Mamoswine, Rhyperior, and the Community Day Garchomp. The same goes for Tapu Bulu, except it competes with more common CD Venusaur, Roserade, and even Leafeon, though at least it can be shiny. And if the Elite Raid is Regieleki, that’s another ‘mon to not write home about aside as a collector’s item. April’s mostly going to have to rely on events.

The April Fools’ Day event this year probably isn’t what people expected, but it is worth talking about a bit, if you don’t mind spoilers.

Click to reveal April Fools' Day spoilers!
Pokeminers have found that the event seems to be just a bunch of Pidgey spawning. That alone isn’t interesting, but it does somewhat shoot down the idea that Professor Willow is turning your old ‘mon into candy. It may be nostalgic for some players, but sadly this month’s double XP event isn’t anywhere near April 1st, so unless there’s more to announce, the joke is kind of on the players this year.

April 4th-10th’s Spring into Spring event isn’t too big a mystery. While we now have some details, the official Korean Twitter account previously hinted at Cutiefly’s release, which was further teased by an apparently released-too-soon message seen briefly in-game. The biggest note is that Cutiefly is en route. While not a good PvE pokemon, it may have some PvP use, as its evolution, Ribombee, caps out around 2500CP, perfect for Ultra Cup. Even better, it resists Ground, Fighting, and Dragon types, which are common abilities/types in that league. Sadly, it currently doesn’t have a great move set, and our PvP friend JRE notes it’s not making waves in current simulations. Naturally, that could still change in the future.

Then there’s the “new” Flower Crown Sakura pokemon seen above. Yes, all the Eevees, and yet another Pikachu – and no new storage in sight. 3/31 Update: As many players saw, on March 30, 2023, Niantic sent out a message about increased storage. That message was false, and Niantic still hasn’t responded to questions about this, most likely in light of the same-day announcement of Remote Raid nerfs (noted below). 4/3 Update: A whole 4 days after the announcements, Niantic finally added the promised storage: 50 spaces more, paid, for both pokemon and items. To put this in perspective, I catch about 150 pokemon just walking a nearby park track while using the Daily Incense, Coin Pouch for Gimme Ghoul, and then walking for a total of about 1.5 hours, and that’s mostly auto-catching. That doesn’t help a lot of events, including the weekly spotlight hours.

Other event bonuses include half egg distance hatches, double hatch candy, 1-hour lucky egg duration, and Riolu included in the 2k egg pool (along with Cutiefly, Flower Crown Happiny, Flower Crown Togepi, Sakura Pichu, and Sakura Eevee). Players may even want to grab a few 12k eggs during the current Rocket Event to take advantage of the event, but Riolu is super useful, so you can’t go wrong either way. Since so many Normal types are out, Mega Pidgeot works well if you’re not doing a Fairy or Bug for Cutiefly; you’ll get bonus XP and candy for the Normals and any wild Togetic, plus Lugia in raids.

3/30 Update: And the event gets worse. On April 6, Niantic is increasing costs to Remote Raids and limiting them to 5 per day, while also limiting the maximum amount of remote participants to 5 (down from 10). We’ve had rumors of this coming for a while now, as we mentioned in the closing of our Hoenn Tour guide. Even though this was expected, the community isn’t having it. The above quote from Serebii.net’s Joe Merrick is the most polite response I’ve seen to this, while PvP analyst JRE is calling for a return of the #HearUsNiantic movement (AKA #PokemonNO for some of us). The community is not taking it well.

4/3 Update: And as predicted, Niantic “reveals” Regieliki is the April 9 Elite Raid target. It should be noted that as of this writing, Niantic has not fixed all of the longstanding bugs that have affected not only this event type, but related, game-wide errors that compound these issues (like the loading bug). They also haven’t followed up on their apology for the last event. Ignoring all that, assuming the event works and you’re able to find people on Easter Sunday, Regieleki from its current stats and moves doesn’t seem like it’ll have any impact on the game’s PvP or PvE meta. Consider it a pokedex filler and something you can ship off to Pokemon HOME.

4/9 Update: And once again, Elite Raids are a broken, buggy mess. It’s objectively clear at this point that Niantic doesn’t care about the quality of their game or events and we won’t bother spilling much more ink on the subject aside from keeping up the tally that Niantic is now 0/5 on successfully launching these as functional content.

April 13th-17th’s A Mystic Hero is a new event we have no details on. My initial thought is that it may be related to Team Mystic or that it could be the Hero Duo are having their second forms released via (most likely) paid quests. More likely, though, Niantic may finally just release a quest for Sky Shamin or Keldeo, as both have been available only via ticketed events thus far.

4/5 Update: My first guess of this being related to Team Mystic was correct. The official event page notes that Team Leader Blanche is the focus and that we’ll get a peak at their backstory (players and Wikis have noted Blanche is non-binary). Content-wise, aside from a single “Blanche-themed” Lapras that has a chance to be shiny, the event mainly seems to be focused on evolving. While “all” (probably not Golden) lures will last 3 hours and there will be research that awards stardust bonuses, evolving pokemon will grant double xp and award 2 XL candy. We’ve never had a candy-evolution bonus specifically before, but this event skips right over that and goes for the XL candy. Oddly, there’s no mention of the traditional level 31 limitation on XL candy. It may be an oversight, so we’ve checked with PR in the rare chance we’ll get a direct reply, if not see an official website update.

4/12 Update: As you can see from the above Pokeminers Tweet, Niantic’s broken an event by not pushing assets again. For those who may have forgotten, Niantic had done this with the fourth Elite Raid Day. As we outlined in March’s event round-up, Niantic had bragged about their commitment to in-person experiences while pulling this sort of amateur move, then days later, gave a half-apology that as of this writing, still hasn’t been updated or acted on. It seems like “forgetting” assets may be Niantic’s new normal.

April 15th’s Community Day is Togetic, as Togepi, a baby pokemon, doesn’t spawn in the wild. The event move, Aura Sphere, is basically a PvP move, and while it may be a bit better, PvE players can just take advantage of the event to fill in gaps in their Fairy lineups or bulk them up. The event will also have 1/4 hatch distance and include more Togepi, which is significant because Togepi gets a discount for unlocking its second Charge Attack. Budget PvE players can either wait until after the event to evolve their Toges or unlock that second move so ensure they don’t get hit with FOMO should Aura Sphere suddenly become weirdly useful for Togekiss as a raider.

Sustainability Week returns April 20th-26th to celebrate Earth Day (April 22nd this year) a bit more. Historically, new/shiny pokemon are released during this event. There were also community challenges for the first few years, but Niantic recently dropped those. Still, I encourage players and their communities to at the very least pick up some extra trash at their usual POGO hangout. We’re out there often enough, and sometimes not in ways the community appreciates, so this is always a good opportunity to help repair both community image damage and lower the environmental impact certain players bring to our turf.

4/14 Update: We now have official details on the event. As predicted, we get new pokemon (the Bounsweet family) and new shiny (Drilbur family for some reason), and Niantic once again is skipping community cleaning challenges, though I still encourage people at least pick up some extra trash at their local hangouts on April 22nd.

4/19 Update: We still have no information on the April 23 Limited Research event, but Niantic did post that Land Forme Shaymin is finally getting its free-to-play release. Those who purchased the research for it during Go Fest 2022 will be able to receive a second one. Somewhat related, Niantic Support has attempted to clarify their original news that event pokemon would be in both 2k and 7k eggs. However, Pokeminers had caught the stealth change on the blog post a full 24-hours prior to this.

4/19 Update #2: And the errors are still rolling in. The bonus walking candy we were promised is apparently “an error,” despite it having lasted a public redo of both the official blog post and infograph.

4/21 Update: The saga of the disappearing bonus continues. After previously claiming the 1/2 distance candy bonus was an error on two different official sources (as noted above), Niantic then auto-sent a third advertisement of the feature via game notifications. To apologize, the above tweet was sent out to notify players of a free “sorry” box, which includes an Incubator and 2 poffins. Supposedly the box is available until the end of Sustainability Week, but as Niantic’s word is about as strong as their organization abilities, I would urge players to grab those boxes sooner rather than later.

Wild Shellder and Foongus should be good for those looking to harvest more stardust. Drilbur’s evolution, Excadrill, works well as a Ground type attacker (for raids and Rocket battles), cheap and accessibly Steel type, and has some PvP use. Froakie will also most likely get a Community Day later this year, so this may be a good time to prepare for that. Teban has already weighed in on Tsareena and it’s not terrible, being a bit below Roserade for you who have missed out on better options. Our favorite PvP commenters haven’t tackled it yet (and they’re understandably disappointed with the game), but just a quick peek at Tsareena’s current stats and moves makes it seem like at least a potential spice pick, less bulky than Grass/Fairy Whimsicott, but as a pure Grass type with access to Magical Leaf which is a fairly strong fast move. Thus far, it’s not a must-have, but a nice option.

The event walking bonuses (longer lasting on maps, half distance for hearts and to earn candy) make using legendaries a lot more convenient. If you use poffins, remember that when you do an AR task, you don’t have to give Niantic usable data. Despite threats, I still submit scans of just my palm to ensure that Niantic can’t map out my neighborhood and I’m receiving new AR quests just fine. As for the more frequent berry packs from Buddy pokemon at Great Buddy rank, any chance of getting Silver Pinapps is a good one. We’ve still not heard of the Limited Research below, and will update this page once we learn more.

During that time, on April 23nd, we have an unknown Limited Research. These events often involve lots of opportunities to catch one or two specific pokemon from research, either in the Today tab or via Pokestops. I’m guessing they’ll be related to Sustainability week, so we’ll just have to wait and update this section later when we have more details.

4/19: And now we have the official announcement that the target pokemon from stops will be Stunfisk, both variants. It’s mostly a PvP pokemon, but collectors may be interested in the newly available shiny Stunfisk. Speaking of new shinies, Drilbur is featured as a wild pokemon during the event, which should help people get one or build a useful one. Other useful ‘mon in the event include Larvitar and Swinub (in case you can’t make its Classic Community Day). The event runs April 23rd from 2pm-5pm local time.

The final event, Community Day Classic on April 29th, is predicted to be Swinub via the mostly correct leak we got months ago. That would add insult to injury in terms of Landorus’ raid presence, as the CD move is mostly a PvP option at best, so PvE fans can simply grab a bunch of Swins to make good Ground or Ice raiders. We’ll see if Niantic throws us a curve ball and update this section should we learn new relevant information.

4/17 Update: And the leak once again proves true as Niantic announces another 2pm-5pm CDC that really is Swinub.

Finally, we have the Spotlight Hours. Exeggcute’s on April 4th could be useful if Cutiefly ends up as a quest reward, in which case you won’t have a lot of time, but you could stack rewards to get double candy from them. Alternatively, it’s also a great time to catch multiple Scatterbugs saved from the postcard-pin feature, especially if they’re combined with pinaps and a good Mega Bug type, with Mega Beedrill being the most accessible.

April 11th’s Shellder hour is great because it gives 1000 bonus stardust per catch, making it very worth while to use a starpiece. It’s also double candy transfer day, so if there’s only one Spotlight hour you have time for in April, do this one!

Trapinch could be a good day for evolving your Cutieflies or any other new pokemon, but it’s largely useless. April 25th’s Tangela isn’t bad, as it can be a useful budget Grass type when evolved, but the double stardust during this hour just can’t compare with the Shellder hour.

As always, we’ll be updating this post throughout the month as we slowly get new info from Niantic, dataminers, and players, as well as reports on how certain things play out. Good luck out there, trainers!

4/14 Update: Some players have noted that the game breaks on Android when you do, well, just about anything: Team Leader Battles, Rocket Battles, remote berry feeding, sending gifts, even just looking at your friend list! As usual, Niantic Support’s first move is to blame players, but also as usual, players have shared on The Silph Road subbreddit how to work around the problem, which is basically to set your avatar pose to the boring default pose.

Massively OP’s Andrew Ross is an admitted Pokemon geek and expert ARG-watcher. Nobody knows Niantic and Nintendo like he does! His Massively on the Go column covers Pokemon Go as well as other mobile MMOs and augmented reality titles!
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