We’ve known since Pokemon Go’s April event details that Niantic had an Earth Day-related event on deck, but this week’s preview shows the event is far more inclusive than you might have expected.
Gameplay-wise, the new details revealed that Binacle will make its debut in POGO for the event (April 20th through 25th), as will shiny Trubbish. There’ll also be tiered rewards for participating in the overall Niantic Sustainability Week campaign, giving POGO players more five-star raids, three free Remote Passes, and double catch XP if they reach certain goals. The base event is good for getting Drilbur and Roselia XL Candy, both of which are quite useful in PvE raids and Rocket battles (whenever the latter gets fixed).
However, unlike past cleaning events, this one can be done alone and be as simple as picking up garbage at a park and sharing your effort on social media. Super environmentalists can even apply for seed money for larger projects. The event includes Ingress awards (2x hack rate of Heatsinks, Multihacks, Shields (all rarity) and Power Cubes (all levels including Hyper Cubes); 2x AP Resonator Deployed; and 2x AP Resonator Destroyed at tier 3).
Worth noting is that the official Wizards Unite page has received no updates between December 2020 and April 13th, 2021, and it’s gone completely unmentioned on Niantic’s campaign page, so it seems our wizard friends may not be getting any bonuses. We’ve reached out to Niantic to see if this is a simple oversight and will update this post with further details should we receive them.
4/24 Update:Â Sadly players were only able to unlock the tier 1 rewards with help from Niantic. Many fans have expressed that the event was poorly communicated, as everything beyond a link to the main article was outside of the game, and the single link didn’t spell out how to participate. Instead, that link was further buried in that post. Perhaps had there been a clearer post, in-game counter, and a longer activity window, the event would have been more successful. However, personally speaking, this was the first time I was able to participate myself, and I even got some people in my community to make efforts as well. Hopefully Niantic will keep the event format but handle communication and integration better next time.
