Pokémon Go’s latest update is letting you pick your favourite Pokémon as your buddy! Thereby giving all the rest of your Pokémon terrible self-esteem issues.
Select a buddy Pokémon in the trainer profile menu; there’s an option to choose alongside the journal and customisation tools. Once selected, that Pokémon will appear next to the trainer avatar. But more importantly, this feature will allow players to earn specific candy in Pokémon Go.
So now instead of repeatedly catching the same Pokémon over and over again. You can assign that Pokémon to walk around with you to generate candy. I’m not too sure how this works, maybe they’re pooping it out.
This makes your buddy Pokémon especially useful for strengthening rarer finds. For example, if you’ve been wanting to evolve your Abra but haven’t found enough of them in the wild. You can now choose Abra as your buddy Pokémon to eventually get all the candy you need. Alakazam here I come!
Stats site like Poké Assistant has data on how many kilometers a player must walk to earn a single candy for their buddy. (Some players have reported the occasional two-candy pickup, however). These vary from one at the least to three at the most for rarer, stronger Pokémon — often ones who don’t need to evolve anyway.
Pikachu Easter Egg! If you assign Pikachu as your buddy Pokémon and proceed to walk 10km with it, he’ll hop up on your shoulder instead of walking on the ground! The Easter Egg is purely cosmetic but it’s still pretty cute.
The Pokémon Go update is currently being rolled out on iOS and Android now. Let us know in the comments if how your buddy Pokémon is going to be!
