Pokemon GO Easter Event Countdown: 5 More Days To Go

Apr 11, 2017 02:03 PM EDT

Easter and eggs are inseparable -- peas in a pod. Well, this coming Easter, what are you going to do as a Pokemon GO fan? It seems that Niantic’s upcoming Easter Event announcement is set to make you wet your pants in anticipation of new Shiny Pokemon that will make their appearance. Basically, there will be a totally new Pokemon GO Easter Event that is set to kick off later this week. Niantic Labs has done rather well in mastering the art of stealthily launching new events one or two days before a major holiday, and past examples have included Halloween and Christmas in 2016, as well as Valentine’s Day earlier this year.

What about Easter 2017? There will most probably be a whole new event, and majority of the changes ought to happen on the server side of things, as opposed to a brand new update to this hugely popular AR (Augmented Reality) game. So far, it seems that the player base of Pokemon GO has seen a rather sharp drop to 5 million from close to 30 million at the height of its popularity, events in the past such as the Gen 2 launch have shown that the number of players increase again due to renewed interest. Hence, Easter would be a good time to provide this mobile game with a shot in the arm.

What will the Easter event for Pokemon GO bring to the table? There are a few possibilities that should never be ruled out, as those are more or less guaranteed to “revive” old and dormant accounts, including offering double the XP, double the amount of Stardust, an increased Spawn Rate for selected rare Pokemon to draw in the crowd, halved Pokemon Egg Distance Requirements (hey, it is Easter after all!), new spawning of new Pokemon, and of course, new spawning of Shiny versions of currently existing Pokemon. Everyone loves sparkly stuff, diamonds especially, and the same applies to Pokemon trainers.

Just how will Shiny Pokemon function within the Pokemon GO environment? To date, we do know that only a couple of Shiny Pokemon are within the game -- Magikarp and its evolved form known as Gyarados. While the chance of Magikarp being a Shiny Pokemon remains unknown, there have been suggestions that the odds could be somewhere in the region of 1 in 400.

Earlier Pokemon games used different factors in determining the chance of coming across a Shiny Pokemon, including the Trainer ID number and the personality value of the Pokemon. Using those factors, the odds of a random encounter with a Shiny Pokemon is in the region of 1 in 8,192. Make it too difficult for Pokemon GO gamers to get their own Shiny Pokemon, and you would see many of this instant generation of gamers wilt away, defeated.

Will Exeggcute be another one of those Shiny Pokemon that will make its debut at the Easter Event for Pokemon GO? Only time will be able to tell, but since Easter does deal with eggs, it would not be out of place to see Exeggcute be part of the picture. It straddles no man's land, being an uncommon Pokemon.