Pokémon Go Fourth Anniversary Event – Week 2: Shadow Pokémon, Team GO Rocket & More

Everything you should know.

team Rocket

Following on from a busy first anniversary event week in Pokémon Go, Niantic have gone all evil on us for week two and joined forces with Team GO Rocket. They slated week two as being based around battles, and it turns out those battles will be with Rocket Grunts, Giovanni, and Jessie and James.

Week two of the event will run from July 10th, 8am local time up until July 15th, 10pm local time. Similarly to the first week, we will have a Battle Timed Research that revolves around battling Team GO Rocket. Completing this challenge will reward you with encounters with Himtomlee and Absol, as well as a Super Rocket Radar which will allow you to battle Giovanni. If 1 million players from each team successfully complete this, then there will be three extra Pokémon available for GO Fest, and these will be Ferroseed for Instinct, Alolan Grimer for Mystic and Alolan Marowak for Valor.

There’s some extra bonuses that will be live for this second anniversary week, and they are as follows:

Poison and Dark type Pokémon will be appearing more frequently in the wild, eggs and raids.
Team GO Rocket balloons will be appearing more often, as well as the Meowth balloon with Jessie and James appearing at a higher rate as well. Encountering either of these will begin a Grunt battle with the chance to catch a Shadow Pokémon at the end.
– If you encounter and beat Giovanni, you will encounter a Shadow Suicune, which will be available for you to catch.
– New Shadow Pokémon are available including Nidoran (male and female) and their first evolutions, Machop and Machoke, Gligar, Shuckle, Stunky and Skuntank, as well as the Rocket Leaders having new Pokémon that you can battle and capture.

This week also has an extra special event occurring on July 12th, 11am – 2pm local time. During these hours, you will be more likely to encounter Team GO Rocket grunts in balloons and taking over Pokéstops. Every Grunt or balloon that you defeat will earn you double the Stardust you normally would. On top of this, if you use a Charged TM on any of your Shadow Pokémon during this time, they’ll be able to learn a move other than Frustration, allowing you to make your Shadow ‘mons better for battling.

Remember to finish your Timed Research before 10pm on July 15th, ready for the third anniversary event week to start.

Pokémon GO is a downloadable mobile game that can be played alone or with friends, and sees you catch, trade, raid and battle against Pokémon in the real world.

Some of the coverage you find on Cultured Vultures contains affiliate links, which provide us with small commissions based on purchases made from visiting our site. We cover gaming news, movie reviews, wrestling and much more.