On Tuesday, Niantic announced a new event for Pokémon GO, which puts a spotlight on the newest Pokémon, Meltan.
In September of last year, a special new Pokémon was revealed through Pokémon GO. This creature, known as Meltan, is a new Steel-type Mythical Pokémon found only through connecting a Pokémon GO account to the Nintendo Switch games Let’s Go Pikachu and Let’s Go Eevee.
Meltan is special in a few ways. For starters, it is the only Mythical Pokémon that can be left to defend Gyms in Pokémon GO. This makes it a very handy powerhouse that’s useful in defensive and offensive play. Additionally, Meltan is the first Mythical Pokémon that is able to evolve. To get it and its evolution, Melmetal, players have to transfer Pokémon from their mobile device to their Switch, which unlocks a special item called the Mystery Box. These boxes give the player a chance to capture Meltans for half an hour. Players can get these boxes weekly.
This event introduces Shiny Meltan. Shiny Pokémon are ultra-rare Pokémon with an alternate color palette to the original. Shiny Meltan is a bit darker than normal, with a blue plug tail instead of the usual red. There is no significant difference stat-wise with Shiny Pokémon — they are purely cosmetic, but some players seek to collect them.
In addition to the shiny variant, the cooldown on the Mystery Box item has been shortened to three days, letting players encounter more Meltans than ever. This event runs until March 4 at 11:59 p.m. PST, giving players a decent window to track down the rare Shiny version. Since Meltan takes the maximum 400 candies in Pokémon GO to evolve, and can’t evolve in Pokémon Let’s Go, now is a perfect time to not only look for a shiny but to also stock up and get the evolution for both games as well!
This event coincides with another Pokémon GO event that began Monday night to celebrate the Lunar New Year. This event adds increased spawns of certain Pokémon, one for each of the Chinese Zodiac animals. More importantly, the event doubles all catch and evolution experience, adding further incentive for players to capture as many Meltans as they can.
