New Year 2019 Box Sale Analysis: Starting the Year Right

The holiday season is over and if you’re like me, you have accumulated some extra “holiday fat”. Perhaps with Pokémon Go’s recent announcement of the Hatchathon Event, you will be enticed to start the year right. The new box sales are tailored to help you reach your fitness goals.

Special Great Ultra
Premium Raid Pass 2 3 8
Super Incubator 5 10
Incubator 3 6
Star Piece 3
Lucky Egg 2 3
Lure Module 8
Price 480 780 1480
Box value analysis
Coins Saved per Box (Incubator & Raid Pass) 170 520 2220
Coins Saved per Box 295 895 2900
Percent Discount (Incubator & Raid Pass) 26.15% 40.00% 60.00%
Percent Discount 38.06% 53.43% 66.21%

Before the verdict, I would like to reiterate that I chose to not use the standard price of Lucky Eggs, Lure Modules, and Star Pieces, since the comparison should be more on the price of buying in bulk. It would be misleading to compare it to the base price which is, in principle, designed to be more expensive than bulk to encourage consumers to spend more. That being said, I used the bulk price of these items when buying an 8-item bundle.

Quick links to related guides:

Our Verdict

While it’s a missed opportunity for Niantic to put Incense in these boxes, seeing as you get more Pokémon from Incense when you walk, these boxes are all generally good. Although each box has its own benefits and flaws, they are all just above average savings wise.

Special Box

Like almost all Special Boxes before it, this box is aimed at those players who really don’t want to spend that much on the game. It’s not the best in terms with savings, but you save 170 coins when you only consider the Incubators and Raid Passes. If you can spend more than 480 coins, I suggest you push for the Ultra Box, which we will get to later.

Great Box

Again, another disappointing Great Box. The only thing this box has going for is that it’s the only box with a Star Piece, but if you bought past Ultra Boxes, you should have enough to get you through these events since you would only need them when the eggs are about to hatch.

Ultra Box

While at first glance, the inclusion of both types of Incubators is mind-boggling, I believe this is Niantic’s way of telling us that they really want us to walk as much as possible. While they can easily make the Ultra Box have 16 Super Incubators instead of the current 10 Super Incubators and 6 Regular Incubators, including the Regular Incubators forces players to walk 1.66 to 3.33 KM more for each egg, which means more calories burned. While yes, there are some players that won’t be walking to hatch these eggs, for the players who intend on using this event as a way to start the year by being more healthy, the additional distance will help.

Overall Thoughts

While these boxes are not ideal when it comes to getting the most out of each box, we should still applaud Niantic’s effort to entice us to be more healthy, even though to be honest it isn’t really the best execution of that idea. Even if you don’t plan on hatching eggs during this event, you can hoard those Incubators and Raid Passes for future Generation IV Pokémon, since there are still 3 unreleased Baby Pokémon which you will need to hatch in the future to complete the Sinnoh Dex. Also, some Generation IV Pokémon might even be only available on raids like Shinx and initially Buizel.

What will I buy? None, because I already spent a lot during the last event (and still no Mantyke and/or Chingling 😢), but if I had the money, I would go for Ultra Box, so I can stock up on Super Incubators and Raid Passes. How about you? If you would buy a box, what would you buy?

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Ysmael
Ysmael
Avid Pokémon Fan since 2000

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