Friendship Day is a new Pokémon GO event focused on having fun with your friends and enjoying various bonuses while playing Pokémon GO. The first Friendship day is focused on Grass-type Pokémon and takes place on Saturday, April 24th from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. local time.
Friendship Days look and feel a lot as Community Days, but focused on smaller friends and family groups. We’re quite excited for the first one, especially after reading through the bonuses that will be active.
Date and time
The first Friendship Day event takes place on Saturday, April 24, 2021, from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. local time.
Features
- Various Grass-type Pokémon will be appearing more often in the wild.
- Complete the Friendship Day Collection Challenge before the event concludes to earn 100,000 XP!
- Take part in the Friendship Day Global Challenge! For each hourly challenge you complete, you’ll earn 20,000 XP!
- Green confetti will be appearing on the map in celebration of Grass-type Pokémon!
Bonuses
- You’ll have an increased chance of receiving a Lucky Pokémon when you complete a trade with a friend. Please note that this bonus will be active until 5:00 p.m. local time on the day of the event.
- Trade distance will be increased to 40 km.
- 3× Catch XP bonus will be active.
- Incense activated during the event will last for three hours.
- Lures activated during the event will last for three hours
Parting words
Friendship Days are focused on getting smaller play groups back together, outside of the confines of a typical Community Day. The bonuses are heavily oriented towards gaining large amounts of experience, which helps you get from Level 40 to Level 50.
Unsurprisingly, Lucky Pokémon are also a prominent fixture of this event format, likely introduced as an answer to the frantic trading many of us partake following the end of a Community Day.
With COVID still looming over our heads, we are happy to see Niantic step up and focus on something that can be safely enjoyed outside of our homes. Is there room for improvement here? Sure, themed Raids come to mind, but there isn’t a lot more to ask for.
A three hour play session that will net you around 100k XP on top of any other collected experience? Sign us up.
