Over the past 48 hours, we’ve received a metric ton of Pokémon GO Weather related questions from our readers. We understand that there is a lot of confusion going on, so we’ll try to answer all of those questions in a succinct manner and as accurate as we can at this moment.
When will the weather system be released?
The Pokémon GO Weather system will be released later this month, December 2017. It will not be released as a part of the Hoenn (Gen III) Pokémon expansion. This was confirmed by Niantic’s marketing lead in an interview with Techcrunch. As of the time of this writing, there is no officially set release date, but GO Hub expects it to happen some time after December 20th.
Is the weather system real time?
Yes, the weather system will feature real time updates. However, “real time” is a tricky thing to say. In the context of Pokémon GO, real time means the following: your local in-game weather will be updated as soon as the underlying weather provider pushes new information and as soon as Niantic’s servers process that info and distribute it to your game client.
Which weather service is Niantic using?
No idea. There’s nothing about that in the APK or in the Licences section of the app. We’ll probably know more when it launches.
Will we be able to see the Combat Power of weather spawns?
No, it seems we won’t be able to see the combat power of a Pokémon spawned by the Weather effects. We’ve went through all of the videos provided in the official Press Kit, and none of the encountered Pokémon display Combat Power in the Capture encounter screen. Check out this Mudkip capture video (Rainy weather):
Our thoughts: this is an intentional game design decision. As Niantic has confirmed that weather spawns should be more difficult to capture, it’s likely that their base CP level multiplier is boosted during capture encounters. However, once captured, the Pokémon’s CP should return to normal values for a given Pokémon at that level. To avoid confusion and having to explain two separate CP values, Niantic has opted to hide the encounter CP.
This is further supported by the Weather encounter code found in the 0.85.x APK:
.WeatherAffinityProto .WeatherBonusProto .get_CpBaseLevelBonus .get_GuaranteedIndividualValues
Do weather spawns have better IVs than regular?
According to the code we found in the APK, weather encounters should have a guaranteed baseline of IVs, or in other words, you shouldn’t be able to encounter a weather spawn with IVs lower than a set value. Code snippet:
.WeatherAffinityProto .WeatherBonusProto .get_CpBaseLevelBonus .get_GuaranteedIndividualValues
We don’t know what those baseline will be, but we don’t expect them to be as high as egg / raid boss IVs (10 IVs per stat). Currently, IVs of wild spawns go from 0 to 15 for each stat. We expect that Weather spawn IVs could range from 7 to 15 for each stat, but we can’t confirm that yet.
Do weather spawns have guaranteed moves?
No, only IV values are mentioned in the APK. There is nothing in this game that guarantees a specific move 🙁
How do increased weather spawns work?
Weather spawns function similar to regular spawns, but their spawn tables are tailored towards the current weather. Unlike Lure spawns, which have an internal timer that procs the spawn, Weather spawns will operate on the regular “spawn-at-a-set-minute-of-hour” timer used by normal spawn points.
PRO TIP
For a deeper understand of spawn mechanics, we strongly suggest you read our Researching Pokémon GO Spawn Mechanics guide.
In other words, a spawn point in your local area will still be producing spawns at same intervals and at the same time as it usually does, but your local weather can (and will) modify its spawn table!
Consequently, all of the usual spawn point rules apply during weather conditions:
- A spawn point generates Pokémon every hour
- The generated Pokémon is not always visible for players to catch
- The generated Pokémon is displayed at a random location around the spawn point
- A spawn point will generate a Pokémon at a set number of minutes of each hour
- For example: 10:15, 11:15, 12:15, 13:15, etc
- A spawn point never goes inactive, not even during the night
