9. The 4 Different Types of Pokémon Spawns in Pokémon GO.

The 4 Different Types of Pokémon Spawns in Pokémon GO.

In this post, I’m going to briefly describe the 4 different types of ways that wild Pokémon can appear in the game of Pokémon GO. In another post, I will expound and give suggestions on how you can use this information to catch as many Pokémon as possible. In short, catching more Pokémon directly helps you, the player, in several ways: gaining player experience from the catch, receiving the candy of the Pokémon species you caught (used to evolve or power up that Pokémon family), and arguably most important, receiving stardust that is needed to power up any Pokémon in the game. Since these resources can be hard to come by, especially stardust, I find it imperative, or at least extremely beneficial, to be able to catch as many Pokémon as you can find, as quickly as possible, to stock up. 

First, let’s clarify something for those new to the game. This is an Augmented Reality game, which means, in the case of Pokémon GO, that the player must move in real life in order to move their avatar (the digital on-screen representation of themselves) in the game. As their character moves, they come in contact with Gyms, Pokestops, and of course, Pokémon. Once a player is close enough to one of these, they can interact with it as the game allows, like catching a Pokémon, spinning a Pokestop or Gym to collect items needed to play the game, battling in a Gym for team control, or battling in a raid (I’ll save discussing raids for another blog post). Simply put, that’s how the game works, on a bare bones level. 

Real quick, for those new to gaming, a “spawn” is a video game term that essentially means the sudden existence of something that wasn’t there before. In Pokémon GO, this basically means that a Pokémon appeared on your screen to catch. (There's more to it, but I don't want to get that deep yet).

In the game, there are 4 main types of spawns: natural spawns, weather-boosted spawns, lured spawns, and incensed spawns. (Lures and Incense are items that you get from leveling up, or from spending real money in the in-game shop). 

It's important to understand the spawn timers as well, to help you prioritize what you catch, and in which order you catch them.

Natural spawns last anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour and are visible to all players nearby.

Weather-boosted spawns are a sub-set of natural spawns.  Based upon the real world weather, the game will update hourly to the best of it's ability based on your local weather forecasts.  The different weather conditions currently in Pokémon GO are Clear/Sunny, Partly Cloudy, Cloudy, Rain, Snow, Fog, and Windy.  Each weather condition will display differently as appropriate in game (snowy weather will literally have snow on the ground and falling, etc).  In addition to visual changes, each weather condition "boosts" 2-3 types of Pokémon. Boosted Pokémon appear more frequently in the wild, are more likely to have higher IV and CP values than non-boosted Pokémon, and reward 25% more stardust when captured. They also seem to last as long as natural spawns before they despawn.

Lured spawns are visible to all players as well, even those that didn’t activate the lure, but despawn after only a few minutes (2-3).

Incensed spawns are only visible to the player that activated the incense, and disappear just one minute after they spawn.

You can use this information on spawn types and timers to better prioritize your Pokémon catching order, to make sure nothing (or as close to it as possible) gets away.

Also, see my "Quick Catch Glitch" Post when I post it, which helps cut down Pokémon encounter times from 18 seconds to just 8 seconds, allowing you to process many more Pokémon per hour.

Happy Hunting!

-Jameson (Rubiksguy)

If you want to learn more about what the community knows regarding how spawn points act and what creates a spawn point location, check out this article by the ever awesome PokemonGoHub:
https://pokemongohub.net/generation-2/researching-pokemon-go-spawn-mechanics/

PokemonGOHub strikes again! If everything I said on weather boosts was new to you, hit up this article.  There's a lot more to it then I was able to go into in my blog post:
https://pokemongohub.net/post/guide/pokemon-go-weather-system-explained-ivs-cp-boost-increased-spawns/

Some additional notes for myself

-focus on rarest/most important spawns first

-then lured spawns

-then incensed spawns 

 (All above while considering the despawn timers, known or unknown, on the Pokémon that are visible)

-when lure spawn > incense spawn and when incense spawn > over lure spawn.