Pokemon GO finally gets another way for players to earn candy for their favorite creatures, in the form of a new buddy system that releases in today’s update.
Last week, Niantic revealed its plans to add a new “buddy” system to its popular AR title, Pokemon GO, in the near future. Now it seems the future is here, judging by the fact that the update bringing the feature to mobile devices has already begun to roll out around the world.
For those who haven’t heard, the buddy system is designed as a way to have players gather candy for their favorite creatures, without having to track them down and capture them again. By choosing a buddy Pokemon to accompany your Pokemon GO trainer, players can earn that creature’s candy, simply by walking around. Some creatures have as little as 1 KM needed to earn candy, whereas others may require trainers to walk up to 3 KM to earn their reward.
As expected, rarer creatures will require more distance walked to acquire candy than the common ones do, however, this feature should help trainers in rural areas as well as assisting all players in evolving their starter Pokemon. Datamining has revealed that legendary creatures such as Mew, Mewtwo, Articuno, Moltres, and Zapdos will all be assigned a 3 KM distance, which makes sense given that there aren’t likely to be multiple legendary Pokemon for each player to catch.
Besides the buddy system, Niantic has made a couple of additional fixes to Pokemon GO with this latest update. Firstly, people who have been having issues with selecting smaller Pokemon on their phone screens might be happy, as the hitbox around the creatures has been adjusted for easier indication.
The common issue that sometimes saw eggs hatching with no animation has also reportedly been fixed, meaning that players should no longer miss out on the wonderful feeling of hatching yet another Pidgey. Performance reliability has been upgraded, allowing a device to switch networks without the app crashing or stopping updating.
Aside from minor text fixes, the only other change seen is support for the upcoming Pokemon GOPlus device, which was recently given a release date. And for those Apple fans who have been playing the incredibly popular title over the last couple months, Niantic has recently revealed their intention to release a companion app for Pokemon GO that is soon to be available on the Apple Watch.
In an effort to crackdown on the number of bots, scrapers, and cheating their way through the game, Niantic is also making the controversial move to prevent rooted or jailbroken users from playing the game. It’s unfortunate for those with rooted devices playing the game legit, but since this is how GPS spoofers are cheating — and ruining the game for others — it was a logical move.
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