Pokémon Go is having a Slowpoke and Galarian Slowpoke Community Day event on March 18 from 2-5 p.m. in your local time.
As expected with a Community Day event, Slowpoke and Galarian Slowpoke will spawn in huge numbers with a high chance to appear shiny. There are also several other bonuses and perks, which we’ve listed out below.
How do I catch a shiny Slowpoke?
According to research conducted by Pokémon community site The Silph Road, Shiny rates on Community Days are about 1 in 24, which means that if you keep playing throughout the three-hour window, you should find quite a few shiny Pokémon.
Graphic: Julia Lee/Polygon | Source images: Niantic
If you’re short on time or Poké Balls, you can pop an Incense, then quickly tap each Slowpoke to check for shiny ones, running from any that aren’t shiny. Notably, any Slowpoke you’ve already tapped will face where your player is standing, so that should help identify which ones you may have already checked.
What Community Day move does Slowpoke’s evolution learn?
If you evolve (Galarian) Slowpoke into (Galarian) Slowbro or (Galarian) Slowking from 2 p.m. until 10 p.m. in your local time, it will learn the charged move Surf.
Notably, from 2-10 p.m., the requirement that has you catch 30 poison-type Pokémon to evolve Galarian Slowpoke will be changed to 30 psychic-type Pokémon instead, so take advantage of that.
If you miss out on evolving it during this period, you will likely be able to evolve it during a Community Day weekend event in December to get Surf. If you don’t want to wait, you can use an Elite TM to get the move.
How does Slowbro and Slowking do in the meta?
If you are looking for a powerful Slowpoke to Mega Evolve, don’t bother. Mega Slowbro isn’t great and is outclassed by tons of other water- and psychic-type Pokémon in raids.
The Silph Road subreddit analyst Trummler12 notes that the gains that the Slow-family will see in PvP from Surf are minimal. They don’t do well in PvP and it’ll likely stay that way.
How do I make the most of Slowpoke Community Day?
The following bonuses will be active during Slowpoke Community Day:
- Tripled XP for catching Pokémon
- Doubled candy for catching Pokémon
- Doubled chance for level 31+ trainers to get XL candy from catching Pokémon
- Incense lasts three hours
- Lure Modules lasts three hours
- Slowpoke special photobombs when taking snapshots
- One additional special trade
- Stardust cost halved for trading
That said, you should definitely pop a Lucky Egg and an Incense and try to nab some powerful Slowpoke.
If you can Mega Evolve Alakazam, Slowbro, Gardevoir, Medicham, Latios, or Latias, you’ll score additional Slowpoke Candy per catch. If you Mega Evolve a water-type Pokémon, you’ll gain bonus catch candy for Slowpoke, but not Galarian Slowpoke, so we recommend going with a psychic-type.
In addition to all this, Niantic is still running special four-star raids from 5-10 p.m., where if you clear the Slowpoke raid, they will spawn in a 300-meter radius around the gym for 30 minutes. These raids cannot be done remotely. If the usual 2-5 p.m. spawn increase doesn’t get you the Slowpoke you wanted, you can try raiding for another chance.