The team behind The Silph Road got ahold of the APK file for Pokémon GO’s latest update and went beyond Saffron City in taking the code apart. Niantic’s overhaul of the Gym system added more code than the app has had for a while. No minor text fixes here — 15 new major topics were covered.
Most of the updates pertain to Gyms and how they’ll function. One interesting feature that fans saw a screenshot of involves Gym badges. For you completionists out there, you’ll want to sit down for this one: Collecting badges will be nearly endless. The Silph Road stated that “[w]e see new code that uses the S2 API, and ways to cluster and navigate the map to display where your Gym Badges are from. Overall, this is an awesome feature that makes collecting Gym Badges infinitely more fun.”
As for legendaries, there’s good news on that front as well:
“Legendaries will be encountered in Raid situations (either at events, or under special circumstances isn’t clear). They will require a ‘Legendary Raid Ticket’ item to enter the legendary raid.
We currently believe you cannot deploy legendaries to defend Gyms. This is an interesting restriction that may help prevent a significant imbalance between botters/illegitimate players (who oft find ways to score rare Pokémon) with legitimate trainers. Not to mention it will significantly cut down the black market value for accounts with these legendary species. At any rate, if this is true, we expect we’ll be able to use them in offensive teams all the same.”
Thank you, The Silph Road, for busting out more than a Silph Scope with cracking this update. For the full list of discoveries, please check out the Silph site. Seriously, if you’re a Premier Ball fan, you’ll want to head over there for sure.
We can’t wait to see what this summer holds, as it might be more than legendary!
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Written by Jennifer Burch
Illustrator, designer, writer and big Nintendo geek, you can find Jennifer with an N3DS within reach 24/7. As the oldest of three, she has survived many Mario Party, Super Smash Bros. and Mario Kart sessions intact in addition to getting her brothers hooked on some really weird games. (Cubivore anyone?)
