August 1, 2025

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Massively on the Go: Pokemon GO’s August is filled with Dark Days

Massively on the Go: Pokemon GO’s August is filled with Dark Days

Massively on the Go: Pokemon GO’s August is filled with Dark Days

Pokemon Go’s future is looking dark, and not just because of the Darkest Day reference in the this season’s Finale event. August is looking full, as in literally events every day of varying quality, but the Darkness seems to have spread to communications as the shot in the arm we got after the Scopely acquisition seems to have worn off. There are some major highs from what little we’ve seen, but the lows should make us consider where the game will be going in the fall 2025 season and beyond.

Don’t worry: Massively on the Go is here to light your path and cast out the shadows hiding some nefarious announcements from the devs this month.

As usual, let’s start with the raids. If you ignore the events happening before the big Max Finale Weekend, there’s no Max Monday on August 18th. Omanyte on the 4th isn’t terrible, especially for veteran players, because it’s our first Rock type ‘mon that also has a STAB Rock attack if you use an Elite Fast TM. I’m not sure how much we’ll need it considering the upcoming pre-Finale event that brings back every current Dynamax ‘mon, including Omanyte and Trubish, which are being released right before the event. Speaking of which, the literal trash ‘mon probably won’t be super useful, but it does grant extra stardust, so there’s that.

Regular raids are where it’s at, though! Ho-Oh and Lugia have limited use outside of candy fodder for their Apex versions for raids and whatever PvP options people may want to invest in, but Zacian, Zamazenta, and their Crowned forms coming back are great. Necrozma closing out the month is like a cherry on top for those of us with spare fusing energy, but for anyone else, it may be a long-term investment opportunity, as Necro on its own just isn’t terribly useful.

Megas are in an odd spot. Mega Ampharos is a bit late to the party, missing the end-of-July Dragon/Steel event, but for new players, Slowbro is nice because of the end-of-the-month, certainly-going-to-feature-Water-‘mon event Mega Pidgeot and Mega Salamence are both Flyers, so new players investing in them for Rookidee Community Day should be able to get at least the second MEga rank with some work (remember: It’s a pure Flying type; Corviknight, the final form, is the only Steel type in the family).

Now for events. The August 2nd Fossil Research Day from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. makes up for last month’s fossil-less Adventure Week but adds nothing new, making it feel pretty skippable except for hardcore fossil fans or new players trying to catch ’em all. Of them, Tyrunt and Cranidos are the most meta-relevant as Rock attackers, especially as neither needs a Community Day move to work well.

The very next day during the same hours is the Max Battle Day: Butterfree day. As cool as it may look, Butterfree’s value as a Gmax is debatable. Bug isn’t a great type and even less so as a Dynamax. Maybe if Calyrex becomes a Dynamax battle in its normal form, someone can math out its worthiness, but I’d wager against it. Enjoy the event if you go but, as I normally note about Max Battle events, keep in mind that customer service doesn’t refund particles or particle packs. If anything goes wrong, you’re just SOL. This is going to be the unofficial mantra of the August events round-up, so be prepared to read this a lot here.

August 3rd is also the start of the Sweet Swarm event. It’s not much, as neither ‘mon is super useful, but Combees from research can be saved to cash in later, as they’re worth bonus stardust. In fact, I’d argue that aside from favorites, the Combee aspect is probably best, as not only do you get that bonus dust that can be saved for later but the increased appearance of Combees with the increased shiny odds also mean collectors have a higher chance of getting shiny female Combee, which is a gender-locked evolution ‘mon with a low male-to-female spawn rate. Not the best event, but it’s at least noteworthy.

Before the Swarm subsides, we’ll have the start of Cozy Companions from August 6th-12th. This is basically an event for pokemon that have buddy evolution requirements and/or evolve for free once traded. Snom and its evolution are basically a much weaker and at this point non-relevant Larvestra family: It’s rare (7k eggs during the event), it costs 400 candy to evolve, but it also needs 10 friendship hearts and can be evolved only at night. It’s a pokedex filler and another POGO fundraiser, sadly. There’s also the release of shiny Tandemaus family, but, uh, it’s not an easily recognizable shiny. At least the event includes bonus friendship from the friend activities and another special trade each day.

Munchlax is the target of August 9th’s Hatch Day. Aside from gym and PvP use, it’s not useful for many players. At the least, it may help players hatch their current eggs so they can gather 7k eggs from the event, as we’ll have half hatching from August 7th-9th plus double hatch candy from the event proper. If you’re not a Snorlax fan, just use the event to get faster hatches and maybe a little extra from Snom. I’ll be praying for your 7k eggs to hold them!

Origin Raid Day on August 10th is for the Origin forms of Palkia and Dialga, though there are three Pokemon of Myth and Giratina’s Origin form that won’t be appearing. The other two are significant, though, as neither of them can be Elite Charge TMed for signature moves, which also provide useful Adventure Effects, if you geet it. As usual, you’ll get 5 extra free passes (6 with your normal one or 7 if you collect but don’t use the previous day’s pass). Unless you’re super lucky and went pretty hard during their previous releases, this isn’t a raid day you’ll want to skip.

Delightful Days: Taken Over runs August 11th-17th and will basically be a Rocket event. We may get new Shadow ‘mon, maybe even a legendary one to rescue from Giovanni, but we’ll probably get the chance to at least remove Frustration from our Shadow ‘mon and see more Rockets spawning on Pokestops and flying to us in balloons more frequently. Again, stay tuned for more details.

August 16th-17th is going to be a busy weekend as in addition to the Taken Over event, we’ll have two other events as well. The first, lasting the weekend, will be the 2025 Pokemon World Championships Go Battle Weekend. Go Battle Weekends are PvP events that up the daily cap from 25 matches (5 sets) to 100 (20 sets). Pokemon won from PvP rewards no longer have their 10/10/10 floors, plus you often can earn some kind of Elite TM and one of the season’s avatar items, like gloves or boots. For the yearly series-wide Championships, however, we often get bonus quests to snag meta-relevant ‘mon for new/lapsed players to get into the thick of it, often for watching Twitch streams. We may get wild spawns of meta relevant ‘mon too. We’ll have more on this as the devs dole out information later in August.

There’s also the Shadow Raid Weekend also taking place from the 16th-17th. There are theories that it’ll be Shadow Groudon and Kyogre, but I’m not seeing anything to suggest this. Shadow Mewtwo makes some sense during a Championship weekend just because it would bring in the largest amount of lapsed players and it’s been gone for about two years now, but as usual, we’ll have to wait and see.

Then we have the Dark Skies event from August 18th-23rd, which is a prep event for the finale. To note, the paid event pass bonus for shinies works only for non-legendaries, as those are 5-star raids and the bonus is only for 1- through 4-star raids. It’s not a bad catch-up time for newbies. The 18th is best for getting Beldum, as it’s a top tier ‘mon you can’t really upgrade at the moment. Obviously, if you can handle them, the legendary Lati twins are probably better just for the higher rewards.

August 19th-20th gives you the legendary birds, which are limited value as Dmaxes but can be placed in Power Spots to earn candy for their Shadow versions, which are typically better (no helping Articuno, sadly), or can be used to power their Galarian versions, which also aren’t really relevant but are fan favorites.

Dmax Toxtricity could be interesting on Tuesday and Wednesday if you don’t/can’t do the Legendary Birds, in that unlike their Gmax form, you could use Dmax Toxtricitys as Poison attackers, but their Poison Fast Move options are 1 second when you want 0.5 second moves. I also doubt they’ll be better than Eternatus, but hey, if you hold them for new players that miss out on Eterny, I’m sure they’ll appreciate that. At any rate, Toxtricity is doubly weak to Ground, and Excadrill is out at the same time, so returning players could just grab a Drill, pump it up, and hit them up easy.

The 21st-22nd has the legendary beasts, but woof, they’re not great. Like the birds, you can at least use them to generate candy for their Shadow version, but that’s about it. Chansey will be a Dmax option, though, and it’s a top tier tank/healer even now. A 0/15/15 is basically the same as a perfect, so you can aim pretty low with these. Heck, just the 15 HP stat can be OK. And it’s still the best gym defending family so both the candy and ‘mon aren’t totally useless if you need to upgrade.

While not the season finale, Go Fest 2025: Max Finale is the drawn-out ending to the Go Fest, uh… spirit, I suppose?  We’ll cover this in a separate article, but I’ll quote a local player for this: “This seems more like a [dev] fund raiser than an event.” Go Fest proper has started to seem as if it’s just about raids, but from what we know so far, this Finale is taking it to a whole other level, especially since it focuses on Max Raids, which at the highest levels are more expensive than normal raids and support will not refund your account if there are any problems, which there surely will be.

Crowned Zacian and Zamazenta being back already is a nice catch-up mechanic for those who want/need it. I can personally attest to Zamazenta’s usefulness, as my communities are tank poor and not always great at switching out to keep their DPS alive, but that’s how you know it’s an MMO, right? In all seriousness, this feels like the fairest part of the event.

The rest of the event is mostly about GMaxes. Everything is coming back, so that can help, but only if people are interested. The dropout rate for them has always seemed high, prepped players are rare, and now there’s competition from everything else. On top of that, Eternatus, the main attraction, is not caught from its raids but from free research. That would be nice if it didn’t require thousands of candies to raise – up from hundreds. Supposedly we’ll be handsomely rewarded for raiding it, but without being able to capture the actual pokemon, many players I’ve spoken to online and especially in meatspace aren’t really having it. In short, be prepared for a new must-have-‘mon but a serious grind in a mode that is buggy and non-refundable.

Perhaps to soften the blow, we’ll be getting something more relaxed sounding afterwards. The Sunkissed Shores event is a new event running from August 25th-31st. Most smart money is better on another Water-type event, but I’m wondering if at least Ground types will be involved, as the shore is where water meets dirt.

During that is Rookiedee Community Day, which was voted on by the community and hence has no relationship to the overall event. It is a bit funny that a bird ‘mon is getting a 1/4 hatch bonus as part of the CD bonuses, but the value of that is hard to gauge without knowing what’s going on with the Sunkissed event overall. However, PvP fans can rejoice because this one looks like a winner.

August and the season will end with Mega Raid Day on the 31st. Which Mega remains to be seen. Some people fear it’ll be a Mega Gyarados Day, though I’m kind of hoping we’ll get both Mega Sharpedo and Mega Camerupt, as both are unreleased but largely already useless, both in terms of utility and (mostly) power from the Primals sharing their main type.

And of course, we’ll end with the Spotlight Hours. Swirlix isn’t a great ‘mon in terms of use, but some people like the shiny, and double stardust is always great. Plusle and Minun with double catch xp is… not so great, unless you’re fans of the ‘mon. Ralts and double catch candy is good for new or returning players, as it has two forms, but Gallade’s best use is as a utility Mega ‘mon. Lechonk is kind of trash, but since it comes with double transfer candy, I suppose it makes some sense, especially if it’ll serve as a luau centerpiece during the Sunkissed Shores festivities (sorry not sorry).

As always, check back for updates as info oozes out of Scopely’s POGO Team. Stay safe out there during these Dark Days, trainers!

Massively OP’s Andrew Ross is an admitted Pokemon geek and expert ARG-watcher. Nobody knows Niantic and Nintendo like he does! His Massively on the Go column covers Pokemon Go as well as other mobile MMOs and augmented reality titles!

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