New features have steadily rolled out for since the game's launch in Summer 2016. These have ranged from an expansion to gyms including group raids to daily and weekly quests and events with a pokemon go friends of rewards. But if there's one thing Pokemon Go is still pokemon go friends two years later--one that players have been requesting since release--it's Pokemon trading. Now, it's finally happening: Pokemon Go is getting trading, Niantic confirmed during a meeting with journalists at E3. Read on for details about exactly how trading works. Along with trading, Pokemon Go is also getting a robustand the two features will tie together in various ways. Making Friends Beginning soon, Pokemon Go players will be able to send one another friend requests using lengthy numerical friend codes, similar to the codes used on Nintendo consoles like the Switch. Players won't need pokemon go friends add one another's codes; if you have another player's code, you can send them a friend request, and they don't need to enter your code as well. At launch, each player's friends list will be limited to 200 players, and although that may expand in the future, Niantic confirmed that it has no plans to charge players in-game currency, which can be bought with real money, for expanded friends space. In other words, you'll never have to spend money to make room for more friends. Your friends list will live as another tab on the trainer screen accessed by tapping on your character portrait in the bottom left of the screen. From there, you can see various stats pokemon go friends, distance walked, number of Pokemon caught, etc. This will be the only way to obtain some Alolan forms, while others will be exclusive to raids or will appear during special events, like Alolan Pokemon go friends did briefly before E3. You can increase your friendship level with specific friends by battling at rival teams' gyms together, raiding together, sending and receiving gifts, and trading Pokemon. Battling with friends also applies bonuses during battle that include attack buffs and extra balls for the catch phase. These don't stack for the whole raiding group; instead, the highest friend bonus of the entire raiding group is applied for all players. Your friendship level with a specific friend can only increase once per day. This is crucially important for one specific reason: The higher your friendship level, the less stardust it costs for two players to trade Pokemon. Trade-offs Collecting Pokemon is intrinsic to enjoying Pokemon Go, and two years into the game's lifespan, many players have impressive collections of powerful, rare, shiny, region-exclusive, and otherwise unique Pokemon in their games. If trading Pokemon in Pokemon Go was easy or cheap, it would ruin an essential part of what makes the game special. Niantic is acutely aware of that, and they designed Pokemon Go trading with limitations and costs designed to not detract from the pride many players feel in their Pokemon collections and the work players put into finding unique Pokemon. We don't want to devalue their effort by making trading so easy. Currently, stardust is used to power Pokemon up, which has made it a scarce material for many high level players. You can't buy stardust with real money, although you can spend money on special item boxes that contain items which increase the rate at which you gain stardust through other activities. Trades will cost the same amount of stardust for both players, which will discourage uneven trades and prevent players from trading with themselves via dummy accounts. Niantic showed journalists several examples of how much a Pokemon trade might cost. Some high level players might have that much stardust to spare, but by anyone's measure it's a huge amount. In contrast, if you've achieved the highest possible level of friendship with someone, that same trade might cost only 40,000 stardust. You can only trade with other players in person--there are no online trades in Pokemon Go. Both players must be level 10, and you have to be friends with one another. And this is one way to prevent that. You can get a Pokemon candy bonus when trading Pokemon that increases based on how far away the Pokemon were caught. Niantic showed an example where one player traded a Dratini caught over 100km away and received three candy. You can also change a Pokemon's nickname even after receiving it in a trade. More To Come Niantic said there are more features related to friends and trading coming this year. One thing they want to implement is sending friend requests via social networks, including Facebook. There are more and more coming later this year. We needed to take into account how to introduce trading into this game, where exploring new places is really important to the game balance. We didn't want to mess with that. I hope we came up with something that's enjoyable and natural and safe for our users.
