Generation 2 and Ditto spotted in the latest Pokemon GO update

For those of you who still play Pokémon GO religiously, you’ll be happy to know that the daily and weekly quests we told you about last week have now gone live thanks to the latest update. The patch contains that and a bit more actually:

• You’ll earn bonuses for the first Pokémon catch and PokéStop visit each day. You’ll receive a larger bonus when you do this seven days in a row.
• When you defeat the Gym Leader at a rival Gym, there will be a brief period of time where only you will be able to place a Pokémon in the open Gym.
• The amount of Prestige a rival Gym loses when you defeat a regular Gym member has increased. The amount of Prestige gained by training at a friendly Gym has been lowered.
• Minor text fixes

That’s all good and well, but what interests me the most about this update is some of the code buried within it. The Silph Road combed through the latest APK, and they found some interesting stuff, including information on Generation 2 Pokémon, and Ditto (via VG247).

Gen 2

Presently, no moveset data has been assigned to the new species. Furthermore, the moves themselves haven’t even appeared in the code yet. This means a server and client-side change will have to occur before Gen 2 is launched. So nothing to hold your breath for, travelers. It may yet be a few more weeks or months. But Niantic has certainly been picking up momentum. At this point, it’s anyone’s guess when these major additions might find their way into the Pokémon GO universe.

Ditto

While it may seem Ditto is now in the game, the GAME_MASTER file does not currently include the recently added move TRANSFORM in Ditto’s movesets. Currently, the only move Ditto knows is: STRUGGLE. It is possible that TRANSFORM may never officially become a Ditto ‘move’ so to speak, but will instead simply be an ‘occurrence’ that happens every time Ditto enters combat. Notably, however, the TRANSFORM animation sequence was not only added as an animation sequence, but as a ‘move’ in the movelist in the APK code.

I’ve long left my Pokémon training days behind, but I’ll be more than happy to dive back into the game, at least for a little while, when the next generation pops up. Unfortunately, though their existence has now been confirmed in the APK, there’s no real way to tell when Niantic will release both Gen 2 and Ditto.

Here’s hoping they don’t wait too long. I can’t help but feel that Pokémon GO is dying a slow, painful death. Content of this nature could very well give it the kick it needs to come back to life.

Last Updated: November 8, 2016