Pokemon Go’s Into The Wild Event Costs Over $300 All-In

I vividly remember paying £4.99 to play Pokemon Go Fest 2021. After a year of lockdowns, this was Pokemon Go’s first entirely virtual event. It was brilliant. Even though I don’t care for Meloetta a jot, the event was still fantastic. There were loads of exciting spawns, exclusive monsters, and great bonuses included in the cost of your ticket.

My brother and I took to our local park with hundreds of others and it almost felt like the old days again. Almost. It was encouraging to see so many people out and on their phones, to see raid lobbies fill up instantly and to hear the rare shout of “hundo over here!” followed by a stampede of players heading to catch it themselves.

Pokemon Go Wild Area 2024 – Fukuoka And Worldwide

Fast forward three years. Pokemon Go Wild Area looks alright, at least on paper. Toxel is being released, as well as its shiny form. It costs 400 Candy to evolve it to Toxicitry, but I welcome the grind at this point in the game’s life cycle. Too often do I immediately catch enough Pokemon to complete any new ‘dex in the first week of an event.

But there’s not as much to do this time around. Admittedly a Wild Area shouldn’t be as big as a Go Fest, but then it probably shouldn’t cost four times as much to access its content and research either. Whether you’re playing in Fukuoka, Japan, or remotely from anywhere else in the world, the event ticket will set you back £11.99. That’s more than twice as much as Go Fest 2021, a far bigger and better event.

However, it gets worse. This cost just gets you access to event spawns, raids, etc. If you want the Into The Wild event which leads up to and makes the most of the weekend event, you have to pay again. Twice.

Pokemon Go Into The Wild Event Paid Special Research

Into The Wild: Raids

Pokemon Go’s Into The Wild special research comes in two parts. There’s an option if you like raiding, and an option if you like hatching eggs. You know, the two mechanics in Pokemon Go that cost money to play. Not only do you have to pay £4.99 for the pleasure of playing each of these, you need to spend more money to make the most of them.

The free bonuses for Into The Wild are increasing the remote raid pass limit from five to 20 from Monday, November 18, to Thursday, November 21, 2024. From Friday, November 22, to Sunday, November 24, the remote raid pass limit will be removed entirely. If you want to make the most of this event, maxing out the number of raids you fight from Monday to Thursday and continuing the trend of 20 a day from Friday to Sunday – the number that is clearly encouraged – then you’ll need to buy 140 remote raid passes. The cheapest way of doing this (on my app at least, some box bundles seem to use dynamic pricing), is by simply buying bundles of three remote raid passes for 525 coins (about £4.99) a pop.

47 bundles costs 24675 coins, which will set you back £179.97 and leave you with 325 left over. It’s more sensible to pay £20.01 more for an extra 4,325 coins, though, because the egg hatching special research requires you to spend yet more hard-earned cash.

Note: The £4.99 raid special research offers you 5,000 bonus XP per raid and two free in-person raid passes per day rather than your usual one, as well as some Poke Balls and Toxel Ccandy. You can also join exclusive raids for with the Tapus, which you probably already have. It also unlocks bonuses to Max Battles, which nobody cares about, and event exclusive field research, which is rubbish. Three raids for a Haunter? No thanks.

Into The Wild: Hatch

The hatching special research might be even more predatory. As well as offering a bonus 5,000 XP for raids (which all but forces seasoned raiders to buy both passes), it halves hatch distance and an increased chance of hatching Toxel from eggs. This feels more pay to win than anything I’ve seen in Pokemon Go’s seven-year life so far. Paying to increase your chances of finding a Pokemon? Come on now.

This research also gives you double XP, Stardust, and Candy from egg hatches, as well as daily timed research that rewards Toxel Candy for walking a kilometre, catching ten Pokemon, and spinning three PokeStops.

This Is Getting Expensive

It’s harder to work out how much this would cost, as it depends how far you’d walk a day. Let’s say you can get out for 10km a day, that’s hatching 30 10km eggs with the stacked bonuses from Super Incubators and the halved hatch distance. You need 70 Super Incubators for the event, ten a day. The best way to get this is by buying the Voyager Box and the Explore Box, for a combined total of 11,350 coins. If you’ve still got those leftover coins from the raid passes, it’ll set you back £59.98 for the remaining 7,025 (with 675 left over). If you didn’t bother with the raid passes, this will cost you a minimum of £99.97, but I’d splash out the extra 2p for an additional 3,100 coins from the big bundle.

Is it worth it? It depends on how much income you have to spend on your hobbies, but it strikes me as a hard no. If you want to maximise both Into The Wild events, it’ll cost you £269.93. Bundle prices vary in each country, but that translates to $340.72. That’s without the ticket to the weekend’s Pokemon Go Wild Area 2024 event, which is technically separate.

Of course, you don’t have to pay this money. You could just pay a tenner for the research, or nothing at all. But Pokemon Go is encouraging players to spend big by focusing its events on its most expensive mechanics. Go Battle League is free, catching Pokemon is free, so we see far fewer events focusing solely on those areas of the game.

Pokemon Go used to be a game for the players. Now it’s just a game for Wailords, those who are happy dropping hundreds of pounds a week on subpar events. And I haven’t even mentioned the worst thing in this whole week of anti-consumer tickets. The Wild Area event ticket increases your chances of finding a shiny. I’m going to play Monster Hunter Now instead.

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