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Right now, Pokemon Go is still very much in its infancy and even if it feels like little more than an experiment, hardcore players are still finding it hard to kick the habit. By now, I’m sure most of you — like me — have already formed a pretty dysfunctional love/hate relationship with Pokemon Go. No matter how broken or premature the game feels right now, many of us are living on the promise that things will get better in future updates.
We know that, during Niantic’s Comic-Con panel, they said they were working on bringing new features like an improved Nearby system, trading, Legendaries, etc., into the game. So far, we’ve seen the results of the new tracking system go live, but only in San Francisco. But what can we look forward to next?
Diving into the code of the most recent Pokemon Go update, someone was able to find references, not only to the trading system we know is coming, but a boat load of new items and other interesting tidbits the game’s devs appear to be actively working on. Let’s take a look.
New items
First off, it appears we could soon see new types of incense introduced into the game based on specific types of Pokemon (Item_incense_spicy/cool/floral). These could be extremely useful for people who don’t live anywhere near different climates, or those who have trouble traveling to new areas.
New types of berries could also be on the way, with lines of code showing items that change the chances of capture rates based on variables like night (time of day), trainer (trainer level?), and first throw. That last one is interesting and we’re guessing that you’ll have a greater chance to capture something after the first throw (possible a super berry or something along those lines).
Legendary Pokemon
We’re also seeing references to Legendary Pokemon buried in the game, with a new line of code “activity_catch_legend_pokemon.” This in contrast to the line of code referencing normal Pokemon — activity_catch_pokemon — which leaves out the Legendary part. Still nothing about how, when, or where we could see Legendaries pop up, but Niantic did mention something about these taking place during specific events and times. This really isn’t anything new per se, but it’s nice to see it finally inside the app’s code.
Gyms and Forts
There’s also a few lines of code referencing “forts,” which one would assume is just an alternative term for a gym, but gyms are also referenced several times in the code separately. Right now there appears to be 2 actions for forts: deploying a Pokemon and recalling it, something you can’t do right now in Gyms. Also, something called “Add_fort_modifier” but again, we’re in the dark as to what it could be, so your guess is as good as ours.
Whether forts will be separate from gyms — and more importantly, how they’ll even work — remains to be seen. It definitely has us scratching our chins though.
Trading with and challenging others
We know trading is coming and with several lines of code referencing it in the latest update, it could be on our doorsteps in no time. Everyone has their guesses as to how trading will work (we thought it was something that would be done exclusively at local PokeStops), but the code is showing 4 main options: Trade_search/offer/response/result.
Going by that, it seems you’ll be able to search for a coveted Pokemon, but whether this will be limited by distance, city, state, country, or the world isn’t known. The term “offer” is likely how you’ll choose which of your Pokemon to offer up for trade, while” response” shows you if your offer was accepted or denied, and “result” showing you which Pokemon has been successfully acquired through a trade.
Finally, the term “sfida” was also found in the code and while it doesn’t sound too important, it’s actually the Italian word for “challenge.” This could be the first references we’re seeing to a new challenging system — i.e., player-vs-player battles — but it seems there’s no additional information to support this theory.
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All the info can be found at the Reddit link down below which, oddly enough, never gained much traction. Seems the title, “Troy_disk?,” may have had something to do with that, something that is known to be code for Lure modules used in the game. But alas, that’s how Reddit works. Feel free to help out the OP by dropping an upvote should you feel so inclined.
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