Latest Pokemon GO Update Makes Obtaining Evolution Items A Little Bit Easier

If you've been struggling to collect the rare evolution items required for some of the new evolutions in Pokémon GO, you're in luck! Not much luck, of course, but at least a small amount of luck. A new update guarantees you one evolution item if you visit a Pokéstop every day for seven days in a row. Previously, you were only guaranteed a glut of other items but not necessarily an evolution item. So you can go from being frustrated by the fact that you never get any evolution items to being frustrated that you never get the one you need.

Evolution items have been problematic since the get go. Basically, they're random items that you can get from Pokéstops and are required for certain high-level and Gen 2 evolutions. The problem is, they don't drop very often. Anything that relies on randomness is bound to cause frustration, and assigning randomness to important items like these without any other way of getting them is tiring.

You can theoretically spin hundreds of Pokéstops and never get an evolution item, much less the one you need. Considering the fact that filling the Pokédex remains the only endgame activity, it can be exhausting for those with just a few gaps left.

For me, the biggest problem with the evolution items is not necessarily that they're capricious and frustrating, though that hardly helps. The biggest problem is that they represent a regressive symbol in the way the game handles rural players and others outside of Pokéstop-dense areas, something which Niantic has struggled with since the beginning.

Evolution items overwhelmingly favor those with access to many Pokéstops, and anyone getting by with just a handful could find certain creatures basically impossible to evolve. Ideally, Pokémon GO should be moving towards a more egalitarian gameplay economy. Evolution items were a step in the wrong direction.

Guaranteeing one item a week is at least a step in the right direction, however. I'd much prefer a slightly more reliable pipeline or a different system entirely, but at least it takes some of the sting out.