Last month, Pokemon Go rolled out Gigantamax Raids, allowing players the chance to capture the Gigantamax forms for popular Pokemon like Charizard, Venusaur, and Blastoise. Unfortunately, Gigantamax Raids seemed doomed from the start, as the battles required in-person groups ranging between 10 and 40 players. Naturally, this has made it extremely difficult to catch Gigantamax Pokemon, much to the frustration of players. Thankfully, it seems there will be a change for the new Dual Destiny season. Niantic has revealed a new item called Max Mushrooms, which will greatly increase the power of moves used in Max Battles.
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Max Mushrooms can be fed to a Pokemon ahead of a Max Raid. When fed to the Pokemon, attacks will do double damage while a timer is active. Players will be able to feed their Pokemon multiple Max Mushrooms to increase the timer length, but the damage multiplier won’t increase after the first one. From the Max Raid lobby, players will also be able to see when other trainers have used Max Mushrooms, similar to the way we can now see that a trainer has a Pokemon that’s been Mega Evolved.
Players will get a chance to see how these changes improve Max Raids on Gigantamax Lapras Max Battle Day, which will be held on Sunday, December 8th from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. local time. During that span, all Power Spots will be hosting Gigantamax Battles, and Power Spots will provide more Max Particles, making it easier to find and participate in Max Raids. Through the Nearby menu, players can get Max Particles just from exploring. During the event, players will only have to explore 1/4 of the distance to obtain those Max Particles, and players will get double for exploring.
While all of this sounds like a much needed improvement, there are still a lot of questions left unanswered. For one thing, we don’t know how easy Max Mushrooms will be to come by; Niantic has only announced that players can get 1 Max Mushroom as a Timed Research reward from the $5 event ticket for Gigantamax Lapras Max Battle Day. We also don’t know how long the timer will last. It’s great that attacks will do double damage, but the actual benefit to Max Raids will hinge on how long the effect lasts, and how easy these are to come by.
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The developers of Pokemon Go are well aware of the issues that players have had with Gigantamax Battles, and have been working to tweak the overall difficulty. It remains to be seen whether Max Mushrooms will go far enough to improve the mechanic for players, or if more improvements will be necessary. Even with the boosted damage, players are still going to have to be well-prepared ahead of time, with powerful Pokemon to use, and Max Moves that have been strengthened. Hopefully it will make it easier to defeat Gigantamax Pokemon without having an absurd number of players on hand!
Are you happy about the addition of Max Mushrooms to Pokemon Go? Do you think this change will make Max Raids more enjoyable? Share your thoughts with me directly on Twitter at @Marcdachamp, on Bluesky at @Marcdachamp, or on Instagram at @Dachampgaming!