How to get upgrade items in Pokémon Go

March 2022 · 3 minute read

If you’re a serial Pokémon catcher, you’ll likely have a handful of spare Pokémon in your inventory. But the excess of Pokémon can slowly turn cruising around your inventory a chore. When that’s the case, you can either send your Pokémon to the professor for extra Candy, or evolve a bunch of them after popping a Lucky Egg to double your XP gain.

Evolving is one of the better XP sources for trainers who are at the beginning of their journey, and it slowly shifts toward becoming a way to strengthen your Raid and Gym squads. You’ll need more than Stardust and Candy to perform rarer evolutions. Upgrade items, also known as Evolution items, have noticeably lower drop rates compared to other in-game items. If you have any of them in your inventory, you should think twice before using them for an evolution since it’ll take a while for you to get another one.

Here’s everything you need to know about getting more upgrade/evolution items in Pokémon Go.

How can you get upgrade/evolution items in Pokémon Go?

There are seven different upgrade/evolution items in the game. Each is used to evolve a different species of Pokémon, and you won’t be able to substitute them with anything else.

Despite being used for different evolves, all evolve/upgrade items come from the same sources. Spinning as many PokéStop Photo Discs as possible will be key to getting more of them. Considering the drop rates are low for evolution items, you should start separating them until you get close to the maximum trainer level.

The worst part about collecting upgrade items is that you’ll never know which you’ll get. The chances of you getting an upgrade item from Photo Discs is around one percent, and there will be a second randomized process to determine which of the upgrade items you’ll receive. You’ll essentially need to get lucky twice to receive the upgrade item that you need.

Though the process may get frustrating, you can do a few things to increase the number of upgrade items you can get in the long run. The daily bonus system in Pokémon Go will help you increase the number of items you’ll be getting from a PokéStop. More items will mean that you’ll have more chances to get an upgrade item. You’ll need to login daily and spin Photo Discs for this bonus to take effect, and it’ll max out at the seven-day mark. After the seven-day period, the bonus will reset to the beginning, and you’ll need to repeat the process again to acquire the same rewards.

Keep an eye on Pokémon Go’s social media accounts for upcoming events since there can be Field Research Tasks that can reward upgrade items. Not missing out on these limited-time events and tasks will be crucial to make sure you’ll always have enough upgrade items whenever you want to evolve a rare Pokémon.

If you’re actively participating in PvP battles, you can also consider competing in the Go Battle League. The prize labeled as a “Mystery Item” can be an upgrade/evolution item, but the drop rates are unknown. The drop rate should still be the same as their PokéStop chances, however. 

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