'Pokémon Go' Special Items: Your buddy Pokémon might determine which evolution items drop

Pokémon Go's evolutionary items have proved elusive up until this point. These special items, like the dragon scale or king's rock, are required to evolve some Gen 1 Pokémon into their Gen 2 evolutions, and only drop from PokéStops. Not content to rely on seven-day streaks, players are trying everything they can to figure out how to increase the items' spawn chances at PokéStops.

Recently, it seems, Pokémon trainers have devised a new theory about how to increase those special item spawns as well. Read on for more information.

Pokémon Go special items trick: Pick your buddy Pokémon carefully

Silph Road user Marvel227 recently posted that they received a dragon scale after walking about a kilometer with Seadra (who evolves with the dragon scale) as their buddy Pokémon. They reported that all other evolutionary items they'd acquired had been while buddied with a Pokémon that didn't require an evolutionary item to evolve, and were trying to find corroborating evidence to see if they could determine causation.

Marvel227 thought that it might be worth looking into because of an earlier post made by Oxone_PkMnTrnr, who observed that evolutionary items might be tied to making the Pokémon they affect your buddy. Some data, such as a poster who had an Oddish as a buddy getting its evolutionary item, the sun stone, twice after switching, seemed to indicate that this might be plausible.

Other posters, however, reported getting multiple evolutionary items while walking with Pokémon who didn't require them to evolve, causing Silph Road posters to wonder if every buddy Pokémon affected your chances of getting a special item.

"Kabuto is my buddy and I have received three metal coats, two sun stones and one king's rock," user thechemistrynerd wrote, reporting that aside from the king's rock and one of the sun stones, all the other evolutionary items had come within a few PokéStops of each other once they'd switched. Other users reported similar bounties of items with Gen 2 Pokémon like Larvitar as well.

Pokémon Go special items trick: Conflicting reports

Correlation doesn't always indicate causation, however. For every data point that seemed to indicate your buddy had an effect on the drops, there were posters commenting that they'd been buddied up with Pokémon affected by evolutionary items for a long time and not seen any drops.

"I walked my Scyther 165.5 kilometers, and the only evolution item I got in that time frame was a single sun stone," Ersen-Hasan wrote. "So I'm pretty sure at this point your buddy is not tied into the drop rate of these items."

"I've been walking my Porygon for about two weeks and 75km at this point," user kethry70 added. "No upgrade. Walked my scyther to get my last four candies before that and no metal coat."

Without more concrete data to go off of, it's tough to conclusively determine which side of this debate is correct. Still, if there's a particular evolutionary item you're gunning for, it probably couldn't hurt to buddy up with the Pokémon it evolves — if only for the free candies, right?

More Pokémon Go guides, tips and tricks

If you're booting up the game for the first time in a while to get ready for Gen 2, be sure to check out Mic's guides on how to get stardust, how to determine how long it will take you to reach level 40, the kind of Pokémon you get from 10km eggs, how to create new PokéStops, how to maximize your chances of catching Pokémon and how PokéStops distribute Pokémon eggs. Also check out how to catch Gen 2 baby Pokémon, our analysis of post-balance update Chansey and Rhydon and everything you need to know about finding the long-awaited Pokémon Ditto.