'Pokémon Go' Special Items: Should you evolve Politoed or Slowking with your King's Rock?
Pokémon Go's special evolution items make it possible to evolve some Gen 1 Pokémon into Gen 2 creatures. Some of these items can even work on multiple creatures, but considering how stingy Pokémon Go is with its drop rates, you may want to think twice before using each item you manage to get. For example, how do you choose between evolving a Politoed or Slowking with your king's rock? It's not an easy choice, but we're here to help.
Pokémon Go special items: The argument for Politoed
Politoed is a water-type Pokémon that evolves from Poliwhirl. Unlike Slowking, Politoed is a third-stage evolution, not second. Third-stage evolutions tend to be stronger, though; in this case, you'll want to check each Pokémon's stats before making a decision.
Politoed can also learn certain attacks that Slowking simply can't, like Hhydro pump and earthquake.
Pokémon Go special items: The argument for Slowking
Slowking, on the other hand, is a water and psychic type. That means it can learn a broader range of attacks — including fire blast and water pulse, which can't be learned by Politoed — and gets bonuses when using and psychic-type attacks in addition to the water-type bonus it shares with Politoed.
The psychic type is strong against certain types like fighting and poison, but with extra strengths come extra weaknesses. Psychic types are also weak against bug- and dark-type 'Mon.
Evolving Slowpoke into Slowking using king's rock only takes 50 candies, as opposed to Politoed's required 100. If you're looking to evolve a Pokémon quickly, Slowking is the way to go.
Pokémon Go Politoed or Slowking? How to decide
Honestly, choose whichever one you like better. With Pokémon Go's newest update, the game now yields evolutionary items consistently after day seven spin bonuses. Which means obtaining a second King's Rock is slightly easier. Eventually, you'll get another evolutionary item and evolve the other Pokémon anyway.
More Pokémon Go news and coverage
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.
