'Pokémon Go' Dragon Scale: Should you hold on to your evolutionary items?

For a while, Pokémon Go evolutionary items were the game's great mystery. Players had a lot of theories about how to get them, like insisting they were based on buddy Pokémon to thinking they were linked to the time of day at which you spun a PokéStop. 

Thankfully, the madness ended once everyone agreed scoring evolutionary items was based on random chance and Niantic started giving out evolutionary items for seven-day PokéStop streaks. But now a new question arises: Should you save those precious Dragon Scales, King's Rocks and Upgrades, or use them as soon as you can?

Pokémon Go Dragon Scale: Will there be a use for the Dragon Scale outside of evolving Seadra into Kingdra?

In a post on the Silph Road, user OblvThorns asked whether they'd be wasting their Dragon Scale evolutionary item by using it on a Seadra they'd leveled up.

The short answer is no. 

Although the Dragon Scale once provided a 10% buff to dragon-type attacks in main series games, its only use in Pokémon Go is evolving Seadra into Kingdra. Barring a huge change to how held items work in Pokémon Go, it's a waste of your already limited inventory space to squirrel away evolutionary items if you can use them.

However, this doesn't mean you should just toss evolutionary items you don't need. As little as a week ago, another poster on the Silph Road announced they'd just gotten their first Dragon Scale after spinning approximately 15,000 PokéStops — so don't count on those seven-day streaks to get you what you need.

Even if you've already gotten all the evolutions a certain special item provides, you might want to keep a couple of each just in case. With Pokémon Go, you never know what the future is going to hold.

More Pokémon Go guides, tips and tricks

If you're booting up the game for the first time in a while, 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 10-kilometer 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.