As Pokémon Go pushes increasingly expensive tickets and Go Passes, often with exclusive but temporary items, I’ve been thinking about how one purchase continues to stand the test of time - the Go Plus. These plastic Poké Ball-like accessories, which easily slip into a pocket or backpack, can spin PokéStops and catch Pokémon for you, making it a more powerful upgrade than anything you can purchase in-game. This was true when they first started rolling out in the months after Pokémon Go’s launch, and feels even more so today as the game ramps up monetisation in the wake of Scopely’s acquisition.
Though Go Plus devices aren’t new - we’re now on the third iteration, the latest released in 2023 - I’m amazed at how few players out there use one, or understand what an advantage they give you. If you play a lot of Pokémon Go - or even don’t want to actively play Pokémon Go - you should seriously consider getting one, even if they're harder to come by today. Here’s why I never leave the house without mine.
Pokémon Go is a numbers game, and a Go Plus improves your chances
Though events can temporarily increase the likelihood of finding shiny or powerful Pokémon, the most practical means of getting better creatures overall boils down to one thing: catching more of them. The more Pokémon you catch, the more likely you’ll come away with creatures with better stats or other rare traits, and this is where having a Go Plus device, which passively hoovers up everything in your path, helps massively.
In theory you can do this manually with quick catching, with the benefit of a shiny and CP check beforehand, but this is quite a laborious process en masse, so having a Go Plus device do the work then checking what you’ve caught later is a much more practical option for the majority of players. This is especially useful during those aforementioned shiny-boosting events, like Community Days, Go Tour and Go Fest, where the number of spawns are often overwhelming.
This said, a Go Plus doesn’t know about rarity, stats or shiny status, meaning a valuable Pokémon can flee without you realising, with no second chances once the device locks onto it. The thought of this sucks, but my logic is thus: since the device is catching more Pokémon than if I was manually, on balance I’ve caught more shinies and high IV creatures this way than if I wasn’t using it at all. (And if this is a worry, there’s ways to improve your likelihood of a successful catch, such as changing to Great or Ultra Balls and manually throwing with a button press on the latest Go Plus device, and / or using Adventure Effects like Ice Burn.)
