Pokémon GO Community Day – How to Catch Shiny Magikarp

Posted by Mittie Cheatwood on Wednesday, June 28, 2023
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Just in case you weren’t still recovering from Pokémon GO Fest 2020, it’s already time for another new Pokémon GO Community Day. For August 2020 the star of the show is Magikarp, the lowly fish character that many see as “completely useless”. But he’s not useless of course, especially with the increased chances of catching a shiny. And if you haven’t been able to get enough candy to evolve him into the useful and majestic Gyarados, then this is a big day for you. To help out, here’s our guide for Pokémon GO Community Day, including how to catch shiny Magikarp.

When is Magikarp Community Day in Pokémon GO

Magikarp Community Day will take place within Pokémon GO on Saturday, August 8th starting at 11am your local time. These events used to run for just a couple of hours, but the COVID-19 pandemic has forced a lot of changes from Niantic. One of these is expanded Community Day hours, so you’ll be able to play until 5pm catching increased Magikarp and enjoying other benefits.

What is Happening for Magikarp Community Day

Just like previous Community Days there’s a lot going on during these special hours. The main draw for many will be the increased Magikarp spawns and shiny rate, but skip ahead if that’s all you care about. There’s also tons of special research to enjoy, including a paid quest called Making a Splash. Is this worth buying? The main reward seems to be a bunch of Magikarp candy. Considering you need 400 of them to evolve a single Gyarados then if that’s important to you it likely is. Along with this, incense activated during the event will last for three hours and catching Pokémon will give you 3x the usual Stardust. So big benefits that you’ll probably want to jump on. But what about the big prize?

How to Catch Shiny Magikarp

Every Community Day seems to come down to the special shiny Pokémon offered. While you’re not guaranteed a shiny Magikarp during the event, if you play enough you can rest pretty easily. The key is simply encountering as many Magikarp as you can during the six hour event. Incense will probably be the key here, thanks to the increased time it works and the boosted spawn rate since the pandemic began. Make sure you have two incense ready to activate during Community Day if you want that shiny Magikarp.

Once you have incense active it’s really a matter of checking every Magikarp that spawns (you also get extra shiny chances with the Making a Splash ticket). Tap them to encounter and see if they are shiny. If not, and if you don’t need more Magikarp candy, you can back out to save time. If you’re unsure which you’ve checked this way, just see if they have turned to face your character. If so, you already checked them.  Beyond that your only real chance at catching a shiny Magikarp is to focus on special research. Hit Poké Stops if you can do so safely and complete any that reward an encounter. If it’s Magikarp then there’s a decent chance it will be shiny. Once you have a shiny Magikarp though you may want to evolve it into shiny Gyarados, cause there’s some special stuff there too.

What’s the Magikarp Community Day Special Move

If you have a shiny (or non-shiny) Magikarp, 400 candy, and want to evolve them into Gyarados you can do so during the event or two hours after to get a special charge attack. Any Gyarados evolved during these hours will have Aqua Tail, a unique water attack they normally can’t learn otherwise. It isn’t especially useful in raids or other circumstances, though PvP battlers always like having surprises for their enemies. In the end, it feels more like a trophy than anything else, but you can always TM it into something else. You can’t get Aqua Tail back any other way, until a special event brings it back though.

So that’s our guide for Pokémon GO Community Day, along with tips for how to catch shiny Magikarp.

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