Don’t make the same mistake I did and ignore the swap

Trading is a classic part of the Pokémon series that you shouldn’t ignore in Pokémon GO. Because swapping brings bonuses.

Catch Pokémon, conquer arenas, complete raids, fight in the battle league and more: you can do all sorts of things in Pokémon GO. This also includes Pokémon trading. But I’ve largely ignored it so far.

So far I’ve only ever traded Pokémon in two cases:

In short: With the focus on collecting, I basically only traded individual Pokémon and only rarely looked for other bonuses, such as guaranteed lucky exchanges with lucky friends.

But that may have been a mistake, because there are bonuses when swapping that can be really worthwhile.

Why should you trade more often in Pokémon GO?

These bonuses can be worthwhile: Trading comes with some “side effects” that you might not even consider if you’re just focused on keeping track of your Pokédex.

One of them are the lucky Pokémon. These special monsters can only be obtained through trading. On the one hand, they usually have good stats and, on the other hand, they have the advantage of costing a reduced amount of stardust when leveling up.

So far I’ve only gotten them when I’ve seen a guaranteed lucky exchange with friends. In fact, there is another guarantee for lucky Pokémon: For the “Hard Times” event in December 2023, it was introduced that a trade with a Pokémon that has been in your or your trading partner’s collection since 2018 or earlier is a guaranteed lucky trade leads.

Additionally, the maximum number of guaranteed lucky trades has been increased from 15 to 25 per trainer. You can read more about this here: Why you should trade old Pokémon.

Other bonuses when swapping: Since this event, I’ve also been paying more attention to the topic of “trading” and paying more attention to swapping monsters that I already have in my collection several times. Some bonuses are very helpful in getting strong monsters.

First of all, this includes the possibility of getting a monster with better stats. Because the exchanged Pokémon does not receive the values ​​that it had with your exchange partner. If you have the same monster with weak stats, it might be worth swapping with each other and hoping to get better stats. This can be worthwhile, especially for weakly caught legendary monsters or monsters from the list of the best attackers in Pokémon GO.

Here you should also pay attention to the friendship level: the higher your friendship level with the exchange partner, the better the chance of getting stronger values. The cost of stardust when exchanging also decreases as the friendship level increases.

You can also get extra candies when swapping. Here you should make sure to trade monsters that you have caught in the distance.

There is also a chance to win an XL candy when you exchange.

When should you swap? In principle, events like Community Days are well suited for swapping because they usually only cost half the price of stardust. In addition, there are often additional special exchanges that you can take advantage of on these days. Would you like to know when the next dates are? Then take a look at the overview of the events in January 2024 at Pokémon GO.