APK MINE OF POKEMON GO V0.53.1 - EVOLUTION ITEMS, NEW MOVES, AND MORE!

After the holiday festivities came to a close, Niantic released v0.53.1 without much in the way of communication:

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• Updated Apple Watch to display Eggs obtained from PokeStops
• Changed distance tracking to better account for GPS drift
• Minor text fixes.

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As always, however, the APK code shows a bit more is taking place! The Silph Road team has dug through the new code additions and summarized our findings below:

1. 38 NEW MOVES HAVE BEEN ADDED!

Code and assets for 38 new moves have been added to the app! Aside from Ditto's TRANSFORM move, this is the very first time new moves have been added to the client, travelers!

Here are the moves we've discovered:

NEW QUICK MOVES:		NEW CHARGE MOVES:
Counter Powder Snow Charge Beam Volt Switch Dragon Tail Infestation Struggle Bug	Astonish Iron Tail Fire Spin Bullet Seed Extrasensory Air Slash Hex Snarl	Close Combat Dynamic Punch Focus Blast Aurora Beam Wild Charge Zap Cannon Avalanche Brave Bird Sky Attack Sand Tomb Rock Blast	Silver Wind Night Shade Gyro Ball Heavy Slam Overheat Grass Knot Energy Ball Futuresight Mirror Coat Outrage Crunch Foul Play

Not only have the move names appeared, but graphic assets have also appeared. We believe at least several of these are ready to be deployed via a server-side change.

2. EVOLUTION ITEMS!

Perhaps the most exciting discovery this round is new support for EVOLUTION ITEMS!

For those who don't know, in the main series Pokemon games, certain species only evolve when exposed to certain items. The following Evolution Items do not have graphic assets in the game yet, but do appear explicitly by name in the code:

• SUN STONE
• KINGS ROCK
• METAL COAT
• DRAGON SCALE
• UPGRADE

This means we may be seeing a new evolution mechanic for certain species soon!

3. POKEMON 'FORMS' FOUND: LIKELY FOR UNOWNS!

Much has been added to enable Pokemon FORMS. In Gen 2, the Pokemon this applies to is UNOWNand its many various forms. The following forms have now been mentioned explicitly:

• UNOWN A
• UNOWN B
• UNOWN C
• ...
• UNOWN Z
• UNOWN QUESTION MARK
• UNOWN EXCLAMATION POINT

We're not sure how Niantic will roll out the Unown species, but showing support for the various forms bodes well for Niantic expanding their mechanics to handle the complexity of species with different forms!

4. A NEW NEWS DIGEST SECTION

It looks like a new top-level button may be coming to the in-game menu!

Long overdue, a "News" section for the game is appearing in the code and appears to bring updates about the game (events, etc) in a more official, referencable format: an official news digest!

5. MORE AVATAR CUSTOMIZATION!

Even more new avatar customization options have been added in this round:

• BELT
• GLASSES
• NECKLACE

We sure are seeing a lot of customization options in the code - can't wait for them all to actually make it out so our travelers don't all look like the same 2 folks!

6. EVEN MORE SHINY AND GENDER CODE

Previous APK versions introduced code for SHINY Pokemon and Pokemon genders. v0.53.1 brings even more code to support these variants. We should be getting close to seeing these in the wild!

7. GYM RADIUS INTERACTION TWEAKS

Changes appear to have been made to the way Gyms interaction radii work. Likely nothing major, but there has been definite new additions to Gym to apparently better handle the radius.

8. LARGE DEBUGGING TOOLS

A new system seems to have been introduced for debugging purposes. Notably, the options for the debugger include:

• Species
• Gender
• Costume
• Form
• Shiny

...Hinting that the variants above are ready for final-stage testing!

9. NEW SPONSOR TYPES

Finally, to add to the mysterious SPONSOR code, the following three new sponsor categories have appeared:

• PAN
• BBQ
• FRYER

PARTING WORDS

This update is brimming with great things to come for Pokemon GO! We can't wait to see Shinies start appearing in the wild, or the new Gen 2 species/moves! We're also looking forward to the Avatar options!

But perhaps the most fun new mechanic this time around is the EVOLUTION ITEMS. Hopefully we see these new items introduced alongside Gen 2 very soon, travelers!

Travel safe,