Pokémon Go Grookey Community Day event guide

Pokémon Go is having a Grookey Community Day event on Sunday, Jan. 18 from 2-5 p.m. in your local time.

As expected with a Community Day event, Grookey will spawn in huge numbers with a high chance for it to appear shiny. There are also several other bonuses and perks, which we’ve listed out below.

How do I catch a shiny Grookey?

As per old research by the now-defunct website The Silph Road (via Wayback Machine), Shiny rates on Community Days are about 1 in 24, which means that if you keep playing throughout the three-hour window, you should find quite a few shiny Pokémon.

If you’re short on time or Poké Balls, you can pop an Incense, then quickly tap each Grookey to check for shiny ones, running from any that aren’t shiny. Notably, any Grookey you’ve already tapped will face where your player is standing, so that should help identify which ones you may have already checked.

If you evolve Thwackey into Rillaboom on Jan. 18 from 2-9 p.m. in your local time, it will learn the charged move Frenzy Plant.

If you miss out on evolving it during this period, you will likely be able to evolve it during a Community Day weekend event in December to get Frenzy Plant. If you don’t want to wait, you can use an Elite TM to get the move.

So, Rillaboom is a very good grass-type Max Battle attacker… but none of the Grookey you find in the wild during this event will be able to participate in Max Battles. That being said, you can use Elite TMs to teach your Gigantamax Rillaboom Frenzy Plant now, if you want to use it for both raids and Max Battles. If you’re playing consistently during this event, you should be able to score enough candy to power up any Gigantamax Rillaboom you may have, while also leveling up a separate non-Max Rillaboom, so you don’t really need to use an Elite TM here.

Rillaboom is a very good grass-type attacker for raids and gyms. Set it up with Razor Leaf and Frenzy Plant to dish out some good damage. Of course, it still isn’t as strong as Mega Sceptile or Mega Venusaur, but is still worth investing in. Drum Beating is rumored to be pretty good also, based on datamines (but as of writing this, the move isn’t actually available yet, so we can’t make a call on it).

Rillaboom is still not worth using in PvP at all.

The following bonuses will be active during Grookey Community Day:

• Tripled Stardust for catching Pokémon
• Doubled candy for catching Pokémon
• Doubled chance for level 31+ trainers to get XL candy from catching Pokémon
• Incense lasts three hours
• Lure Modules last one hour
• Grookey special photobombs when taking snapshots
• One additional special trade
• Stardust cost halved for trading

That said, you should definitely pop a Star Piece and an Incense and try to nab some powerful Grookey.

If you can Mega Evolve Venusaur, Sceptile, or Abomasnow, you’ll score additional Grookey Candy per catch. Using Primal Reversion on Groudon will also yield the same effect.

Additionally, Niantic is continuing the lure bonus from previous Community Days. Grookey will appear at lured-up PokéStops from 2-9 p.m. during the event, meaning if you don’t catch the Grookey you wanted before the event ends at 5 p.m., you can use a Lure Module to try to get more. The higher shiny rate will still apply to these Grookey, and they still will have a chance to have a special background.