Pokemon GO: Where to Find Rare Pokemon

On your big fun adventures outside, you’ve probably come across a bunch of really cool Pokemon. That’s great, and these will definitely help you defend your team’s Gyms (or take control of your oppositions), but what about rare Pokemon?

These will often require a little bit more than just walking around your neighborhood during the day. Although, we’re not saying one won’t just happen to appear out of chance, but it is unlikely. With that in mind, we’ve got a bunch of tips to help you break down where you’ll be able to find the rarest Pokemon, including the elusive legendaries. So without further ado, let’s check ’em out.

Location

Rare Pokemon are, as their name suggests, not gonna be easy to find. There is not yet a solid rule for where rare Pokemon will reside or show up, so you should try and vary where you go exploring. The more unusual places you check out and the different terrain that you adventure near, the more different kinds of Pokemon you’re probably going to find showing up.

There’s also another way to get Pokemon that doesn’t require you to search all kinds of different locations, as well. If you signed up to the Pokemon Trainer Club and subscribed to their monthly newsletter, you can occasionally get download codes for rare Pokemon. Not a bad incentive to read through an email every so often, right?

Trainer Level

Another surefire way for you to start stumbling upon rare Pokemon is to increase your level in the game. Just as it happens in the normal Pokemon games, the further you progress, the more often you’ll find yourself coming face-to-face with those higher leveled and rarer Pokemon. While you may find yourself coming face-to-face with a bunch of Pidgeys and Rattata right now in one location, doesn’t mean that that’s all you’ll find forever there.

Yes, they’ll still be around in droves, but not only will they have a higher CP, but less common Pokemon will start to show up in the tracker in the bottom right-hand corner of your screen. We’ve got a few tips for leveling up quickly here to help you on your way.

Rustling Leaves?

One way to know if you’re coming close to a Pokemon is by checking out your map and looking for anything out of the ordinary. While we know that the rustling leaves suggest that there is a Pokemon in that vicinity, there have also been mutterings of a variation to this which suggests rare Pokemon are nearby.

Players have been reporting that golden leaves have appeared on their map in Pokemon GO, which has led to them catching a much rarer Pokemon than normal when they’ve gone to investigate. We cannot confirm this ourselves for now, but if you do see some golden leaves blowing in the wind, run towards them as if your life depended on it.

Legendary Pokemon

Of course, the other big question on everyone’s mind is what about the legendary Pokemon. Well, if we go off what was shown in the announcement trailer for the game, there seemed to be an event taking place with trainers being tasked with taking down Mewtwo. Now, nothing has been confirmed, but we’d put our money on the theory that events may be coming up in the future that will lead to legendary Pokemon being up for grabs. Again, this is just speculation off of the announcement trailer, but it’s the best lead we’ve got for now.

As for the legendary birds, Moltres, Zapdos, and Articuno, it seems to be the same case for these as well. With the being the mascot Pokemon for each of the three different teams in the game, we’re pretty sure we’ll be able to catch these at some point. Although don’t expect it to be an easy fight.

We’ll continue to update this if there are any sure fire ways to net yourself a rare Pokemon, but for now, keep exploring!