As time goes on, Niantic has been making efforts to balance Pokémon GO. We’ve seen balances come in ways of move adjustments, the recently released Buddy System, and now Type Capture Bonuses! This new feature will hopefully assist Trainers in completing their Pokédex and more easily catch those hard to find Pokémon when they encounter them. Let’s dive into what we know so far.
What Is It?
The upcoming new feature will give a capture bonus corresponding to the medal for Pokémon of that type captured. For example, catching a bunch of Rattata will progress my School kid medal since Rattata is a normal type Pokémon. With the new capture bonus, I will become even more efficient at catching Rattata and other normal type Pokémon. This will allow me to save my much needed Pokéballs which I eagerly feed to my GO Plus unit.
Tiers
As you may already know, medals in Pokémon GO come in three tiers: Bronze, Silver, and Gold. It appears these tiers for type captured medals are used to determine your capture bonus!
| Tier | Bonus |
| Bronze | +1 |
| Silver | +2 |
| Gold | +3 |
Averages
If a Pokémon has multiple types, the capture bonus is the average of the two bonuses. The example Niantic gives is Pidgey being both a Normal and Flying type Pokémon. Niantic forgot about the Pidgey and Rattata infestation, because most of us are well beyond maxing the medals for these two types. Another example would be Dragonite, being Dragon and Flying type. Now, I’ve caught a crap ton of Pidgeys and will likely have a max capture bonus to Flying types (+3). However, I haven’t captured too many Dragon types and will likely have a very low capture bonus for Dragon types (+1). This will give me an average of 2 until I go out and capture more Dragon types to bring up my average.
New Medal Icons!
Something not mentioned, but check this out! Some medals like Jogger, Breeder, and Fisherman have custom medal icons outside the standard Bronze, Silver, Gold default design. With the newly designed Kindler, Swimmer, and Punk Girl medals, it’s safe to say that we’ll be seeing new medal designs for all medals relating to type captures. Aside from the new icon, the medal page looks much more polished.
Conclusion
We’re pretty certain we have most the details on how this new feature will work, but will report more as we find out. This will be the first feature to give any sort of perks based off medals earned, and is a very welcomed addition to this ever growing game. I also noticed in the URL and picture file names that the word “elemental” vs type is used. Perhaps this could mean that this bonus will be a Elemental Capture Bonus vs Type Capture Bonus. Small detail, but worth the mention. For now, get those type medal counts up and train on!