As players scramble to catch em all in Pokémon Go, Niantic CEO John Hanke has a huge tip for those hatching eggs hoping to find rare regional monsters.
The scandalous details arrive via Hanke’s Twitter account, where one Pokémon Go enthusiast confronted the studio head with a very popular question. “For the love of all that is PoGO, please answer. Can you hatch regionals out of eggs outside their region?” Just a few hours later, Hanke officially replied in the negative. “The eggs can only be found in their natural habitat,” he confirmed.
@lady_maethoriel the eggs can only be found in their natural habitat.
— John Hanke (@johnhanke) September 22, 2016
While Hanke’s words are very clear, they arrive to clear up a pretty major misconception for Pokémon Go players. Shortly after the game’s launch, word spread that region-specific monsters, like Mr. Mime and Farfetch’d, could be obtained globally by walking to hatch eggs. In fact, many websites have actually posted guides citing eggs as a verified solution. We’ve even seen screenshots of regional Pokémon on outside devices. How can there be so much proof in favor of eggs when Niantic says otherwise?
Beyond physically traveling to different regions to find each Pokémon, the answer is pretty clear. Every single source that suggested a link between regions and eggs was actually using a popular GPS spoof cheating technique to buy eggs from other parts of the word. While GPS spoofing doesn’t really work in Pokémon Go today, it essentially allowed players to trick the app into believing they were any place in the world. By entering the correct coordinates into an interface, it was once possible to essentially warp to other regions and buy eggs there. Once those hatched, they may have contained a regional monster.
In other words, remember those reports on your local news station about someone being the first person to complete Pokémon Go? That so-called champion faked everyone out by hacking their game. Without travel, it is officially only possible to catch about 142 of the full Kanto roster of 151. Alongside four regional monsters there are also five legendaries and Ditto that have yet to be put into the game. Barring a huge nest migration or updates, those 10 are mostly off limits for now.
Pokémon Go is available now on Android and iOS.
What do you think about this egg rumor finally being debunked? Have you caught all of Pokémon Go’s regionals? Tell us in the comments section!
