‘Pokémon Go’ Update: Catch Bonus Explained And How It Affects Your Catch Rate

The latest version of Pokémon Go is finally live and with it come the new mechanics regarding Gyms, Catch Bonuses to help trainers catch Pokémon easier and some minor changes with the Pokémon Go Plus.

However, we’re going to be covering the new Catch Bonus feature and how it ties into those medals you receive for catching a bunch of Pokémon, which prior to this update did nothing for the game.

According to Niantic, the medals in Pokémon Go are tiered depending on how many Pokémon of a specific type is caught. Each tier will increase the catch percentage for that type. Now that the update is live, we have more information on how this actually affects your catch rate.

If you go into your trainer’s options in Pokémon Go and scroll down to the medals you will see them split into two categories. The first are the medals that deal with how much you walk and how many Pokémon you’ve evolved while the second category deals with the catch rate.

Each type medal has three tiers, the first is achieved when you catch 10 Pokémon, the second after 50 and the last tier is reached when 200 Pokémon of a specific type are caught.

The first tier gives your trainer a plus one and goes up by one from there.

What does plus ones mean is the percentage, so if you max out the medal you will add three percent to your catch rate. If a Pokémon is dual-typed, Pokémon Go will take the average of your bonuses.

In other words, you max out two medals you’ll only receive a three percent increase (the max).

If you still aren’t sure that’s a big enough difference to catching Pokémon, check out this sample calculation from the Silph Road subreddit below.

Base catch chance: 10%

Bonus for gold medal: +3% to base catch chance

Multiplier for "great" throw: 1.5x

Multiplier for curveball: 1.25x

Multiplier for razz berry: 1.25x

Multiplier for ultra ball: 1.5x

Overall catch chance without bonus: (10%) * 1.5 * 1.25 * 1.25 * 1.5 = 35.2%

Overall catch chance with bonus: (10% + 3%) * 1.5 * 1.25 * 1.25 * 1.5 = 45.7%

So are you excited for the new Catch Bonus feature in Pokémon Go? Let us know in the comments section below.