Pokémon Go Catch Mastery event starts off Rising Heroes
Jokes aside, while the first event for Pokémon Go’s newest season, Rising Heroes, could be a lot more exciting than what’s on offer, Catch Mastery comes with one redeeming aspect: a XP bonus for catching Pokémon.
Running from March 5, 2023, 10am local time to 8pm local time, you gain double XP for every Pokémon you catch with Nice Throws, Great Throws, Excellent Throws, and Curveball Throws. The event also features an increased chance of encountering Shiny versions of Hitmonlee, Hitmonchan, and Hitmontop in this timeframe.
Unfortunately, these are also Pokémon with relatively low base catch rates, which could make it tricky to take full advantage of the XP bonus and may lead to a high degradation of your Pokéball reserves.
Hitmonlee and Hitmonchan will spawn more frequently in the wild, while Hitmontop will be a Field Research reward. Tyrogue will be featured in 7 km Eggs and can be Shiny as well. There are no other featured Pokémon for this event.
A Timed Research is going to enable you to encounter up to 40 Hitmontop in addition to those you find through the Field Research.
It’s definitely a slower start to the season than Pokémon Go players are used to, which is not going to help a lot with the fact that the community is really frustrated with Niantic once again after technical issues with the Las Vegas event and rumors about further nerfs to Remote Raids.
Pokémon Go Rising Heroes also features new Elite Raids with Regidrago and Regileki as well as a fresh season of GO Battle League full of exciting PvP formats.