Pokemon Go Datamine Reveals Tons of New Info About New Field Research

A datamine of an upcoming Pokemon Go update has yielded plenty of new information about some of the game's new features.

Earlier this week, Pokemon Go announced plans to add "Field Research" quests to the game, which would give players an opportunity to encounter Mew and some Legendary Pokemon in the wild. The new feature also adds a bit of a plot to Pokemon Go, giving the game some much needed depth.

In order to prepare for the arrival of this new feature, Pokemon Go began rolling out a new update to the game last night. Dataminers got a hold of the new update and pulled out lots of new information about how the field research will work.

Notably, we now have an idea of the different kinds of tasks that will be included in the research quests. Dataminers found 32 separate code lines related to different quest options, which range from spinning Pokestops to reaching certain level milestones. The Silph Road datamine notes that there appears to be two different tiers of research goals, a tier geared for beginning players and a tier for more advanced players. The advanced tier includes successfully completing different throw types, finding different types of Pokemon, or spinning unique Pokestops, so it looks like there will be plenty of variety when trying to complete tasks.

The datamine also revealed seven types of potential rewards for completing research. As expected, items, XP, and Stardust are all potential quest rewards. However, players can also earn Avatar clothing items, candy, new quests, or even a Pokemon encounter for completing different research tasks

Based on the datamine, it appears that Pokemon Go will use Professor Willow as the face of its new research feature. Willow will not only prominently appear in the new loading screen, he'll also get a 3D model in the new update and will have interactions with players. Several expressions were included in the new update, so we'll see Willow happy, impatient, frustrated, and even admiring at different points in the game.

It also appears that Pokemon encounters that occur as a reward for completing Field Research may be a bit different than encountering random wild Pokemon. The update has separate line items noting "Research Encounters" and "Mew Encounters" so it appears that these will be a bit different than randomly finding a Pokemon in your neighborhood. The Silph Road datamine notes that the Mew Encounter seems to be pretty special, but they don't give a lot of details because they didn't want to ruin the surprise.

The Field Research feature goes live on Friday and we'll have full coverage. Get excited, Pokemon Go trainers!