Pokemon Go's Newest Regional-Exclusive Pokemon Can Only Be Found in One Country

Pokemon Go has a new regional-exclusive Pokemon, but players will have to travel to one small country in order to get it.

Yesterday, Pokemon Go announced that they were adding 20 new Pokemon to the game as part of its ongoing holiday event. All twenty of the Pokemon were either Water-Type or Ice-Type Pokemon and included some fan favorites like Wailmer and Snorunt. While players quickly found most of the new Pokemon in the wild, there was one Pokemon missing: the Rock/Water-Type Relicanth.

While several screenshots confirmed that Relicanth was in fact available in the game, most players simply couldn't find anywhere in the wild. It wasn't until earlier today that players realized that all the Relicanth spottings were all in one place: New Zealand.

New Zealand seems like a strange place for a regional-exclusive Pokemon due to its relatively small size. An island nation located about 925 miles away from Australia, New Zealand has less than five million total inhabitants. However, New Zealand does have an impressive tourism industry, bolstered in part because Peter Jackson used parts of the country as a stand-in for Middle-Earth in his Lord of the Rings movies.

There's also a more practical reason why New Zealand got Relicanth as a regional-exclusive Pokemon: they didn't have a regional-exclusive Pokemon previously. Despite its relative proximity to Australia, Pokemon Go didn't make Kangaskhan available to Kiwi players of Pokemon Go.

It's a bit of a shame that players around the world won't have access to Relicanth, as it was expected to have a place in the current metagame. As a bulky Water/Rock-Type Pokemon, Relicanth was basically a more defensively oriented version of Omastar.

It's possible that Relicanth's availability extends to other parts of Oceania, but right now we've only seen confirmed sightings of Relicanth in New Zealand. So - if you want to complete your PokeDex, get ready to book a trip to one of the most beautiful spots in the world!

UPDATE: It appears that Relicanth is also available in several small islands in the general Oceania region such as Fiji, and New Caldonia.