Pokemon Go to Introduce New Kind of Raid

Pokemon Go will introduce a new kind of raid next week. Today, Niantic announced that Pokemon Go would introduce Shadow Raids, a new kind of in-person raid, later this week. The new Shadow Raids will feature Shadow Pokemon as Raid Bosses, who will have heightened offensive and defensive capabilities. Notably, Shadow Pokemon in raids will become enraged as they are attacked, boosting their Attack stats and Defense stats even further. However, these buffs can be negated by Purified Gems, a new kind of gem that can be obtained by combining Shadow Shards from Team GO Rocket members. The Purified Gems lower a Shadow Pokemon’s attack and defense stats and can be stacked with other Purified Gems. A trailer for the new raids can be seen below: 

Notably, the first 5-Star Shadow Raid Boss will be Shadow Mewtwo, who can also be encountered in its Shiny form for the first time. The Pokemon will only appear on May 27-May 28 as part of the Rising Shadows event. Other Pokemon appearing in raids include the Shadow versions of Bayleef, Quilava, Croconaw and Sneasel in 3-Star Raids and  Poliwag, Machop, Bellsprout and Beldum in 1-Star raids. The 1-Star and 3-Star Shadow raids will appear throughout next week, although Mewtwo will still only be available on a 2-day stretch. 

As part of the event, Team Rocket members will be appearing more often throughout the week. 

The Rising Shadows event is one of two capstones to the current Rising Heroes Season, with the other being the introduction of the Master Ball to the game. Players can only obtain the Master Ball by completing the seasonal Special Research that ends on June 1st.