Pokémon Go Vulpix and Alolan Vulpix Community Day event guide

Pokémon Go is doing another double Community Day event, this time featuring Vulpix and Alolan Vulpix on Sunday, Feb. 1 from 2-5 p.m. in your local time.

Seasoned Pokémon Go players may know what generally to expect from a Community Day event, but since Niantic/Scopley has been testing out different event perks (and the bonuses do rotate on different Community Days), keeping up with what’s part of this event can be tricky. For your convenience, we’ve listed all the perks and bonuses for the Vulpix and Alolan Vulpix Community Day below.

How do I catch a shiny Vulpix?

As per old research by the now-defunct website The Silph Road (via Wayback Machine), shiny rates on Community Days are about 1 in 24, which means that if you keep playing throughout the three-hour window, you should find quite a few shiny Pokémon.

If you’re short on time or Poké Balls, you can pop an Incense, then quickly tap each Vulpix to check for shiny ones, running from any that aren’t shiny. Notably, any Vulpix you’ve already tapped will face where your player is standing, so that should help identify which ones you may have already checked.

If you evolve Vulpix into Ninetales on Feb. 1 from 2-9 p.m. in your local time, it will learn the charged move Energy Ball. Evolving an Alolan Vulpix into an Alolan Ninetales will teach it Chilling Water.

If you miss out on evolving it during this period, you will likely be able to evolve it during a Community Day weekend event in December to get these moves. If you don’t want to wait, you can use an Elite TM to get the move.

Neither Ninetales are useful for raids or gyms, but they are quite good in Great and Ultra League PvP, with Alolan Ninetales’ new move actually helping it quite a lot.

For best effects, set up Alolan Ninetales with Powder Snow, Weather Ball, and Chilling Water. Regular Kantonian Ninetales is pretty good too, but you’ll want Ember, Weather Ball, and Overheat.

The following bonuses will be active during Vulpix Community Day:

• Tripled XP for catching Pokémon
• Field Research that rewards Vulpix with special seasonal backgrounds
• Doubled candy for catching Pokémon
• Doubled chance for level 31+ trainers to get XL candy from catching Pokémon
• Incense lasts three hours
• Lure Modules last one hour
• Vulpix special photobombs when taking snapshots
• One additional special trade
• Stardust cost halved for trading

That said, you should definitely pop a Lucky Egg and an Incense and try to nab some powerful Vulpix.

If you can Mega Evolve Charizard, Houndoom, Blaziken, or Camerupt, you’ll score additional Vulpix Candy per catch. Using Primal Reversion on Groudon will also yield a candy boost. If you want to boost the gains from Alolan Vulpix catches, you’ll want to Mega Evolve Glalie or Abomasnow. Sadly, there is no Pokémon to Mega Evolve that will net you bonuses from both types of Vulpix, but since they share candy anyway, it shouldn’t be too bad.

As mentioned before, new things are still continuing to be tested with Community Days. Vulpix Community Day keeps up the trend of Lure Modules offering bonus spawns. From 2-9 p.m. (yes, even after the Community Day technically ends) both Vulpix and Alolan Vulpix will spawn more frequently around placed lures, with a chance to have a special seasonal background. The increased shiny rate that is usually only available during the event will continue until 9 p.m. from Vulpix that spawn from lures, too.