Pokemon Go special friendship event 2020 – Start time, bonuses, more

The final scheduled Pokemon Go event in February is a special friendship weekend and you guessed it, there will be friend related bonuses.

Romantic love isn’t the only love Niantic are celebrating in February, as they conclude the month by shifting gears to friendships. It’s time to show your friends some love, too, as confirmed by the Pokemon Go blog.

Start and finish time

It begins on Friday February 21, 8am and finishes on Monday, February 24, 10pm. This time is based on local time so you don’t need to work out those pesky time zone differences.

Bonuses

Pokemon Go trainers can enjoy the following bonuses throughout the weekend:

• Friendship levels will increase faster
• 2x Trade Candy
• 1/2 Trade Stardust cost
• The number of Gifts you can open daily will increase to 40
• The number of Gifts you can carry in your inventory will increase to 20

Time to XP farm?

A lot of players will know that ascending through friendship levels is already an excellent way to accumulate XP. Currently it takes this many days worth of interacting to increase levels and get the following XP:

• Good Friend: 1 day – 3,000 XP
• Great Friend: 7 days – 10,000 XP
• Ultra Friend: 30 days – 50,000 XP
• Best Friend: 90 days – 100,000 XP

The bonus for the February friendship event simply states levels will increase faster, so it isn’t known how much faster this will be. We’ll have to wait and see whether you’ll be able to interact on perhaps a 12 hourly basis or whether the levels will simply increase faster.

If you really want to XP farm this weekend, then throw out a Lucky Egg while interacting with friends to double XP. With an increase in the number of gifts you can carry and receive, this is the absolute best opportunity to try and ascend through the Pokemon Go levels.

• Read More: Pokemon Go friend codes – The best way to maximize XP?

Elsewhere, we all know trading Pokemon can be costly – nobody wants to waste the Pokemon Go gold that is Stardust. Nevertheless, trading is the best way to get those coveted Lucky Pokemon.

If you want to increase your chances of doing so then you can check out our Lucky Pokemon guide. So, save those spare high CP species and remember CP won’t change as much when trading but IVs will. In short, the IV of a Pokemon when trading is irrelevant whereas CP is important.