Greetings travelers! On August 27, 2020, Mega Raids were introduced and with them a major overhaul of the Raid Battle system as a whole. Gone are Tier 2 and Tier 4 raids, and replacing them are new Mega raids and speed bonuses. With all of these changes, we felt it was time to update our previous findings on raid rewards. The Research Group pulled out their raid passes, and explored these changes, collecting data from over 5,000 raids! Let’s see what they have uncovered.

Key Findings

• The number of Premier Balls corresponds to the number of item bundles for each Tier.
• The reward types and frequencies have changed for several raid Tiers.
• Potions dropped in Tier 3 raids are unevenly distributed depending on the raid boss.

Background

This study comprises data collected across two different time periods. Prior to the introduction of Mega Raids, researchers collected item rewards from 3,437 raids (from December 12, 2019 to February 15, 2020).¹ The results of this first collection period are presented in the appendix. Following the addition of Mega Raids, Silph Researchers collected data from an additional 1,761 raids between June 15 and October 10, 2021. This time period will be the focus of this article.

The redistribution of raid Tiers coincided with a rework of how Premier Balls and item bundles were awarded: team contribution bonuses were replaced with speed bonuses. The screenshots below show how Premier Balls were awarded before and after the Mega Raid update.

Screenshots of how Premier Balls were awarded from before (left) and after (middle) the Mega Raid overhaul. In Mega Raids (right), Mega Energy is awarded in place of Speed Premier Balls.

Premier Ball and Item Rewards

Let’s begin with the ball-to-bundle relationship: there is a relationship between the number of Premier Balls received and the number of item bundles awarded. Premier Balls are awarded for Damage, Gym Control, Friendship Level, and Speed. Only three of those factors, however, influence the number of bundles the Trainer will be rewarded. Damage, Gym Control, and Speed contribute equally to the number of reward bundles. The table below shows the number of bundles awarded for each bonus Premier Ball received. Note that the table does not include Friendship balls, as those do not count toward bundles.

The grayed-out cells indicate situations in which it is impossible to receive that specific number of balls.² The implementation of speed rewards has greatly increased the number of Premier Balls awarded, from the previous maximum of 14 balls to the new maximum of 20 bonus Premier Balls.³ The total number of item bundles awarded in each raid Tier remains roughly equivalent to pre-Mega levels. A full list of the legacy rewards can be found in the appendix.

Item Bundle Distribution

Now, let’s take a look at the composition of bundles. Each bundle consists of 1-3 items, and bundle composition for some rewards vary based on the raid difficulty level. Certain items, such as Fast and Charged TMs, are always awarded in bundles of 1. Hyper Potions, on the other hand, are not found in Tier 1 raids, but are awarded in bundles of 2 in Tier 3 raids and bundles of 3 in Tier 5 raids. Silph Researchers recorded at least 1,000 bundles for each of the four available raid Tiers. The table below shows the number of each item per bundle and the frequency of each bundle’s appearance for each raid Tier.

In addition, the following rewards are always received, independent of the number of Premier balls.

Reward bundles can be any combination of the possible items for each Tier. At least, this holds true for almost all Tiers. We discovered, however, that certain Tier 3 raids break this pattern!

Speculation on Raid Tier Merging

When Tier 2 and Tier 4 raids were retired last year, an official blog post stated that the rewards for Tier 1 and Tier 3 raids would be increased to match the previous Tier 2 and Tier 4 rewards.

In our data set, Tier 1 raid rewards matched those from legacy Tier 2 raids, as announced. However, we found that rewards from Tier 3 raids did not match legacy Tier 4 raid rewards. Specifically, Tier 3 raids could award both Super Potions and Hyper Potions, whereas the legacy Tier 4 raids only awarded Hyper Potions.

Interestingly, we found that the proportion of Super and Hyper Potions was dependent on the Pokémon battled. Species that have always been found in Tier 3 raids, such as Alolan Raichu, reward Super Potions significantly more often than raid bosses which moved from Tier 4 to Tier 3, such as Tyranitar (χ² test of independence, p-value < 0.001).⁴ While this discrepancy caused a slight difference in the number of non-Potion rewards, there was not sufficient evidence to reject the null hypothesis that non-Potion rewards are given in equal proportion between the two sets of raid bosses (χ² test of independence, p-value = 0.07).

For now, we cannot be certain what causes the different rewards observed within Tier 3 raid bosses. It’s possible that Potion rewards were incorrectly updated when raids were reworked. Alternatively, another hidden variable might be at play. It’s interesting to note that a single raid never rewarded both Super and Hyper Potion bundles to a Researcher. This observation suggests that the hidden variable affects the entire reward package, as opposed to each bundle.

Parting Words

Raids are a great way to play with friends locally or around the world! No longer is it important to complete raids with players from the same team. Instead, the larger the group the higher the rewards received! This change encourages players to come together in larger groups and builds community engagement. Whether you participate in raids for the rewards, to collect the sought-after Mega Energy, or to chase the newest (shiny) raid boss with your friends, raids are here to stay. Niantic has hinted that EX Raids may eventually return. Will rewards received from EX Raids differ from our past data?

A big thank you to all the Researchers who helped collect data from 2019 to 2021 — without you this project would not have been possible. Until next time, travelers!

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Acknowledgements

Authors: Lead Researcher Belle and Scientist CaroKann
Analysis: Scientists Pancake and CaroKann
Project Leaders: Scientist DeeDillyDawn and Lead Researchers AlertedFancy and Belle
Graphics: Scientists WoodWoseWulf, CaroKann, and DeeDillyDawn
Editing: Scientists Cham1nade and Titleist and Senior Researcher JinianD
Data collection: Between December 2019 and October 2021, 162 Silph Raiders contributed data to this project. These eight scored the most raid completions:

• alohanico
• aniwol
• Kingdaddyxxx
• marinaj
• SquidKidLena
• omahanime
• RDC-DCIfan68
• ThatOneZebra

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Footnotes

¹ A minor change, effective December 5, 2019, introduced a guaranteed Charge TM in Tier 4 raids, and Rare candy rewards were adjusted.

² In our study we did not observe certain theoretically-possible ball/bundle combinations, such as a Tier 5 raid with 19 or 20 balls received. These would be extremely difficult to achieve, as it would require the Trainer to contribute a minimum of 15% damage in under 30 seconds in order to receive 3-4 damage balls plus 8 speed balls.

³ Winning a Tier 1 to Tier 5 raid will always reward Trainers with a minimum of 2 speed balls, netting them at least 8 Bonus Premier Balls. In Mega Raids, Mega Energy replaces Premier Balls, meaning there is a maximum number of 12 Bonus Premier Balls possible.

The relationship between the time used to complete the raid and the awarded Bonus Premier Balls or Mega Energy is shown in the table below.

⁴ We compared the frequency of each type of reward from before the Mega Raid changes to those afterward using a Pearson’s chi-squared test of independence. There was no significant difference in the reward drops between pre-Mega Tier 2 and the post-Mega Tier 1 raids (χ²(5, N = 4,018) = 5.39, Bonferroni-corrected p-value = 1), or between pre-Mega Tier 5 and the post-Mega Tier 5 raids (χ²(5, N = 14,164) = 12.3, Bonferroni-corrected p-value = 0.09). There was, however, a significant difference in item rewards from pre-Mega Tier 4 and post-Mega Tier 3 raids (χ²(6, N = 4,494) = 1267.6, Bonferroni-corrected p-value < 0.001). Individual comparisons of each item reward type showed that Potion type (Super or Hyper), contributed most to the observed difference in pre-Mega Tier 4 and post-Mega Tier 3 raids. When correcting for multiple hypotheses, no other item type differed significantly in the pre-Mega and post-Mega groups.

Appendix of Pre-Mega Raid Data

The pre-Mega raid appendix covers unpublished data collected from December 12, 2019, to February 15, 2020, and highlights the minor 2019 raid reward updates before the August 2020 Mega Raid update.

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