In Pokémon GO you will not encounter Zorua today, the ‘Ditto Pokémon’ [Update]

The release of Zorua in Pokémon GO was supposed to take place on October 25. After a series of teasers, it was clear that you should encounter the new Pokémon during the Spotlight Hour. But now there are problems and Niantic is canceling the encounter.

Update from October 25 at 10:30 AM: There are major problems with the release of Zorua. A bug caused Zorua to take on the values of the mimicked Pokémon such as height, CP, and attacks in the early time zones.

Therefore, the Zorua surprise is being canceled for the next time zones. The Spotlight Hour with Shuppet will still take place.

The cancellation of the surprise was announced by the support account of Pokémon GO on Twitter. Already captured Zorua cannot be traded, cannot be sent to Pokémon HOME, and are also not allowed to participate in the GO Battle League until the issues are resolved.

The tweets are embedded here:

From here on begins the original article that was published before Niantic’s cancellation. This is how the event was supposed to go today:

This has now been revealed: In recent weeks, the Pokémon GO team released mysterious teaser videos showing special Pokémon encounters. Suddenly, masses of the same Pokémon appeared.

Niantic also hinted in text form that today during the Spotlight Hour, something special would be experienced with your buddy.

Now it is clear: Zorua will be released today, on October 25. Niantic confirmed this in a tweet on October 25. The Pokémon comes from the fifth generation and is of the Dark type.

It can evolve into Zoroark and is available through a Hisuian form.

How to find and catch Zorua?

When does Zorua appear? During the start and end of the Spotlight Hour with Shuppet on October 25, you will encounter Zorua.

• In the teaser videos, the times 18:00 and 18:55 can be seen
• Pay special attention to spawns in the wild during these times
• Update at 09:20 AM: There are first reports from trainers about the spawn times. At the end of the Spotlight Hour in New Zealand and therefore at the start of the Spotlight Hour in Australia, there were no Zorua spawns. This may be due to frequent event issues in the early time zones, and Niantic is likely to fix this for the upcoming time zones.

It can therefore be assumed that during these times you will find particularly many spawns of your buddy Pokémon on the map, which will then transform into Zorua after being caught.

How does this work? The special feature of this Pokémon is its ability to disguise its appearance – similar to Ditto. Zorua will disguise itself as your buddy Pokémon and thus appear in the wild. After being caught, it will transform into Zorua.

Some players report that the buddy Pokémon must be fed and accompany you on the map. However, other players contradict this and explain that they didn’t have their buddy “outside” and still encountered Zorua disguised as their buddy Pokémon. We will update the article as soon as we know more.

Update at 09:20 AM: According to initial reports from trainers, you can also take legendary Pokémon as buddies, and they will then appear in the wild. After being caught, they will transform into Zorua. The movesets of the buddy Pokémon apparently are not directly transferred.

Is that surprising? For days, trainers have been pondering what the special announcement for the Spotlight Hour would be. Because Niantic stated at the beginning of the month that you should definitely take your buddy Pokémon to today’s Spotlight Hour.

Through the findings of data miners, trainers already speculated that a release of the new Chameleon Pokémon for Halloween would be appropriately timed.

What you need to know about Zorua in Pokémon GO has been summarized for you.