In Pokémon GO there is currently a nasty bug that costs you many experience points. Niantic even warns against using lucky eggs.
What bug is it? It affects the XP you gain from friendship level-ups. You level up with friends, but do not receive any XP. Normally, depending on the friendship level, there are up to 100,000 XP for level-ups, with a lucky egg up to 200,000 XP.
It is unclear whether every player is affected or just a small selection. It is certain that some trainers do not receive any XP for friendship level-ups.
Niantic compensates affected players
This is what the developer writes on Twitter: Niantic states that for now, you should not use lucky eggs during friendship level-ups. The lucky egg is currently useless since you do not gain any XP during the level-up. Other actions with lucky eggs are not at risk, however. So if you use eggs during a raid hour to collect experience, you can do that without worries.
Furthermore, the developers recommend that you contact support (via Niantic) if you are affected by the bug. Trainers on Twitter and Reddit report that they were compensated with raid passes among other things.
Can the bug be circumvented somehow? There is no real solution to this. We recommend that you simply refrain from making friendship level-ups for now. Gather your hyper and best friends first and only level up with them when the bug is fixed.
So pay close attention not to send your friend a gift right before leveling up or to not open your friend’s last gift.
This is why the bug is so nasty: Leveling up with friends is the best way to quickly gain experience points in Pokémon GO. With no other method can you gain XP so effectively. Now you have to do without these experience points, so you level up significantly slower.
When can the bug be fixed? That is still completely open. There have already been some bugs in the game that could only be fixed after months. Currently, Niantic has removed the rocket balloons from the game, as there was a bug with them. This was already a week ago, and a bug fix has not yet been announced.
Depending on how complex this bug with friendship level-ups is, we will have to be patient a bit longer.
Soon there is an event coming up where you definitely do not need a friendship level. There, you will need to take out your camera and go on the hunt for Shiny Fletchling. We will show you the details here:
Pokémon GO announces event with Shiny Fletchling – Here’s how you can get it
