Everything You Need To Know About Critical Catches In Pokemon Go

Since its release in 2016, Pokemon Go has taken the world by storm. In the first several months following the release of the mobile game, individuals across the world could be seen walking around aimlessly, glued to their phones in search of Pokemon in the virtual world. Since the initial outburst of popularity, the popularity of the game has died down some.

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Despite not maintaining that initial fervour and incredible popularity, Pokemon Go has nevertheless managed to remain one of the most popular mobile games on the market. One of the coolest features added to the game since its release is the critical catch feature. While it has been around for a while now, there is still much that players don't know about critical capture.

Updated July 13, 2022, by Gabrielle Huston: With a bit more time to gather information, we know more about the Critical Catch than ever before! We've updated this article to be as accurate as possible.

9 What Is A Critical Catch?

While some believe that a critical catch merely increases the likelihood of capturing a Pokemon, that is not quite the case. In all actuality, critical capture is much, much better than that.

Whenever a player is lucky enough to initiate a critical capture during one of their throws of a Pokeballs, the Pokemon being targeted is caught instantly. Instead of shaking three times, it'll just shake once.

8 It Was Released With Gen 2 Pokemon

This feature actually first popped up with the release of the 2nd generation Pokemon in Pokemon Go. Players were pleasantly surprised when they first started noticing critical captures occurring within their games. Perhaps they shouldn't be, though, since it's adding Pokemon in real life, where you can even visit Johto landmarks!

Since the 2nd generation is one of the fan-favourites, this was the perfect opportunity for the creators at Niantic to add a new feature to the mobile game as well.

7 How Can You Tell When A Critical Catch Has Occurred?

When a critical capture is successfully initiated, a stream of fireworks appears to launch out from the Pokeballs (seen on the right-hand side of the image above). This seems to be in celebration of the rare achievement.

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If you ever get the opportunity to see your first critical capture, be on the lookout for the fireworks that come out from the Pokeballs. As long as you continue to play Pokemon Go for long enough, it is inevitable that you will eventually get the chance to see this very cool feature.

6 Isn't From A "Perfect" Throw

One misconception surrounding the critical capture is that it is only initiated after a perfect throw. These players believe that if you curve the arc just perfectly, and hit the target zone of the Pokemon just right as the circle is at its smallest, that is what creates a critical capture.

That theory couldn't be further from the truth. No matter how well you throw a Pokeballs, you can't create a critical capture. Players have no effect on the mysterious feature.

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4 It's Entirely Random

Not only is this feature automatic, but it is also random as well. There is no telling when a critical catch may appear/happen. Nothing you do will affect the frequency of its occurrence.

This is important for players to understand. There are no power-ups or special Pokeballs that will increase or decrease your odds. If you are lucky enough to have a couple of critical captures in a row, it was merely by chance.

3 Client-Side

The chance of whether a player gets to see a critical capture animation is entirely decided by the client-side of Pokemon Go rather than the server-side. This means that it is the local Pokemon Go app on someone's phone that randomly generates critical captures. The server merely records whether the Pokemon was captured or not, regardless of the method used for capture.

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While it does seem as though this opens up the system to possible malfeasance and hacking, the Pokemon Go creators are very good at monitoring for cheating within the game. This fun aspect of critical capture remains safe from the possibility of players with bad intentions taking advantage of it to get an unfair leg up on the rest of the Pokemon Go community.

2 1% of All Throws

Thanks to diligent Pokemon Go players, we have somewhat of an idea of how often this automatic random event occurs within the game. According to these players, the process happens approximately 1% of the time.

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Now, to make it clear, this doesn't mean that every 100 times you'll see one critical capture. On average, over a long period of time, that will be the average. You still could be lucky enough to see a few in a row, or unlucky enough to not have one critical capture for a couple of hundred throws.

1 It Even Works On Legendary Pokemon

The most important question that players of the game have about critical catch is "does it work on legendary Pokemon?" The answer to that question is yes, it does. Although the odds are slim, if you happen to get lucky enough, you can get a critical catch to initiate while throwing Pokeballs at a legendary Pokemon.

Having a critical catch appear while trying to acquire one of these Pokemon gives players one of the best feelings imaginable. All of that hard work ahead is suddenly gone, and that long-awaited, coveted character is finally within your roster of cute little pocket monsters.

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