Anyone who plays Pokémon Go exclusively probably feels mighty screwed at this point: The newly introduced daily adventure smoke, which is now available to all players, attracts rare Pokémon, sometimes even legendary ones! These include Galar-Zapdos, Galar-Lavados and Galar-Arktos. But Niantic, as usual, doesn’t give you anything. The catch rate of the legendary birds is extremely low. Even with Golden Himmihbeere and Hyperball, the catch circle of the birds still shows up in shades of red, and if the Pokémon breaks out once, it flees immediately. But why? And is it always like this?

That’s what quite a few trainers have been wondering since the introduction of daily adventure smoke, and the developers at Niantic are plenty cryptic about it in their official explanation: “These mysterious Pokémon are attracted by the daily adventure smoke, but they are quite difficult to catch. You can try using items like Himmihberries to increase your chance of catching them. Luckily, tomorrow you will get another daily adventure smoke […]” Yeah wow, thanks for not explaining. So it’s up to the early Pokémon fans to explain the main series concept of traveling Pokémon!

The concept of the Wandering Pokémon

If you’ve played GameFreak’s Pokémon games, you’re familiar with this. Fleeing Pokémon have always been a horror, because as soon as you used an attack, the Pokémon fled. Or, as in Pokémon Go, after a failed ball throw. Fleeing Pokémon roam the regions where they live, and you’ll have to work a bit hard to be exactly where the rare mon is at the moment. And then you need a little luck to keep the Pokémon in the ball.

While in the main series you could still use abilities and attacks to prevent the Pokémon from escaping, in Pokémon Go there is no such possibility. Unfortunately, you have to accept that Wandering Pokémon is not an absolutely new, “stupid” idea to scare players away, but a concept from the main series that is many years old.

What are the fleeing Pokémon?

Adventure smoke has only recently been introduced, and as a result, the concept of fleeing Pokémon hasn’t been around too long in Pokémon Go. Currently, you can encounter the legendary birds Galar-Arktos (Psycho/Flight instead of Ice/Flight), Galar-Zapdos (Battle/Flight instead of Electric/Flight), and Galar-Lavados (Unlight/Flight instead of Fire/Flight).

Fleeing Pokémon of the Main Sequence

Whether all of the main-series fleeing Pokémon can ever be caught via adventure smoke is questionable. Because some of them already existed through research breakthroughs as well as in Raids, and there in Pokémon Go the escape rate seemed to be normal; unlike now with the Galar versions of the legendary birds. Nevertheless, we have created a list for you, because as they say, hope dies last. By the way, this concept of fleeing Pokémon has only existed since the 2nd generation! While you could still catch Zapdos, Arktos and Lavados at fixed locations, this was no longer possible for other legendary Pokémon later on!

• 2nd Generation – Entei, Raikou and Suicune
• 3rd generation – Latias and Latios
• 4th generation – Vesprit and Cresselia
• 5th generation – Boreos and Voltolos
• 8th generation – Galar-Arktos, Galar-Zapdos and Galar-Lavados