How to complete the Pokemon GO Lunar New Year challenge

Like a lot of other online games, Pokemon GO is celebrating the Lunar New Year. With every new event in Pokemon GO comes a wide catalog of event bonuses, items, and special research tasks. In standard fashion, this event comes with various research tasks as well as a capture challenge and a friendship challenge.

The Lunar New Year is celebrated by lots of games with player bases in southern and southeastern Asian countries. Games like Dead by Daylight, League of Legends, and various other games commemorate this event for many of their fans. In the Chinese zodiac, this year is the Year of the Tiger, and as such, various feline Pokemon will be making an appearance.

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Completing the Various Tasks for Pokemon GO's Lunar New Year event

The Year of the Tiger typically symbolizes Bravery, Enthusiasm, and strong moral values (Image via Niantic)

Lunar New Year: Catch Challenge

This part of Pokemon GO's event does not stray too far from other capture challenges in the past. This challenge does not have multiple stages like others typically do and is also very lenient on the type of Pokemon players need to catch to complete each stage.

The only restriction put in place is for one objective, which requires players to catch 25 Fire-type Pokemon. Another pseudo-restriction requires the player to catch ten different species of Pokemon, which is something the player will most likely complete on accident. Other objectives for this task include catching 10 Pokemon, which rewards the player with 10 Poke balls, and catching 25 Pokemon, which rewards the player with 15 Great Balls.

Upon completing the entire catching challenge, players will be rewarded with 1,000 Stardust, 1,000 XP, and an encounter with Espurr, who has a chance to be shiny.

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Lunar New Year: Friendship Challenge

This part of the event revolves around giving gifts to other players. Three out of four of each of the objectives revolves solely around sending in-game gifts to other players in your friends list. The last objective requires players to trade three Pokemon with a friend. Completing this objective rewards the player with a chance to catch Corphish.

The next three objectives require players to send gifts to players in Pokemon GO with certain variations. One objective requires the player to send five gifts in total with stickers attached to each of them. This objective rewards the player with a chance to catch Torchic.

The next objective requires players to send 15 gifts to their friends and rewards the player with a chance to catch Darumaka.

The final objective requires the player to send out gifts for three days in a row and rewards the player with an encounter whose information is currently unknown.

Upon completing all of these objectives, the player is rewarded with 1,000 stardust, 1,000 XP, and another mystery encounter.

There are various steps players can take to speed up the process of completing these objectives in Pokemon GO. Groups on social media platforms actively look for new members to add to their group, which is a great way to exchange friend codes and find other players to invite to Raid Battles. Items like Lures and Incenses can help players speed up the process of spawning wild Pokemon to catch to complete their catch challenges as well.