Ahoy, in this blog post I want to show you how you can evolve the newly released Inkay into Malamar. As mentioned in my previous blog post it requires a unique method of evolution. This method was introduced in Pokémon X and Y which were the first games for Inkay to appear in.
I traded several Inkay with a friend to try and obtain a Lucky Inkay. That way my Pokédex registry for Malamar to make this guide would be a Lucky Malamar immediately.
As you will notice on Inkay it shows "?" + 50 Inkay Candy to evolve it. Once you get the 50 Inkay Candy, the evolve button will still be greyed out. This is due to the unique requirement to evolve it. You can see the button greyed out in this screenshot.
So how does one evolve Inkay?
In Pokémon X and Y you had to hold your Nintendo 3DS upside down when Inkay leveled up in order to trigger its evolution. So this method of evolution has been kept for evolving Inkay into Malamar in Pokémon GO.
Flip your phone upside down
When you flip your phone upside down, you will see the Evolve button turn into its normal darker pink colour and even the text "evolve" will be turned upside down.
If you click on the evolve button now it will display a notification asking if you want to evolve Inkay. Since your phone is upside down this will also be upside down. For the sake of phone orientation I've left those next photos upside down. But you do not have to keep your phone upside down anymore now.
Once you've clicked on the evolve button you can flip your phone back to normal at any time that you wish to do so. I've tried that out by flipping it back to normal before I confirmed that I wanted to evolve Inkay.
Now the evolution process continues and we see our Inkay has evolved into Malamar. Here you can see the end of the evolution process and my Malamar Pokédex registry.
As you can see, the bottom part of Malamar looks like the top part from Inkay and same for the top part of Malamar. Which explains the need for Inkay to be upside down in order to evolve.
Here you can see the stats for my Lucky Malamar.
This is definitely the best stats out of any of the Inkay I have caught so far.
I hope this guide helped those who might be struggling to evolve their Inkay.