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Ahoy! This Thursday May 12th the Water Festival has returned for its 2022 edition. This event will last until Friday May 20th at 8 pm local time.

The event has 2x Candy from hatching Eggs and increased XL Candy from hatching Eggs. Since it's a water event, any Rainy Lure Module activated during the event will last for 2 hours instead of 30 minutes!

Before the start of the event, a global challenge started that required Trainers all over the world to catch 600,000,000 Water-type Pokémon. This challenge was completed already today, and adds an additional bonus for the remainder of the event: 2x Catch Candy

This bonus will be especially helpful to get Dewpider Candy. If you're trying to get more Candy from any Pokémon you encounter, make sure to use Pinap Berries because the 2 Catch Candy stacks with the bonus Candy from Pinap Berries. Catching a Magikarp with a Pinap Berry and this bonus would be 12 Magikarp Candy, with another +1 if you have a Water-type Mega Evolved Pokémon active.

Prior to the event start, we already received the Poni Island Special Research and had Tapu Fini showing up in Raids since Tuesday at 10 am local time. Here you can see my first encounter with Tapu Fini and its Pokédex registry.

Back to the event now, these are the increased wild spawns from the event:

I didn't have much time during the first day of the event to play, but I did eventually encounter a Dewpider! That was my only Dewpider I found that day. Here is its Pokédex registry and the stats. Great Attack stats, but no Defense at all.

There is also a Timed Research found under the Today view called "Water Festival: Catch Challenge", it has many Poké Balls, Great Balls and Ultra Balls as reward. Here you can see what you have to do for it.

I think the encounters could be a Dewpider and a Lapras wearing a scarf, I'll find out once I complete the challenge and claim the rewards.

Especially because Lapras doesn't have an increased spawn chance from the event. So you can find Lapras either in 3-star Raids, or from one of the event Field Research tasks which I'll get to now.

Event Field Research Tasks

There are once again a bunch of event Field Research tasks. These are the ones with encounters:

• Catch 5 Pokémon: Magikarp ✨ OR Wailmer ✨
• Catch 5 Magikarp or Wailmer: Luvdisc ✨
• Catch 10 Water-type Pokémon: Binacle ✨
• Catch 15 Pokémon: Dewpider
• Catch 25 Pokémon: Lapras wearing a scarf ✨
• Hatch an Egg: Carvanha ✨
• Evolve 2 Water-type Pokémon: Marill ✨

Items and Mega Energy:

• Catch 5 Water-type Pokémon: 10 Poké Balls OR 5 Great Balls
• Catch 10 Water-type Pokémon: 20 Blastoise Mega Energy OR 20 Gyarados Mega Energy

I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for the tasks with the Lapras encounters! Possibly try to complete some for Dewpider too, as I haven't seen that many yet in the wild. The Gyarados Mega Energy looks good to me too, I'm running kinda low and that would help me Mega Evolve it more before I'd have to walk again. As I'm trying to increase its Mega Level.

Having Mega Blastoise, Mega Gyarados or Mega Slowbro active during this event can help you get more Candy (and XP if you unlocked Mega Level 2) from all the Water-type Pokémon you catch while the Mega Evolved Pokémon is active. You don't have to set it as a Buddy, just as the active Mega Pokémon.

Looking for more Stardust? Make sure to keep an eye out on the increased Staryu spawns from the event. They give 750 Stardust per catch.