Published 21 minutes ago

You’ll need to be not just best friends, but Forever Friends

Graphic: Julia Lee/Polygon | Source images: Game Freak/Nintendo, The Pokémon Company, Niantic

Remote trading has finally been added to Pokémon Go, allowing you to trade Pokémon with your friends, even if you aren’t right next to each other. You’ll finally be able to trade with that Lucky Friend who moved away, but you’ll have to be patient, as you can’t just trade freely as much as you want.

As of writing this, this feature is only available in New Zealand, but it will eventually roll out to the rest of the world.

Below you can see how to remote trade in Pokémon Go, along with how to reach the coveted Forever Friends rank with your besties.

How to remote trade in Pokémon Go

In order to remote trade, you’ll need to be Forever Friends with the player you’re trying to trade with. This is a newly added tier above Best Friends, so you’ll need to raise that friendship before you can even think about remote trading.

Based on Niantic’s blog, this is how to remote trade:

1. Reach Forever Friends with the friend you’d like to trade with.
2. Mark up to three Pokémon that you’d like to offer in your trades with the "Remote Trade" tag. Your Forever Friends will be able to see the Pokémon you have tagged.
3. Select the Pokémon on your Forever Friend’s list that you’d like to receive and wait for their selection.
4. If you are both OK with that offer, you can confirm the trade.
5. Once the trade is completed, you will need to earn 90 friendship points to do another remote trade with that same Forever Friend.

Yes, if you want to do multiple trades with one friend, you’ll need to recharge a remote trading gauge with friendship points, effectively putting a lengthy cooldown on each trade you make with individual players.

Image: Niantic

If you are** Lucky Friends **with your friend, the remote trade will still be lucky, so you don’t have to worry too much about that.

Additionally, no matter what Pokémon you trade remotely, remote trades will never eat up a Special Trade for that day, so you can freely swap legendaries, shinies, and new Pokédex entries.

Notably, you cannot trade the following:

• Pokémon caught in the last 30 days
• Previously traded Pokémon
• Shadow Pokémon
• Mythical Pokémon
• Pokémon defending Gyms or Power Spots
• Pokémon currently set as your buddy
• Actively Mega-Evolved Pokémon
• Fused Pokémon
• Crowned Sword Zacian and Crowned Shield Zamazenta
• Pokémon placed at Pokémon Playgrounds

Admittedly, as of writing this, we’re unable to test this feature ourselves, both since the feature hasn’t rolled out to our region and because there’s a time gate on raising friendship. We’ll update this post with more details when we’re able to test this system ourselves.

How to become Forever Friends in Pokémon Go

You can raise your friendship to Forever Friends the same way you raise friendship normally:

• Participate in Weekly Challenges with your friend
• Trade a Pokémon with your friend
• Open a gift from your friend or have a gift opened by your friend
• Raid with your friend

You can only gain one friendship point per day by doing any of the above methods, though completing Weekly Challenges will net you extra friendship points. There are also often events that double friendship gains, so you’ll want to take advantage of those when they come around.