Ditto is one of the most sought after creatures in Pokemon GO, but many methods of finding him have already been disproven — here's the lowdown on which strategies are fake.
Just like prior games in the series, the end goal of Pokemon GO is catching 'em all. However, Niantic isn't being completely transparent about which pocket monsters are currently obtainable in the app, and which are being held back.
It seems likely that legendary Pokemon like Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres are going to be distributed via some sort of event, and Mew and Mewtwo probably fall into the same category. However, there's another creature that no one has been able to catch in-game — the lovable copycat, Ditto.
Ditto is famed for its ability to mimic whatever Pokemon it's squaring off with, so there's some debate as to whether Niantic is holding off on adding it to the game while it mulls over an appropriate mechanic. That being said, there are plenty of rumors flying around about how trainers can capture it, more often than not wasting players' time.
- Simply naming a Pokemon "Ditto" doesn't work — even though that's the method for controlling Eevee's evolutions.
- Using symbols to give a Pokemon a name that resembles a Ditto's face doesn't work either, perhaps unsurprisingly.
- Pressing and holding to Pokeball to access the menu, then dragging to one of the four menu options causes their icon to be colored red, blue, yellow, or orange. Various color combinations have been attempted, but none have caused Ditto to appear.
- Ditto has the same capture rate and flee rate as the four starter Pokemon. However, various interactions with the four starters haven't prompted Ditto to appear.
- Evolving a Pokemon with the canonical height and weight of a Ditto doesn't seem to have the desired effect.
- The in-game camera is incapable of scanning QR codes to "unlock" Ditto.
In Pokemon lore, Ditto is believed to be a failed clone of Mew, and as such it's possible that the monster could be available as part of a future event. However, dataminers have already discovered that Ditto is hypothetically capturable, whereas the legendary birds are not.
There's still a lot of confusion about Ditto, and plenty of misinformation being spread around. As more techniques are proven not to work, we can perhaps start to get a better idea about new strategies that are worth investigating.
Of course, we won't know anything for sure until Niantic gives official confirmation. The reveal of the game's team leaders at Comic-Con suggests that Pokemon GO is going to be fleshed out much more now that it's available in a broad swathe of regions — and that's very exciting news for trainers.
Pokemon GO is available now on Android and iOS devices in select areas.