Although no official release date has been announced, Pokemon GO's next major update seems to be just a few days away. The APK is now available, which means dataminers are about to pick through all of the details about the upcoming patch before it is pushed to individual devices. That means trainers have a ton of new details about the new PvP battle system to devour.

The initial press release offered a lot of insight into how PvP Battles are going to work, but the system obviously has a lot more moving parts than could be explained in that quick announcement. Luckily, the Pokemon GO community is already tearing down the APK and pulling out the most important points for trainers to take note of. For example, there is a lot of code relating to Buffs and Debuffs that seems to have the community stumped for now...

"The code references multiple levels of Buffs and Debuffs, as well as sound effects related to Buffs and Debuffs. The interesting fact is that the sound effects are present in the APK files, and they are almost exactly like the sound effects for main series buff and debuff sound effects, such as when your Squirtle uses Tail Whip and the opponent loses Defense."

Although the buff and debuff code is a bit of a mystery, some of the changes coming in the big update are a little more straight forward. Here's a short list from the official patch notes:

pokemon-go-pvp-patch-notes

In addition to those big changes, these miscellaneous updates are also a part of the patch, courtesy of Pokemon GO Hub's breakdown:

-Some Pokestop related coding was fiddled with, indicating some changes brought about by the Beta Pokestop Submission process. In short they appear to be location checks and telemetry, indicating an aim to produce more accurate locations when submitting.

-New Badges, simply shown as:BADGE_TOP_BANANA_1, BADGE_TOP_BANANA_2, and BADGE_TOP_BANANA_3. Chrales saw some of this as well, but no solid leads on what these mean.

-Several bits of random code was removed from a section relating to friends and code scanning. Whether this means anything is yet to be seen, but let’s see how things work around the friend processes.

There was nothing to show the costs of adding the second charge move, however the coding to allow a second charge move is in.

-At the time of writing the new hair options are live, however the new skins are not. The hair includes various shades on black, brown, blue, purple, and blonde hairs, as well as new colors in green and white.

Those are the highlights for now, but be sure to check back for more details, updates, and guides once the new features go live. Until then, good luck out there, trainers!

Pokemon GO is currently available in select regions on Android and iOS devices.

Source: Pokemon GO Hub