With Pokemon GO having put out its latest update, a plethora of fans of the title have been spending their waking hours datamining the game's patch to find out more about what's to come. Interestingly enough, newly discovered code potentially points to the mobile release having legendary creatures be offered to players as rewards for completing the game's new feature known as Raid Battles.

This revelation comes from the subreddit known as The Silph Road, as its members have been combing through the code for the latest update to find as many details as they can about Pokemon GO's new gym and Raid Battles. According to the group's findings so far, legendaries are connected to Raid Battles, as code for a legendary-class Raid Battle ticket – that is, the item used to participate in these co-op challenges – and badges tied to winning against legendary Pokemon have been found in the files.

As the Silph Road member dronpes has speculated, "Legendaries will be encountered in Raid situations (either at events, or under special circumstances isn't clear). They will require a 'Legendary Raid Ticket' item to enter the legendary raid." Furthermore, the Pokemon GO community on Reddit have surmised that after one acquires a legendary Pokemon, they will not be able to deploy the creature to defend a Gym, as the restriction "may help prevent a significant imbalance between botters/illegitimate players (who oft find ways to score rare Pokemon) with legitimate trainers."

As of now, Niantic has yet to explain how players will actually encounter legendaries in Pokemon GO, but their existence in the title has been hinted at for quite some time. As a matter of fact, Niantic's CEO, John Hanke, has mentioned in the past that legendary Pokemon would be added to the game before 2017 is finished. Furthermore, when accepting the Webby Award for Best Mobile Game of 2017 about a month ago, the company's’s global marketing lead Archit Bhargava said that “this summer will be legendary,” hinting at their addition to the game in the middle of this year.

With practically all of the past datamines for Pokemon GO having been an accurate assessment of what's on deck, it seems likely that legendary creatures are indeed going to be the rewards for the game's Raid Battles. After all, Niantic teased the prospect of players being able to capture the likes of Mewtwo when it released the first trailer for the game, so coupling legendary Pokemon with the highly anticipated multiplayer feature makes plenty of sense.

Pokemon GO is available now for Android and iOS devices.

Source: Reddit