Much like Mew before it, it’s now available as part of a Special Research quest, where players must complete a series of objectives as part of a story-based questline. However, there’s another key difference - the quest has debuted first for those attending this year’s Go Fest in Chicago. Celebi has also had it’s shiny form released into Pokémon Go. Shiny Celebi was first released during the December 2020 Secrets of the Jungle event, which unlocked the special research quest Distracted by Something Shiny. On this page: To get started, you need to have completed the third group of tasks for Mew’s’A Mythical Discovery’. Like Mew, there’s no time limit to completing the quest line - so take your time! Celebi is also has also recieved it’s shiny form in Pokémon Go. This form first came available during the December 2020 Secrets of the Jungle event and, if you played Pokémon Go during this event, you’d unlocked the Distracted by Something Shiny special research quest. Completing this questline would result in you catching shiny Celebi! The quest is broken down into eight stages, with multiple challenges to complete per stage. By completing every step of the Special Research quest, the Mythical creature will be given to players as a reward. Though these are similar to Field Research quests, the specific steps are fixed for every player - so if you don’t mind spoilers, you can plan ahead and learn what you need to do to complete them all catch Celebi - which is useful as you’ll need to undertake Raid and Gym battles along the way. If you already caught Celebi by taking part in Chicago’s Go Fest, then completing the many tasks will earn you Candy to help power Celebi up. ‘A Ripple in Time’ Step 1 of 8
Power up a Pokémon 5 times Battle in a Gym 2 times Battle in a raid
Rewards: 10 Pokéballs, Fast TM, Special Incubator ‘A Ripple in Time’ Step 2 of 8
Make 3 new Friends Catch a Pokémon 3 days in a row Evolve an evolved grass-type Pokémon
Rewards: Sun Stone evolution item, 1,500 Stardust, Premium Raid Pass ‘A Ripple in Time’ Step 3 of 8
Each level 25 Use a Sun Stone to evolve Gloom or Sunkern Hatch 9 eggs
Rewards: Eevee encounter, King’s Rock evolution item, Premium Raid Pass ‘A Ripple in Time’ Step 4 of 8
Walk 10km with Eevee as your buddy to earn Candy Evolve Eevee into Espeon during the day Send 20 Gifts to Friends
Rewards: Eevee encounter, 2,500 Stardust, Metal Coat evolution item> ‘A Ripple in Time’ Step 5 of 8
Walk 10km with Eevee as your buddy to earn Candy Evolve Eevee into Umbreon at night Trade a Pokémon
Rewards: Star Piece, 15 Pinap Berries, Up-Grade evolution item ‘A Ripple in Time’ Step 6 of 8
Visit PokéStops 7 days in a row Use 25 Pinap Berries while catching Pokémon Use special evolution items to evolve Pokémon 2 times
Rewards: 3,500 Stardust, Dragon Scale evolution item, 5 Silver Pinap Berries ‘A Ripple in Time’ Step 7 of 8
Catch 40 Grass- or Psychic-type Pokémon Make an Excellent Curveball Throw Earn a Gold Johto Medal
Rewards: 1x Charge TM, 10x Silver Pinap Berries, Celebi encounter. ‘A Ripple in Time’ Step 8 of 8
Catch Celebi!
Rewards: 5,500 Stardust, 1x Super Incubator, 20x Celebi Candy. Thanks to MatterGuy98 and Valarrian on reddit for help with the quest steps. Ahead of the July event, datamining (via The Silph Road subreddit) had revealed a Special Research quest for attendees, which confirmed how the following went down:
A total of five steps to complete Challenges to hatch an Egg, earn Buddy Candy and visit PokéStops Catching Unown, Plusle and Minun Story text hinting at Celebi’s time travelling abilities
Once attendees registered for the event (players have to spin a PokéStop and scan a barcade to register their account as attending) they could get started.
Another hint Celebi was going to be at Go Fest is through a sponsored tweet from Mystic7, showing a silhouette of the Pokemon in an event invite:
The datamines turned out to be true, with Celebi able to be caught after a day’s play:
The Season of Mythical Wishes continues with the Winter Holiday event, which has brought Mega Glalie to Pokémon Go. Don’t forget to partake in the new Go Battle League season.
Elsewhere, be sure to use Daily Adventure Incense for the chance of encountering Galarian Articuno, Galarian Zapdos and Galarian Moltres.
Celebi is both Psychic and Grass Type, leaving it open to attack from Fire, Bug, Dark and Ghost attacks. Between that and fairly underwhelming stats, Celebi continues the trend that Mythical creatures aren’t great competitive Pokémon in Pokémon Go.
However, its rarity alone makes it well worth the time and effort in completing the Special Research questline. After all, there is no way to trade it.
There are more to come, too. Like Legendary Pokémon, each generation adds one or two of these creatures - such as Gen 3’s Jirachi and Deoxys - and it’s assumed these creatures will be added to the game as part of their own Special Research quests at some point in the future.
