Raid Battle



A Raid Battle is a special event that takes place within a Gym in Pokémon GO.

Details
A Raid Battle is a cooperative gameplay experience that encourages Trainers to work with other Trainers to defeat an extremely powerful Pokémon known as the Raid Boss. Before a Raid Battle begins a large egg will appear atop the Gym. When the countdown above the egg reaches zero, the Raid Boss will be revealed.

There is also a special Raid called an EX Raid Battle which is an invitation-only Raid. A trainer will receive a notification along with with time, date and location; along with an EX Raid Pass to gain entry into the Raid.

Eggs start to appear at 5:00 AM and end at 7:45 PM local time.

Raid Passes


Before a Trainer can battle the Raid Boss, they'll need a Raid Pass. Trainers can receive one free Raid Pass per day by visiting a Gym, but can only hold one at a time. A Premium Battle Pass may also be purchased from the in-game Shop. Players can also battle the Raid Boss remotely using a Remote Raid Pass.

Raid Bosses
Upon using a Raid Pass to join the battle, the Trainer and up to 19 other Trainers work together to defeat the Raid Boss. If a Raid Boss is successfully defeated within the three-minute time limit (five-minutes for Legendary raids), those Trainers have the chance to catch an extra powerful Pokémon of their own.

Raid Eggs
Raid Eggs are a special type of Pokémon Eggs which hatch into Raid Bosses. Upon the beginning of the Raid Battle, a Raid Egg will be placed atop the Gym. A countdown will display the time until the Egg hatches and the battle begins.

A Raid Egg will usually appear one hour before it will hatch. Certain events will decrease the time of hatch time. The Raid tab in the Nearby and Sightings view will denote the hatch time in 24-hour clock or military time. Once the egg hatches, the Raid Boss will become available for battling for the next 45 minutes.

Types
There are three tiers of Raid Eggs – Normal, Rare, and Legendary.

Rewards
Completing a Raid Battle for the first time will always award 1,000 Stardust. After defeating a Raid Boss, Trainers receive a collection of rewards which depend on the tier of defeated Raid Boss.

Bonus Challenge
Bonus Challenge is a feature available for Trainers who successfully defeated Raid Boss and it gives an opportunity to catch the Raid Boss Pokémon as if it was a Pokémon in the wild, but with a significant difference – Trainer cannot use their owned Poké Balls.

After successfully defeating the Raid Boss and being rewarded with Items, there are Raid Battle performance statistics shown to Trainer with amount of Premier Balls given to them and the Go to Bonus Challenge button displayed.

After tapping on the button, the encounter screen shows up with Pokémon that is a defeated Raid Boss. The player does not have their currently owned Poké Balls for use but only the Premier Balls that they have been rewarded for performance in won Raid Battle.

Pokémon in Bonus Challenge, especially Legendary and Mythical Pokémon, tend to dodge and attack more frequently and have low capture rate.

If Trainer do not manage to capture the Pokémon with their last Premier Ball and there are no more Premier Balls left, the Pokémon will flee.

Trainer can leave the encounter screen of Bonus Challenge and re-enter it by tapping on the same Gym which the Raid Boss was defeated at, but as long as the Raid still occurs on that Gym.

Trainer can capture Pokémon after defeating Raid Boss in the Raid Battle which has ended and is no longer visible on Gym but once they leave the encounter screen they cannot return to it.

History

 * June, 2017 - Raids were open being available for players level 35 and above
 * June, 2017 - Raids were made available for players level 31 and above
 * June, 2017 - Raids were made available for players level 28 and above
 * June, 2017 - Raids were made available for players level 25 and above
 * June, 2017 - Raids were made available for players level 20 and above
 * July, 2017 - Raids were made available for players level 5 and above

Trivia

 * Before introduction of Research tasks and Trainer Battles, Rare Candy, Golden Razz Berry and TMs were exclusively available as rewards from Raid Battles.
 * Originally, the amount of Stardust given per Raid Battle was 500. It was increased to 750 on October, 2018. Then it was increased to 1000 on January , 2019.
 * Legendary Raid Bosses have a base capture rate of 2%.
 * Mewtwo in normal Raid Battle and Darkrai in Halloween 2019 are the only Tier 6 Raid Bosses, which are labelled as Tier 5 in the game and give the same awards upon victory.