Should you buy the Pokémon Go Verdant Wonders Rogue of the Jungle Zarude Special Research ticket?

Ticketed content has been rampant in Pokémon Go this year and the Verdant Wonders event is a perfect example, with most of its content locked behind a ticket. This situation has left many wondering if it’s even worth buying the Verdant Wonders: Rogue of the Jungle tickets just to get Special Research and bonuses.

The Verdant Wonders event runs from March 21 to 25 at 8pm local time, with a focus on the Mythical Pokémon Zarude and other Pokémon found in forest biomes. You will see the debut of Flower Crown Cottonee and Shiny Flabébé along with plenty of other featured encounters, though a lot of extra goodies are exclusive to players who purchased tickets.

Those bonuses include gameplay modifiers and a set of Special Research, which is currently the only proper way to encounter Zarude in Pokémon Go. But is that enough to make the $8 event ticket worth picking up?

Pokémon Go Verdant Wonders: Rogue of the Jungle Special Research: Price guide and is it worth it? 

The Pokémon Go Verdant Wonders event offers a $7.99 event ticket that includes multiple pieces of exclusive content for the duration of the event from March 21 to 25 at 8pm local time. That mostly boils down to the Rogue of the Jungle Special Research and a few gameplay bonuses. 

Before the event began, most players already called out Niantic for locking the biggest piece of content for this entire event behind a paid ticket. Zarude can only be encountered if you buy the ticket and complete the Rogue of the Jungle Special Research. And, considering this is the first time it has been available in over two years, that means a lot of players need to buy the ticket if they want to catch Zarude for the first time.

In addition to an exclusive Special Research story and Mythical Pokémon encounter, the ticket also unlocks boosted Incense encounters with several rare Pokémon like Pansage, Pansear, Panpour, Zorua, Cutiefly, and the White and Orange Flower variants of Flabébé.

Essentially, if you don’t have Zarude and want one before it disappears for an undisclosed amount of time again, you will want to purchase this event ticket. Additionally, the Verdant Wonders event without the ticket is almost a glorified mini-event until you get to the weekend’s Rocket Takeover. So unless you want to grab a few boosted spawns or Shiny hunt a Flabébé, the ticket is really the only thing making this worth your time.