There’s only one correct way to use Pokémon Go’s Eevee name trick

There are a lot of species to get in Pokémon Go, but players often have a soft spot for Eeveelutions. You might have to be patient to get them all, however, especially since it’s recommended to wait for a long time before using the Pokémon’s name trick.

Many players recommend waiting until Level 41 to use the trick because one of the missions to reach Level 42 is to evolve Eevee into each of its unique evolutions.

This can take you a long time, especially since you have ways of getting each Eeveelution in special circumstances, but not for the three Kanto species: Jolteon, Vaporeon, and Flareon. For those, you’ll have to evolve Eevees over and over again until you get all three—unless you use the rename trick.

A player suggested doing this would be a huge waste, however. “Do NOT use the Eevee name trick for the level 41 requirement,” wrote the title of a top-voted Reddit thread. “Keep the name trick for those 3 for shinys,” it read.

According to the player, the Level 41 requirements, although challenging, shouldn’t be the priority because there’s something even harder to do in Pokémon Go: get all Eeveelutions in their Shiny version.

In Pokémon Go, there is only one way to be guaranteed of getting Jolteon, Vaporeon, and Flareon, Kanto’s evolutions of Eevee: renaming them Sparky, Rainer, and Pyro, respectively. This trick can work only once, which means it’s a unique chance you don’t want to waste.

Other Eeveelutions, however, all feature special tasks and means to be obtained, and the name trick also works on those. Players will only be blocked by the three Kanto Evolutions to get to Level 42, and they can get as many candies as they want by assigning any Evee or corresponding Evolution as Buddy and walking with them.

“You can guarantee all Eeveelutions except those 3 by doing certain things. Walking 10km as a buddy and then either evolving during the day for Espeon or during the night for Umbreon, getting 70 buddy hearts for Sylveon, spinning a glacial lure for Glacron and a mossy lure for Leafeon,” wrote the author. “Only Flareon, Vaporeon and Jolteon are completely random.”

For them, it means getting all Shiny Eeveelutions is harder than meeting Level 42’s requirement, so the trick should be saved for this. Players massively agreed with their suggestion in the comments.

Users added some tips to help players complete their Level 41 task, which can take a very long time. Forgetting which Eeveelution you validated and which you haven’t is the trap you should avoid. To record the ones that counted in the task, it’s recommended to tag the Pokémon species so you can always know which Eeveelutions are missing.

If you’re like me and you’ve started out the game at launch and used that trick a long time ago, well you can only hope to get lucky, as the developer didn’t introduce a rename reset for longtime players.