Findings
We will discuss our findings, starting with individual spawn locations and moving into more general summaries.
Distribution of Pokémon Locations / Distance from Observer
Below is a distribution plot of the Pokémon observed, combining all observation stations. As you can see, wild Pokémon are not observable outside a distance of 100m from the observation point (denoted by the red circle). Instead of Observation Posts, you can think of yourself standing in a field. How far can you see pokemon? How many will spawn around you during the course of an hour? That is what we’re talking about.
Of particular note is the sparsity of locations, the small number of black dots. Each of the 422 points represents 99 individual Pokémon spawns occurring in exactly the same location. If Pokémon spawning was random, this should be an evenly-distributed cloud of points. As this is not the case, it’s clear that Pokémon spawn in fixed locations.
Finally, the individual spawn locations themselves are relatively evenly distributed, with a slight increase in density at the diagonal directions. This merits further investigation with additional observation locations.
Spawn Location Distance from Observation Station
Variety of Pokémon Spawns within Station View
Given that Pokémon spawn in a fixed location, the next question becomes: How many spawn locations are observed by a typical monitoring station? Grouping each monitoring station based on the number of spawn locations contained within the monitoring station reveals that most stations have access to five or fewer Pokémon spawn locations, with very few having access to more than 10:
Distribution of Visible Spawn Counts
Time To Spawn
It’s become common knowledge that the act of a Pokémon spawning at a specific spawn location occurs on an hourly basis, and this dataset seems to confirm this observation1 This is not charted, as it’s a rather boring chart. Every single one of the 41,657 Pokémon was observed for no more than 15 minutes. The ones that were observed less than 15 minutes were during the start or end of the observation period.,2 Interesting! I’ve been shared data that seems to indicate there are 30-minute spawns. I’ve double-checked my data, and the only time this happens is when the servers seem to have a hiccup. That said, I may have more information in the next week, so stay tuned!. Hourly spawning of Pokémon is only part of the story, as an observer in any given location may have access to additional spawn locations.
Turning our gaze to these observation stations, one could think of it as standing in a singular place: What is the average time you would have to wait until another Pokémon arrived (of any type), given the time of the last Pokémon spawn? This is strongly correlated to the number of spawn locations an observation station has access to.
In referring to the cumulative frequency chart below, you can determine that in this dataset it would be 50% probable to see a new Pokémon within 18 minutes while standing stationary.
Observation Stations: Mean Minutes Until Spawn Each bar in this chart represents the number of stations that have an average time-until-next-spawn of N minutes.
Given that Pokémon spawn every 60 minutes and persist for 15 minutes, observation stations with 4 or more spawn points become increasingly likely to have concurrent Pokémon. The sampled probability of coming across multiple Pokémon was found to be:
| Pokemon Seen Concurrently | Probability |
|---|---|
| 1 | 74.659% |
| 2 | 18.743% |
| 3 | 04.354% |
| 4 | 01.371% |
| 5 | 00.541% |
| 6 | 00.182% |
| 7 | 00.065% |
| 8 | 00.055% |
| 9 | 00.020% |
| 10 | 00.003% |
| 11 | 00.007% |
If one were waiting for a specific Pokémon to respawn, that is another story. Each spawn location may spawn a variety of Pokémon, and so anything but the most common Pokémon will take several hours to spawn at the same location. Please refer to Pokémon Spawn Frequencies per Station for a list of Pokémon type / Pokémon respawn probabilities.
Sparsity of Rural Areas
It is interesting to note that the sparsity of spawning as a station becomes more rural is extremely significant. In the diagram below, the gaps in Pokémon spawning correlates to:
- A freeway cutting through left-to-right at approximately 2000 latitude,
- Large fields in the square mid-east, centered at 1200,1250.
- A river moving South East and emptying into a lake from 1000,500 to 500,750,
- The lake in the South East centered at 1250,500
The northern portion of the map contains a bustling city, and the triangular quadrant mid- to mid-west are trails cutting through the large park system (leading to the lake). You can see that low-population areas have had no Pokémon spawning during the observation period of 110 hours:
Pokemon Spawn Locations, and Observation Posts
