Optimal pinap usage to maximize expected number of candies from mewtwo raid boss with new catch rate

Any pokemon that I would use rare candies on is a pokemon that will get silver pinaps during double candy.

That’s the proper Logic.

You've got some of the right logic in there, but not all of it. Legendary candy is the hardest to obtain (most importantly through walking), and most people have a greater lack of legendary candies than they have rare candies. Thus, it is normally optimal to only spend rare candies on legendary pokemom.

But it does not follow from this that all legendary candy are of equal value. Imagine if there were exchange rates for legendary candy to rare candy. Any legendary candy is worth at least a little less than a rare candy because a rare candy can be turned into any of them.

If I were setting the exchange rate for regirock candy to rare candy I would say that 100 regirock candy is worth 0 rare candy. I would not give someone a rare candy for their 100 regirock candy if this were possible. That candy is worthless to me.

So when we're thinking about the value of silver pinap berries - they can give you some number of bonus legendary candies. It's reasonably clear that you should use them on legendary pokemon because legendary candies are scarcest. All good so far.

But should you hoard them all for a double candy event? That depends. In the long run, you'll use as many silver pinap berries as you get. If you get so many silver pinap berries and raid so seldomly that you could use silver pinap berries for every throw on every legendary raid whose candy you value during a double candy event, and have an ever-growing surplus of silver pinap berries, then obviously you should use some outside of double candy events.

The math gets a lot more complicated than that though, because while some legendary candies are worth nothing to a given person, some will be valuable but less so than others. I need Mewtwo candy a lot more than I need Moltres candy. But is Mewtwo candy worth twice as much to me as Moltres candy? It's hard to say. If I can get 6 Moltres candy instead of 5 Mewtwo candy, is that worth it? Will I ever actually end up spending rare candies on Moltres, or will I always need so much for things that are better that I'm only spending Moltres candy on Moltres?

Mewtwo candy is among the most valuable to me. Is it a good idea to save all of my silver pinap berries for a double candy event when I can't guarantee that there will be raids for pokemom whose candy I want as much as Mewtwo during that event? There are three broad scenarios:

1) There are only something like Regi raids during a double candy event. Then I wouldn't use any silver pinap berries on them and I would have thrown away an opportunity to get more Mewtwo candy. That's not a good outcome.

2) There are Mewtwo raids or something equivalently good during a double candy event. Then I'd use silver pinap berries lots, and would want to save as many as I could usefully expend catching them. How much raiding am I going to do? Also unknown, depends on what the other bonuses are. But how much raiding am I going to do? Unknown, depends on what the other bonuses are for raiding at the time. So even this scenario it isn't obvious how many silver pinap berries to save.

3) There are Moltres raids or something else whose candy I value, but value less than Mewtwo's, during a double candy event. How many silver pinap berries should I save? That's a very hard question to answer.

/r/TheSilphRoad Thread Parent