Rockruff, the cute puppy Pokémon from Alola, has been added to Pokémon Go and it has slightly specific evolution requirements depending on the Rockruff you find and the time of day you attempt to evolve.
How to evolve Rockruff into Midnight, Midday and Dusk Lycanroc forms in Pokémon Go
The Lycanroc you get depends on the time you evolve your Rockruff
Graphic: Julia Lee/Polygon | Source images: Game Freak/Nintendo, The Pokémon Company
Julia Lee (she/her) is a guides producer, writing guides for games like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and Pokémon Go. She helped launch the Rift Herald in 2016.
Our Pokémon Go Rockruff evolutions guide details how to evolve Rockruff into both its Midday, Midnight, and Dusk forms.
How to get Lycanroc Midday or Midnight forms
To get the brown quadruped Midday Lycanroc, you need to use 50 Rockruff Candy on your Rockruff during the daytime.
To get the red two-footed Midnight Lycanroc, you need to use 50 Rockruff Candy on your Rockruff during the nighttime.
Before you tap the evolution button, make sure the silhouette of the Pokémon matches the silhouette of the form you want, because you cannot swap between the forms once you evolve your Rockruff. The silhouettes between Midday and Dusk Form Lycanroc are similar, so make sure you’re paying attention to the shape of their mane behind their ears. You can see the slight difference in the image below.
How to get Dusk Lycanroc in Pokémon Go
To get the orange quadruped Dusk Form Lycanroc, you need to just get lucky. A Rockruff obtained after Jan. 6 may be eligible to evolve into Dusk Form Lycanroc, and that’s all there is to it.
This means you may get an eligible Rockruff from 2 and 7 km eggs during Jan. 2024’s “Lustrous Odyssey” event, from completing a raid encounter, or from Adventure Sync reward eggs throughout the Timeless Travels season onwards.
To clarify, there are technically two different types of Rockruff; one which can evolve into Midday and Midnight, and one which can evolve into Dusk. Which one you will receive from Jan. 2024 onwards is random.
You know you have a Dusk eligible Rockruff due to the unique evolution button, showing a dusk-symbol alongside the usual 50 Rockruff Candy to evolve it.
As for what time dusk is in Pokémon Go, that is specific to your local timezone — but the easiest way is to consult the evolution button when the sun begins to set in your area to see when you can proceed.
This is to replicate the way you get a Dusk Form Lycanroc in base games, which is evolving a special Rockruff with the ability “Own Tempo.” As of Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, there’s just a chance to find “Own Tempo” Rockruff in the wild. Since there aren’t any abilities in Pokémon Go, this is what we get instead.
Why it mattersPokémon Go set the world alight in summer 2016. Thanks to its drip feed of Pokémon from each generation of games, the arrival of player battling, trading, and a variety of global community events, Niantic’s AR RPG is still going strong. So, yes — people are still playing Pokémon Go.
— Matthew Reynolds, Deputy Editor, Service
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