Exchanging a gift with Mateo in Pokémon GO can be a rough task if you do not know where to look. Mateo first appeared during the Season called Timeless Travels, as he is part of the A Route to New Friendships special research task. In the first step of that mission, one of the quests that needs to be concluded is exchanging a gift with him. While exploring 1km, spinning 3 PokéStops, and earning candy while exploring with your buddy are all pretty straightforward and easily accomplishable, giving a gift to this new NPC is somewhat mysterious, especially if you have not completely dived into the the game’s new mechanics.
When he is first introduced, Mateo is shown off as an adventurer who loves exploring and collecting treasures and therein lies the secret to exchanging gifts with him. He can be found at certain PokéStops, in a similar way that Team GO Rocket Grunts and Leaders, like Giovanni in Pokémon GO, regularly position themselves. However, it is up to you, the player, to trigger the encounter with Mateo. This is because the special is locked behind a new gameplay mechanic that needs to be used if he is to spawn. Simply walking around with no destination will not prompt Mateo to appear, thus making his gift exchange feature impossible.
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Find Mateo At The End Of Routes In Pokémon GO
To exchange gifts with Mateo, you first need to encounter him. The NPC can be found at the end of Routes in the game. To trigger his appearance, you will need to start a Route and walk it to completion. Mateo will appear at the Route’s final PokéStop, waiting to be interacted with. After spinning the PokéStop in Pokémon GO, Mateo will start talking and you can exchange a gift with him.
If the final destination in your Route is a Pokémon Gym, you should interact with it, even if Mateo does not appear as an NPC nearby it.
You can send off a gift and receive one in return. Curiously, these gifts come from Trainers from all around the world. Because of the randomness behind the origin of each gift you get from Mateo, you can save their respective postcards and have a chance of getting an encounter with Spewpa, which can later result in a differently patterned Vivillon in Pokémon GO.
The encounter with Mateo can only be triggered once a day, which limits the amount of gifts you can exchange with him. Nevertheless, only one gift exchange is necessary to complete the special research task’s requirements and get you one step closer to finishing A Route to New Friendships in Pokémon GO.
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Pokémon GO
- Franchise:
- Pokemon
- Platform(s):
- Android, iOS
- Released:
- 2016-07-06
- Developer(s):
- The Pokemon Company, Nintendo, Niantic
- Publisher(s):
- Niantic, Nintendo
- Genre(s):
- Augmented Reality, RPG
- Multiplayer:
- Pokemon
- ESRB:
- E
