Pokémon GO: How To Exchange A Gift With Mateo

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Exchanging a gift with Mateo in 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 , 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.

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, 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