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Pokemon GO is celebrating the 2023 Pokemon World Championships by having a special event that's happening until August 15 at 8 pm local time. Passimian will debut in Niantic's mobile game, Pikachu will spawn with a special World Championships t-shirt, and for the first time, Shiny Scraggy makes its debut --but all of that only scratches the surface.

Like most other events in Pokemon GO, there are timed research tasks that trainers can complete to earn special rewards. However, one of the tasks this weekend is tripping some players up. The third task for the research requires trainers to 'Use 5 Charged Attacks.' This may seem like a simple quest, but it turns out that Niantic has left out one important piece of information that'll help players complete the action properly.

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How to Use Charged Attacks in Pokemon GO

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So, there are two types of attacks that a Pokemon can perform in battle in Pokemon GO: Fast Attacks and Charged Attacks. Fast Attacks are the repeated attacks that players perform when they tap on the screen during a battle; the Charged Attacks can only be used once they're powered up and will appear as a button on the lower part of the screen. These attacks are typically stronger than the Fast moves and they can be increased in strength if players successfully complete the touch-screen minigame after activating the attack.

In order for the current questline to register a Charged Attack, players will need to use the attack on a Pokemon that is weak to the move typing, which is called a supereffective attack. So this means trainers will have to use, for example, a Fire-type Charged Attack on a Grass-type Pokemon; or a Water-type move on a Fire-type Pokemon. Otherwise, the quest will not register that a Charged Attack has been performed.

How to Teach a Pokemon a New Charged Attack

A Pokemon being affected by a Super Charged Attack

There are two ways to go about changing a Pokemon's Charged Attack in Pokemon GO:

  1. The first way is to go to the Item menu and use a Charged TM on a Pokemon. This will teach the Pokemon a new random Charged Attack.
  2. The other way is to click on a Pokemon's profile and click the 'New Attack' button. By paying up Candy and Stardust, a new move will be taught.

Pokemon GO is available on mobile devices.

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