How To Exchange A Gift With Mateo In Pokémon Go

Republished By Plato

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Mateo is a character and feature introduced in as part of Pokémon Go’s Timeless Travel season in Dec. 2023.

The researcher can be found when playing Routes, and gives players another way to exchange gifts with others from distant locales — something which could prove useful for completing your Vivillion collection.

It’s otherwise an extra incentive for completing Routes, alongside finding Zygarde Cells.

Here’s how to exchange a gift with Mateo in Pokémon Go, and why Mateo might not be appearing for you.

How to exchange a gift with Mateo in Pokémon Go

Mateo is found by using the Route feature. Routes, introduced to the game in the summer of 2023, are found on a tab in the ‘Nearby’ window in the lower right corner of the map screen.

To find and exchange a gift with Mateo, you must walk to the end of a Route. From there, Mateo will appear at the final PokéStop, similar to Rocket Grunts and Leaders.

Interacting with the PokéStop will allow you to engage with Mateo. From there, you can send a Gift found along your route, and then choose from several Gifts to open one in return from another trainer elsewhere in the world — giving you a chance to pin a Postcard from another country.

Though the exact mechanics of the Gift exchange is unclear, it’s likely similar to Wonder Trade in the main games, in that that trainers giving gifts to Mateo are in fact exchanging gifts with another trainer at random.

Why isn’t Mateo appearing in Pokémon Go?

At the time of writing (Tuesday, Dec. 5, the day of Mateo’s debut), it’s possible he only spawns from 10 a.m. local time. This is at odds of the feature’s associated research Special Research “A Route to New Friendships” (which tasks you to exchange a gift with Mateo), which went live at midnight the day before — so it might be a case of Niantic confusing matters by not co-ordinating the two together.

Though not confirmed, it’s also possible Mateo does not spawn on every route. As such, you might have to complete multiple routes for Mateo to appear. This is similar to collecting Zygarde Cells, which only have a chance of appearing when walking Routes.

However, similar to Zygarde Cells, it’s possible that ‘forcing’ Mateo to spawn by closing and re-opening the Pokémon Go app within the PokéStop radius could help. Give this a go — and if there’s no luck, try completing another unique Route to see if Mateo appears.