Does swapping Buddy lose progress?

As a passionate Pokémon Go player, I‘m often asked by friends and readers: "If I swap my Buddy Pokémon, will I lose the progress I‘ve made toward earning a candy with them?"

The short answer is: Yes, any progress toward earning your next candy will reset to zero if you swap Buddies. But your Buddy level will not decrease.

Let‘s dive deeper into the mechanics at play, best practices around Buddy management, and how to maximize the performance of your top Pokémon.

Swapping Buddies resets candy progress, but not Buddy level

Every Pokémon in Pokémon Go has a certain candy distance – the distance you need to walk in order to earn Candies to power up or evolve that species. Common Pokémon like Pidgey only need 1km per Candy, while Legendaries like Mewtwo require a whopping 20km!

As you walk with your Buddy, your progress on the meter below them steadily increases until finally awarding a Candy and resetting.

However, if at any point you decide to swap your current Buddy for another Pokémon, the entire mileage counter gets erased back to zero. All that walking was for nothing!

For example:

As you can see, timing your Buddy swap correctly after earning Candy is crucial to avoiding wasted distance!

Now for some good news: When you swap Buddies, your Buddy level (Good, Great, Ultra or Best Buddy) remains completely unaffected.

The heart meter measuring your Bond with that species goes on pause when swapped and will still be at the same level when you return to them later. So you can freely rotate between Buddies without impacting any Best friend perks unlocked.

Tips for managing Buddy swaps in Pokémon Go

With an understanding of how swapping works under the hood, let‘s talk tips and strategy for effectively managing your Buddy roster:

• Swap immediately after earning a Candy – This should be obvious by now, but always swap Buddies after you‘ve hit your distance milestone and received Candy to avoid progress loss.
• You can swap up to 20 times per day – If you have the patience, you can rotate all of your favorite Pokémon through as Buddies in a single day.
• Prioritize "Best" Buddies for battle first – Pokémon marked as Best Buddies receive a CP boost in combat, so shoot for that status with your top raid counters and gym attackers first.
• Plan candy earning for evolutions – Figure out how many Candies are needed to evolve each species (like 400 for Magikarp) and make sure to set as Buddy early enough to have the Candies in time for a good evolution like Gyarados.

If attempting to earn a Candy takes longer than a day for legendaries, I actually recommend having a separate permanent "walking" Buddy different from your "Best" battle Buddy with the CP boosts.

As a hardcore shiny hunter, I keep my Shiny Meltan (400 Candies needed) on permanent walking duty these days!

Which species earn Candies the fastest?

For the collectors out there looking to speed up evolutions, here are the Pokémon species requiring the fewest kilometers per Candy in Pokémon Go:

As you can see, the common Gen 1 spawns are fastest at 1km per Candy. So I‘d recommend buddying up Weedles and Pidgeys during Lucky Egg evolve sprees!

Meanwhile, 5km buddies like Clefairy or Geodude are great backup options if you‘ve already got enough of the 1km ones.

Conclusion: Be strategic with Buddy swaps

I hope this guide has given you some clarity around what progress does (candy) or does NOT (Buddy level) reset when swapping Buddies in Pokémon Go.

The key lessons here are:

• Always swap after earning Candy, not before
• You can swap up to 20 times per day
• Prioritize Best and walking Buddies appropriately
• Match faster earning species to your evolution goals

Stay tuned here for more tips onmaximizing performance, rare catches, and better battling in Pokémon Go! Which Buddy are you currently walking with? Let me know in the comments!