How to get it
- Earn it from research that explicitly grants a Super Rocket Radar, often associated with Rocket Takeover releases.
- It cannot be assembled from ordinary Mysterious Components.
How to use it
- Equip it to investigate Giovanni locations. Some PokéStop signals lead to decoy Grunts.
- Defeat Giovanni to use the radar and access his reward encounter.
Worth knowing
Decoys do not consume the radar. You can unequip it while deciding when to face Giovanni.
Giovanni’s reward Pokémon changes over time; the radar itself does not lock in the Legendary shown when you first earned it.
Decoys and Giovanni are different encounters
Some locations revealed by the Super Rocket Radar contain decoy Grunts. Defeating a decoy does not consume the Super Rocket Radar as if you had defeated Giovanni.
With the Super Rocket Radar active, a Rocket balloon can instead provide the Giovanni encounter. Review the currently available Shadow Legendary before committing to the win: the radar locates the boss, but does not let you choose freely from his past reward Pokémon.
Sources & further reading
- Pokémon GO: A Quantitative Approach by nick blackVersion 1.0.6 (October 4, 2026), §4.6, p. 27
Event rewards, shop offers, and limits can change. Check the current in-game description for event-specific rules. Worked examples are illustrative calculations.