Available from Tuesday, Oct. 22, through Sunday, Nov. 3, as the name suggests, it offers encounters with a variety of costumed Pokémon, including the first opportunity to catch costumed Froakie and Rowlet, and the debut of a new Gengar costume.

This page explains all the “Costume Party” rewards, and whether the ticket is worth buying. (For costume collectors, you probably know the answer.)

‘Costume Party’ Timed Research quest steps and rewards

This quest requires you catch a certain number of Pokémon, with berries, and across a variety of species. The steps and rewards are:

Rewards: Gengar [Spooky Festival] encounter, 2 Premium Battle Passes, 5,000 XP

Is the ‘Costume Party’ ticket worth buying?

Unlike most Pokémon Go Halloween celebrations, there is a lack of costumes available to find in the wild or raids in Part 1 of the event — and so it’s from premium research tickets such as this and “Morpeko Onesie” where you’ll find these encounters in the opening week.

If you want to guarantee you get these costumes (they will appear across wild spawns, raids, and eggs when Part 2 rolls around) then this is useful in maintaining your Pokémon Go costume collection. For those who haven’t played every Halloween event to date, this ticket can help you get any costumes you’ve missed, and / or roll the dice for some shiny variants.

If you weren’t too interested in costumes, this is a good way to get higher-than-average set of stats for some reasonably competitive Pokémon, since research encounters have an “IV floor” of 10/10/10 out of a possible max of 15/15/15. So if you’re after Rowlet, Froakie, Gengar, and more with decent stats — and unique appearances — then that’s worth considering.

Finally, the addition of two Premium Battle Passes as the end reward, which are priced at 100 PokéCoins — or around $1 — each, technically covers the overall $2 entry fee of the ticket.

So in summary, yes, “Costume Party” is worth buying is any and all of the above matter to you. Note that the “Morpeko Onesie” is a separate purchase, and comes at a steeper $5 cost, making it $7 if you want both sets of research — so feel free to review both sets of rewards if you only have the funds for one ticket this year.