Nov 17, 2021 10:27:17 GMT Emperor said:

I'm level 28.

Someone tell me what the point of these Event Pokemon are. Sure I can stock up on candies but these guys don't even evolve. Are they just like collector's items?

Your trainer level and battle rank should be different. For instance I'm Lvl 34 but only Rank 4 in battles (because I rarely do it). You can check in the Battle Menu and scrolling down. There should be a shield with a number on it.

Yeah just collector's items. If you can get a shiny variant of them they're more valuable due to their limited edition nature. Honestly I'm a little disappointed in the event since I need to add all three lines as dex entries and yet I can't. I'm curious if the next spotlight hours will be event versions of Chimchar and Piplup or if they'll be their regular forms so I can finally evolve them.

What makes this worse is that Piplup was an event Pokemon during Halloween so a lot of trainers are just swimming in candy.

I feel like the event could have been better but Niantic are a little stingey. I have been able to take care of a few dex entries and farm more Larvitars which I'm happy with. The second part starts tomorrow, fortunately I was able to get the BD shiny version of Turtwig during the Spotlight Hour and a shiny Aron so I'm happy with that. During the second part I need more Burmys, Spheals and Bagons. Also curious to see what the research tasks are for Larvitar and Cranidos. I get the feeling they'll be raid related which is kind of a shame.

My battle rank is 20. Which I think is the max, I can't seem to go any higher.

That explains it, when you reach max rank you can get legendary encounters if you win 3 matches on the day.

As a fan of water starters this is going to be sick.

One of my research missions is to catch 5 Electric Pokemon but there literally aren't any at the moment.

Nov 18, 2021 15:54:06 GMT Emperor said:

One of my research missions is to catch 5 Electric Pokemon but there literally aren't any at the moment.

Is it a field research or a special research?

Magnemite, Electrike and Pikachu still spawn albeit they're uncommon. Otherwise just wait until the Shinx community day on Sunday.

If it's a field research, delete the mission and spin a different PokeStop for a different mission.

It's special research. Funnily enough I only found out a few days ago that you could delete field missions!

If you get an encounter as a reward, do you have to catch the Pokemon to make the reward go away? If I flee from the battle it's still there.

Nov 18, 2021 18:21:48 GMT Emperor said:

It's special research. Funnily enough I only found out a few days ago that you could delete field missions!

If you get an encounter as a reward, do you have to catch the Pokemon to make the reward go away? If I flee from the battle it's still there.

I thought I answered this, as far as I know yes you eventually have to catch it. You can save up to 90 encounters which can be good for events like double candy or double stardust depending on the monster.

Well the Shinx community day is a wrap and I'm officially beat.

The day started when I traded in around 150 Pokemon including a few Darkrai which I sent to Pokemon Home for those extra candies. I did my first leg of the community day in around 2 hours catching 11 shiny Shinx's before coming home for some lunch. Originally the plan was to go for another two hours but I was pretty happy with my haul so I only went an extra hour and that was really just to hatch more eggs since the distance required was cut down to 75%. In the end I only added two more to the tally but I also caught some higher level Shinx's so I was happy with that. Shinx is actually a pretty handy Pokemon for PVE if you can't get a Magneton (which requires 125 candy and a specific lure to evolve) so it's a good supplemental choice. Just make sure to hold off evolving it around community day hours since it'll learn Psychic Fangs which you won't want.

Shout out to the Kid who came through with the Riolu egg. After Mime Jr that was my most desired egg Pokemon so I was glad to break the duck and I ended up with a few.

In the end, I had a productive BDSP event. At first I caught absolutely everything I could but I settled down and largely just went after Spheals, Larvitars and Bagons once I had enough candy to get dex entries of everything else. I only got the one shiny BDSP event starters from the spotlight hours, but otherwise had a decent haul which consisted of Bonsly, Buizel and Bidoof. I also caught a shiny Aipom but that wasn't tied in with the event.

Eggs were kind of a pain. I had to hold off opening up gifts and every so often the game would glitch and my 3.5km egg would hatch at 3.3km and I'd end up with a 5km at a Pokestop. It was a pain but I hatched all of them and got enough candy to evolve everything which was a goal.

If I had to rank it, it wasn't quite as eventful as Festival of Lights or Halloween but still pretty useful.

Really looking forward to the Ed Sheeran event. When I got back into the app in September my main goal was to just catch a Squirtle along the beach, while the beach is out of the equation thanks to schoolies (Aussie version of Springbreak) the ability to catch one with shades is too good to pass up. I'll be going buts and trying to catch as much as possible. I may even listen to Ed just to get into the spirit.

You're pretty intense, Big Pete. I can't match your dedication to the Pokemon.

I've caught two cool Squirtles. They can evolve! I wonder if Wartotle and Blastoise keep the shades?

I have a bunch of missions based on raids now, almost got enough Pokecoins to buy three remote raid passes which should help me clear all of them.

Also have a mission to catch a Furfrou. Is there something special to catching this Pokemon or do I just gotta encounter it?

Nov 22, 2021 22:13:13 GMT Emperor said:

I've caught two cool Squirtles. They can evolve! I wonder if Wartotle and Blastoise keep the shades?

They sure do.

Also have a mission to catch a Furfrou. Is there something special to catching this Pokemon or do I just gotta encounter it?

I presume that's the Misunderstood Mischief research? Or maybe Zarude? Unfortunately Furfrou was a Fashion Week common spawn and hasn't appeared since. It's just a normal capture but I'm unsure how you'd come across one now.

Pretty nice sub-event to look forward to this Friday. Finally the conclusion to the Hoopa event with access to Hoopa's more powerful form, a few raid bosses and some really handy spotlight Pokemon albeit at relatively terrible hours. The Beldum one in particular on Monday at 12pm is such a tease.

If you can they're all worth taking part in, Both Ratata and Pikachu have achievements that require you to capture high volumes and Sableeye is 750 stardust per capture as opposed to 100. Pop a Star Piece and that's 1150 Stardust per capture.

My Pokemon Go exploits have hit a snag.

Australia is getting some much needed rain and heavy showers are forecasted for the rest of the week. We'll see how accurate those are but it's put my plans to go hard for the Ed Sheeran event into some serious jeopardy. I actually tried to play when there was a slight break, but then it picked up quickly and I got absolutely soaked. Fortunately it subsided in time for the spotlight hour and I was able to get a shiny Chimchar relatively quickly. Worth noting as well it's a regular Chimchar so you can evolve it.

Nov 23, 2021 10:20:28 GMT Big Pete said:

I presume that's the Misunderstood Mischief research? Or maybe Zarude? Unfortunately Furfrou was a Fashion Week common spawn and hasn't appeared since. It's just a normal capture but I'm unsure how you'd come across one now.

Misunderstood Mischief. Looks like I'm buggered on that one.

Nov 23, 2021 16:50:48 GMT Emperor said:

Nov 23, 2021 10:20:28 GMT Big Pete said:

I presume that's the Misunderstood Mischief research? Or maybe Zarude? Unfortunately Furfrou was a Fashion Week common spawn and hasn't appeared since. It's just a normal capture but I'm unsure how you'd come across one now.

Misunderstood Mischief. Looks like I'm buggered on that one.

Have you taken a snapshot of your buddy?

Big Pete is a wizard who knows everything about Pokemon Go.

I'm about to tell a story, and I hadn't read Pete's last post before all of this happened.

Today I went to the gym (the real gym, not a Pokemon gym). While there I caught a Falinks which is one of the wackiest Pokemon I've seen. Really new too judging by its number. That was the only time I played Pokemon Go in the gym, honest!

Left the gym, caught a bunch of Pokemon, got some hearts with my new buddy Magikarp. Got photobombed.



Killed the evil Yellow invaders in my local Pokemon gym and stuck my super Falinks in there.

Got home and checked my Special missions. Ticked off the other two in Misunderstood Mischief. One of the rewards was an encounter.

FURFROU! Exactly what I needed!

Fantastic that Pokemon Go was smart enough to have this contingency. Caught the fashion fixated fucker and now I can move on. The best part is that one of the next steps is to evolve a Slowpoke, and I have an awesome Slowpoke ready to evolve. I've held back on evolving Pokemon for a while now, waiting for a Lucky Egg or a mission that required me to evolve some Pokemon. My patience paid off!

Awesome stuff.

I'd say your next obstacle will be the catch 30 Ghost and catch 30 Dark type grind. On Saturday at 12pm they'll run a Sableye spotlight hour who happens to be both Dark and Ghost so if you can participate in that you should be able to move onto the Team Rocket section.

One thing you'll want to do is hold onto your Rocket Radar until those sets of missions start up, so you can challenge a leader right away. The task requires you to beat three leaders, beat 5 grunts and beat Giovanni. I don't know if that'll be possible to do before December 1st since the event was designed around a Team Rocket event that took place during the Festival of Lights event. Regardless while you may miss out on the Hoopa transformation you will have access to Shadow Lugia.

Sableye is probably the most pointless Pokémon in the game that’s not a fish.

Nov 23, 2021 10:27:50 GMT Big Pete said:

Pretty nice sub-event to look forward to this Friday. Finally the conclusion to the Hoopa event with access to Hoopa's more powerful form, a few raid bosses and some really handy spotlight Pokemon albeit at relatively terrible hours. The Beldum one in particular on Monday at 12pm is such a tease.

If you can they're all worth taking part in, Both Ratata and Pikachu have achievements that require you to capture high volumes and Sableeye is 750 stardust per capture as opposed to 100. Pop a Star Piece and that's 1150 Stardust per capture.

Finally going to get my hands on an Articuno! 

Nov 24, 2021 5:09:31 GMT KING KID said:

Sableye is probably the most pointless Pokémon in the game that’s not a fish.

It's actually got some utility in Great League, but otherwise you mostly just want it to farm stardust for power-ups and trades.

I'd also like to announce to the world that KING KID and I are now Ultra Buddies. I was able to pop a Lucky Egg before opening your present so I got to enjoy the full 100K exp.

Scored the shiny Ratata during the spotlight hour and nabbed all three legendary birds for the raid hour.

I would like to say it all went swimmingly but there was a disaster.

So the event started earlier in other parts of Australia, so I cashed in one of the remote raids that was burning a hole in my pocket to catch Articuno. Nice easy, didn't even have to replenish my Pokemon's health and I caught the bird quick enough. 30 minutes later I headed down towards the biggest park in the neighbourhood which was completely deserted. Sweet, it made setting up for Moltres a breeze and I caught it relatively quickly.

As luck would have it Zapdos spawned at the gym right outside my house, so as I returned home, I hosted the gym and got 20 friend requests. I've never seen a Pokemon in such demand. I went with the five that appeared on the app and they must have invited friends as well because we had a raid group of 12 to take down Zapdos. It was such a breeze which was helpful because I really don't have that many quality rock type monsters.

It was all going so well...but then I didn't catch the monster. I thought I clutched it on the second last throw with an excellent curve throw but the mother kicked out at 1 and did the NJPW defiance spot. It just wasn't to be, so I thought about sucking it up and maybe spending a remote raid but I had a quick look around and found there was another spawn at a park about a km away. I had just under 20 minutes to get there and set up, so I got there in around 10 minutes sent out the notification which again was quickly snaffled up and we were able to take it down with a few minutes to spare. Fortunately it only took two captures so there was no stress and I finally caught three Pokemon I've waited 5 years to get my hands on.

Tomorrow's Heatran should be a breeze, Regi Sunday could be tougher since the park is usually packed so I won't have the luxury of just being able to go in, find a comfy spot and give myself every opportunity to nail the catch.

Also have the Sableye spotlight hour which I will take advantage of. I won't go as hard for the Pikachu event since I already have the shiny and I do plan on going hard for Beldum and Pinplup (although I got the shiny for it the other day).

Battle League is frustrating when it goes badly.

A new season has started and I can tell that almost every trainer I'm facing has the most optimised, most powerful Pokemon, all of them with two charged attacks. There's this squirrel fucker who took pretty much zero damage from my fast attack, charged Body Slam almost instantly, which took 45% health off one of my Pokemon. What kind of OP bullshit is that?

Season of Mischief ends in 22 hours. Does this mean all the special research missions will be reset? Or do I keep them?

Nov 30, 2021 11:47:33 GMT Emperor said:

Season of Mischief ends in 22 hours. Does this mean all the special research missions will be reset? Or do I keep them?

You keep them but you won't get access to the Hoopa Unbound Research unless you pay $5 USD.

If you can complete it in time you'll be OK and will get access to that research.

The Mischief of Mayhem is over and we've now entered the Season of Heritage which appears to be tied to the Pokemon Legends: Arceus game coming out in January 2022. As a result we've got new spotlight hours, new challenges and different Pokemon spawning in the wild.

The first real event is the Swinub Incense Day. On that day you'll have the option to spend 1 Poke Coin to gain two incense and between the hours of 11am-5pm the monsters will rotate. Swinub will appear in both hours but alongside him you'll get access to...

Ice: Seel, Jynx, Sneasal, Snorunt, Snover, Galarian Darumaka and Vanilluxe

Ground: Cubone, Rhyhorn, Wooper, Phanphy, Larvitar and Barboach

The December 7th event based on Dragonspiral Tower from Generation V kicks off on Tuesday next week. The dragon type Druddigon has been confirmed to be making it's debut and if the game is anything to go by you'd have to presume Golett and Mienfoo will both be spawning.

Other potential Pokemon include Vanilitte, Deerling, Cubchoo, Audino, Emolga and Dratini.

I really thought Christmas had come early with the Ed Sheeran event but I didn't go as hard on it as expected. The conclusion to the Mayhem of Madness season ended up taking precedence for me and the last couple of days were completely washed out in Brissie, I barely did anything during the Piplup spotlight hour. Fortunately I did catch the shiny earlier alongside a shiny Totodile. The only thing I didn't really do which I wanted to was capture either a shiny Squirtle or a really strong one but I fell well short there.

I was a little disappointed with the spawns. I was expecting to see a ton of the starters floating around, but I'd be lucky if I saw one exclusive spawn in a cluster - it was usually just common monsters.

I did manage to get all the raid bosses I wanted. Heatran was a breeze, but I remember Registeel and Regirock giving me some anxious moments. I didn't think we'd defeat Steel and it really went down to the wire. I had a few team mates not pulling their weight and offering up some crap mons. Got there with about 20 seconds to spare but fortunately the catch was easy. I then made a beeline towards our biggest park to do the Regirock raid. The battle went smooth, but I went through about 12 catch attempts before getting him. Usually I get antsy after 6 or so. With Regice I didn't see any spawning so I just joined a remote raid which needed to be spent anyways. That was a breeze and I was able to add 7 new monsters to the mix.

Neither the Sableye nor Beldum event went as planned. With Sableye I made the mistake of doing a rotation instead of following a unique path through out so I denied myself access to enough Sableyes. With Beldum I made a special point to duck out when I did and my phone started playing up. There were a few clusters where I didn't see every Beldum but I just kept moving. I'm not necessarily in it for the shinies, but I'm not going to lie getting one is a nice shot of dopamine and serves as a nice trophy. What I learned was to scale back my expectations since it's still a 1/400 and I only encountered 200 through out the hour. It also makes the event Turtwig catch a little more valuable in my eyes especially since I didn't pop an incense for it.

Still, I'm happy with the events. I did get a hundo Sableeye (which I don't think is ideal? I think you want low attack max everything else), plenty of stardust and plenty of beldum candy. I did make a mistake and evolved my best beldum of the bunch which was premature since it's best move is an event exclusive. I can get it on there with an Elite TM, but those are really hard to come by. I still have another one there but I'll hold off. It's the same deal with some of the Totodiles, Mudkips, Piplups and Oshawotts I got, I'm going to hold off until the December 17th community day.

The weather cleared up this afternoon so I was able to sample the Season of Heritage. Got to say as a returning player this was a really exciting event and gave me access to a ton of monsters I really needed to catch. There's nothing better than turning the app on and seeing a lot of shadows on the bottom right corner. So I was aware that the Hoenn starters would be spawning among others but didn't realise how many different monsters would be appearing.

So far I've come across

Psyduck, Ekans, Ledyba, Tailow, Ponyta, Omanyte, Marill, Snubbull, Voltorb, Seedot, Surskit, Squirtle, Charmander, Bulbasaur, Aron, Starly, Kabuto, Feebas, Lileep, Lillipup, Minccino, Porygon, Shellder among others. A lot of these I haven't seen in the wild since I started playing so it made for a really refreshing afternoon. In one session I caught the same amount of candy for Bulbasaur that I had saved up from 5 years ago.

I also caught my first Dragonite in the wild. The guy spawned right outside my house while I was a good km away so I had to make a mad dash home before catching Zekrom.

How frequently do you go on these grand voyages? Must be nice because it's summer in your area, you're dedicating a lot of time to it.

Also do you have infinite raid passes?

Dec 1, 2021 14:03:55 GMT Emperor said:

How frequently do you go on these grand voyages? Must be nice because it's summer in your area, you're dedicating a lot of time to it.

Also do you have infinite raid passes?

Yeah the past weekend was a major grind. Unless it's a community day I usually don't go that crazy but this was the first time I really went out of my way to play it.

I wish I had infinite raid passes, no I just game the local free passes and save my remote raid and 1 Pokecoin boxes. There's also premium passes which you can collect from special researches that you can spend on local raids and I spent a couple of those on the event. The Hoopa Unbound research gave away three, so I still have one more than I started off with.

I'm hoarding the freebies for raids that are actually worth grinding.

I finally helped my kid complete his mission to get a Mew.

In the end; I was more excited then he was. He was actually more excited to get Blastoise with sunglasses then a Mew.

How do you get a Mew?