Dec 19, 2021 16:53:16 GMT Emperor said:

How often are you mega evolving? I've literally only been able to mega evolve once since I started playing. Getting that energy is nearly impossible.

I am more able to understand how you caught so many shinies. I've caught three today, doubling the number of shinies I've ever got before. Two of them are the same Pokemon (Oshawott), and a shiny Swablu. It's kinda cool, but serves little purpose besides being a collectible. Just like the event Pokemon. At least shinies have a cool appearance. Well except Oshawott whose shiny form looks almost the same as normal. Maybe it will get better if I evolve it.

Not that often honestly it was honestly something that I did for the Swinub event and since you earn 25 additional energy per 5km walking Steelix and you only need 40 to mega evolve again it was an easy way to earn additional candy.

I was actually supposed to do it for the Electabuzz Spotlight Hour, but I completely spaced on it.

I'm not sure what it is with Community Day, but it took me about an hour for shiny rates to really pick up and then I kind of got sick of seeing them because I got caught into catching/keeping crap monsters. :lol: I can't get over the novelty though, it took me over a decade to find my first shiny in the wild in the games. Also Oshawott's shiny form is lame, but it's final evo looks sharper with the darker tint.

The next CD Pokemon has been confirmed and on January 16th, Spheal with two event exclusive moves will be available. I have to say considering how common Spheal has been with the BD/SP and Holiday event it's not the most exciting announcement but it does make for a more casual CD experience.

Supposedly the February CD will be the 50th so it could potentially be big. Fans are hopeful for an Axew or Riolu CD.

Otherwise the second part of the holiday event starts on Thursday. It's well worth turning the app on and spinning a PokeStop since you'll get a free 1 use incubator.

I've been weighing up whether to buy a ticket for the upcoming Johto Tour. The ticket grants you access to a bunch of research missions starting in January, so now is the time to decide whether it's worth it for the event.

So the Johto Tour itself appears to be based on the Kanto Tour.

I wasn't playing around the Kanto Tour, but it operated like so...

Region Exclusives and Legendaries were available in raids.

Cubone, Lickitung, Chansey, Tangela, Lapras, Ditto, Aerodactyl, and Snorlax will appear as reward encounters from the GO Tour: Kanto Special Research tasks.

Those were all available for free.

Now if you bought the Kanto tour, you would pick one version of the ticket and get access to:

If you select Red Version these Pokémon will be attracted to Incense during the event: Ekans, Oddish, Mankey, Growlithe, Scyther, and Electabuzz.

If you select Green Version these Pokémon will be attracted to Incense during the event: Sandshrew, Vulpix, Meowth, Bellsprout, Magmar, and Pinsir.

Now we know these version exclusives

Gold Version: Spinrak, Gligar, Teddirusa & Mantine.

Silver Version: Ledyba, Delibird, Skarmory & Phanphy.

I think primarily what the ticket gets you is boosted shiny rates and honestly I'm not that fussed on shinies.

Gligar's evolved form is the only dex entry I really need from the version exclusives and I'm sure it'll pop up at some point.

I'm curious to see how they'll break the spawns up. Kanto has something like 75 Pokemon families whereas Johto has 45. Whether they'll include fewer spawns per time-slot or include Kanto spawns with Johto evolutions in the mix remains to be seen.

It should be a fun event and I can't wait to complete the Johto Dex, but I'm going to give the ticket a miss.

So I've actually been inactive in the game at the moment because my feet are killing me. I haven't been taking proper care of them so moving forward I'm going to ice them, massage and stretch them after. One pro-tip is to grab a golf ball, and just step on it to help get some of the knots out of it, feels like heaven.

I haven't really done all that much on the app lately. I'd say the last thing I did was joining a local Discord so I could take care of the Winter Wonderland trade research tasks, which in turn helped me complete some special research tasks that have been there for ages.

We're currently celebrating the New Year's Event which looks like:

It's actually a lot better than the leak suggested. The 1/2 distance egg incubators is always a good incentive and I'm always down for Kanto starters. It's also worth noting that Kanto starters are shiny boosted as well and I was able to nab a shiny Charmander from a Catch 10 Field research. The event field research are actually really handy as well since anything that keeps track of successful catches is handy for quick catches.

I'm looking forward to the 7th and the Mountains of Power event.

Today is Go Battle Day so it's a good time to write about my favourite aspect of Pokemon Go, and probably the only reason I'm still playing: the Battle League.

When I first tried battling, I thought it was kinda dumb and too dependent on type. If your starter is weak against the enemy's starter, you're fucked. Switching and protect shields are just silly gimmicks to try and make a shallow screen-mashing game seem sophisticated.

However, the game is actually pretty deep and required on-the-fly strategic thinking. An incorrect switch or a poorly-timed charge attack can turn a win into a loss. It is true that starting with a type weakness is a big disadvantage, significant enough to lose most of the time, but it can be turned around with clever play, or a bit of luck.

Didn't take long for me to learn the game and I soon built up pretty good rosters for Great League (max 1500 CP) and Ultra League (max 2500 CP). The internet is a great resource for identifying the best Pokemon and best moves for each Pokemon. However a lot of people who play, especially Ultra and Master Leagues are "professionals": they have the perfect Pokemon with two different charge attacks, the highest CP possible, and know exactly how many fast attacks are needed to generate a charge attack for every Pokemon. Despite that I still win roughly 50% of my games which I consider to be a decent result.

The past few weeks have been Master League only, no CP limit. I only have a couple of Pokemon above 3000CP, in a division where most of the Pokemon are 3500+CP. I expected to get walloped. Surprisingly in my first round of 5, I won 3 of them. No idea how. Beginner's luck, I guess. On the next few rounds I got annihilated, as expected. My error was throwing out my highest CP pokemon which at the time were Zekrom, Kyurem and Feraligatr. Zekron and Kyurem share weaknesses while Feraligatr kinda sucks. If my opponents had a Dragon killer, which is common, then I was fucked.

After a few iterations I realised that choosing smart is better than going for the highest CP. My current lineup is 3357CP Zekrom, 2461CP Swampert, and 2367CP Sylveon. I've had a surprising amount of success with this roster despite being heavily out-CPed in almost every battle. Even a low CP Sylveon wipes the floor with Dragon pokemon which are very common in Ultra league. Swampert does well against Steel pokemon, another common type since it's a good counter to Fairy. Zekrom is my Dragon type, the one badass in my roster. Unfortunately having such low CP Pokemon means that in matchups against similar types, I lose simply because my Pokemon are a lot weaker. However I'm winning around 45% of battles which is a lot better than expected with what is more or less a thrown together roster.

Battle League is great. Hey Big Pete, I know battling's not your thing, but we should give it a go sometime.

I haven’t been played the app in about a week, but one thing I learned from battles is to always start with a Pokémon who gets their finisher quick. The faster you can get rid of their blocks, the easier it will be for your big dog closers.

Rock slide is an awesome finisher as it catches those flying type Pokémon off guard. Stunfisk is always a great Pokémon to battle with because the defense is strong and his attacks come very quickly.

Here was a renacement of my last Pokemon Go Battle performance against Emperor.

It's something I'll get into for the future, but currently I'm purely building raid teams and collecting monsters. When that starts slowing down, I'll focus more on PVP but right now I already devote too much time, I swear collecting, sending and opening gifts is a meta unto itself.

But yeah I was pretty impressed with the depth and the amount of thought that goes into team building and how for some monsters it's actually better to have a low attack stat just to farm energy and the like. It's one of the new additions that made the app so much more exciting than it was on launch where it was a lot slower and there was hardly anything to do.

How's everyone been going with the new event?

I've got to say I've warmed to it a great deal. Machop is always a handy Pokemon to farm and I needed to farm Nosepass and Ferroseed for their evolution dex entries. I like to have ample candy for each monster, so it was nice to stock up on Geodude and Zubat who were pretty low after I evolved them into their final forms not too long ago for dex entries. I still wish we could have got Feebas, Larvitar or even Rhyhorn spawning, but this turned out better than I anticipated.

Currently have over 1300 Machop candies and I was able to get a Shiny Slugma.

With the Power Plant event coming next week, I hope the Magnetic Lure becomes a reward so I can evolve Nosepass and get some Magnetons as well. I have a few Magnemites taking up space from the Festival of Lights event back in November.

Jan 11, 2022 3:01:02 GMT KING KID said:

I haven’t been played the app in about a week, but one thing I learned from battles is to always start with a Pokémon who gets their finisher quick. The faster you can get rid of their blocks, the easier it will be for your big dog closers.

Rock slide is an awesome finisher as it catches those flying type Pokémon off guard. Stunfisk is always a great Pokémon to battle with because the defense is strong and his attacks come very quickly.

Yep, fast charge attacks are very important. I don't play any Pokemon with a slow but powerful charge attack, it's not worth it. I've tried it before and it's very rare to get a chance to use it when all the shield are down. If such a charge attack is blocked it's just a huge waste of energy. Bulky Pokemon are basically a requirement in PVP. Have to be able to take a lot of damage. Even if they don't deal much damage themselves, the ability to fire off two or three (if not more) charge attacks before fainting is pretty important. So all of my Pokemon have either fast or moderate energy building, and low to medium cost harge attacks. I don't have the resources to teach my Pokemon two charged attacks so gotta make my only move count.

Finally the Master League is over, and we're back to Great League. Out of the 25 battles I played today, guess how many I won? 22! I only lost 3 battles the entire day. Can't believe it. Never had anywhere close to that much success.

My winning team is Galarian Stunfisk (KING KID ), Pidgeot and Skuntank. Skuntank is my opener and he's an absolute beast. Good defense/HP, has a pretty high damage fast attack, a decent charge attack (Crunch) and only one weakness (ground). Surprised I don't see more of them.

Normal Stunfisk is a killer as well. Ground/Electric type with access to both Ground and Electric charge attacks that charge very quickly. Can take out all of my Pokemon. Fortunately I only ran into two of them today. One of them resulted in a loss, somehow I won the other one.

There's also a Sinnoh Great League. Only had two eligible Pokemon (Skuntank and Drifbloom) initially but over winter I got an Abomasnow and had enough candies to power him up to the required CP. Haven't tried that team out yet.

Jan 11, 2022 16:00:12 GMT Big Pete said:

Here was a renacement of my last Pokemon Go Battle performance against Emperor.

Did you see the challenge? I didn't even think you saw it because there was no response. I just decided to try it on the off-chance you'd accept. I have no desire to be competitive with you, I'm happy to throw out three random Pokemon, not my powerhouses, and see what happens. Just a bit of fun. Battle League can get a bit tiring seeing the same old faces. I also believe battling boost friendship rating.

Jan 11, 2022 16:00:12 GMT Big Pete said:

It's something I'll get into for the future, but currently I'm purely building raid teams and collecting monsters. When that starts slowing down, I'll focus more on PVP but right now I already devote too much time, I swear collecting, sending and opening gifts is a meta unto itself.

I don't understand the point of building raid teams. Raids are just a guaranteed win, I can throw any Pokemon out there and let the other trainers carry me. Sometimes I've literally just thrown out my three weakest Pokemon so I can get more iterations and count towards "participate in so many raids" challenges.

Speaking of Magnetic Lures, I recently spent some PokeCoins on a lure box which has all four of the evolving lures. I have a Magneton that needs evolving, no use for the others at the time but I'm sure they'll come in handy.

Reason I bought them is that I didn't think there was a way to get them outside of the shop.

I have been stocking up on the Triple H pokemon (Nosepass), a good one to evolve. Also have a perfect CP Alolan Geodude which would be a nice one to evolve. Golem is not great for battling, but just having a perfect CP Golem is pretty cool in itself.

Pokemon Go is Pokemon GONE.

That Battle League day where I got 22 wins and 3 losses was the high water mark career of my time as a Pokemon Trainer. Since then I've gone back to mediocrity.

Yesterday I was lying in bed after midnight playing Battle League. It turned 1am. I thought to myself, what the fuck am I doing? Why am. I not sleeping?

Then I uninstalled the app.

Here I was feeling guilty that I hadn't played all day to send you a gift/open yours :lol: . It's typically around an hour earlier I get the alert on my phone. You gave it a good run and you got way more into PVP than I have.

Did you see the challenge? I didn't even think you saw it because there was no response. I just decided to try it on the off-chance you'd accept. I have no desire to be competitive with you, I'm happy to throw out three random Pokemon, not my powerhouses, and see what happens. Just a bit of fun. Battle League can get a bit tiring seeing the same old faces. I also believe battling boost friendship rating.

Yeah I was playing music via bluetooth and must have switched the app because when I went to turn it off I received an alert. I was tempted but it was late at night so I fled. :lol:

I don't understand the point of building raid teams. Raids are just a guaranteed win, I can throw any Pokemon out there and let the other trainers carry me. Sometimes I've literally just thrown out my three weakest Pokemon so I can get more iterations and count towards "participate in so many raids" challenges.

I'm not entirely sure about mechanics, but I'm pretty sure if you're the host you do more damage than your remote invites. So if you're hosting and you don't get that full team of six raiders it can be a squeeze, especially on bulkier monsters. I've had a few failed attempts before and felt rotten so I'm trying to farm as many viable monsters as possible.

Spheal Community Day this Sunday and then the PowerPlant Electric/Steel event on Wednesday. It's expected that Helioptle will make it's debut during the event, I've got my fingers crossed for Klink, Beldum and Pawniard.

Jan 14, 2022 9:34:04 GMT Emperor said:

Pokemon Go is Pokemon GONE.

That Battle League day where I got 22 wins and 3 losses was the high water mark career of my time as a Pokemon Trainer. Since then I've gone back to mediocrity.

Yesterday I was lying in bed after midnight playing Battle League. It turned 1am. I thought to myself, what the fuck am I doing? Why am. I not sleeping?

Then I uninstalled the app.

That escalated quickly.

It was going to happen sooner or later.

My Spheal Community Day experience was really chill. I just treated it like a regular walk, came away with 8 shinies and about a dozen or so viable catches. I kept the shinies and all but one so it can have it's CD moves. Unfortunately it's not really built for PVP but it's nice to have in the collection.

On Wednesday we have the PowerPlant event and the Lunar Event is returning in February with some timed research. I would not be shocked if Tauros is available via an award.

I still think you should consider re-downloading the app for the Johto Tour event Emperor. If you have nothing else on that day, it should be one of the best days with the app and well worth checking in.

Also on that PowerPlant event, I just made the discovery that the Jirachi Special Research gives you all the Module as a reward. On top of that, Jigglypuff is also rewarded which I need for Wigglytuff. Currently I'm collecting candy for Abra, I think I need to walk 21km and I can finally get Alakazam. Meanwhile Jigglypuff needs 17km and I'll have every Kanto monster other than Tauros and Mewtwo.

The Magnetic Lure was not a part of the PowerPlant event, but regardless it ended up being one of the better events on the app. Electabuzz was a common spawn which was extremely useful since Electivire is among the best raid attackers in the game and it's Shadow form is although it's currently unavailable. Other uncommon spawns included Jolteon, Grimer, Trubbish & Porygon. On top of that Helioptile and Hisuan Voltorb made their Pokemon Go debut. Then on top of that there was a take two photographs of electric Pokemon which netted 25 mega energy a pop for Manectric and Ampharos so it was extremely easy to farm their mega forms.

Team Rocket started using new shadow types - all the Johto starters have their shadow forms available with Voltorb, Whismur and Hippowdown being available through the grunts. Meanwhile the bosses started using Shadow Bagon, Poliwag and Teddirusa with Bagon being of particular value. I barely did any Rocket battles around Christmas since there was a glitch that made them extremely difficult - now they're a priority to farm up those Bagon. Shadow Salamance is the most powerful Dragon type in the game. I haven't really got a good IV yet, but I've currently got six that could be called onto raid if need be.

After that was the Lunar New Year and unfortunately Tauros was not a part of Special Research like I hoped. It was mainly a Litleo event and it's shiny made it's debut just in time for the spotlight hour. Meowth and Paras were the big event spawns with a lot of common monsters like Magikarp, Voltorb, Growlithe, Litleo and Torchic being available. Electabuzz continued to spawn as a rare spawn, which was handy for me because I caught the best of the lot during this event. Outside of farming stardust from Meowth and Paras, one of the big draws of the event was Gyrados Mega Energy which was an extremely handy and useful Catch 5 task.

That was quickly followed by the Valentines event which is a double catch candy and triple depost candy event. Flabebe made it's debut and a stack of uncommon Pokemon became available. Namely Audino, Chansey, Furfrou, Alomomola, Volbeat/Illumise, Luvdisc and Miltank. The big draw is the candy bonus' which has been big for me since I've found two Rhyhorn nests so I've been able to farm up 85 candy a day through just five catches. Although that appears to have dried up somewhat in recent days.

Actually there was a fun event where players had to work together to send 70,000 gifts in order to receive the 3 times transfer candy bonus. You actually get to see how many gifts your friends send per day. Apparently I'm around the time with about 60+ gifts a day on average.

Yesterday was the Hoppip community day which was actually useful for me since I didn't have Jumpluff. With a 3 times multiplier for candy and stardust it became really easy to rack up both although I forgot to Mega Evolve again to get the entire benefit. There was also more raid passes available but I completely spaced on that. I made a big mistake with the Walrein event by not hunting for a PVP Walrein and now it's entirely meta in Ultra League so I actually made a point to put together some search strings. Apparently I have the best Jumpluff available...unfortunately Jumpluff really isn't that relevant in Great League but maybe it'll get a good move at some point.

Was trying to figure out a way to get more Sinnoh Stones and as it turns out they're extremely common rewards in PVP. I had to wait a bit but with the love cup coming up I had a few meta relevant Pokemon albeit, not with PVP stats. Love Cup is Great League but restricted to Pink and Red Pokemon. So my team is Electrode (Electric), Crustle (Rock/Bug) and Talonflame (Fire/Flying). It's well and truly peaked but as long as I can win 2/5 I'm happy since I can get TMs and such.

I'm starting to prioritise raids. Usually I only do them if they're convenient but with the bonus' and relatively good match-ups I figure I may as well get some return on my investments. We've nearly gone through the Regi-trio and we're about to start Deoxys which is going to include two free local passes a day, so it's good opportunity to grind those up.

Johto Tour is less than two weeks away. They're going to do a Johto In-Game event before the big community day so it should make the day itself more manageable. Right now the event is largely going to be about taking care of raids for the legendary dogs, Ho-Oh, Heracross and Corsola. Then I'll be looking to farm Larvitar and Sneasal among others.

Made Rank 20 of Go League. I hope I didn't bump myself into too difficult an ELO for my team, but the lure of grabbing an Elite TM proved too much.

The current goal right now is to hit Level 40 before Johto Tour. I need just under 1.9 million experience in 10 days. So right now it's like that episode of the Simpsons where Homer is trying to gain weight to get disability. I'm looking at every conceivable way to gain exp in a short amount of time.

One of the primary focus' is through gifts. I'm pretty close to hitting Best Friend and Utra Friend with a number of people and now I'm actually starting to become really selective about who I open gifts from. I have six friends I have a good chance of hitting Best Friends with so they'll be my main priority since that's a minimum of 600K. Then I have around 25 that can hit Ulta Friend. A few are only a day or so away but I could be waiting for them to combo up with a lucky egg. I've set a six day cut-off there although I have about 10 to hit it. This may change depending on how active users are but if I manage to hit around 20, that's a 1,000,000 minimum.

That leaves 500,000, right now the game is offering two free raid passes a day so you have a good chance of encountering all the forms of Deoxys. Each raid I can make 5 friends and if I'm successful that's 15,000 a piece making it 30,000 per raid. That's 270,000 before Johto...

Which leaves around 130,000 to gain during the week. Hopefully some of that will be made up through friends getting up to Stage 2 but I think it's largely going to come through general play. I need to average 15K in general play. I'd say that's my average at the moment I usually catch around 100 Pokemon a day which at a minimum is 10,000 even before including bonus' and I spin around 50 PokeStops which is 5,000 Exp. However I'm going to have to up the ante and farm those Pidove candies and Caterpies for the cheap evos. If I can catch around 10 a day, that's 10,000 more experience.

There's other bonus' like gym battles, hatching eggs, daily and weekly rewards as well. It's going to be tight but as long as the weather is kind I should be able to get there.

EDIT: Just realised you get 200 experience per sent gift. I typically send around 60 a day, so that's 12,000 there and roughly 100,000 before the day itself.

New event has been announced as well. Wailmer and Foongus are the stand-out common Pokemon with Jigglypuff and Galarian Stunkfist being rare but stand-out Pokemon of the event.

I'm much happier without Pokemon Go, feels like a huge burden has been lifted and I have much more time to focus on other things. Still enjoying your adventures Big Pete , your dedication is commendable.

Feb 13, 2022 13:35:17 GMT Big Pete said:

Actually there was a fun event where players had to work together to send 70,000 gifts in order to receive the 3 times transfer candy bonus. You actually get to see how many gifts your friends send per day. Apparently I'm around the time with about 60+ gifts a day on average.

How do you make so many friends? Just add randoms from reddit?

60 gifts a day is insane. I was averaging 5-10 a day. Could have done more but I got lazy. In general you can only store 20, so that means you have to go out and spin at least 40 pokestops? How much time do you spend walking around every day?

Feb 13, 2022 13:35:17 GMT Big Pete said:

Was trying to figure out a way to get more Sinnoh Stones and as it turns out they're extremely common rewards in PVP. I had to wait a bit but with the love cup coming up I had a few meta relevant Pokemon albeit, not with PVP stats. Love Cup is Great League but restricted to Pink and Red Pokemon. So my team is Electrode (Electric), Crustle (Rock/Bug) and Talonflame (Fire/Flying). It's well and truly peaked but as long as I can win 2/5 I'm happy since I can get TMs and such.

As you know I loved playing Battle League and these interesting variants really helped spice it up because you just run into the same Pokemon over and over again in normal Battle League. The last one I played was the Winter Cup or whatever it was called, which was type-restricted. I thought I had a pretty good team but consistently got wiped out so I switched back to the regular Ultra League

Feb 16, 2022 13:40:32 GMT Big Pete said:

Made Rank 20 of Go League. I hope I didn't bump myself into too difficult an ELO for my team, but the lure of grabbing an Elite TM proved too much.

Getting Rank 20 is fairly straightforward, you don't even have to win a high percentage of your fights, but well worth it. Don't think I ever got above 1800 ELO but I was gradually increasing before I called it quits.

Feb 16, 2022 13:40:32 GMT Big Pete said:

One of the primary focus' is through gifts. I'm pretty close to hitting Best Friend and Utra Friend with a number of people and now I'm actually starting to become really selective about who I open gifts from. I have six friends I have a good chance of hitting Best Friends with so they'll be my main priority since that's a minimum of 600K. Then I have around 25 that can hit Ulta Friend. A few are only a day or so away but I could be waiting for them to combo up with a lucky egg. I've set a six day cut-off there although I have about 10 to hit it. This may change depending on how active users are but if I manage to hit around 20, that's a 1,000,000 minimum.

Trying to time Lucky Egg with friendship level boosts is so frustrating. I only succeeded once, all the other times the level increased when they opened the gift.

I'm much happier without Pokemon Go, feels like a huge burden has been lifted and I have much more time to focus on other things. Still enjoying your adventures Big Pete , your dedication is commendable.

I still think you should check in on the 26th for the Johto Tour day. If there's one day to play the app, that's it.

How do you make so many friends? Just add randoms from reddit?

Mostly off of raid apps. You add five friends per raid and a few tend to hang around to send/accept gifts.

As you know I loved playing Battle League and these interesting variants really helped spice it up because you just run into the same Pokemon over and over again in normal Battle League. The last one I played was the Winter Cup or whatever it was called, which was type-restricted. I thought I had a pretty good team but consistently got wiped out so I switched back to the regular Ultra League :lol:

Yeah, I've noticed there tends to be a lot of long time players pulling out monsters that haven't been available in ages and here I am running a CD Talonflame and a couple of monsters I only caught a week ago. I've been a lot more diligant with collecting PVP Pokemon, even using a website to generate proper search strings to isolate Pokemon.

Getting Rank 20 is fairly straightforward, you don't even have to win a high percentage of your fights, but well worth it. Don't think I ever got above 1800 ELO but I was gradually increasing before I called it quits.

All I really want is 2/5 wins each set so I can collect TMs, so the easier the opposition the better. Just did a set in Rank 20 before bed and went 1/5 although I had a chance to at least go 3/5, I just got outplayed/bad connection.

60 gifts a day is insane. I was averaging 5-10 a day. Could have done more but I got lazy. In general you can only store 20, so that means you have to go out and spin at least 40 pokestops? How much time do you spend walking around every day?

Lately it's been about an hour and a half since we're in summer and the days are longer. There's a ton of stops in my neighbourhood and more were just added (only just realised halos around the stops represent unspun PokeStops) so I usually hit about 30+ stops before I reach this one Park. I send a few gifts intermittently but then I'll sit down, clear out my room, spin the four stops around the park, send those then when I'm ready to walk back I'll spin around 40 or more stops.

I rarely actually take the optimal route for PokeStops so if I sat down and worked it out I could probably get more. However it's pretty frustrating constantly opening up the friends page and hoping the game won't lag out while I try to send gifts.

So basically by next Wednesday evening/Thursday morning I hope to be at 4.5 million exp at least. That's 200K exp each day, but I'm really going to have to game the system and do more gym battles, evos, gym feeding etc.

Feb 17, 2022 1:12:40 GMT Big Pete said:

I still think you should check in on the 26th for the Johto Tour day. If there's one day to play the app, that's it.

I don't understand why anyone would play Pokemon Go for just one day. What's so special about that day?

Feb 17, 2022 1:12:40 GMT Big Pete said:

Mostly off of raid apps. You add five friends per raid and a few tend to hang around to send/accept gifts.

I made friends through raids. Just one per raid since I always joined and never hosted. Every time I sent a gift. They didn't regift, and then deleted me shortly after. Rude.

Feb 17, 2022 1:12:40 GMT Big Pete said:

Yeah, I've noticed there tends to be a lot of long time players pulling out monsters that haven't been available in ages and here I am running a CD Talonflame and a couple of monsters I only caught a week ago. I've been a lot more diligant with collecting PVP Pokemon, even using a website to generate proper search strings to isolate Pokemon.

I don't even know what this means.

Feb 17, 2022 1:12:40 GMT Big Pete said:

Lately it's been about an hour and a half since we're in summer and the days are longer. There's a ton of stops in my neighbourhood and more were just added (only just realised halos around the stops represent unspun PokeStops) so I usually hit about 30+ stops before I reach this one Park. I send a few gifts intermittently but then I'll sit down, clear out my room, spin the four stops around the park, send those then when I'm ready to walk back I'll spin around 40 or more stops.

Helps if you're in a good area. From my home I can walk 10 minutes in one direction and hit a cluster of three gyms and four or five additional Pokestops. That's pretty nice, and I did that most days. I can walk 10 minutes in another direction to get a gym and a Pokestop. That's it.

I don't understand why anyone would play Pokemon Go for just one day. What's so special about that day?

On February 26th from 9am to 9pm the Johto Tour will be in effect. Just about every Johto Pokemon will be available to non-ticketed members with legendaries and regionals (ie. Heracross and Corsola) appearing in raids. Pokemon will be able to learn their event exclusive attacks, there will be special field research and there will be PVE Trainer Battles. Usually there's two huge events and this is the Pokemon version of Wrestlemania.

Then the next day they're doing Kanto events at a few select locations so you can so you can remote raid pass a few regionals there. I'm hoping to finally get my Tauros and Mewtwo that way to complete the Kanto Dex after nearly six years.

I don't even know what this means.

Now you know why I didn't bother with PVP.

Basically for PVP you want to get very specific IVs. Something like 0/15/15 is typically ideal for Great and Ultra Leagues (hundos for Masters) but that can vary depending on the monster. However you can't just type 0/15/15 into search and expect that to pop up but they've created websites where you can generate search terms/code that will help locate monsters through their respective CP and HP, the higher the HP at a certain CP, the most likely it has high stamina and defence stats.

Each Pokemon has different search strings, so you simply go to your browser on your phone, select the Pokemon and the cup, then copy & paste that into search and voila.

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I was going to hold onto this info but I just found out more about friendship mechanics. I was under the presumption that each gift opened counted as a day, so potentially you could increase each friend level but two a day. It doesn't work like that, and if both friends open gifts at the same time, the friendship only increases by one day. The way you can tell a friendship has increased is by a blue glow around a player's avatar. So essentially all the 14 day guys just got wiped and now I'm strictly focusing on 7 days and under. That halves just about every and makes things a little tighter.

I'll know if I'm on track if I hit 4.5 million by Wednesday evening.

I'm so relieved, I hit Level 40.

It's the one achievement I worked really hard to get. I really wanted to hit it before Johto Tour so I could reap the full benefits of the free-to-play experience.

It all began when I accidentally upgraded a few friendships. Usually I like to let them get the EXP, but since I didn't want it to go to waste I snuck a Lucky Egg on and earned around half a mill. I realised I was just over 2 million experience off hitting 40 when I started to think about this more strategically.

I usually gain plenty of Exp playing the game ordinarily but there were a few more things I could do.

Raids - I was already going to do this because we've got this awesome Deoxys event where you get two free raid passes a day and everyone is absolutely jonesing for their Deoxys hit. There's four different forms to collect and they've just released the shiny form so it's easy to organise and I'm not flapping in the breeze waiting for one person to join the party and putting up with all the usual raid nonsense. Seriously, make sure your name matches and you accept the damn invite!

Gyms - Live and let live is typically my motto, but I developed a bloodlust and until the gym was stained with blood I wasn't leaving...unless there was a raid or they were at full HP then I'd quickly move on. Gyms are actually worth a decent amount of exp sometimes going for 3K a pop. On top of that, I have to find a home for my Chansey's and Blissey's so they were right at home.

Berries - I usually like to feed the Pokemon before I catch them - that's been my main Safari Zone method since '99. However I had to hoard these bad boys because each feeding session was worth 5K. Easy money, except when I'd hit my storage limit and have to start emptying my blue balls.

Excellent Catches - I'm usually the John Wayne of Pokemon Go, quick on the draw and if it catches good. However this endeavour turned me into American Sniper and everything was about excellent catches. If I saw a Zangoose, Wailmer or Ponyta show up it was instant joy since they're easy to farm on.

Evolutions - Pidove went from one of my least desirable to a Squirtle tier, instant catch Pokemon. I couldn't get enough and would hoard them and Caterpie for big Lucky Egg evo sessions.

Gift Opening - I usually don't care about postcards unless they came from England, New York or Winnipeg so there were days I didn't even open gifts. This changed and while I didn't get to use my fancy draft board I had all mapped out, I was incredibly friendly with all my new raid partners and wanted to secure them as good friends as quickly as possible. 10K a good friend, 20K with a Lucky Egg as well as a few Ultra. I will say you learn who your real friends are in Go. I have a couple of Level 50 friends who only need to open their gift to give me some exp and they've sat on it for nearly a week now. They've been online too, they're just absolutely the worst. Right up there with people who play music off their phone on public transport or cut in line.

Combine that with 10km+ walks, tons of PokeStop spins, tons of catches and a few egg hatches and we got there. It was a glorious moment, the Voltorb spotlight hour hit and as soon as my bag became full the heavens opened up and it was like the Shawshank Redemption. I got absolutely soaked, the Voltorb had to wait another day, but I got my achievement with a few days to spare.

While that happened, I also caught a Shiny Squirtle and a Shadow Metang with good IVs.

Plan is to take it easy leading into the event. I'm still not sure what the plan of the attack is, I'm hoping they release more details about spawns so I can plan my walks around it. I'm not going to walk for 12 hours and I'm not going to go to the city to play

Question for you Emperor and KING KID. With PVP how did you determine which Pokemon to invest in? Were you worried about PVP? Or did you just pick the best available Pokemon, spend the candy + stardust and take it from there?

Feb 18, 2022 1:14:35 GMT Big Pete said:

Now you know why I didn't bother with PVP.

Basically for PVP you want to get very specific IVs. Something like 0/15/15 is typically ideal for Great and Ultra Leagues (hundos for Masters) but that can vary depending on the monster. However you can't just type 0/15/15 into search and expect that to pop up but they've created websites where you can generate search terms/code that will help locate monsters through their respective CP and HP, the higher the HP at a certain CP, the most likely it has high stamina and defence stats.

Each Pokemon has different search strings, so you simply go to your browser on your phone, select the Pokemon and the cup, then copy & paste that into search and voila.

I enjoyed PVP and I didn't need to know any of that. You're trying too hard to optimise! You don't need to have perfect Pokemon to play Battle League.

I still don't know what you are searching for. Are you searching for Pokemon in the wild with certain IVs?

Why is 0/15/15 ideal? That's a Pokemon with no attack but max defense and HP. I always thought attack was the most important stat in PVP.

For my Battle League team I was content with a 3 star Pokemon, preferably with 14 or 15 attack, but I'm content to settle for less. Perfection not required. Unless you are at the absolute top that shit hardly matters. The moveset and type coverage of your roster plays the biggest role. I won many battles in Ultra League when I was seriously outgunned in terms of pure CP.

Feb 22, 2022 11:22:29 GMT Big Pete said:

Question for you Emperor and KING KID. With PVP how did you determine which Pokemon to invest in? Were you worried about PVP? Or did you just pick the best available Pokemon, spend the candy + stardust and take it from there?

I picked the best Pokemon I had available and invested. How did I identify the best Pokemon?

gamepress.gg/pokemongo/great-league-pvp-tier-list

Amazing website with detailed PVP analysis on any Pokemon along with the best movesets.

For Great League I had Galarian Stunfisk, Skuntank, Pidgeot. Those were my main three but sometimes I'd use Sableye, Abomasnow, Noctowl just to shake it up. Before I quit I also had Azumarill and Scrafty on the pipeline.

Ultra League, Swampert was my main man. Hydro Cannon is a great charge attack, you need an Elite TM to teach it but worth the investment. Struggling to remember what else I used. I was going double fairy for a time because Dragons are everywhere. 2000CP Sylveon and 2200CP Clefable. Sometimes I used Cresselia as well, not great damage output but an incredible tank.

I imagine you have a much wider range of Pokemon to choose than I did.

I still don't know what you are searching for. Are you searching for Pokemon in the wild with certain IVs?

Precisely.

Why is 0/15/15 ideal? That's a Pokemon with no attack but max defense and HP. I always thought attack was the most important stat in PVP.

Because of the CP caps in Great and Ultra league, you want to raise your monster to the highest level possible. Attack has a much greater bearing on CP, so a 15/0/0 is still going to be underlevelled compared to a 0/15/15. I'm not entirely sure why a 0/15/15 is more desirable than a 0/0/0 but I presume you want as much bulk as possible to trigger as many Charge Attacks as possible.

For my Battle League team I was content with a 3 star Pokemon, preferably with 14 or 15 attack, but I'm content to settle for less. Perfection not required. Unless you are at the absolute top that shit hardly matters. The moveset and type coverage of your roster plays the biggest role. I won many battles in Ultra League when I was seriously outgunned in terms of pure CP.

Gotcha, what was your team and did you use any PVP guides to help you build a team or did you just wing it?

I picked the best Pokemon I had available and invested. How did I identify the best Pokemon?

gamepress.gg/pokemongo/great-league-pvp-tier-list

Amazing website with detailed PVP analysis on any Pokemon along with the best movesets.

For Great League I had Galarian Stunfisk, Skuntank, Pidgeot. Those were my main three but sometimes I'd use Sableye, Abomasnow, Noctowl just to shake it up. Before I quit I also had Azumarill and Scrafty on the pipeline.

Ultra League, Swampert was my main man. Hydro Cannon is a great charge attack, you need an Elite TM to teach it but worth the investment. Struggling to remember what else I used. I was going double fairy for a time because Dragons are everywhere. 2000CP Sylveon and 2200CP Clefable. Sometimes I used Cresselia as well, not great damage output but an incredible tank.

I imagine you have a much wider range of Pokemon to choose than I did.

Ah I see.

I use the PVPoke tier list and team builder to help but I'm really low on meta relevant Pokemon. My collection is largely made up of shinies, legendaries and raid attackers. I only have a handful of PVP potentials.

How did you get enough candy for Galarian Stunkfist? They've only just started spawning here for the current event. Unfortunately the event spawns aren't as plentiful and it seems like it's 30/70 event with regular spawns taking over.

Feb 22, 2022 12:43:30 GMT Big Pete said:

Because of the CP caps in Great and Ultra league, you want to raise your monster to the highest level possible. Attack has a much greater bearing on CP, so a 15/0/0 is still going to be underlevelled compared to a 0/15/15. I'm not entirely sure why a 0/15/15 is more desirable than a 0/0/0 but I presume you want as much bulk as possible to trigger as many Charge Attacks as possible.

You're saying that a Pokemon with a higher attack stat gains more CP when it levels up? So it will be at a lower level when you reach the max CP?

The way I always saw it is that a 2500CP is the same as any other 2500CP regardless of how many times you powered it up, so a 0/15/15 2500 is no worse than a 15/15/15 2500. Maybe I got that all wrong.

Even so, I hardly care. I don't put too much weight in min maxing, I just used the best Pokemon I had available to me.

Also had no idea you could search wild Pokemon. How do you do that?

I caught Galarian Stunfisk a while ago, it was already 1300-1400 CP when I caught it. Possibly an event or special mission reward, I don't remember. Only needed a few powerups. I seem to recall when I first joined that normal Stunfisks were in the wild so I must have got candies that way.

Also had no idea you could search wild Pokemon. How do you do that?

When I mentioned search strings, I was referring to Pokemon inside your collection and just using search terms to filter them.

In the wild you still can't search for them unless they pop up on the nearby tab.

So the Johto event is this weekend (February 26th), I'm looking forward too completing the Dex for that region and hopefully get a few new shiny Pokémon as well.

Counting down the hours until the Johto Tour event. Currently in Brisbane we're experiencing flash flooding so chances are all that preparation and hard work may have been for nought. I haven't been able to do too much on the app at all these past couple of days but I'm hopeful the weather will ease up. Today was supposed to be the worst of it, but showers are expected tomorrow.

I'm just assembling raid teams for all the regional and legendary monsters. At the very least, I should be able to do a few of them on the day and I will be popping incense so I should still catch plenty of Pokemon across the 12 hours.

Big news for the app, PokeMiners has revealed that Generation 7 has been uploaded into the game and an announcement is expected in a couple of days during the Pokemon Direct stream. I'd expect it to kick off at the start of the next season so I'm pretty excited to be there for ground zero. We already had some of the Alolan variations of monsters, but there's around 85 new monsters coming into the game. I expect a few will be regional and of course some will be in raids as well.