Pokémon Go! (Into Private Territory to Catch a Snorlax)

I had a stroll for about 90 minutes today around the fields near where I stay then down into the town centre. What I discovered is that where there were once Weedles, Caterpies and Pidgeys galore, my surrounding area is now a hotbed of the fossil Pokémon, Arons and Geodudes and most unfortunately, Mr. Mime.

I enjoyed being out and about the home as it's been ages since I've just taken a walk for fun rather than to go somewere.

That's just the timing of when you're playing as it's the adventure week event until tomorrow which spawns all that sort of stuff in greater numbers, a few days ago you'd have had an abundance of Alolan Exegutor alongside them.

That's not to say spawns aren't better now though, the weather system means what you find is a lot more varied than it used to be.

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Oh! I had some convoluted reason for all the fossil Pokémon spawning like "well, Dunfermline is known for being the ancient capital of Scotland, so that MUST be why I'm getting all these Kabuto!"

Beldum community day is almost here, anyone else going hunting?  Plan on heading into Adelaide and snagging me a bunch.  Target is a hundred of them, although I hope to get closer to the big one-fifty.

Just a heads up for those casually playing the game. You know, since it's Beldum and all. Metagross with Meteor Mash.

I took part in community day before and after family swim and then during the weekly shop, top tip, supermarkets are brilliant for mass spawns. Managed 3 Shiny Beldum in all which is good enough for me.

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Well, another month another Community Day.  Cyndaquil!  

By god this one started rocky, connection issues plagued the first hour or so.  I almost gave up and went home in disappointment.  Instead I hunkered down in a nice quiet area with some Dokkan Battle, and eventually the issues were resolved and the event extended by a couple of hours to boot.  

I highly advise anyone across the pond looking for Stardust to go out tomorrow, we've got a double stardust event on right now and the CD adds another double, so 400 stardust for every Pokemon caught (600 if you use a stardust crystal, and 700 if you catch a weather-boosted mon.  Was sunny here in Adelaide so Cyndaquil's were weather-boosted for most of the day).  I started the day with about 90k stardust, came home with 200k more than that.  

Didn't go ham this time, so I only got two max attack IV Typhlosions and a shiny one with decent IV's.  Fire isn't the most used type for raids so I didn't go all-out like Beldum.  Still a good haul, especially when you factor in the Giratina, Kirlia, and Sharpedo from raids.

It sounds like Go! has become pretty in-depth indeed since launch! I suppose it makes sense considering a lot of the casual crowd will have moved on leaving mostly serious players who'll want a bit more meat in their game.

I know a few people who play it religiously, I still manage to get a lot of time to play with journeys to and from work but these people make me look like a casual.

The real appeal these days is definitely in getting whatever kind of special Pokemon you can, 100% IV, Shiny, Level 1 evolved Pokemon, etc.

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I don't understand 100% IVs or Level 1 stuff. If anybody could signpost me to somewhere that explains it all plainly, I'd appreciate it.

I'm still playing Pokemon Go, probably in the same way as treesmurf is. I think it's great - not only is it much more in-depth than it was in summer 2016, but it's far more well-rounded and giving. I'm eager to see how it's used with Pokemon Let's Go.

The most I do these days is the daily catch / spin.
The only days I do put a bit more effort is on Community days or I'm close to evolving who ever my buddy is

The level 1 thing will be Pokemon whose power up bar is right at the start, so like a Charizard with 30CP, more of a trophy piece than a useable Pokemon.

The way I check IVs is to use the appraise button, if she says "It's a Wonder" and that it's best stats are HP, Attack and Defence equally and they "exceed expectations" then it has perfect IVs. They say something different for those that aren't on the mighty Team Mystic but I think you are anyway.

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I fired this up today properly for the first time since launch week! I caught a few Pokemon around the starbucks whose wifi I was mooching as I waited for my bus. It turned out this was not an intelligent use of my phone's battery.

Oh, Go! is a massive power drain. When I was playing it reasonably often, I thought about investing in one of those little power bricks to charge my phone when I'm out and about.

JayMoyles wrote:

Oh, Go! is a massive power drain. When I was playing it reasonably often, I thought about investing in one of those little power bricks to charge my phone when I'm out and about.

I've got one, I just forgot to pack my wire

Walked 20km yesterday, mostly just playing this. It actually really improves the "wondering around Japan" experience because I would click on nearby stops or gyms, see that they were interesting little shrines and statues and stuff, and add detours to my route.

There was also a mountaintop temple I wanted to visit (I saw it from the top of another mountain a couple of weeks back), and at the top I sound a a rarely visited gym. I defeated it and dropped off my own Grimer there so now I'm expecting serious coins.

I'm sorry to disappoint, but coins are capped at fifty per Pokémon, per gym, and per day. That's annoying, because, with the length of time I've had some monsters in some gyms, I could probably afford a house.

Ah thats a bummer. I knew it was 50 per mon per day but i was hoping tbat hed be there for 100 days and id make 5000 coins or something.

Yeah, the coin limit is a pain.  I've had instances where I deposited a Pokemon in a gym expecting it to be back in 24 hours because of the typical turnover rate of the gym, only for it to survive several days and arrive at the same time as a more recent Pokemon.  Result?  No coins for that day.  

Anyone else heading out for the big Community Weekend landing in a few hours?  Hoping to finally nab me some Tyranitars (got 3 perfect attack Larvitars from recent hatchings lined up and ready to evolve   ) and more Dragonites.  

On the subject of IV's, they're a lot simpler in Go than the main series.  Every Pokemon you catch can have an IV in each of its stats that range from 1 to 15.  The higher the IV the higher the Pokemon's stat.  The easiest way to tell when you've got a Perfect IV or several is through appraising a Pokemon in its menu.  If its got a perfect IV the team leader will express how amazing it is in the specific stat (and they'll list all stats when the highest IV is tied with another).  None of that breeding for hours and training for hours nonsense from the main series.

There are apps around that can calculate a Pokemon's exact IV's (or rather calculate the various potential combinations it has) based on the Pokemons level, CP, and HP stat.  But I only bother with that if it's a good Pokemon and has a promising appraisal (basically only after community days when I'm deciding what to evolve and the end of raid seasons to see which Legendaries to keep).  

Some things to note about IV's that help to keep in mind are that anything hatched from an egg has a higher chance of having high IV's in general (it's fairly common to hatch something with at least one perfect IV, and even when they don't have that they have higher minimum IV's than usual), same for anything caught from a raid.  And weather boosted have a higher chance of good IVs as well, although the rates are a fair bit lower than egg hatchings and raid catches.  

As for level 1's, they're just rare and people like having trophies.  I've got a 22CP Golbat that I keep for novelty value for example. In an era where anyone can take a gym if they have ten minutes to spare I tend to prefer sticking junk in for laughs than actually trying to defend it.

I will indeed! I'm planning to make a big day of it on Sunday and get shedloads of Pokeymans. I may even . . . spend money!

Heh, I've been spending money on apps for a few months now.  Always get one of the Ultra Box specials ahead of a Community Day for the egg hatchings and raid passes (shame there's no stardust crystals this time around, stacking that with the double stardust on a CD is always a blast)  And you don't even want to know how much money I've blown on gacha games like Dokkan Battle and Dragon Ball Legends the last few months.  

Well, day one is over for me.  Spent a good four or so hours catching, got myself enough candies to evolve one Dragonite and one Tyranitar, as well as two shiny Mareep and a Frenzy Plant Venasaur.  

Despite that it ended on a bit of a sour note.  Joined a Crescellia raid, and only four other people turned up.  One person decided to bail immediately thinking we couldn't win (considering Crescellia can be 3-manned under the right circumstances... Yeah).  And another person brought a bunch of bloody Fire types in cloudy weather.  FIRE TYPES!  Not even good ones either, a Houndoom with Fire Blast and a Flareon.  

So the raid ended with me spending the last forty seconds on my own because everyone else decided to throw in the bloody towel after their Pokemon had been KOed.  And I left pretty annoyed, because I reckon we could've scrapped over the line if everyone else had done their bloody jobs (hell I wiped off a good ten percent of Cres's health in the last portion on my own, and I know two of them had T-tars they could've revived and rejoined with).  But no, they just decide to quit preemptively meaning I wasted a raid pass.  

Don't get me wrong we might not have made it.  But it would have been very close. And for the chance of catching a weather-boosted Crescellia. . . Bah. Lightweights.

Will probably play more in passing over this weekend but still need a Shiny Bulbasaur and Chikorita as they were both missed. So far I've only had a Shiny Larvitar.

I see they're bringing PvP to this now, really don't know what to expect for it, it can't be good surely?

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PvP will be easily ignored imo. Gym control already serves enough pvp for my tastes.

Anyhow day two is over. I actually missed almost the entire three hour period, thought it was going to be a day later than it was (my mind saw the listings of the event in pacific time and then thought the boosted stardust was also in pacific time, rather than Japan time).

Still had a decent haul though. Got another Cresselia (20 people this raid, the poor thing never stood a chance against the army of Tyranitars and Metagross'), got enough Dratini candy to meet my goals of two full evolutions (going to wait to evolve them though, Outrage has higher dps than Draco Meteor), and enough candy to get my third Tyranitar. Also caught a great Squirtle that I plan on evolving, and a good Charmander. Don't have the candy for them yet though so they're my focus tomorrow morning.

Funny thing about Larvitar. My house frequently spawns a good 3 to 4 Pokemon every few hours. Woke up to a Dratini and weather-boosted Larvitar in my front garden. The Larvitar was almost-max level and had perfect attack IV's. The luck lmao.

I caught a pretty decent number of everyone, made me a feel a little better about missing all the community days before this point. I also sae loads of people playing, which was nice.

It still has a very good size player base who play regularly especially on community days, I'm a part of a WhatsApp group which is that active I had to mute it. A lot of that group bought a Switch with the new Pokemon games too so it's serving it's purpose very well.

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Gen 5 Pokemon have been added today:

https://www.polygon.com/pokemon-go/2019/9/16/20867743/pokemon-go-unova-gen-5-regionals-eggs-raid-exclusives-stones

It's well worth coming back to Pokemon Go with treesmurf and I. Come see all your favourites, like Krookodile...


...Bouffalant...



...and, of course, Snivy: