Pokemon Go

I must have misread the announcement, then, because I missed that (though I did see the shiny Anorith and Onix announcements).

For my maxed attack/defense Snorlax, I'm probably going to hold off on powering it up until I get a "power up 5 times" quest, but I figure it'll be a solid 6th choice in many cases with the right charged move combo. That level 35 Snorlax though has already been put into rotation as a gym defender, and it's doing as well as one would expect.

You didn't misread anything, as the candy discount for legendary second moves was an unannounced side effect that was later reversed. Typical Niantic scripting error, though it worked in our favour this time. I'm really curious as to how they managed that, though. I suspect it was accidentally also reduced with the buddy candy distance reduction script, but the change also didn't affect non-legendaries/mythics, so I'm having a hard time envisioning the kind of code failure gymnastics that were required for this to blow up on them like that.

One regret on that front: I was culling down some of my box and was finally touching the dozens of legendaries I have unnecessary copies of (and aren't worth the opportunity cost of holding in case of another 2x candy on transfer event) and realized I've been sleeping on a 98% Sky Attack Moltres. Would have been nice to add a second move to that so I could have both that and a fire charged move. Oh, well. Not like fire is going to be useful at all against the current raid forecast.

I more meant that I misread that Lileep's shiny was released.

As for Fire-focused Moltres... well, I mean, we're not that far off of Cobalion (technically Virizion as well, though you'd obviously want Sky Attack more against that), but admittedly, outside of that, a Fire legendary is not going to be that great against most upcoming 5-star raids. Though if we expand our view a bit to include potential 4-star or 3-star raids in Gen V... Excadrill might be a good use for a Moltres as long as Rock Slide isn't one of its charge moves. Lilligant and Whimsicott strike me as reasonable possibilities for a mid-tier raid boss as well. Ferrothorn feels like it's inevitable as an otherwise-maddening 4-star raid (and possibly a popular gym defender, depending on its stats). Bisharp is a reasonable possibility, although the army of Machamps we all have probably has dibs there. Finally, if they do what I think and make Genesect into an EX Raid boss, Moltres will almost certainly be a top 3 attacker.

So... if you've got the candy and dust, I can see the usefulness of that Moltres. That said, it wouldn't be my priority either.

Fair, though that's still a minimum of a month and some change away. And said minimum assumes they don't spend a bunch of time rerunning the lake Sprites with their regions rotated two more times with other shiny reruns between those. So I'll have a pretty big window to react accordingly. Of course, there's also the unfortunate complication for Moltres that I have a full team of level 30+ Blast Burn Blaziken.

Because of the issues with Adventure Sync, the 50k Dust & 15 Rare Candy reward for walking 50km this week will also apply to next week. It's possible to get the reward twice as a result.

Admittedly, my discussion of said Moltres does also run on the presumption that you aren't just powering up a bunch of Blazikens and/or Charizards (the latter even having the Flying type to make future Earthquake Excadrill raids a cinch), both of which can much more affordably acquire the Fire/Flying charged move combo (though yes, Moltres is much better at it than Charizard, who is miles ahead of Blaziken). Moltres at this point would mostly be for those who just really like it.

I expect folks most likely know, but the end results of GO Fest Chicago:

• Attendees got to catch Jirachi; it's officially unknown when it'll get a global release (however, given the tradition of associating Jirachi with the Tanabata, I'm betting around July 7th).
• All of the missions were accomplished, although Instinct was a close call, apparently completing 5 million on the last day (which has led to some speculating that Niantic juiced the numbers). So yes, an upcoming special raid day for Raikou (including its shiny) will be coming.
• There was one snag that Niantic can't be blamed for - severe thunderstorms hit Chicago on Saturday and forced the evacuation of the park for about two hours in the afternoon. In response, people who attended will get an extra day of event spawns this coming Saturday. Sadly, that's just for people who attended - fair, yes, but a mild bummer for those like me who just can't go for various reasons.
• Apparently, shiny Clefairy (which, to be fair, is available for everyone, though only via hatching a shiny Cleffa and evolving it) and shiny Abra were briefly available at GO Fest, but it was apparently a mistake and they were only briefly available.

I was there Saturday. It was, uh, pretty crazy. Got there at 11, had connection issues for nearly an hour until I ended up hotspotting off my friend so I wasn't stuck with AT&T's one bar of service. Played until 1:30 with on-and-off showers, then we got kicked out of the park because the city came out and told Niantic to shut down. We didn't get the all clear to come back until 3:30, which meant we didn't get to start playing again until 3:45. It then proceeded to rain pretty hard for almost the next two hours, which meant playing from under an umbrella the entire time. Around 5:30ish, we were finally able to play without an umbrella. Then we got kicked out at 7. Was still relatively fun, though.

The compensation was definitely needed, since Saturday was a roller coaster of how playable a given hour was compared to the last.

Biggest disappointment for me was that the constant showers caused them to cancel the Pikachu and Eevee photoshoots for the entire day. I kinda wanted pictures with them.

There's a film crew poking around my town, and apparently they're doing something Pokemon Go related.

The whole thing with the Saturday weather was unfortunate, but sadly, with a game of this nature, what can you do? Well, other than the compensation, of course, which was the right call.

Kuroi, did you get to participate in the raid server stress test that they did? I heard about it and saw the screenshots, but I didn't hear how well it worked out.

As for that film crew... interesting. Wonder if it's a local production or something bigger.

Supposedly it's an advertisement for "the next Pokemon Go computer game". That could refer to Go itself, or it could be referring to Sword and Shield, or Pokemon Sleep, or to Niantic's next AR game Harry Potter Wizards Unite.

Edited by Anura on Jun 18th 2019 at 4:54:30 PM

Yeah, this legitimately wasn't Niantic's fault. The event did advertise "rain or shine", though, so the compensation was definitely needed to save them from getting lynched—even if it was Chicago City's call in the end.

Unfortunately, the compensation doesn't get me the mascot photoshoot pictures, or the replay time with my friend (we live on opposite ends of North America), but it's still a pretty generous timing window. Plus, when we were headed out on Sunday, it looked the lines for the mascots were pretty sizable, so 99% chance they're back next year (just... fingers crossed on getting tickets again, I guess).

I did not get to participate in the raid stress test. I think that was a Thursday thing and we drove in the morning of the Saturday that we played.

Harry Potter: Wizards Unite is out in the US and UK.

So, the make-up day turned out pretty decently for me. Played all ten hours and my rates weren't as good as a lot of peoples' on Reddit, but I kind of knew that'd end up being the case. My city's not particularly good for the game (but definitely not rural bad). In a grand kind of irony, it was also raining for about half of the day, but I picked the local university, which is probably the best place for density in the city, while also conveniently being largely indoors (there's a central courtyard with a good cluster of spawns that I was constantly missing while I was raining hard, though). My plan was to concentrate on Unowns, then shiny checking pretty much everything in order to take advantage of the increased rate. A lot of normally rare stuff (Absol, Mawile, Lapras, Dratini, Larvitar) was more or less everywhere, while Unowns ended up being the uncommon spawn (as expected, really). For some weird reason, despite the rainy weather, I saw a grand total of three Horseas. Also, only two flower Pikachus.

End result was mostly ending up with trade bait, but that's fine, as Unowns have high value. Got about 20 of those. A haul of 11 shinies put me at a rate of about one per hour (roughly average compared to what I've anecdotally seen, with some people going as high as 26 and others only getting 2-3), including Absol, Lapras and Mawile, which are normally big pains to hunt. Bronzor, too. Most of the non-shiny stuff I got had pretty non-notable IVs or levels. I think I got a couple level 33 Mawiles, and a level 33 Larvitar. IV-se, there was 98% Mawile, I think an Unown slightly improved its percentage and a good chunk (something like 6/15) of my flower Eevees were in the top tier of assessment.

Spawn-wise, the compensation was generally plentiful and fun enough. But trekking those empty halls couldn't begin to compare to hanging out with my friend in the middle of that electric Go Fest atmosphere.

Shadow and Purified Pokémon, Team Rocket, PokéStop Invasions, Route Maker and 3 New Moves coming to Pokemon GO

Didn't expect to see Shadows back in Go of all games.

Oh geez, wasn't ever expecting to see Shadow Pokemon appear again. Or for Orre and Cipher to be mentioned at all.

If this means that we'll see the return of Miror B., then all is right in the world.

Of all the villain teams, though, I'd rather see a return of Team Plasma. They're the ones I'd be most excited in fighting again (partly due to their aims, and partly because I'm kind of bored of Team Rocket. Again).

Well i dont see any mention of Cipher, but i remember Rocket were responsible for Shadow Pokemon in the Pokemon 4Ever movie.

In terms of "interesting," two things I saw in the pic made for Go's third anniversary (as seen on the official news site and Twitter feed).

1. Tepig, Oshawott, and Snivy are in the picture (and not hard to spot, either). I wasn't anticipating Gen V for another few months, but maybe it'll be sooner than I thought.
2. Much harder to see, but hiding in the shadows of the tree on the right, two figures in familiar black berets can be seen. That Team Rocket content may be coming very soon (which, given the datamine, would make sense).

Slightly less mindblowing is that flowery Eevee and Pikachu are also in that pic, so they might be making a return relatively soon, for those interested.

Armored Mewtwo incoming as a Raid Battle from July 10th through 31st

Edited by tclittle on Jul 4th 2019 at 8:10:40 AM

A million years later, we finally have a Fairy fast move. Rejoice!

So Go's having a cross-promotion with One Piece

Yes, that's not a joke post.

Well, Hello Kitty and Gundam are doing a thing, so maybe TPC is trying to one-up them?

It's a mix of celebrating anniversaries (Go's third and One Piece's 22nd) and is in support of the reconstruction of the hometown of One Piece's creator following earthquake damage in 2016.

Some more detail here: https://comicbook.com/gaming/amp/2019/07/16/pokemon-go-one-piece-crossover/

Also, little fun fact, Pikachu's voice actress, Ikue Otani, also voices a main OP character, the little reindeer doctor, Chopper.

Edited by sgamer82 on Jul 15th 2019 at 11:45:11 AM

Straw Hat Pikachu is officially announced in English... and it very much does not mention that it's a crossover with One Piece. The closest that announcement gets to noting the crossover is mentioning that this is "the latest in the grand line of behatted Pikachu" (emphasis mine) and a stray mention of a "crew." Though the pic of the male trainer in the straw hat is in the pose Luffy usually takes right before he gets ready to administer a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown.

My only guess is that there's some sort of awkward legal reason as to why Niantic can't make the One Piece crossover explicit.