Pokemon Go

Sort of. Where I live has a weird history with it. Basically, before they stopped making spawns so weather dependant (which I actually appreciated, since weather having more weight made spawns less generic...), Trapinch took our rare slots downtown—especially during sunny weather. Made me a little bitter because we couldn't even get the cool dragons like Dratini or Bagon during windy. Then the spawn weight shifted and Trapinch invaded. It started taking up all the uncommon slots that used to spawn the evolved forms of junk like Geodude or Diglett. Was pretty weird.

That said, I can't really say I hate them, since, even though I don't care for Trapinch's base design, Vibrava is just one that really clicks with me.

Finally caught two Mewtwos, with one of them being shiny. KuroiTenshiTsubasa wasn't kidding when they said it was going to be a rough fight.

Having never ever fought an EX raid Mewtwo before, did those ever use Ice Beam in raids? One of the raid Mewtwos I fought had it and I was wondering if it had it specifically to take out Tyranitars.

Thankfully, one of the raids I was in had 20 people in it, so that one went by really smoothly. On the downside, I need to stock up on healing items now.

Oh well, it was worth it. Finally got one of my all-time favorite Pokemon.

Edited by dragonfire5000 on Sep 20th 2019 at 1:18:47 AM

The EX-raid Mewtwo never had Ice Beam, no. That was added the first time it went into normal raids, when it lost Shadow Ball (probably its best move until Psystrike). It's always had Focus Blast though; I fought one of those earlier today, that wasn't fun with T-Tar.

I see.

These two Mewtwos are probably the only ones I can catch for a while since Mewtwos leave raids this coming Monday and my place of residence rarely sees big groups for raids. Still, I'm happy with the two I caught, and I hope Mewtwo appears in Research Breakthroughs in the future (however unlikely it is).

Now back to hoping I get a good female Eevee from the next Research Breakthrough I get...

Yeah, Ex Mewtwo had Hyper Beam and Shadow Ball instead of any of the elemental attacks. After leaving Ex Raids, it replaced those with Ice Beam, Thunderbolt and Flamethrower. As noted, Focus Blast was always a thing, so Ttar could always have a rough time of it. The biggest contributing factor to why it's way tougher outside of Ex Raids, though, is that Niantic arbitrarily buffed its raid stats by enough to represent a 20% CP increase, thus why it was dubbed "T6".

I've done it with as low as three veteran accounts (two of us had full teams of Shadow Ball Mewtwos at level 35+) plus two people who were just using whatever they could find out of their boxes from the counters list and it was pretty rough going. Mind, that was also before super effectiveness was buffed, so it'd probably be a little easier now.

The Safari Zone was fun, though I wish I had known a few logistical things before I went (most notably, that the route to get to the park on foot involved a bridge that's several hundred feet over the St. Lawrence River... which is not fun when you're acrophobic). I've got my two dozen or so Tropius, as well as enough Unown to make a decent number of trades locally (the letters B, C, E, Q, and U, naturally). I also made out well with shinies - not as good as the people I heard pulling 8 shiny Yanma, but I managed two of those, plus my first two shiny Carvanha and my first shiny Scyther (plus a few shiny Treecko and Ponyta, but I had those already).

Oh, and hilariously, I got a third shiny Yanma when I got back home. Trade bait!

Finally, one side effect of being American and thus used to imperial measurements is the whole "not really clicking just how much walking I did." I was naturally feeling dead on my feet after everything, and since I made sure that I noted my weekly walk amount in-game before Friday began, I was all "oh, a little over 32 kilometers, why am I acting so tired out after only that?" It was when I did the conversion to miles that I realized that I nearly walked a marathon in a single day, and that might have something to do with why my legs felt like they were screaming in agony.

EDIT: Oh, yeah, had a classic "the RNG mocks you" moment. So I don't know if folks recall, but for a long time, I had terrible luck getting EX Raid passes. I got one as part of the beta test, and it was around 8-10 months until I got another. That drove me crazy. Fast forward to last Friday, and shortly after arriving in Montreal and downing a small breakfast, I noticed that there was a T5 raid very close by starting in 15 minutes. I went, won the raid, failed to catch the Mewtwo, and didn't think any further of it. 6 hours later, I got notified that I got an EX Raid Pass for that gym. Sigh... understandably, I'm not taking another 6-hour bus ride just for that.

Edited by 32_Footsteps on Sep 23rd 2019 at 4:15:12 AM

It's probably because I've only recently been doing 5-star raids, but it feels kind of jarring to see Giratina at around in the 30,000 CP range after having to deal with Mewtwos at 60,000+. I forgot that the 30,000 CP range is normal for legendaries.

Speaking of Giratinas, I recently caught one that got a pink crowned sticker when appraised. Feeling pretty good right now.

Isn't Mewtwo using anything other than Psystrike a downgrade?

Not really. Super effectiveness is still +60% damage and Mewtwo has a huge Attack stat. It can basically fill quite nicely for Ghost, Ice and Electric. Of course, there is generally better in any other category, but whatever it is will need to be about as invested and some have limited availability (assuming we're talking about Shadow Ball, that'd be Giratina-O; or Gengars with Lick or Shadow Claw).

Edited by KuroiTsubasaTenshi on Sep 25th 2019 at 2:52:18 AM

Yeah sure, let's foster United Nations by insisting regional mons still be regionals.

That's definitely one of the most baffling decisions they could have made. They could have at least expanded it enough that the Americas all temporarily share their regionals; Europe and Africa do the same; and same with Asia and Australia. Or do some sort of loaner rotation where each region temporarily gets a different region's regional.

I'd personally rather they ditch the regional mechanic entirely, though I know that's never going to happen.

The regional mechanic is definitely a case where the mechanics of the original games do not scale properly with the mechanics of this global game. It kind of reminds me of when Square Enix decided to take the mechanics of an MMO and scale it down to a single-player RPG for Final Fantasy XII, and it frustrated a lot of players.

To be fair, a lot of the most problematic mechanics there were inherited from old-style JRPG convention carryovers from its previous titles. Stuff like low-percentage weapon/mat drops or rare spawns. I recall FF4 being a particularly sore point for farming for Excalibur, etc. That said, I will readily gripe about Yiazmat's absurd HP pool and how palings (invincibility that can only ever be removed by letting it run out) have no place as a mechanic in a single player game (or even more MMO situations).

Thinking more on it, a good compromise for regionals would be to have them semi-locally regional. Make them like nests that are quite uncommon. This makes it so that people may have to take a mini-adventure a town down to get a rare spawn, rather than asking them to take a $2000 plane trip for Chatot. Alternatively, they could make trading range restrictions less draconian, but it's in the best interest of their gacha model to perpetuate FOMO as much as possible without appearing particularly overt, so that'll never happen.

Did they slash catch rates? Pokeballs have been completely worthless for a few days for me, even with Razz Berries.

Not to mention Rocket Pokemon being uncatchable if they have anything resembling useful CP.

Or am I just unlucky?

I haven't noticed any issues, though I tend to only use Great of Ultra when manually catching, since a lot of trashy stuff will even break out of curved Greats or Excellents with base Pokeballs. I've always found base Pokeballs to be of sketchy use, so maybe you were just lucky before and your luck has returned to normal?

I've noticed that there's some sort of weird sine wave to my own catch success. If I'm at a peak, I can throw a normal throw Pokeball at something with an absurd catch rate like a final starter evo, miss the target circle, and still hit a first throw. On the flip side, when I'm at a nadir, I can see CP 10 Pidgeys break out of an Excellent curve throw if I'm using anything less than an Ultra Ball.

I notice it consistently, but I'm just one person, so I've never been sure if it's luck, an actual mechanic, or just something in my phone is seeding the RNG weird.

I've gotten a few Charged TMs in the recent Giratina raids. Good thing too; I have a purified Larvitar that I'm trying to evolve all the way into Tyranitar, and I need a way to give it Crunch.

Murphy's Law: now that you have them, evolving to Tyranitar will get you Crunch right away. But if you didn't have them, it would get Fireblast.

Rumor: dataminers have found code for Galarian forms and a new event.

I honestly think it's a mistake to introduce Alolan forms early, since you're cutting the amount of mons that will appear.

Speaking of which, I thought the first batch of Unovamons are kind of few?

Eh, the first batch of Hoenn and Sinnoh 'mons were also pretty small. I'm fine with it.

As for those new moves... Thunder Fang and Ice Fang are probably just going to be Fire Fang but with electric or ice type, just like the games. Sacred Sword, of course, is going to be the big determinant as to how usable the Sword Trio (or quartet, if you prefer) is going to be. As for the moves that are OHKO in the games... I strongly suspect they're going to end up coded like Hyper Beam, in terms of both power and charge requirements, with the only differences being who learns them (and, for Fissure, being Ground type). It's the only way I can see it being fair (though if they made them be Blast Burn/Frenzy Plant/Hydro Cannon, but with different types... ooh boy).

For those of you who've actually been there: are regionals relatively common where you are? What are the likelihood that you take a vacation that spends like a day or two over there and not run into any?

Mr Mime is everywhere here. Though Mime Jr seems to be quite a rare hatch.

Carnivine is a borderline Com Mon and Tauros is less common but still not incredibly difficult to find in my neck of the woods.

Where I am, Tauros is somewhat uncommon during non-Partly Cloudy weather. You can probably find one outside of an event within a day. As soon as Partly Cloudly hits, I'd be shocked if you can't find one within an hour or two. It was actually really funny earlier in the year where some Australian acquaintances of mine came over to visit and seeing them get excited about Tauros. It was one of those, "Oh, yeah, people from other regions actually want these things" moments.

Seviper basically doesn't exist outside of events, though. Even if it's a week that spams Cloudy, seeing one during said week is far from guaranteed. Active hunting would probably turn one up, but it would be a pain.

I'm just outside of the cut-off for Pachirisu, but those who have gone north for a day trip typically come back with 2-3.