Pokemon Go

Which is kind of odd after being prominently featured in the S/V hype event.

Speaking of odd decisions: making the winter thing last a week, but explicitly setting an Elite Collection over just Xmas Eve and Day. What the actual hell, Niantic?

Weather Cup is going to be interesting.

Meta will be warped around Poliwrath, the only pokemon resistant to all 4 legal types (fire, water, ice, rock).

Counters such as Azumaril, Lanturn, and Araquinad will be vital.

anything to bring if i dont have a 3-star poliwrath?

You don't want 3-stars in PvP anyway. Low attack IV is generally better.

Bulk is king in PVP along with fast energy generation and cheap-moderate cost charge moves.

Lanturn has a positive matchup against all four types (fire and water hard counter, ice and rock soft counter).

Other potential meta threats include Aloan Marowak, Aurosaurus (was a total dark horse in this year’s holiday cups), Crustile (also a solid choice in Halloween Cup).

Remember, unless stated otherwise, limited formats use Great League as the base.

A certain Pokémon is (finally) set to debut in the game at long last:

Yesterday, my housemate had been shiny hunting for Chespin during the Community Event, and only managed to get one in the last half-hour. I hadn't had an opportunity to play until the last 15 minutes or so, and decided to try, thinking to myself "Wouldn't it be hilarious if I found a shiny on my first one?"

Suffice to say, she now hates me.

Edited by TheHeroHartmut on Jan 25th 2023 at 1:07:59 PM

And thus more than five years after it was started, Hoenn is complete. It is pretty funny that Kecleon somehow ended up being the last one. For the record Kanto took a little under two years with Mew, and Johto a little over two years with Smeargle.

Sinnoh was released a year after Hoenn, and for that we still need Manaphy, Phione, Arceus and kinda Rotom.

I'm guessing they might have manaphy and phone be the prizes for the big event day paid tasks this summer. And save arceus for next pokemon day.

Also got my kecleon but still need a relincanth. My friend had one for me on an alt that she was using for less than legal means but she forgot her log ins

I was in Taiwan recently due to handling family business, and I finally completed the Johto Pokedex after catching a Corsola.

Sadly, I wasn't able to find a Sensu Oricorio before I had to leave, but eh, hopefully there will be an event where different forms of Oricorio show up in places they normally do not.

I'm originally from New Zealand and I did the last Hoenn event. Overall the only ones I don't have is Kecleon (too recent) and Rayquaza (I wasn't experienced enough in GO during the last Rayquaza event)

Hopefully I will be able to join my step-mom in going to Baja California in July. This is mainly a fun exploration thing for me, but I think it would allow me to add Maractus

If I was Niantic I would save Arceus for a thematically appropriate event. Like maybe they do an event around Hisui where they release Hisui variants/Pokemon and if you complete the tasks you encounter Arceus.

I could also see Manaphy/Phione as being something similar to Meltan; it would be unlocked with a new key item via some interconnectivity with HOME or something. I know that's weird, but here me out

• Both lines are unique for Mythicals. The former can breed (Manaphy breeding creates Phione), the latter can evolve
• Unlike a lot of mythicals in their lore they're not stated as being exceptional/one of a kind. Manaphy is a mysterious egg from the sea and is based mainly on a sea angel instead of something major cryptid/some mythic thing. Meltan seems to just be a blobby boi. They can both do cool things, but you could write them as regular Pokemon and I don't think you could do the same for, say Celebi

Alternatively they could do one of those 4-star raids except not awful. That being you get a 5-Star Raid for Manaphy and after raid hours Phione spawn around where Manaphy used to be or something

Edited by RJ-19-CLOVIS-93 on Jan 8th 2023 at 11:42:44 PM

I guess they waited for any Gen IX stuff for the integration.

thanks to the lads who gave me some pvp strats; on that note, i thought three-star was preferable above two-stars but on par with one-stars maxed out in one thing?

has anyone done ticketed events before? it sounds like niantic is returning to old-style go fests and im kind of close enough to vegas to make going not expensive

Not exactly sure what you mean with the 3 star thing, but master league you want as close to perfect as possible, otherwise you want as small of an attack IV as possible with Defense and HP maxed.

Ticketed events follow a general formula of there being physical areas of a park marked out in-game to have certain spawns, along with bonuses(within the area?) and Pokemon Go themed booths and the like. Probably worth it if you've got the time and money to do so and can travel to it reasonably.

Yeah, PvP is a weird stat-product maximizing thing, so what IVs you want outside of Master will actually vary depending on the Mon. But the above advice is a good general rule.

I've been to the one Chicago Go Fest way back. I'd recommend seeing if you can find a friend to go with you. Despite all the physical stuff, it's largely a spawn spam event, which can get old kind of fast solo. Also keep in mind that while there's a general shiny boost, it's not particularly big, so you can't expect to walk away with all the spotlighted shinies (I got around 7 total for roughly 2/3 of a day—the other 1/3 got rained out). Spawns don't exactly come back instantly, either, so if you're shiny hunting, pick like two areas you want the spawns from and cycle between them.

Did Niantic flip a switch or something? Adventure Sync doesn't work anymore.

• Finally* had my first legendary encounter from Battle League. Shiny Regirock, which is nice I guess.

You can now send postcards from your album to Scarlet and Violet to be able to catch the corresponding Vivillon in Paldea.

That said, anyone want to exchange postcards? Mine correspond to modern Vivillon.

1427 5809 6546

Edited by ShinyCottonCandy on Feb 27th 2023 at 1:40:17 PM

I'm not that enthused but I like what they are doing. I wish they made SV connect with HOME, however. On a more related note, did anyone have a productive time in the Hoenn tour? I managed to get both Primals and hatched a shiny Tropius (I live in Australia so this regional isn't usually available, though the prior Hoenn event let me get the vanilla version). I just need a Raikou raid at this point and I'll have the 35 Platinum Medal requirement for later

I wonder when the final Mega legendaries of Rayquaza and Mewtwo will be released. I was thinking maybe with the former being a raid and the whole Hoenn event it was meant to hint at Mega Ray soon being available

I couldn't find anyone to raid with IRL and I wasn't going to pay out for remote passes, so no success on that front.

For those here who play both S/V and Go, there have been reports of S/V save files being lost when using the postcard function.

Changes have been made to Remote Raids, mainly by making RR-Passes able to be received through Research Breakthrough awards...at the cost of jacking up the prices for them in the shop (while adding a much cheaper standard Premium Pass 3-Pack) and putting a cap (of five) on how many Remote Raids one can do in a single day.

...Just to put things in perspective, the post on the Silph Road subreddit about this isn't even a day old at the time I'm making this post and it already has nearly 3k comments on it.

Edited by kablammin45 on Mar 31st 2023 at 10:11:40 AM

What utter nonsense in my book.

I can't drive around to raids that no one else shows up to all day. It's a waste of my time. Remote Passes garunteed that I could join a raid and actually work together with people. I also know it helped people in rural locations finally play the game too.

It's even further bullshit when you recognize that you could totally pay $5 for these raids and then the Pokemon just runs from you. Congrats. You paid for nothing.

Classic "for the good of the game, we need to rip you off" Niantic. A reasonable approach would be to keep the cost at 100 coins, but put a shop limit per week (something like 15 as a max seems okay). The free weekly box proves they have the tech for it. This is just a blatant money grab.

Edited by KuroiTsubasaTenshi on Mar 31st 2023 at 11:58:14 AM

It's not about money (at least not directly), it's about discouraging people from using remote raids. Their main moneymaker is selling location-tagged engagement data, and remote raids don't let them do that.

The only reason they added remote raids in the first place was because covid forced them to, and they've been trying to make in-person raiding more appealing. None of it worked, so now they've resorted to gutting remote raiding.

Edited by Anura on Mar 31st 2023 at 7:36:48 PM