It's May's Community Day* in Pokemon Go! Catch a shiny Charmander and evolve it to shiny Charizard with Blast Burn! Triple catch stardust and extended lures, 11 AM to 2 PM Pacific Time.

Blast Burn will apparently make Charizard the best non-legendary fire-user. It reportedly doesn't lift Charizard above any legendaries after all, though many expected that.

It's been a while since I've posted about Pokemon Go. To catch up:

• I love the research mechanic! In-game research is the best. "Yes, Professor, I'd love to help you investigate powerful pokemon!" (And yes, I have my Mew, and look forward to Celebi in due time.)


• During the most recent double-XP event, I reached Level 40, the highest available. I was delighted to no longer think about XP at all! (But then the head of Niantic said that a level-cap raise is coming, so, oh well.)


• I've received 2 EX passes that I've had to let go, because the raids were during the workday. ~sigh~ But I have 3 total Mewtwos, one with great IVs, so I'm doing just fine. Nevertheless, I'm one of those who thinks the EX raid system bombed. If Niantic must add another pokemon to it, I feel that it should be Deoxys. But I'd rather have research and one-per-player distributions all around.

* The monthly Community Days alternate between Saturdays and Sundays. Unpredictably, but so far 50/50.

Today is the first monthly "Community Day" mini-event in Pokémon Go. In the Americas, it's from 11 AM to 2 PM (Pacific Time) / 2 PM to 5 PM (Eastern Time). Goodies:

• Double XP
• 3-hour lures
• Increased Pikachu spawns everywhere (but most of all in parks)
• Increased Pikachu shiny rate
• Pikachu can learn the exclusive quick move "Surf" (Pichu and Raichu can't)

And if you participate in the Silph Road's new "Traveler's Card" program, you may be able to find a local event where Discord Admins or other local leaders and coordinators will be giving out badges.

Have fun!

When Norway's Prime Minister visited Washington D.C. last week, a news photographer "caught" her putting one of her pokémon in the White House gym. (Sources: Comicbook.com, NintendoSoup, Daily Mirror, etc.) This wasn't the first time she'd been thus "caught" taking a break between meetings with the game; in 2016, she told the media she'd reached Level 14 (no word on her current level).

I, at least, was utterly charmed. I hope that she caught an amazing Tauros while she was over here. ♥

I'm a disappointed pokémon trainer tonight.

A week and a day ago, I was excited to receive my first EX pass for a raid to take place today. Formerly called "Exclusive," these "EX" passes invite players to come test a new game feature at a specific time and place, with a group of other players, for the expected reward of an opportunity to catch a supreme legendary monster (Mewtwo!). These EX raids have been happening in waves around the world for a few months now.

I looked forward to the event all week, put it on my calendar, powered up my best counters, wore my team-color sweater and jacket...

Now, I had worried that no one had chimed in when I posted the raid to my local Discord group. Or the neighboring group. Or all the groups in the region. But, hey, not everyone uses Discord! Surely regular players would just show up at the park without organizing?

Nope.

Only three of us came for the raid in person: me, another woman, and a boy with his mom. A fourth spoofed in from a distance (cheating). When the raid clock dwindled, the others let me convince them to try, for the sake of the experience, even knowing that we couldn't win with so few (they were understandably reluctant to incur the cost of the resources to heal up from an impossible contest). And we couldn't. We didn't. But we tried! We played well! We battled Mewtwo down under a quarter strength! But we were just too few.

Discovering the lower bound is part of the game testing. Of course. But it's disappointing to be the guinea pig at this end.

I wonder whether we'll get another EX pass someday.

(BTW, when you battle Mewtwo but don't win? It doesn't register as "seen" in your pokédex.)

Yesterday, I managed to take down an Entei raid boss with just 3 other trainers! It was second teams all around, by pretty high-level players, and close even so, but we beat a legendary with only 4 people!

Entei has 3 vulnerabilities, of course: water, rock, ground. But ground is too slow. When you're hard against the clock, go with rock and water for sheer damage-per-second.

There's an Articuno raid at the park nearest me right now. What's happening? Is Articuno back, or is this a glitch...?

I'd planned to post briefly this morning to share that I was so very lucky as to catch a 100% IV Zapdos yesterday! Yay! And then I was going to say that I actually hope summer legendary season will end tonight; I'm game-exhausted by these limited-time-only availabilities of the legendary birds. And then I was going to comment on the rampant Ho-Oh speculation. But...

Apparently, Mewtwo has been a raid boss at Pikachu Outbreak! People have caught Mewtwo! And clearly there's this Articuno right now, here, when we all thought that Articuno wouldn't be seen again in the game for many months, if not a year, if not ever.

Why does Niantic do these things on Mondays (work days) instead of weekends?

If all the legendaries are back in the game at high availabilities, I may perhaps feel a little ill-used or tricked for having invested time and effort in catching them while we were told they were limited-time-only. Hmmmm.

Addendum 10:56 PM: Niantic has spoken: Mewtwo and "other powerful pokémon" are coming soon to "Exclusive Raids," and all 4 legendary birds are back through the end of August. Read all about it.

After the gym rework, I posted that 3K+ CP pokémon would lose motivation 10 times faster than >3K CP pokémon.

That was true until this weekend. Turns out, it was a bug! All gym defenders were meant to lose motivation at the same rate. Niantic has released an out-of-sequence update (this was a migration week, not an update week) and it's bursting with bug fixes.

Just thought you'd want to know. It's safe to go back to defending gyms with 3K+ CP pokémon. :-)

I'd walked down the block for a simple little Weezing raid (Level 2) before dinner, to wrap up my GoFest day. I'd done my bit to help during each global challenge window; I'd heard about the problems in Grant Park (poor connectivity, server overload, long lines, etc.); and I was wondering when the bonuses would turn on.

I bumped into a fellow trainer who lives across the street. We beat Weezing together, naturally, and discovered that we work for the same (very large) company. She started to add me to an internal company pokemon group that I hadn't known of... and we saw posts about a Lugia raid boss (Level 5) hatching within the past 15 minutes, 10 minutes drive away!

( Read more... )

(BTW, the bonuses have gone live and will stay so until 5:00 PM Pacific on Monday. Double stardust, XP, candy, spawns.)

Now, wasn't I going to do something about dinner...?

Update 30 July 2017: This was a bug. All pokemon now lose motivation at the same rate. Read my post about the change. Or read the original post below:

Fellow pokémon trainers! Just in case you haven't heard or figured this out yet: in the recently renovated gym system, the motivation of 3000 CP and higher pokémon degrades 10 times faster than that of 2999 CP and lower pokémon as gym defenders. (As widely reported, the APK mines show ~10% CP loss per hour for 3K and up, versus ~1.1% for under 3K CP.)

It's not that your teammates are feeding berries only to the weaker pokémon, as I initially wondered, myself. It's that the stronger pokémon are 10 times hungrier.

While at first this felt like nothing but a vile nerfing of our best defenders, I now see two ways it can be useful. First, in the new gym defender prize system, a trainer receives 1 coin for every 10 minutes defended, up to 50 pokécoins per day, received when the pokémon returns home. So if your goal is to maximize your pokécoins to spend (rather than your time-in-gym for your gym badge bonuses), you may want your pokémons' motivation to degrade faster, so that they will return to you promptly with those coins! Second, if your goal is precious, precious stardust, then a hungry 3K+ CP pokémon in a handy gym could give you more total opportunities to redeem berries at 20 stardust per berry.

Per Reversal (YouTube episode, ~4 minutes), Toronto currently has more Level 40 players (57!) than any city in the world, and their Pokemon Go community got together to commemorate it. How?

Simultaneously, they maxed out 4 gyms — Mystic/Blue, Valor/Red, Instinct/Yellow — with 10 Level 40 trainers each.

Absolutely awesome.