I love good guys

A shiny magikarp was waiting for me between my apartment and my mailbox when I got home tonight! I wasn't shiny-hunting; I was fetching my snail-mail. It has 70% IVs, but... shiny! (I was so excited that I can't even remember now whether it was shiny (yellow) or normal (orange) on the main screen before I tapped it.* But there is a "shiny" animation to catch your attention once you tap a shiny, in case you don't otherwise recognize the difference.)

I wonder how rare these will turn out to be? In the main-series games, I understand, the red gyarados was the one shiny all but guaranteed to every player. Perhaps we're all meant to encounter one shiny magikarp during this United Nations World Water Day (week) event? Hmmm.

(Oh, yeah, and remember to sign up for fkficfest soon. That's important, too. Sure. Of course it is. Shiny shiny shiny... ~grin~)

* Addendum: Mystic7 reports that shininess becomes visible after tapping. Also, shiny spawns, unlike all others, are individual (that is, for only one player each time). Oh, and shiny magikarp can reportedly be non-shiny dittos... cruel tease!

I understand that ongoing games require periodic rebalancing to remain competitive. Yet it felt like adding insult to injury when I hatched a new lapras (10K egg) shortly after realizing that my pet powered-up lapras had been nerfed in the latest rebalancing.

Lapras had been the most elegant of the high-powered pokémon: pretty, useful, intelligent, and dignified. (Plus, every now and then, a lapras buddy looks fondly at your avatar. So engaging!) I'd poured huge quantities of stardust — and so many, many, many kilometers walked (including through most of the Valentine's double-candy event) — into powering up my lapras as high as my trainer level allowed. She'd had my fourth-highest CP, and was my go-to gym defender (when not my buddy), even over my snorlax, because she adds both class and diversity to gyms. Now she has my ninth-highest CP, down under gengar and above cloyster, and I don't even know where her moveset falls anymore.

Granted, I should have known this was coming. Lapras was left out of the previous rebalancing because of the big lapras event in Japan's Tōhoku region (trying to help bring in tourism, as they're still recovering from the 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear plant incident). I should have guessed that her omission wasn't permanent. Indeed, I should have recognized that the event itself made lapras rebalancing more necessary for the overall meta-game. (But. Still. Niantic, why did you have to hurt my lapras?)

Did any of your pet pokémon get nerfed?

You may remember that gyarados was one of the 4 pokémon still missing from my North American pokédex. No longer! (3 to go.)

Saturday morning, at least 40 minutes' drive north, over the border into an adjacent poké-biome where they get more water types (my immediate area gets bug, ground and fire types), I picked up a green 2K egg. Saturday afternoon, that egg hatched a magikarp, boosting my magikarp candy count over 400 at last! Saturday evening, I evolved my one (and probably only ever) gyarados. It has 96% IVs; I've been saving up that prime magikarp for this purpose for months. Unfortunately, it got the poorest available gyarados moveset (bite and twister), but, hey, even a less efficient gyarados is by far a more effective gym defender than most other pokémon species ("Category: Atrocious" ~grin~).

In other weekend pokénews, I earned my gold medal in fairy types, and, still campaigning for diversity in gyms, I held slots (for at least a few hours each) with my muk, vileplume, and cloyster. Muk looks so weird on top of gyms, spreading ickily all over! Vileplume is cute and deadly, with her solar beam. Cloyster seems happy, icing all comers.

(As a reminder, last week was an update, so this week is a nest migration. If you've got any good nests nearby (Silph Road Atlas), you may want to stop by before 12 AM Thursday UTC — afternoon Wednesday, my time.)

You can have many kinds of Pokémon Go fun. You can work on completing your pokédex. You can train in gyms. You can maintain your daily streaks, raise your trainer level, earn badges, enjoy Niantic's events, hike to hatch eggs, contribute to research on the Silph Road or GamePress, and sort and rank and catalogue to your heart's content! (Breeding, trading, and player-versus-player are all supposedly in development.)

I also give myself assignments ("quests"). For weeks, I've been meaning to share my Great Clefable Quest (drama! disappointment! second chances!). And I'm on the verge of fulfilling my Alakazam Attacker Quest (maybe soon!).

But tonight I just wanted to share that I'm exactly 4 pokémon away from completing my North American pokédex for all pokémon available at this time! Who am I missing? ( Read more... )

I did my starter evolutions after the New Year's event ended (with a lucky egg on for those "added to pokédex" XP bonuses!). As mentioned, I had enough candies to evolve and keep one each of every stage of all three starters, plus double enough for venusaur (grass types have always been common here). I'd been storing up my starter candies ever since I started playing, and keeping three of each starter, swapping out the lowest IVs each time I caught or hatched a new one, so...

( Bulbasaur family )

( Charmander family )

( Squirtle family )

How went the PokéGo New Year's event for you?