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Pokémon GO

So Sandygast's a kind of rare Pokemon, and Sneasel's popular and kind of fits the Team Rocket task,a nd Whiscash is an anime reference but

Why Dubwool? Kind of a random reward



Also gotta say I'm stunned how....reasonable? This is as research. Oh sure the numbers are big, and will take a while but not as big or intensive as I could have expected. Hell there's nothing pertaining to raids or trades oranything, even.
Dubwool is sometimes used in PvP and Galar raids are still extremely rarely given out excluding Regional Variants I guess.

Admittedly I was helped in this by the spawns around my house being insane today: Zorua is seemingly everywhere, I chanced upon a Frigibax, a Jangmo-o, and a Sliggoo (since when were those things in the wild...?), and Ioads of evolved stuff which gave loads of CP. Plus I caught a shiny Munna which was one I hadn't yet found so that's nice too. I wondered if these were are all special spawns for the event but apparently there aren't any! So clearly Niantic are showering me with the good stuff to reel me back in.

Though is anyone else finding Jangmo-o really common for a Pokemon you'd expect to... well, not be? Maybe it's my biome or hemisphere or whatever but I'm catching one or two a week atm.
So anecdotally, I think this is because of the lack of event spawns lately after the Rediscover Kanto stuff ended. I've also seen a couple of the Pseudos and evolved stuff so my theory is they normally have decent rates, but only as the "generic" spawns for the season which we very rarely get time to go out and hunt, usually only there for 2-3 days between events. This season has been lighter on spawn heavy content to push them out, so even if they're like a 1/500 chance, there are more of those chances to roll them atm.
 
I'm not rushing on this master ball task especially since I heard the limit I can have in my inventory is 2. I believe I have just one and I'm reserving it for when I really need it.
 
I'm not rushing on this master ball task especially since I heard the limit I can have in my inventory is 2. I believe I have just one and I'm reserving it for when I really need it.
This is only our 3rd Master Ball, but I think people confirmed you can hold more than 1 so they assume it's not capped, just rarely given out (I used one on a high Power G-Zapdos, but saving my others for something like Hundo Necrozma-last-ball Situations).

I can't confirm if it caps out at 2 for reasons given, but very few other items in the game do (they usually artificially stop you from acquiring more like Rocket Grunts not dropping Components while you have a Radar) even if you have to force them (such as stacking Giovanni Research for SRR or Takeovers letting you get components via Research Tasks)
 
Goomy community day confirmed!

Really hoping they'll give us Hisuian Goodra at the same time, but it'll probably be part of the raid day a couple of weeks afterward (if it isn't Rayquaza).
 
Okay, soooo... Mega Rayquaza is going to be in Elite Raids on the 29th after all (not a raid day then, is it Niantic?) the same day I'm out of London visiting a friend who also plays, but not religiously.

Anyone know the calculations on whether it's possible to trio Mega Rayquaza with party play...? I rather doubt it but you never know.
 
Some belated goings-ons for me:

-A week or so ago I finally finished the first page of the shaymin masterworks research, and am now working through the first 21 day time-gate; still better than catch 10 Keckleon.

-I was travelling during Bounsweet community day, so I only managed to snag one shiny; hopefully I can get 2 more in December for the living shiny dex. At very least that travel took me close enough to a river/beach biome to snag a Wigglet. (Sadly only managed the one).

-With the final step of the world of wonders research out I was finally able to evolve Poipole. Took a bit due to having to catch 20 dragon types that were spawning only sporadically, but I managed to do it before clicking on any gyms that already had a Naganadel in it and having the "seen" counter forever ahead of the "caught" counter in my pokedex.

-Lastly, with Blacephalon out I was finally motivated to do some raids again, since getting extra Blacephalon in the main games would be a chore. Too bad ultra beast raids still use premiere balls instead of beast balls, but hopefully GO fest gives some research that gives an encounter that uses a beast ball.

In other news, GO fest Sendai is tomorrow(?), so looking forward to seeing the Marshadow t-shirt that was data-mined and any other cool stuff they might have been hiding.

This page speculates that Z-moves may be getting added, as 20 new moves were added and they figured 18 types + Solgaleo and Lunala. I will be annoyed if Diancie got to mega out of the gate but Marahadow doesn't get spectral thief and its Z-move, at least by global go fest!
 
Okay, soooo... Mega Rayquaza is going to be in Elite Raids on the 29th after all (not a raid day then, is it Niantic?) the same day I'm out of London visiting a friend who also plays, but not religiously.

Anyone know the calculations on whether it's possible to trio Mega Rayquaza with party play...? I rather doubt it but you never know.
I think people managed to Duo Mega Rayquaza using ~Level 40-50 Shadow Mamoswine (best Ice Attacker bar none atm) during the initial Go Fest with 5 attackers and a Fainted Primal (10% Boost but don't have them battle, your own Mega Rayquaza also works for this if anyone has it). I mostly did Trios because I only had one Shadow, but my runs were usually comfortable (as in I didn't have to have perfect dodging

There are two notable differences here, one good and one bad.
- Go Fest had 2x Friendship Damage Boost
- Go Fest was BEFORE Party Power was implemented

So assuming you have decent Friendship levels between your 3 accounts to have a higher boost to that (even without the 2x Go Fest bonus), I think a Trio is tricky but possible. Work on Friend Interactions and building your Ice Types in Advance to be safe. If it's anything like previous Elite Raid Days there tends to be a decent crowd but better safe than sorry (Enamorus I had people throwing out stuff like Golem which helps but isn't optimized for example). It helps that the Eggs spawn 24 hours in advance so you can look for places where a couple hatch together and do multiple either expecting or attracting a Crowd.

For reference the 5 best options are: Shadow Mamo, Regular Mamo, Shadow Weavile, Galarian Darm, and Shadow Mewtwo with Ice Beam (no STAB but Psycho Cut gets it fast and it has high stat power to compensate).

tl;dr Possible, but build up as much as you can to be on the safe side.
 
Pro: thanks to having a remote raid pass, I was able to get Necrozma!

Cons: you cannot transfer Necrozma to Home.

I am hoping that like Poipole, that's something they're just going to enable later. Maybe when global fest happens.
My worry is due to the fusion mechanic, you just will never be able to transfer it so it gets to be next to Spinda & Zygarde
 
I fully expect Larvesta to just remain in eggs forever. It seems to be something they are actively pushing as the premium pull in egg gacha. It's not just always in the egg pool (barring sinnoh tour) it's in all the eggs aside from 7KM.

Even in the Unova tour I expect it will remain in the Eggs
 
The secret prize from this event for me isn't Larvesta (because I ain't counting on Hatching another one of those, much less a shiny), but just the smaller (Shiny) Egg Pools. I'm sitting on a bunch of the 7K eggs from this Emolga event, so the Hatch distance will be nice to clear out any I still have left by then, and besides a Charcadet for the other Evo, I need Shiny Turtonator, so the 10 K eggs are hard to go wrong with from a collector perspective (most of the others I own or could hunt easier via Research/Encounters).

That said this is the usual spell of "who cares?" events that tend to precede a period of big spending like Go Fest or the debut of a big game changer (Annihilape's event was like the only interesting one I recall in its month, but what an impact). The fact that there's no Rocket Takeover leads me to believe they want people worn out and itching for something to go hard on, then make them jump the gun with an event leading up to Go Fest akin to Road to Sinnoh's raids
 
I don't doubt* that larvesta and charcadet will be made more accessible in some future event, it's just that of all the nonsense Niantic does, egg events are particularly egregious. Except for the hatch days when the spotlight mon is literally the only thing in eggs, egg events are just never worth it. I have hatched one (1) larvesta since release, and as far I can tell there isn't going to be any significant boost to it or charcadet's hatch rates, so I have no incentive to spend coins on incubators just to get the same results I've been getting for months. For the folks aiming for shiny slugma or litleo maybe it will turn out to be worth it for them, but Niantic is definitely counting on whales to go hard on trying to hatch shiny larvesta. And to top it off, there aren't even any event spawns!

*Ok, I have some doubt. It's been 2 years since salandit was released and I don't think there's been any event to make it (particularly female salandit) more accessible, even despite varoom being the fancy new addition to the 12k egg pool.
 
I don't doubt* that larvesta and charcadet will be made more accessible in some future event, it's just that of all the nonsense Niantic does, egg events are particularly egregious. Except for the hatch days when the spotlight mon is literally the only thing in eggs, egg events are just never worth it. I have hatched one (1) larvesta since release, and as far I can tell there isn't going to be any significant boost to it or charcadet's hatch rates, so I have no incentive to spend coins on incubators just to get the same results I've been getting for months. For the folks aiming for shiny slugma or litleo maybe it will turn out to be worth it for them, but Niantic is definitely counting on whales to go hard on trying to hatch shiny larvesta. And to top it off, there aren't even any event spawns!

*Ok, I have some doubt. It's been 2 years since salandit was released and I don't think there's been any event to make it (particularly female salandit) more accessible, even despite varoom being the fancy new addition to the 12k egg pool.
Technically speaking, Larvesta and Charcadet are advertised with higher hatch rates from the vague signage Niantic uses (1Egg Icon for rarity vs Larvesta normally being 5 vs everything in the egg pools), but obviously there's no number we can even concretely point to from survey data much less and official confirmation. At the very least the smaller "Icon Rarity" and fewer mons per egg does suggest they are more common than usual here, if not actually common. The bigger issue for me vs Hatch Day is that this event still uses All Eggs. Hatch Days reduce them to 2KM so you can cycle them faster (albeit still a lot of walking for a 3 hour period) while here you have to get lucky to even roll the Egg Type you want, much less the mon(s) inside once it hatches being something you want to get.

It also highlights why Hatch events suck in general: The Egg System is about 7 years out of date (arguably by design) to the point that a lot of players tune out instead of caving to buy Incubators for convenience. You can't dispose of Eggs you don't want to even bother checking outside of hatching them, so they always compete for resources in Incubators until you open them. You also can't pre-prep for this event the way you can for a Catch event (stock up on Pokeballs or clear out Storage) or a Raid event (Save coins for a bunch of passes and Power Up Raiders/Megas) since every major interaction in this game REQUIRES you to potentially claim eggs from them (spinning Pokestops, Fighting Rocket Leaders, Opening Gifts), which means if you want a clear egg inventory before the event, you have to basically stop interacting with anything from the moment you open an Egg Slot. It's impossible to act on the foresight for an Egg event without a massive Pokeball stockpile for catches (that only covering one aspect), so what damns this mechanic and event type is that it actively discourages playing the game on other fronts, even ones Niantic monetizes.
 
*Ok, I have some doubt. It's been 2 years since salandit was released and I don't think there's been any event to make it (particularly female salandit) more accessible, even despite varoom being the fancy new addition to the 12k egg pool.

There are a handful of Pokemon which have just stayed rare, annoyingly. Sandile is a similar case; I assumed it might have a similar treatment to the pseudos (shiny released during Go Fest, then made gradually more common) but instead it's still purely an egg-exclusive. It hasn't even ever been in field research that I can remember. It seems the perfect sort of Pokemon for a community day but I can only assume the reason it hasn't had one yet is because, with Unova tour on the horizon, it's still one that can be monetised. Then it might eventually get a comm day in 2026 or something.

Salandit will very likely eventually transition to being a wild spawn. The vast majority of Pokemon initially confined to eggs or raids has slowly been filtered into the wild: Absol, Mawile, Nincada, Timburr, Mienfoo, regional forms like Alolan Raichu and Hisuian Growlithe (there's still a few that haven't, though, like Shinx and Pancham). There'll be an event incorporating it eventually - possibly the next Valentine's Day, or the next-but-one. I do expect it to get its shiny released relatively soon, though - that's another one where Niantic can expect to make a killing on incubators.
 
Technically speaking, Larvesta and Charcadet are advertised with higher hatch rates from the vague signage Niantic uses (1Egg Icon for rarity vs Larvesta normally being 5 vs everything in the egg pools), but obviously there's no number we can even concretely point to from survey data much less and official confirmation. At the very least the smaller "Icon Rarity" and fewer mons per egg does suggest they are more common than usual here, if not actually common. The bigger issue for me vs Hatch Day is that this event still uses All Eggs. Hatch Days reduce them to 2KM so you can cycle them faster (albeit still a lot of walking for a 3 hour period) while here you have to get lucky to even roll the Egg Type you want, much less the mon(s) inside once it hatches being something you want to get.

Where did you see it advertised that Larvesta and Charcadet would have higher rates? I don't see any indication of egg tiers in their blog post or infographic, and the text says "larvesta will hatch from 2 km, 5 km, and 10 km eggs, if you're very lucky," which sounds to me like the current low rates.

It also highlights why Hatch events suck in general: The Egg System is about 7 years out of date (arguably by design) to the point that a lot of players tune out instead of caving to buy Incubators for convenience. You can't dispose of Eggs you don't want to even bother checking outside of hatching them, so they always compete for resources in Incubators until you open them. You also can't pre-prep for this event the way you can for a Catch event (stock up on Pokeballs or clear out Storage) or a Raid event (Save coins for a bunch of passes and Power Up Raiders/Megas) since every major interaction in this game REQUIRES you to potentially claim eggs from them (spinning Pokestops, Fighting Rocket Leaders, Opening Gifts), which means if you want a clear egg inventory before the event, you have to basically stop interacting with anything from the moment you open an Egg Slot. It's impossible to act on the foresight for an Egg event without a massive Pokeball stockpile for catches (that only covering one aspect), so what damns this mechanic and event type is that it actively discourages playing the game on other fronts, even ones Niantic monetizes.

Mateo also has a unique 7 km egg pool that most people would be hard pressed to get by happenstance.

-------

Speaking of rare spawns, hopefully I will catch a komala this time around. I didn't get one during the original sleep event and as far as I know it hasn't been available in the wild until the current slumbering sands event.
 
From my experience it's not that uncommon. I've seen several today, the slakoth seemed marginally rarer. Even then I saw plenty of everyone; Slowpoke, Mareep & Psyduck are definitely the most common but over all not bad.
 
So I recently went to New Orleans for the North America Intercontinental Championship (NAIC) as my son participated in TCG while I did Pokemon GO. For further details go to my X.com feed for goateeVGC. I was 2-2 before getting double eliminated but it was still a great overall experience. I met some of the oldtimers from the video gamers where I was once active so that was cool. I liked the rare spawns that were good for farming XL candies useful for the likes of Lickitung, Carbink & Shieldon among certain others.
 
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I'm positively surprised that people here are still playing. Fun to see that the people I added on Smogon years ago still send me gifts daily. Some of which I sometimes even get the "lucky" status with (that we can never put to use, lmao). On that note, I got extremely lucky yesterday and netted myself a shiny Rayquaza from the first and only raid of the day I did.
 
I'm positively surprised that people here are still playing. Fun to see that the people I added on Smogon years ago still send me gifts daily. Some of which I sometimes even get the "lucky" status with (that we can never put to use, lmao). On that note, I got extremely lucky yesterday and netted myself a shiny Rayquaza from the first and only raid of the day I did.
Nice job. Honestly the Rayquaza event felt like a major (one step forward, three steps back) one, in that they did some good stuff with the Rayquaza and Elite Raid issues, but didn't really correct the actual problems with the Elite Raids just being a bad event format.

Congrats on the shiny. I brought a friend for a couple along with meeting a new (6 month accounts) player who caught a Shundo when I was just out for the Meteorites, so admittedly I got lucky for a good experience. Admittedly moments like this or powing around with friends at CD/Go Fests are pretty nice even if they're fewer and far between lately.
 
Nice job. Honestly the Rayquaza event felt like a major (one step forward, three steps back) one, in that they did some good stuff with the Rayquaza and Elite Raid issues, but didn't really correct the actual problems with the Elite Raids just being a bad event format.

Congrats on the shiny. I brought a friend for a couple along with meeting a new (6 month accounts) player who caught a Shundo when I was just out for the Meteorites, so admittedly I got lucky for a good experience. Admittedly moments like this or powing around with friends at CD/Go Fests are pretty nice even if they're fewer and far between lately.
From what I saw this event had no steps forward. A lot of places just didn't spawn any, they had to issue an announcement apologizing and the way eggs spawned made them easy to miss even if you had EX Gyms to fish for.

The "free meteorite" actually just being a duplicate of the timed research (both of which required beating Rayquaza anyway...) was also comical.
 
From what I saw this event had no steps forward. A lot of places just didn't spawn any, they had to issue an announcement apologizing and the way eggs spawned made them easy to miss even if you had EX Gyms to fish for.

The "free meteorite" actually just being a duplicate of the timed research (both of which required beating Rayquaza anyway...) was also comical.
For clarity, the "steps forward" I was referring to were trying to minimize Gym Blockage (method sucked but something like a glow to signal an egg without blocking raids the previous day to still allow planning) and increasing Rayquaza's Energy drops to "normal" Mega rates (admittedly necessary because of the thinner raids, but I'd hope that sticks around).

I say 3 steps back because any good changes or additions were either just to soften the bad Elite Format or fixing things they didn't really have a reason to do the old way to begin with.

The EX spawns were weird because after Niantic made the announcement, some people reported areas where somehow every Gym was a Mega Ray Egg, which brings into question what even makes an EX Gym.
 
I'm probably lucky with everyone here all over the world more recently with Fluke. I am still hopeful someday we can have remote lucky trades as I will never intend to travel to Australia just to receive a 12/15/12 of something, and yes it's a 1/64 odds of receiving a lucky hundo from a lucky trade which is rare. My latest buddies on my main and alt accounts are lucky hundo Rayquaza and lucky hundo Groudon so if I ever get 296 xl candies for each of them then I will certainly max them out.

For yesterday's mega Rayquaza raids, I managed to hook of with my group from Facebook & Discord as we managed to average 3-4 raids per hour for the 3 hours I was available. I did manage to get 2 shiny rayquaza which I am saving for lucky trades of equal value. One of the raids we did manage to join when there was mere seconds left to join which fortunately resulted in one of those 2 shinies.

I hope in the future we can have 3 hour mega rayquaza raids again but I'll only believe it when I see it happen.
 
Yeah, definitely very little places spawned any at all. This is why I inconveniently only was able to do one. Got a shiny though, so can't complain!
 
Clearly I'm not as cruel as I thought. Ordinarily I'd laugh at the thought of all your excitement and anticipation inevitably concluding with you ending up with an 11/10/11 Marshadow, but I know how long you've been waiting for this so I sincerely hope you get a good one.

Despite your change of heart the RNG gods have opted to appease your sadistic side:

1000036535.png

True to my word, though, I am still happy to have it and pumped it full of rare candy and levelled it up to 40. Waiting to see if we get more (non-paid) candy for global go fest before I add the second move or level up past 40. The real shame is that Niantic didn't give Marshadow any ghost-type moves. :(

Overall, this year's GO Fest was not worth it. It was just too hot and humid for a park that is super inconvenient to get to, has little shade, and has no air conditioned buildings you can retreat to (except the "quiet room" which is just a trailer). Seattle GO fest was much better in those respects. I basically just did a speedrun of the research to get Marshadow and did some trivia at one of the team tents and then we bailed. Honestly we should've just gotten the global go fest tickets and played in a mall next weekend.

https://pokemongolive.com/post/scorching-steps-2024?hl=en

Scorching sands! Instead of not hatching Larvesta, you will now not be hatching shiny Larvesta! You will also continue to not be hatching Charcadet.

Maybe you'll hatch a shiny slugma or litleo as a consolation prize.

In other recent POGO events, I guess my bad Marshadow IV luck was to make up for my (eventually unnecessary) relatively good luck for the scorching steps event. I only used non-infinite incubators to clear out one set of eggs, and I managed to hatch 4 or 5 larvesta from 2k/5k eggs and 2 charcadet (both 2*) out of three 10k eggs. No shinies, though.

I did get a 3* charcadet from the Google play timed research, at least.
 
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