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Pokémon GO

Spawn tables for Sunsteel Strike and Moongeist Beam are out.

Yeah... these are very much not worth it.


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....If you're going to put Pidgey in the day time wouldn't it make sense to put Hoothoot in the night time...?

Pidgey and Gligar are counterparts, apparently (news to me)

Solrock and Lunatone basically no longer being regionals is cool, though. One of the few duos where I genuinely like both equally.
 
I've been incredibly lax with raids this week so if anyone's doing Buzzwole or Xurkitree raids tomorrow please hit me up so I can get that sodding Timed Research completed. Happy to return the favour with Pheromosa for anyone not in Europe.
 
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Finally got through all of the ultra beasts (also an egghorse from timed research), very handy for being in a small area with organised raiding essentially impossible.
 
I've actually also almost finished out this research. I figured I may as well, you know? I should be able to finish it up tomorrow and worst case I have 2 remotes I can use.
I feel between this & the Sinnoh Global, that they might uptick the raids for these events. I see far more 1 & 3 star raids pop up, across more of the nearby gyms that I can actually go to, than I normally do.

The Kartana was even shiny! How nice.
 
At a raid a few weeks ago I met two really cool people that live in my city. We added each other on Pokemon GO and they said GO Fest is Pokemon GO's biggest yearly event, and that I should not miss out on it. I usually don't care much about events, but they got me interested. When we left the raid they said "see you there" but I now realize I have no ways of reaching them. Did some online name searching but didn't give me much. I wish Pokemon GO had some sort of chat function. It would surely be nice doing some of the event together with a few people, but I'm definitely not going to do it by myself.
 
One more plea for Buzzwole and Xurkitree, good people (it's Pheromosa raid hour in one hour if people want invites in return)
 
One more plea for Buzzwole and Xurkitree, good people (it's Pheromosa raid hour in one hour if people want invites in return)
I will be doing Buzzwole for my own Raid hour in like 5 and a half hours, but if that's too late I could join for Pheromosa (easy Duo with Flying attackers and I need the Shiny)
 
I wish Pokemon GO had some sort of chat function. It would surely be nice doing some of the event together with a few people, but I'm definitely not going to do it by myself.
You may want to try out Niantic's Campfire feature as it has the ability to chat with other Pokemon GO members that use it.

I'm waiting until I get a better phone plan as my current device is poor at multitasking and probably lacks the RAM to load the app as quickly as possible unless Niantic has yet other buggy things that has been making it load up slower than usual.

Edit: got a shiny Pheromosa on my alt from a member here from "Taylor" so thanks for the invite. We were able to duo it can probably be soloable with a Mega Rayquaza at least.
 
I will be doing Buzzwole for my own Raid hour in like 5 and a half hours, but if that's too late I could join for Pheromosa (easy Duo with Flying attackers and I need the Shiny)

Not too late! It's 11pm for me so I'll be up. Thanks!

Also as I've got four accounts I'm up for doing loads, so feel free to invite then leave the lobbies if you've had your fill - pretty sure Buzzwole is an easy duo
 
Not too late! It's 11pm for me so I'll be up. Thanks!

Also as I've got four accounts I'm up for doing 6 in total, so feel free to invite then leave the lobbies if you've had your fill - pretty sure Buzzwole is an easy duo
Which account(s) should I invite? I have GreenTyphlosion added, not sure if I had any of your other alts as well.
 
I managed to meet the people I was looking for at a meet up through Campfire today! We had a good time, did some fun raids in a group of ~50 people, and caught some fun stuff, all while the weather was amazing. I had no clue this game was still alive like this. Good experience.
 
I ran into and chatted up a lot of people, and blew my Raid savings for this event on ~130 Necrozma Raids. These kind of events tell me that the game isn't really "dead" as one might think, moreso its structure leaves things really scatterbrained/disorganized.

Niantic has very few effective communication channels (the average player being unlikely to download Campfire for it given how many QoL and features it lacks compared to most chat platforms) for the players and community to congregate and communicate through. Most players on my friends' list have a Discord but have not linked to Campfire despite it have features like a Remote Raid Queue or Map that should make it useful.

Something like an in-game messaging system to say things like "We have Lucky Friends, want to meet?" or to even just communicate "I'm trying to make a raid, want to join?" would go much further than having to go to an external app, be it Campfire or Discord.
 
Well, this year was a bit of a bust even considering the fact I didn't buy a ticket (and honestly after seeing the event in full I feel pretty validated in that). There was nothing of particular interest outside of the raids: the vast majority of wild spawns were species which most players have already had ample opportunity to get before. Considering previous years put egg-locked species like Pancham or regionals like Heracross in the wild for everyone, or at the very least some at-the-time rare and/or evolved species like Rufflet, Burmy, Watchog, Golurk, Dragalge, Vibrava, and Beartic, I was hoping for something interesting but the most exciting it really got was, er... Golett (oh, apparently that can be shiny?) and Jangmo-o (which big whoop because it will almost certainly have a community day next year). I'm afraid Espeon and Umbreon are not sufficient draws for me.

The upshot was that such boring spawns made it easy to focus on raiding but, just looking over the list of recent introductions and thinking about what feels thematically appropriate, would it really have broken the game open to have Hisuian Decidueye, Greavard, Komala, Bergmite or even Sandile appearing? There wasn't even a new Rotom form or a new species like Skiddo for ticketed players (obviously there's Marshadow but that's a given).

The one bit of luck I did have was finding a shiny Ducklett, which I'm pretty happy with.

Necrozma was another matter, though. I didn't spend a penny but, as I had over 10,000 coins saved up due to only rarely buying storage space and incubator bundles (and pretty much never buying remote passes) I was able to go all out and blew about 3000 coins on additional passes for which I ended up with... about 45 non-shiny individuals with crappy IVs. Looks like I'll have to hope for a good one from a lucky trade sometime.

And, infuriatingly, I lost out on my chance to get additional Ultra Beasts from that timed research last week because I didn't realise it'd disappear at 8pm on Friday rather than at 10am the next day when the event ended. Didn't manage to get any shinies while they were here - well, they'll be back eventually I'm sure.

Niantic has very few effective communication channels (the average player being unlikely to download Campfire for it given how many QoL and features it lacks compared to most chat platforms) for the players and community to congregate and communicate through. Most players on my friends' list have a Discord but have not linked to Campfire despite it have features like a Remote Raid Queue or Map that should make it useful.

Something like an in-game messaging system to say things like "We have Lucky Friends, want to meet?" or to even just communicate "I'm trying to make a raid, want to join?" would go much further than having to go to an external app, be it Campfire or Discord.

This. I had a message on Discord from someone I'm lucky with but, because I never get notifications from the app any more, had already left by the time I saw it.
 
Well, this year was a bit of a bust even considering the fact I didn't buy a ticket (and honestly after seeing the event in full I feel pretty validated in that). There was nothing of particular interest outside of the raids: the vast majority of wild spawns were species which most players have already had ample opportunity to get before. Considering previous years put egg-locked species like Pancham or regionals like Heracross in the wild for everyone, or at the very least some at-the-time rare and/or evolved species like Rufflet, Burmy, Watchog, Golurk, Dragalge, Vibrava, and Beartic, I was hoping for something interesting but the most exciting it really got was, er... Golett (oh, apparently that can be shiny?) and Jangmo-o (which big whoop because it will almost certainly have a community day next year). I'm afraid Espeon and Umbreon are not sufficient draws for me.

The upshot was that such boring spawns made it easy to focus on raiding but, just looking over the list of recent introductions and thinking about what feels thematically appropriate, would it really have broken the game open to have Hisuian Decidueye, Greavard, Komala, Bergmite or even Sandile appearing? There wasn't even a new Rotom form or a new species like Skiddo for ticketed players (obviously there's Marshadow but that's a given).

The one bit of luck I did have was finding a shiny Ducklett, which I'm pretty happy with.

Necrozma was another matter, though. I didn't spend a penny but, as I had over 10,000 coins saved up due to only rarely buying storage space and incubator bundles (and pretty much never buying remote passes) I was able to go all out and blew about 3000 coins on additional passes for which I ended up with... about 45 non-shiny individuals with crappy IVs. Looks like I'll have to hope for a good one from a lucky trade sometime.

And, infuriatingly, I lost out on my chance to get additional Ultra Beasts from that timed research last week because I didn't realise it'd disappear at 8pm on Friday rather than at 10am the next day when the event ended. Didn't manage to get any shinies while they were here - well, they'll be back eventually I'm sure.
The things I was most intent on for the Spawns were the stuff on the Incense, namely Rockruff (Dusk Form without having to hatch stupid long eggs) and the two Regionals for Dex entries (even nabbed a couple Shiny Corsola), but the pool overall wasn't very interesting considering how much stuff there was to look through for the couple cool things like Jangmo-o or mons with their special moves.

I do find it odd the Ultra Beast Timed Researches ended before the Go Fest stuff considering the UB's were still a prominent aspect of Saturday and the US ticket included benefits that lasted through the event (very high value if you were a raid fiend for that much candy).

I do think Tour/Fest events since Hoenn Tour have been leaning more and more heavily on the Raid "Headliners" since those are obviously the big money makers, but it has the issue of not really hooking community players since there's so much overlap between things. Like I skipped out on Research walking and hunting for Wild Spawns actively since I didn't want to stray far from my Raid Trains, so I didn't really get into the other big features too much like Egg Hatching or some rarer spawns like Jangmo-o. The only exception was Sinnoh Tour where I could do tasks in "down time" of Biomes where Origins didn't spawn (which happened to align with things I wanted to hunt) or where the tasks were Raid Focused so I could do them simultaneously (like the Win-Raids tasks Hisuian Evos or simple power-up Tasks for things like Sneasel).
 
The things I was most intent on for the Spawns were the stuff on the Incense, namely Rockruff (Dusk Form without having to hatch stupid long eggs) and the two Regionals for Dex entries (even nabbed a couple Shiny Corsola), but the pool overall wasn't very interesting considering how much stuff there was to look through for the couple cool things like Jangmo-o or mons with their special moves.

Funny you mentioned Corsola as that particular mon was literally part of my aversion to buying a ticket, I remember well people raiding the heck out of it during the Johto tour and still not getting a shiny (and the subsequent analysis which showed that regionals likely weren't shiny-boosted). But a few people seemed to get a shiny one this time around so it seems like that wasn't the case here. The only other regional was Maractus which obviously can't be shiny yet but will almost certainly be released in the Unova tour next year so I wasn't that bothered about it.

I do find it odd the Ultra Beast Timed Researches ended before the Go Fest stuff considering the UB's were still a prominent aspect of Saturday and the US ticket included benefits that lasted through the event (very high value if you were a raid fiend for that much candy).

I do think Tour/Fest events since Hoenn Tour have been leaning more and more heavily on the Raid "Headliners" since those are obviously the big money makers, but it has the issue of not really hooking community players since there's so much overlap between things. Like I skipped out on Research walking and hunting for Wild Spawns actively since I didn't want to stray far from my Raid Trains, so I didn't really get into the other big features too much like Egg Hatching or some rarer spawns like Jangmo-o. The only exception was Sinnoh Tour where I could do tasks in "down time" of Biomes where Origins didn't spawn (which happened to align with things I wanted to hunt) or where the tasks were Raid Focused so I could do them simultaneously (like the Win-Raids tasks Hisuian Evos or simple power-up Tasks for things like Sneasel).

A lot of people raiding with me were quite disappointed the UBs weren't around on Sunday. Personally I was not because two forms of Necrozma is enough variance considering Jangmo-o, Pikachu x2, Espeon, and Umbreon already dilutes the pool of available raids enough - if you'd added in a bunch of UBs to that it'd have been a nightmare raiding as many Necrozma with green passes as I managed. Small mercies I guess.

I quite like the Saturday-Sunday split Go Fest tends to have where Day 1 is mostly spawn-focused and Day 2 is raid/story focused, I remember a couple of years back (2020, I believe) they had a Team Rocket-focused day and it was so overwhelming checking Pokemon and doing battles and ensuring I was making it through the Special Research AND trying to do raids (iirc it was Groudon and Kyogre on day 1 and Dialga/Palkia/Giratina on Day 2, which at the time I hadn't caught any of yet so I went very hard trying to get them all).

This was, by comparison, quite stripped-back in comparison to previous years: a lot of people would (I assume) have largely ignored raids on Day 1 and focused on spawns and then gone hard on raids on Day 2. Ultimately I did enjoy it overall, just for the experience.
 
This was, by comparison, quite stripped-back in comparison to previous years: a lot of people would (I assume) have largely ignored raids on Day 1 and focused on spawns and then gone hard on raids on Day 2. Ultimately I did enjoy it overall, just for the experience.
I think this is the intended format, but in my personal experience and several members of my friend group, it was moreso they focused on the UB's for Day 1 since the Day 2 Necrozmas were just an objectively better time to do it (less scattered/diluted spawns on Gyms, plus having to do some for Fusion Energy no matter how good they had rolls beforehand). The lackluster field and research spawns led to a style of mostly walking between Gyms, catching on the way and only diverting if someone shouted out something rare like a Hundo.
 
Gonna embarrass myself rn and do some Unova Tour predictions. Let's see how much of it holds up!
  • Release of Black/White Kyurem. Seems almost nailed-on. Since the fusion in the MSG is very similar to Necrozma's I expect it'll work in a very similar way. Except that in the MSG Kyurem can only fuse with one at a time so it remains to be seen whether they'll allow multiple fusions at once.
  • Global release of Keldeo. Again, seems pretty certain. I could see this one being part of a lead-up research ahead of the actual tour. Like maybe it'll start in January and gradually unfold over the weeks with the final part only unlocking during the tour itself. Unova has a lot of legendaries so I expect the Swords of Justice to be in raids during this period.
  • Tornadus and Thundurus as roamers during the event itself, with Landorus either a roamer too or a research reward for snapshotting/catching the other two. Most likely the Incarnate forms, though I could see them putting the Therian forms in research rewards after snapshotting the wild Incarnate forms.
  • Release of Pirouette form Meloetta. There's not a shiny mythical they can release here for the first time*, so this squares the circle of a "new" mythical release while technically not being one. Everyone's got a Meloetta already (or is able to get one) but I expect they'll give a second one anyway.
  • Reshiram, Zekrom, and Landorus in raids day 1, Black/White Kyurem and Genesect in raids day 2. Or something similar.
  • Release of Zen Mode Darmanitan? Stranger things have happened and they need something to fill the Tier 3 raid slot.
  • I assume Black/White tickets akin to the division of previous years, with boosted spawns/shiny rates depending on ticket. Something like

    Black ticket: Cottonee, Venipede, Roggenrola, Archen, Gothita, Male Frillish, Karrablast, Vullaby (higher shiny chance for Reshiram and Shock/Burn Genesect?)
    White ticket: Petilil, Sewaddle, Timburr, Tirtouga, Solosis, Female Frillish, Shelmet, Rufflet (higher shiny chance for Zekrom and Douse/Chill Genesect?)

  • All three of the monkey trio, Throh/Sawk, Heatmor/Durant, and both Basculin as regular (or incense) spawns, but all the other regionals in eggs. Four habitats based on seasons (Fragrant Spring, Blazing Summer, Calming Autumn, Freezing Winter?) with each form of Deerling in one of them
  • Special Research encounters with Zorua and Larvesta, who otherwise won't be common
  • Costume Pikachu in black/white hats. Well, I had to have one guess that was absolutely guaranteed to happen.


*If you follow the "Go can't pre-empt the MSG" line of thinking


edit: Fuck it let's do habitat predictions too, why not

Fragrant Spring
Patrat, Pansage, Munna, Cottonee, Petilil, Trubbish, Mincinno, Ducklett, Foongus, Ferroseed, Tynamo, Mienfoo, Vullaby, Durant
Blazing Summer
Pansear, Pidove, Blitzle, Drilbur, Sewaddle, Darumaka, Scraggy, Solosis, Karrablast, Axew, Druddigon, Rufflet, Heatmor
Calming Autumn
Lillipup, Roggenrola, Woobat, Timburr, Venipede, Sandile, Dwebble, Archen, Emolga, Joltik, Klink, Litwick, Stunfisk, Pawniard
Freezing Winter
Purrloin, Panpour, Tympole, Yamask, Tirtouga, Gothita, Vanillite, Shelmet, Frillish, Alomomola, Elgyem, Cubchoo, Cryogonal, Golett, Deino

Incense-only: Audino, Throh, Sawk, Basculin and all three starters
 
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Gonna embarrass myself rn and do some Unova Tour predictions. Let's see how much of it holds up!
  • Release of Black/White Kyurem. Seems almost nailed-on. Since the fusion in the MSG is very similar to Necrozma's I expect it'll work in a very similar way. Except that in the MSG Kyurem can only fuse with one at a time so it remains to be seen whether they'll allow multiple fusions at once.
Since there's no item tied to Necrozma in Go, I assume the "lore" of using the DNA Splicers won't be applied to Kyurem either. Makes sense to just keep reusing the same set up for all 3 fusion candidates.

I also assume that Ice Burn and Freeze Bolt will get adventure effects, though I wonder what they'll do. Increase Ice/Fire and Ice/Electric encounters, maybe?


  • Tornadus and Thundurus as roamers during the event itself, with Landorus either a roamer too or a research reward for snapshotting/catching the other two. Most likely the Incarnate forms, though I could see them putting the Therian forms in research rewards after snapshotting the wild Incarnate forms.
I could see all 3 being Incarnate roamers, and then in the raids as Therian. I could also see Enamorus being trotted out in the lead up (likely as an EX Raid again). She is pretty relevant, even if she is associated with Hisui. Probably no Therian of her yet.

  • Release of Pirouette form Meloetta. There's not a shiny mythical they can release here for the first time*, so this squares the circle of a "new" mythical release while technically not being one. Everyone's got a Meloetta already (or is able to get one) but I expect they'll give a second one anyway.
If they decide to do a lead up of Keldeo they could probably do Resolute Keldeo instead, just to tie it all together. Also doubles as releasing Secret Sword at the same time. So plebs get regular keldeo for free but pay up for the fancier much better Keldeo.

My sillier idea is that there's a Shiny Genesect ticket and the shtick is you get 5 of them, one for each Drive. No need to cross reference a million raids, just pay $8-15.
  • Costume Pikachu in black/white hats. Well, I had to have one guess that was absolutely guaranteed to happen.
I think instead of hats, it'll be a little tuxedo/dress using the checkerboard iconography that the boxarts use. They could even be cute and release a third one that's literally a checkerboard
 
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What I'd be curious about is how they handle the glut of Signature moves for the Tao dragons. Each has one, but Kyurem not only gets to poach the Fusion moves, not only does Kyurem have Ice Burn/Freeze Shock, but Zekrom and Reshiram have Bolt Strike/Blue Flare as yet more movs they could add to encourage raiding, though I wonder about the prospect of that since they're already the top of their respective types (definitively for Reshiram, competing for it for Zekrom), so they need the upgrade less than Ghost/Steel for the Necrozma fusions. Kyurem might care more about the Ice buff if it gets Ice Fang than the Charge moves.

I also think they'd have to give them Flare/Bolt since the mined movesets are very lackluster for PvP, as the main place they'd be differentiated since the moves probably don't have much room for variance outside their Adventure Effects without making out "definitively" better
 
I did manage to get a hundo Necrozma which is now a buddy on my goateeVGC account. The goatee64 account got 2 shinies and will likely be doing lucky trade swaps in hopes for a lucky hundo which is 1/64 or at least 15/13+/13+ may do as a shiny.

So we needed 1000 fusion energy to merge with either solar or lunar. I only got 820 lunar energy and this is after the secret codes, quests and lunar raids done so since I can't walk as a buddy to earn those it looks like I'm indefinitely stuck until maybe there's an elite raid event in the future or something. Niantic never seems to fail in disappointing me somehow.
 
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