This Week in Pokémon Go News

[inkstone]

Happy Friday, trainers!

• The Pokémon Go subreddit has become the biggest subreddit in the world -- bigger than even /r/all! Ironic, since that's not really the subreddit you go to if you want legit & helpful info on PokeGo. (source)

• Look alive! The next nest migration is expected to begin today. (source)

• On that note, today's a full moon. Keep an eye out for a surge in clefairies and jigglypuffs. It's all anecdotal, of course, but there always seem to be more spawns around this time of month. (I saw 5-6 jigglypuffs yesterday myself, which is very unusual.)

What's going on in your next of the woods? Anyone pick up the Go Plus?

Comments

[havocthecat]

The clefairy nest in my hometown better not migrate! But I see I'm going to have to go clefairy hunting in the parking lot tonight just in case.

[vass]

My Grimer buddy finally got a candy (it took 3km to do this, and 3km in GPS distance seems a lot further to me than three actual km) and I've switched to one of my Pikachus (hatched, 1km for a candy.) I hatched another egg, and it was a Doduo. Disappointing in that it's the third egg I've hatched that gave me something I already had (Pikachu, Evee, Doduo.) Its stats were excellent, but still.

I sat down tonight and did some evolving. I now have a strong Pidgeot, and a strong Flareon. And on tonight's Pokewalk I caught my first Oddish!

[inkstone]

I think, with this new nest migration, I may be living on top of an oddish volcano.

[havocthecat]

Oh, I'm jealous! I'm literally one oddish away from a vileplume and I can't. find. them. anywhere. They always show as nearby and then they vanish when I try to find them.

[lilacsigil]

A lot of people have experimented with logging actual distance vs Pokemon distance and they agree with you that 3km of Pokemon Go is a lot more than 3km in the real world. Walking in straight lines seems to give you more distance, but still not the actual distance.

[soc_puppet]

Things like this make me wish that Pokemon Go were backwards compatible with the PokeWalkers from the Heart Gold/Soul Silver core games - which, last I knew, were still the most reliable pedometers on the market.

[serpentine]

Are they really the most reliable ones on the market? If so that is awesome and my idea of possibly using my old PokeWalker for that Appalachian trail thing at work was actually a legit idea.

[soc_puppet]

Here we go! Bulbapedia says: "According to an Iowa State University study, the Pokéwalker was more accurate than other pedometers available at the time." So it's probably not the most accurate on the market anymore, but it's still probably pretty accurate by today's standards.

[monanotlisa]

Oh my God, you are right! I caught a BUNCH of both Clefairies and Wigglypuffs; I was scratching my head but then late at night at the pool saw the almost-full-moon, not quite connecting that to the Fairy mon. :)

[inkstone]

It's all anecdotal but it's something I've noticed. I don't know if it's confirmation bias but I just don't see that many jigglypuffs around my house normally. And the pokedex entry for clefairy specifically mentions dancing under a full moon so...

[serpentine]

Naming my Jigglypuff Pokémon buddy Mokona (after the Magic Knight Rayearth character) was the best idea I had this week as it makes me smile whenever I see the words "Mokona found a candy!".

Otherwise, things haven't been particularly interesting outside of the fact that I finally was able to level a gym from level three to level four and we've been holding onto the gym since Wednesday.

Now that the weather is starting to cool down, I am thinking of getting more walking in than I had in previous weeks.

[inkstone]

I wish you the joy of evolving a wigglytuff. I caught a few jigglypuff this week and was able to power up my 86.7% wigglytuff with pound/play rough, so I took her out for a spin at the local gym. I've found my dragonkiller. She's amazing. 1000CP Wiggly vs 1700CP Gyarados: took down the sea dragon easy and had half of my HP still remaining. There are so many dragonites around here (I know it'll be a problem if they have steel attacks though) that I think I'm going to work on creating a wiggly army.

It'll be slow though. I just don't see many jigglies with 80%+ IVs.

[serpentine]

Mokona, who I think was hatched, has a 97.8% IV. Which is pretty much why I'm working on evolving him. Right now his moves sucks but I hope that will change when I evolve him.

I really should make a spreadsheet of my Pokemon, at least the ones I'm defintely keeping.

[soc_puppet]

I'm probably going to get a Go Plus, if only because I get arm/hand cramps from walking around with my phone out like that. Plus, it sounds like I'd be able to possibly track distance at work (where no phones), and even if I can't catch anything while I do that, I think it'd be worth it to hatch eggs and pick up buddy candy. (Also, my location tends to get glitchy when I'm at my house, and I am shamelessly willing to take advantage of that. I may not "walk" very far when sitting in one place, but I have logged at least 500m (enough to hatch an in-progress egg) while laying in bed and reading, so!)

[ephemera]

If you do get the Go, it would be great to see an actual users review! I was kind of turned-off by the realisation that it sort-of lets you hunt pokemon with a button press (which - I don't get why you would want to do that) but doesn't track distance when the phone's locked, because what I want is to be able to track distance without having to keep the phone screen on and the game front and centre AT ALL TIMES. That said, some of this week's reviews suggest that it actually does work better for tracking than advertised...

[soc_puppet]

I was getting mixed info from serebii.net (older info suggests it only works when the phone is "awake", but the most recent update about the Plus on the front page says it works with the phone in sleep mode), so I checked Bulbapedia, which says: "When the Pokémon GO Plus is in active use, the player may continue to experience gameplay elements of Pokémon GO even if they place their device in sleep mode and store it in a place like a pocket or in their handbag. The Pokémon GO app must still be open and running in the background of the player's device to use the Pokémon GO Plus." Which sounds pretty reasonable to me.

That said, I'd probably mostly be relying on it for hatching eggs and collecting candy, and maybe to catch something during work once in a while. If I'm not at work and not driving, if I see the light indicate that there's a Pokemon nearby, I'm waking my phone back up to catch it manually instead. Especially if it indicates that it's one I don't have yet.

[ephemera]

Has anyone else been having problems with connecting to the servers again the last few days? I was wondering if the Buddy walking was impacting the server load, as I haven't had that issue in over a month, and it's been a real bear the last couple of days. Particularly frustrating when I *could* have been earning buddy candy and have two 10k eggs cooking!

My reliable Ryhorn spot got changed in the last next migration, and is now More Drowsies (I swear - we don't need any more Drowsies - they're more common than pidgies round here!) so roll on another change!

[kotturinn]

Yes. Since the update it's been immensely troublesome. I'd been fortunate with not having problems before but now I'm getting problems all the time! Failure to connect to the servers, with changing from wi-fi to mobile data (I'd never had that one before) and with the game partially working - for example this morning it was working sufficiently for my avatar to move accurately but tracking kilometers was not working and until I restarted I was seeing no 'mons at all. Once I restarted things were OK for a while.

Drowsies

[brightknightie]

>"Drowsies - they're more common than pidgies round here!)"

Oh, regional differences! I've seen/caught exactly 1 Drowsy.

Re: Drowsies

[havocthecat]

Oh my goodness, really? They're EVERYWHERE here. I have at least half a dozen 1100+ CP Hypnos from all those Drowzees that I keep catching. I can run into a clutch of three or four at a time at work. I would give you some if only that were possible.

Re: Drowsies

[inkstone]

The way biomes work in PokeGo are so interesting to me. Drowzees are pretty rare where I live too. I caught my first one in the wild yesterday. I've only ever hatched them until then.

Re: Drowsies

[havocthecat]

I've honestly started to hate them because I have so many. No one around here uses Hypnos once they start getting high-level enough to use anything else.

Relatedly, I'm getting a little tired of hatching Eevees from 10k eggs. They're all over the place here! I've got two of each Eeveelution, and I'm working on getting a third. I haven't decided which I should try for next.