This Week in Pokémon Go News + Free-for-All

[inkstone]

Hi trainers! I hope you've been enjoying this Halloween event! Here are some highlights from this week in PokeGo.

• Niantic had to change the ToS and privacy policy in Germany. I wonder if we'll see similar actions in other territories. (source)

• To everyone who's been having trouble getting their hands on a Go Plus, Nintendo plans to expand production. (source)

• Niantic announces a PokeGo partnership with Globe Telecom, the Philippines' largest mobile brand. The deal sounds similar to the McDonalds sponsorship in Japan. (source)

• I know we're probably tired of hearing about the ways PokeGo is destroying people's lives, but this headline caught my eye: A PokeGo trainer makes a friend through the game; friend turns out to be a yakuza member; trainer gets blackmailed. Yikes. (source)

And now, let's talk about how the Halloween event has been going for you!

Comments

[inkstone]

I've been having a blast. Thanks to the Halloween event, I evolved a gengar & a marowak. I also evolved a persian but that was earlier in the week, before the event started. I have been earning some candies for my dratini, but not as much as I want to! I'm starting a new job next week, so I've been running around. ^^;

[yuuago]

I love this event so much. I really, really hope that they'll do more like this in the future. It's a great idea.

I now have a Gengar and a Marowak and a Persian, hooray! Before, Cubones and Meowths were so rare in my area that getting the evolutions would have been such a pain. <3

I'm glad that there are a few more days left before it ends. I need more Dratini candy! *_*

[korafox]

I'm walking soooo much that my knees are actually starting to complain. I may take a few days off after the event ends.

Really loving the increased candy. My Magikarp collection is up to 150/400, and I hatched some amazing new pokemon along with a sizeable stockpile of candy towards evolving them. (Perfect Mankey for the win!)

[malnpudl]

I have been working the hell out of this event and having a blast! As I've mentioned before, I have various physical issues that make walking painful and difficult, but walking also gives me tremendous mood lifts so I do it anyway. For this event, I've pushed it to the max and beyond -- like yesterday when I walked 7.5 miles, which is 50% more than my previous max distance for at least the last decade. (Today is a Mother of All Pain Day, but I don't even care. It was worth it!)

It helped that there was a low-level, rapid turnover gym on my walking route and every time I got there I sat and rested for a while while I battled or trained. Met some other Mystic folks, too, which was fun, and we supported each other in taking and (briefly) populating and holding that gym.

I'm at Level 30 and yesterday got me 1/3 of the way to Level 31 (500K is a vast interval to bridge, holy crap). Also, my venusaur walking buddy (who started as my bulbasaur walking buddy) is now fully powered up for my current level. Hot DAMN! \o/

I am, however, deeply vexed at how poorly the distance tracking works for buddy-walking. I got only about half the candies I should have for the distance I covered. Maybe even only a third. When it's a special event with buddy candies every .75 kilometers, the damn thing should check more often than every five minutes! ARGH. I hate not getting promised rewards, especially when the physical cost to me is so high.

OTOH, once I hit Level 30 I sorted through all the Mons I'd been saving up and ran them through IV calcs, and I evolved all the ones I'd been waiting on, so my Pokedex is up to a very gratifying 131 caught.

I also need to thank yuuago (I think that's who it was?) for posting about using incense while on a boat ride because I did that and it was phenomenally rewarding. An hour-long boat ride around Eureka Bay with incense had me catching a fantastically wide variety of Pokemons almost non-stop, including THREE dratinis (I'm usually lucky to see one or two in any given month) and TWO omanytes. I'm very lucky that I managed to get two of these rides in before the tour boat shut down for the season.

My funniest experience in a while happened the day before yesterday when I did a one-hour stationary session at a cluster of four simultaneously lured Pokestops at our local small-town park, followed by a 2-mile walk around that park. These days there usually aren't a lot of other players at this park, and those who are there tend to be young men (late teens to maybe 30 or so) who talk with each other but don't even notice my existence -- fat, gray-haired women are generally invisible to men in this age range, after all -- but I walked up on one fellow who was calling back and forth with a couple of other guys across the road -- "What team? What level?" -- so I called out "Mystic Level 30" and shocked and impressed the daylights out of all of them, since they were all between 20 and 25. Heh. Got some respect after that... though they did call me "ma'am" which is just plain weird. *g*

[healingmirth]

I'd been holding on to a few 10k eggs to time to my next lucky egg, before the event was announced, so I went ahead and pushed through on those... and hatched two eevees (one transferred, one evolved to jolteon...) and a garbage dratini. Happy for the candy, definitely, but I still don't have a dratini I like enough to evolve.

I *am* having fun with the event, but halfway through I'm already starting to wish they'd balanced the spawns differently, both for myself and for all the 1k gengars anchoring seemingly every gym in the county. Luckily, I'm near one of the water biomes unaffected by the event, so I can trot down the street when I need a break from the gastlies.

I also now have a 111cp blastoise from the squirtle I evolved for giggles, and he and my original 10cp meowth may become a terrible trio with this 20cp ivysaur I caught this afternoon.

In other news, wow is level 29 A Lot, and I don't think the lucky eggs I have remaining are going to get me through. Please send help.

[malnpudl]

Much sympathy on those 10K eggs. I also had two of them hatch eevees yesterday, and since eevees are a dime a dozen around here that was really painfully disappointing. It really sucks when something with so much potential lets you down, eh?

And I hear you re the leveling up. The intervals get bigger and bigger, and it takes longer and longer. Best of luck.

[havocthecat]

I figured the increased spawn rate of the event would be in addition to the other pokecritters, but it seems like it's instead of other pokemon. Which means I'm grabbing all the cubones and marowak I can because I'll never find enough ground time to get the catch bonus without the event. I'm at +2, but I don't think I'll make +3 in time.

[brightknightie]

I saw a hypno in a gym for the first time this weekend! (Drowzees and hypnos are egg-hatched or nothing around here, usually, while meowths and cubones are native to this biome.)

I spotted one gengar! I tried all razz berries and ultra balls and my best nice/excellent/great throws, but it got away. I haven't yet earned enough candies to evolve to gengar, but there's time and hope. ;-)

Unrelated to the Halloween event, I saw a snorlax on Nearby for the first time! I was unable to find it before it despawned, but still. The ones in the gyms here might all be egg-hatched, or they might not after all...

[tyger]

I've pmuch been in post-surgery haze for most of the event, but I caught a bunch of stuff on the first day, before I went in. Which is great, 'cause other than zubats none of them are local, and yet I've somehow got 60 ghastly candy! :D

I'm definitely hoping there's another event like this soon, when I'm feeling a bit better!

[eerian_sadow]

I HAVE MY FIRST GENGAR THANKS TO THE HALLOWEEN EVENT!

ahem. sorry. It's just that Gengar is my favorite pokemon and I've been so sad that Gastly/Haunter/Gengar are almost impossible to catch in my area.

[inkstone]

This new day job is putting a big damper in my walking, but I was able to earn some dratini candy anyway!

[inkstone]

Yeah, the 2 10K eggs I hatched during this event were an eevee and a scyther. WHY.

[inkstone]

Yeah, I pushed to get my silver medals but I knew I wasn't going to get gold in any of them.

[inkstone]

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we'll get a Christmas event. Apparently, Niantic held Christmas events in Ingress!

[inkstone]

I was pretty excited when I got my gengar during this event too. I threw him in a gym just for giggles.

[eerian_sadow]

All gyms should have Gengar in them.

[liv]

I evolved Marowak and Gengar and am generally enjoying the extra candy.

Also I cosplayed as Candela for IRL Halloween! Nearly all the decent photos of me have kids in them (the children were Dawn from the animé and ridiculously adorable Pikachu), but I'm seeing if I can crop something shareable.

[ephemera]

My timing for the events was *rubbish*, in that I was away from home, in a place with no Pokestops* and very limited time/availability for walking, but I sneaked in some play on my journeys, and gave in and bought an 8 pack of incense, and loaded up on Mewths and Cubones (both vanishingly rare around here), and even the limited amount of walking I've been able to do has given me a huge boost on my Ivysaur buddy's eventual evolution - I'm past the half way mark! *excited*

* but not so remote that that the incense-for-rares trick to work - I think there's *one* spawning spot in the village, but no 'stops for miles.

[havocthecat]

Well, the event is over, and I managed to evolve my charmander into a charmeleon, and now I'm 65 candies toward a charizard. But we're back to 3k per candy, alas.

[inkstone]

Yeah, they let the event run a little longer than normal, but it has definitely come to an end. I switched from my dratini to a mankey.

[healingmirth]

https://twitter.com/PokemonGoApp/status/794321140676235265

Great timing, Niantic!

I picked up a 10k egg 2 days ago, I think, and my inventory is otherwise full of leftover 2ks. Let's see how this goes.