Community day conversation post

[ephemera]

Hi folks - it's July's community day, and I hope Squirtle is treating you all well.

It's been a busy month in-game with multiple events and specials going on, plus the launch of trading and gifting. How's that all working out for you? Did you get lucky with an awesome shiny over the weekend? Something cool from an Alolan egg? (Thank you all for the awesome long-distance eggs!)

Comments

[ephemera]

Since I last posted, we've had Adventure week 2018 which meant lots of Kabuto and Omanytes (I snagged one shiny Omantye, who is now a lovely purple Omastar, but am still desperately seeking a shiny Kabuto, who's one of my favourites.) and also 10x XP on spinning "new" Pokestops, which seemed to mean stops you hadn’t spun ever, or in some time that was longer than three months but less than six. That, fortunately, coincided with a random day off work, so I shamelessly took the bus to various random areas of town I never go to, and got my grind on, hitting Level 38, and making about a 20% dent in that over that week. \m/

Thanks to some of the fab people here, I have been really enjoying that the friends / gifts mechanics work long-distance, and I did a raid last week where the "friends bonus" with several local people made a critical difference. That said, our group hasn't settled into a protocol or rhythm for regular trading (vs focusing on trading for regionals, shinies, and other "high value" special trades") - maybe I need to try and find some folks who play near work that I can catch up with over lunch a couple of times a week to do just regular trades for candy and distance with?.

The friends interface badly needs some way to make it more wieldy - I'd love to be able to organise players into useful-to-me-groups, and at a minimum, some way to search for a specific trainer. I hear that they're planning to role up further updates to these mechanics, though, and I can't imagine that they're not hearing the wide-spread complaining about this, and the fact that you can only trade a pokemon once. I do understand why they're trying to put road-blocks in the way of the spoofers and scammers, but you'd think that some kind of "no re-trades for N days" could introduce enough friction without just blocking onward trading entirely (and, frankly, the spoofers can just nip over to the other side of the globe to trade "locally" so this is more of a limit on actual players.)

The Dortmund Safari event at the end of June meant Shiny Roselia, and then, in a PR master-stroke (/irony) a couple of days of Corsola for all across Europe. (A goodly sized group from my local Discord headed to Dortmund, had a really frustrating first day, a good second day, and then came home to what felt like a smack in the face with that "apology" - it sucks to see folks feeling that badly, and it put a dent in our group for the past week.)

It also marked the start of the "Global Challenge" which is currently giving out XP bonuses like candy, and also gave us Shiny Articuno Day, which I'm assuming was a money-spinner par excellence for Niantic, with all the raid passes people were buying (I finally went silver on my Legendary Raids badge, after hitting 20 raids, for a grand total of zero shinies... Folks who headed to central London and really did the heads-down grind hit 40+) I think they managed the event itself pretty well, but the shiny ratio was a disappointment all over - I'm not sure people will be as enthusiastic to buy tons of passes if, as the rumours suggest, we get Zapdos Day after the Chicago event unless they also boost the shiny ratio at least a little.

(Personally, I know I'll be budgeting more exactly for my passes, having got a better sense of the potential pace now, and then buying ahead, so I don't end up rushing to dump/use items to be *able* to buy another pass on the run, as I did this time. Two full mornings of Pokemon-hiking back to back in a heat wave (30C+ each day, and sunny and humid) is also *exhausting*, so here's hoping the weather cools off before we do that again. I'm also pretty sure now that I don't want a more efficient-raiding-focussed group to hang with. Our pace for the day was plenty, and I just can't imagine that the 40+ raids in 3 hours group were having that much fun, and the fun-to-cost ratio makes me wince. Saturday was pushing that for me this time, to be honest.)

Today's community day was also an XP bonanza with the Global Research bonuses running alongside, and introduced a new twist with a special Squirtle-in-sunglasses available only through research encounters, and which could come in shiny variant. Australia/Asia figured out (thank you future people) that is a stop gave a research task that resulted in a shiny sunglasses squirtle for one player, it would do so for all. That gives a real bonus to communities who organise, and share info, and I was pleased to be able to contribute two such stops to the general store of knowledge. There were several such just outside the radius of our usual community day circuit, which I think is why things felt a bit thinner - I did run in to quite a few folks, but more at the start and the end than in the middle.

I snagged 3 "wild" shinies, and 4 with sunglasses. My minor frustration of the day is that I am *one squirtle* away from another shiny sunglasses - I have the research queued up, one with 4/5, one with 3/5 and one with 2/5 - which is the one that is going to be shiny. The encounter Squirtles count, so I could do this, if that last squirtle hadn't turned into a rattata a split second before I was close enough to click on it. I'm holding them in the desperate hope I randomly trip over a squirtle in the wild in the next 24 hours, but after that I'm going to have to let it go, because I want to keep my research streak going more than I want a fifth shiny sunglasses squirtle.

My current stats are 365 caught, 372 seen (+7, 7 gap) with a 150/97/118 split (Articuno being the +1 Kanto: I just need Tauros to complete that chapter of the 'Dex, and I have a trade promised once we level up as friends.) I'm a good way into level 38, about 1/6th of the way from level 39, because the XP bounty on multiple events have been crazy.

[lilacsigil]

I've seen a purple Omastar in a gym, it's super pretty! But I really want an Alolan Ninetales, so gorgeous.

[ephemera]

That is also high on the list - it is *so* pretty! I keep hatching Alolan Rattata which is ... not what I want. I do have a very lovely ice-spike Sandslash, though, which is lovely, and a single Alolan Vulpix, with rubbosh stats, so I'm holding out for a better example to evolve.

[grammarwoman]

If you do the "evolve a water Pokemon" research task, I believe the reward for that is catching a Squirtle, so you could keep an eye for that?

Good luck! Also, thanks for the long-distance eggs! :)

[ephemera]

That would be a cunning plan, if I had been able to find two of those (I'd have had to delete one of the Squirtle researches to get the evolve a water Pokemon research) - I did a quick circuit of the wettest-bit of the park this morning, entirely predictably didn't find any squirtles, and then made peace with the deal and deleted all the research.

[upanddisappear]

I caught a shiny roselia! And I got aloan grimer, vulpix, meowth and sandshrew from eggs, so thank you for the gifts!

Unfortunately I haven't been able to do any walking lately, due to chronic pain and the heat, so I apologize for not sending gifts as often as I'd like.

I was thinking we could have a trading post here, where we can share our locations to see if we have anyone close enough to trade.

I'm in San Jose, California. Any Bay Area trainers about?

[ephemera]

Ohh - cool catches and hatches! (I really want an aloan nine-tails - so, so pretty)

Sorry to hear that the pain and the heat are being a bad pairing. Here's hoping things improve soon!

A location post is an excellent idea - I've pinged Inkstop to ask if we can have that as a sticky members-only post, for ease of reference.

[upanddisappear]

I'm really looking forward to evolving my vulpix!

Thank you 🧡

Yay!

[lilacsigil]

It's winter here, so I'm getting out and about a lot more than during summer. I live in a very rural area, though, so I also feel a bit bad about not sending gifts, but nobody seems to mind.

[upanddisappear]

I definitely don't mind! 💙

I'm just always hard on myself.

[ephemera]

I don't know about others, but I'm really not keeping count, just appreciating all the lovely eggs that come in from distant places and trying to ID where those places are from the postcards ;)

[lilacsigil]

I've got Alolan Sandshrew and Meowth from eggs! I love the gifts system, it's so exciting to see all these places around the world!

[upanddisappear]

It really is! I wish there was some way we could store the postcards.

[soc_puppet]

Very much agreed; I mean, I could take screencaps (it occurred to me at this exact moment), but that's not quite the same.

I'd also love the option to send little messages. I probably wouldn't, most of the time, but once in a while. Today, for example, I would have sent a gift with a postcard from one of the Shiny Sunglasses Squirtle stops and a note to Get Your Shiny Sunglasses Here! for local friends, in the hopes that they'd be able to take advantage. Though I suppose I could text just as easily.

[ephemera]

I'm liking how humans will find ways to transmit messages come what may: I do my level best to send visibly "London" things to non-UK people, and when I can pull it off, literary related ones to my Oldest Friend, who has a literary bend, and there's been a spate of local people sending either "the place we just met up", "gyms you may recognise my handle from" or "here's the gym you were holding, which I just took" (that last reported, not from my own experience, but we're a multi-team Discord group in these parts so it's generally relatively good natured. )

Proper in-game messaging would be nifty, but I can also see why Niantic might think it's a nest of snakes they don't need to get into.

[soc_puppet]

Yeah, I've got a handful of IRL folks, but most of my contacts so far have been via this comm :)

Shoot, I hadn't thought of that. I can definitely see that logic now, though. Texting will be a fine substitute.

[silveradept]

I second that. Some very gorgeous places attached to the gifts.

[soc_puppet]

I ended up with 10 standard shiny Squirtles, and 5 Sunglasses Shinies. I heard about a sixth stop for Sunglasses Shiny, but didn't manage to spin the right one.

In terms of sheer number of shinies, this was my best Community Day to date, narrowly beating out Dratini Day on standards and blowing it out of the water with sunglasses included. In terms of quality, though, Larvitar Day was my best; seven total shinies, one of which was Attention-Catching, and two of which were Wonders - and that was without the stat boosts that research gives us.

I've been working my way up to the gold Pikachu Fan medal with the latest Pika-Hat Bonanza. I'm at about 255, up from 180-ish at the start, and am optimistic about getting it before the end of the month.

I did go on a little bit of a splurge for new fashion items 9_9a The Pikachu shorts for the girl avatar are just so cute! (THE PIKACHU IN THE BACK POCKET, AHHHH!) And I'm pretty fond of the shoes as well. I have yet to see the socks from the banner actually show up in the store, which I'm somewhat torn about; on the one hand, I've been wanting new sock options for aaaaaages. On the other hand, I honestly feel kinda "meh" about these ones. Anyway, I've coordinated my outfit to a slightly ridiculous degree, and if I didn't need/want the Togepi candy so badly, I'd be carrying a (hatted?) Pichu right now.

I also hatched my first Alolan Vulpix today! She is sooooooo cute! Her stats aren't the best, though, so I'm hoping I get another with better stats to evolve. Otherwise, I'm covered for current Alola forms.

Lessee, what else, what else... Oh! Our local Discord had our first big community meetup today, and I think it went pretty well. Someone brought cold (non-alcoholic) drinks and decorated sugar cookies: Pokeballs and Squirtles! I am possibly bringing Pokeball Chocolate Strawberries next time, depending on how timing works out. And leaving a tip jar, because strawberries will be getting more expensive.


Seconding thanks to all you lovely community members who befriended me :D At only seven trades so far, I'm over half way to my silver Pilot medal! If we get a location post going, I'll definitely be participating (and possibly bookmarking).

[ephemera]

Ohh - that is quite the haul of shinies with decent stats - congrats!

Alolan Vulpix is so cute - I'm in the same boat, and trying to resist the temptation to evolve in the hopes I land a better one.

Hurray for in-person meet ups, too - the cookies sound super-cute!

[itsamellama]

I only recently started playing again (maybe two weeks now? The last time I played was in 2016, haha) and managed to get my first ever shiny, a Squirtle during the event :D And an Alolan Meowth from an egg!

I need to add more people *_*

[ephemera]

Ohh - welcome back! That must be so much new stuff to adjust to all at once. A shiny Squirtle seems like an appropriate welcome back gift ;)

Several of us who would welcome international friends have posted our trainer codes:

https://pokestop.dreamwidth.org/40731.html#comments
and
https://pokestop.dreamwidth.org/40260.html#comments

[kirin]

After a long shiny drought (nothing during the adventure week or water events), my luck's been turning lately - I got one shiny Articuno on Saturday, and eight wild + five sunglasses shiny Squirtle yesterday, three Roselia last weekend, and I also relatively recently caught shiny Megikarp, Aron, Swablu and Absol(!!!). My egg luck has been bad in exchange, though - hatched over 40 Alolan eggs now with no Vulpix yet.

With the tons of XP bonuses lately, I finally hit Level 40 last week.... which left me with a lot of feeling of "now what?" in terms of random catching. No more need to evolve and grind pidgeys. Mostly focusing on clicking on anything with possible shinies now, or a few things I'm looking for rare-ish genders of for the heck of it.

Meanwhile with trading active, I got a Kangaskhan from a friend who was just vacationing in Australia, which finally completed my Kanto-dex, woo!

Sorry I didn't share my friend code on here - between a large active local group, another online forum, and a few other random folks my list is already over 100 and it's just super unwieldy to deal with. Maybe after they release some much-needed friend management tools I could add some more...

[ephemera]

Congratulations on hitting 40! And getting to Kanto complete! And that's some *amazing* run of shinies (Aron and Absol are also high on my wish-list)

I keep hatching Alolan Rattatas, so I feel you on that front :)

[grammarwoman]

I did the back-to-back of Articuno raids (17 raids, no shinies, *SIGH*) and Community day (4 sunglasses shinies, and only 1 wild shiny). But I did manage to move up from level 36 to 37; I am loving all the XP bonuses.

[ephemera]

The XP bonuses are a definite plus point, although I feel your pain on the Articuno raids!

[silveradept]

Saturday was three Articuno raids, where I watched other people get shinies.

Sunday was six wild and two sunglasses Shiny Squirtles. But I also hatched the Alolan Vulpix, and then traded a Sandshrew I'd collected from an egg sent over from the UK to a friend with an abundance of Alolan Exeggutors to collect 7,700 km of trade distance and finish out having one of each Alolan form.

The XP event has been way helpful in working the grind, and now I'm 75% of the way to 37.

I still have only caught one shiny in the wild outside of a community day - a Wailmer.