pokestop | August community conversation post

How do you even get a Spinda?

It's the reward encounter for the "make three curveball throws in a row" research task, in honor of its spinny eyes. The pokedex says there are eight "forms", but so far all the catches are reported as "form 8", so all of mine are identical.

I'm posting today, because I will be missing tomorrow's community day hours in favour of getting a train to the other end of the country for a family birthday, but I had a decent haul this morning, and do have the 9 shinies needed for a complete set of eevelutions, even if the stats are a very mixed bag. I really like ghostly!eevee as a shiny design, and the fact that the "special" move is not something I actually need to worry about, so no evolution pressure for me. (Eevees are not terribly common around me, so over 1/3 of my total Eevee caught number is today's 200!)

I've also had good fortune with Spindas - two found genuinely "in the wild", spinning random research, and another three that were posted to Discord and were close enough for me to get to.

Zapdos Day was more successful for me that Articuno had been, in terms of getting a shiny, but also socially, because I was late, so ended up on the slowest-moving back-markers group, so had more time to chat with people, including some new folks who seem really cool, and I only had to test my will-power and not buy an additional raid pass once, right at the end. Got a little bit of trading in, and in-game friended a couple of people I've been chatting to monthly for several months. Also - shiny Zapdos! (I think they significantly upped the shiny rate, and the catch rate, as there were a lot more happy people this time, which given that the whole event is supposed to be a "reward" would seem to be the point.)

I did several trades with my nephew a couple of weeks back, trying to get luckies, and - really with the random. We traded several 2016 'mon with no joy, and then while swapping a pair of Sunkerns collected litterally hours before for the extra candy, ended up with a lucky 22cp Sunkern. (We also traded shiny Charizard's and now I have my princess goth dragon *and* her stats went up!)

I had to work for the first eevee day but I'm going out as a team of three to play today. I didn't manage any shinies yesterday (not many pokestops around me) but fingers crossed for today.

Only managed four shiny Eevees yesterday; hoping for slightly better luck today so I have a chance at a full set of Eeveelutions. I did get one shiny Zapdos earlier, for what that's worth given in barely changes. Gotten a few interesting Luckies with trading too, like a Dragonite and a Venusaur.

After two mornings trundling around town in the drizzle with a friend, I ended up with a dozen shiny Eevees, none of which are particularly good but does mean that I've got enough to get a shiny evolved variant of each kind, so I'm happy with that.

One of our local players has set up a field research task group for posting details of stops with the more coveted research tasks. I've been contributing to that more often than I thought I would because the Pokestops on my journey into work this week have been very good to me and I now have four Spinda without having to go out of my way to find a stop.

But my real excitement for the month was glancing at my phone at just the right moment to see someone in the local chat group post about an Unown spawn. Since it was within walking distance and I was waiting for a software install to finish I joined the general stampede to catch it and was lucky enough to get there in time. It did feel as though half the offices in the city centre had abruptly emptied at 4 in the afternoon as a huge number of people ran, cycled and drove towards the market to catch their letter A :) I got back to the office before my install had finished too! I've hardly been raiding this month because work has been so busy that I haven't been getting enough of a lunch break for that but it's nice to have a job where I can join an Unown chase if it happens during a quiet working patch.

yesterday i got 5 shinies, today i got 4. so i had enough to evolve flareon, vaporeon and jolteon. and i have 2 to walk for umbreon and espeon, and 2 to keep for leafeon and glaceon. and 1 to keep as is!

i could only do an hour and 1/2 yesterday and today, due to the heat. i also did a raid today, since it was an exeggutor raid. those are rare for me and i want that gold dragon badge!

i also got my silver rattata badge today.

i haven't gotten the spinda research task yet. hopefully soon!

and i haven't gotten to trade yet. again, soon hopefully!

gift drops are aggravatingly low for me lately.

I haven't managed to get any Spinda yet, but I did manage to get 14 shiny Eevees (some of which I've promised to trade to friends - I'm keeping enough to get a full set of evolutions, though). Sadly the IVs are mostly terrible :)

Raiding is kind of not happening at the moment, but I did manage to get an Alolan Marowak today finally! I might actually make it to a Registeel raid at some point soon...

I've caught two Spinda so far, and traded for one; I've got a Latias with my name on it coming from the same guy, as soon as we're more than first level friends. And then Volbeat from either him or a new friend, and Mr. Mime to boot. (Still desperately wishing for Tropius.)

Caught the end of a raid train for Articuno, ending with nine from that day and one shiny. Zapdos day I was able to get to the start of, and I finished with twenty total, three of which were shiny. I'm holding on to them for now, just in case I don't manage to get a shiny Moltres when Moltres day finally occurs. (Thankfully, Shiny Moltres is considerably more distinct in coloration than Zapdos or even Articuno are.) So yeah, I'd call myself fairly well surrounded at the moment :P

I finished the first Eevee day with six shinies, and almost a seventh; I tapped and caught a shiny with just under a minute left on the clock, but when I went to look at it ten seconds later (I'd forgotten to star it), it had turned into a normal Eevee. Imagine my disappointment! There was at least one other person this happened to in the local Discord group, as well.

Day two was much better. I caught fifteen shiny Eevees, and walked one of the better ones I caught Saturday 5km - half way to a shiny Umbreon!

I made my special poke-strawberries for both days (and a Mewtwo raid the previous week), which were received with great enthusiasm!

Oh, our Discord group also did a raffle as a fundraiser for school supplies! We raised over $400 in cash and/or school supply donations. I don't know the final number yet, but even if we didn't break $500, I think that is way cool.

BTW, folks, if you've gotten any Lucky Pokemon? Check out your Pokedex entry for them. It is way cool, and having just now done so myself, I now completely understand the popular local idea for getting a complete Lucky 'Dex. (I may have to do it myself!)

I am ticked off at Niantic - I saved a bunch of Eevees as research rewards to catch this past weekend while I was at a convention, and the first time I went into the backlog screen, it went all grey and refused to let me do anything but restart the app. So much for that planning. :(

There's a bug in the current version that causes a crash any time you try to return to an encounter that you had fed a berry to before fleeing. Can happen with wild pokemon too, but is particularly bad if you berry'd queued reward encounters.

They also announced they're going to cap the reward queue at 100, but due to the bug they extended the deadline to clear out any extras (to like the end of August I think? But double-check if you have a ton).

Huh. I wouldn't think it's crashed, because it still responds to the back button by asking if I want to exit, but maybe that's it? I hope they fix it soon. Thanks for the info!

August community conversation post

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