Pokestop check in

[ephemera]

Time keeps passing, but as I'm in Europe, and we've just finished having our Slakoth day re-do, let's pretend this is a timely virtual community-day chat post ...

Hi! How's it been going? We've had Adventure Week, two Go-fest weekends, a Community Day, a summer-session of raid dinner hours, Raiku raid day, and new Special Research released since the last one - how's that all been treating you?

Comments

[ephemera]

The original Slakoth day was a bit of a disappointment, although not the complete wash that I read about after the fact. It was, however, particularly frustrating, because a frienhad come d up to my neck of the woods to play, and I feel like we let her down somehow, although clearly it was Niantic's fail. Usually, when we're all lured up and in full swing there are literal piles of the pokemon-of-the-day everywhere, and that was sadly not the case, and there were several chunks of time where there were zero slakoths to be had. Nevertheless, I ended up with a very healthy eight shinies, and it was good to walk and chat with my friend, and catch up with some other folks.

Slakoth makeup weekend has also been something of a disappointment, as it's been wall to wall slakoths, and really I might have preferred rather more of the GoFest weekend and Alolan spawns. I've seen less than 30 nindorans all weekend, including research, and I think sandshrew is about the same. I did nab an alolan diglett and two alolan rats before the slakoth infestation began, and at least the five further shiny slakoths I now have are, at least, better than the original handful, so I can't really complain.

Last weekend's Raiku raid day was more satisfactory, if somewhat testing - mostly due to being the hottest day of the year. I think it got up to 34C, maybe 35C, and there was a good chunk of the first part of the route was in direct sun. We also had some logistical challenges, with a major event taking out a section of our usual route and even though we were a good distance away from the event, the phone signal was impacted, so I lost four or five raids through phone glitches, and another three or four while dealing with my body being Very Unhappy about the heat. I *almost* quit about an hour in, but one of my Poke-friends had waited for me while I was being not well, and I figured that we were probably past the worst of the heat, and I'm really glad I did push on, because the rest of the day was much more fun. I ended up with a couple of mates in the back-of-the-fast-group pack, and we did most of the route in the end - I think 26 or so of the 33 that the fast group went for, and I did 20 or so of them. I got my shiny, and so did my friend-who-waited-for-me, although not until the penultimate raid, which was nervewracking. I do enjoy the raid days - it's expensive, but there's a good challenge to it, and I really like the group of people I'm doing it with. Looking forward to the next one on Sunday!

I've similarly been enjoying the raid dinner hours, on the weeks when I can get out of work in time to get back near home to play with said group - it's a nice, bite-sized, chunk of time, and a good reason to get together with a group. (The weeks when I haven't been able to get back home to play, it's been rubbish, as it's almost impossible to find a lobby when everything hatches at once without external coms.)

The GoFest weekend for the Chicago fest, I was grinding pretty hard, and I lucked out with a set of three shiny horsea - including two actually decent IV/CP ones - so I have a nifty little family set. They're *ridiculously* pretty shinies.

"Adventure Week" was the event where I turned level 40 last year, and it was nice not be *as* driven as I was then, but also nice to hit Double 40 status, so I was mostly chasing shinies, but also picking up fresh stops as often as possible. Friday, I made a specific trip to a part of town I'm not often in, where there was an Onyx nest (didn't get a shiny Onyx, did pick up a couple of nice scarves in a charity shop), Saturday my friend and I did another section of the Capital Ring walk, and then it was community day, and then some more grinding on Sunday took my in-game distance up to 70k for the week. Total non-CD shiny count? Zero until I was sitting on the couch, doing game admin, when the one-spawn-an-hour that I get in my house turned out to be a shiny anorith... I've since traded for a shiny lileep, but the kabuto that I yearn for is still eluding me.

[lilacsigil]

Because I live in a rural area, there's nobody around to do raids with other than my partner - we can manage 3-star, once fluked a 4-star but definitely not 5-star. So it's really exciting when legendaries turn up for weekly research and today it was a Kyogre!

[ephemera]

Yay! I do love Kyogre!

[melannen]

My phone runs on Android 4.4, so I guess I'm done playing. :/

[ephemera]

Oh no! That sucks!

[gorgeousnerd]

I'm not playing as much as I'd like for various reasons (the lack of accessible gyms, personal stuff, a setback I had in one of the few raids I've managed to do), but I still love it! Even if I don't get to my neighborhood Pokestop most of the time, I catch most days, and I'm making progress on some of the evolutions I'm aiming for. I also enjoy getting and sending gifts to my friends; it's a nice way to stay in touch with some of the more casual ones, if that makes sense? Really, the game's great for casual play and more intense interactions.

Can't believe I've been playing for three years now. I'm still having so much fun.

[ephemera]

I think I do know what you mean - there are some people I regularly gift with, but don't often otherwise see, and its a nice little thread of maintaining-connection thing.

[grammarwoman]

I am trying really hard not to be a salty brat about how hard I was grinding during Adventure Week and the Dortmund GoFest weekend, and how few shinies I had to show for it - not a single Alolan, and only one m Nidoran, on top of a couple of other shinies I already had, especially because the weather by me has been utterly hot and humid, and not at all pleasant for walking.

Not to mention that I did every single dinner raid hour, with a minimum of 7 raids per hour, and didn't get a single shiny from the span of Cresselia to Kyogre to Groudon, while the friends I was raiding with each got at least 1 a night. I swear the RNG has it in for me.

[ephemera]

On of the very active players in my community has had very similar dinner hour luck - RNG can be so harsh sometimes. I'm most envious of your Nidoran M!

[kirin]

My RNG for shinies in the wild hasn't been great lately - none from the Dortmund GoFest boost, one Alolan Ratata but none of the others from the Alolan boost, and one wild Lileep from Adventure week - though I did get a shiny Onix from a research task. From other things I've been doing well, though. Got like eight shiny Slakoth on CD, and managed two shiny Raikou on its raid day.

And on top of that, well, I actually went to the Chicago GoFest. :D As you can imagine, that was more shinies in a weekend than I usually get in several months. Total haul: 1 Horsea, 2 Snorunt, 2 Wailmer, 1 Sandshrew, 1 Absol, 2 Duskull, 1 Clamperl, 2 Larvitar, 1 Cubone, 1 Lotad, 1 Buneary, 1 Mawile, 2 Drifloon, 1 Luvdisc, and 2 Misdreavus. Whew! About half of those were ones I actually needed, and several of the others are good for trading. And of course I also came back with plenty of Pachirisu and WAKEUP! Unown. I was lucky enough to have my ticket on Friday, when the weather was good - it was a great trip all 'round.


Also of note today - the released the fairy fast move Charm! It's rolling out today and will be available for Gardevoir, Togekiss, and several other pokemon. A bunch of other pokemon are also getting new attacks, one of the most notable besides Charm being a flying fast attack on Moltres, making ones with legacy Sky Attack into one of the best flying types in the game.

[ephemera]

Ohh! You got to go to GoFest! That looked *so* cool, and what a shiny haul! That sounds great! (I'm about to sink all my TMs into getting Charm on my shiny Togekiss...)