Latest package deals

Bronze box, 460 coins: 100 red pokeballs and 8 lure modules.

Silver box, 980 coins: 8 incense, 8 lucky eggs and 8 lure modules.

Gold box, 2480 coins: 50 great balls, 25 incense, 25 lucky eggs and 16 lure modules.

Right now the bronze box is fantastic value, but its main problem is that it's physically difficult to buy. You need 108 bag slots free due to the 100 balls Niantic want to litter your bag with.

The silver box is a compact piece of goodness if you're power-evolving. Otherwise it's a box of crap unless you're living somewhere where you can really make good use of the incense.

The gold box is all over the place. 50 great balls is just problematic considering the package inlcudes another 66 slots. You have to be really interested in all three main components, incense, lucky eggs and lures, for the package to be good value.

At this moment, when lures run at one hour, the cheapest package is probably the best deal for just about everyone (if you can make room for 100 pokeballs).

Best pokemon in the game

What's the best pokemon in the game?

This is one of the questions that normally is answered with an: 'it depends' or 'given this situation I'd say that' etc.

Well, in this case that's bullshit.

The best pokemon in the game is snorlax. End of story.

When defending a gym, if you want rival players to think 'screw this' and walk away, just dump ten 3k cp plus snorlax into the gym. Job done.

As for attacking, while there are several other pokemons better suited for a specific job, you can never go totally wrong with a snorlax.

There's something to a 250 hitpoint monster with perfectly decent attack and defence stats. Add a variety of useful attacks and you have it. The best pokemon in the game.



Is it the best attacker in the game? No.
The overhyped dragonite, rhydon the glasscannon and gyarados are all better for their intended targets. Flareon jolteon and lapras have their specific targets as well.



Is it the best defender in the game? No.
No???
No.
Chansey is the best defender in the game. Pity you won't see anything above cp 1400, which relegates it to a bouncer role. Now, fill that gym with ten cp 1300 plus chanseys, and attacking players will find out why chansey is indeed the best defender in the game.


Still, in the end, snorlax is, by a very large margin, the best pokemon in the game.

Nest migration

I'm getting reports a new nest migration just occurred.

This would be exactly the kind of post where comments are very welcome, mainly in the form of condensed reports of new nest behaviour.

For rather obvoius reasons such comments will only be useful for a local readership, so let's limit those reports to the Gothenburg area, shall we?

Christmas event, part two

More starter mons

The stiff week, December 30 to January 8, with increased spawn rates for starter mons and their evolves will soon be upon us.

This opens up a splendid opportunity to max out that elusive final evolve. The relative spawn rates until now depends on location. For example here in Gothenburg squirtles are comparatively common, but charmanders and especially bulbasaurs are a rare sight.

With this new event you should be able to build whichever of the three evolution-trees you currently deem a hopeless pipedream to achieve.

So now everything is just happy smiles?

Well, no.

If 'increased spawn rates' means everywhere being packed to the rafters with starter pokemons, especially during the period December 30 through January 3, when pika with a hat still is around, then you'll really see them everywhere.

How often do you lob a red ball after the Christmas pikachu? Now multiply that situation by four. Add the first and second evolves to the equation and you'll soon run out of pokeballs.

It's time to save up a healthy stock of berries. You'll use them all the time. In fact you're likely to run out of them, which would suck when you run into some big game like lapras or snorlax. Well it would suck if you encounter a sweet enough final evolve as well.


Package deals

The current package deals in the shop are likely to change with the new year. It seems the incubators will be replaced by lucky eggs and lure modules.


Longer lures

Also, for a limited time, probably keyed to the time-slot for the new package deals, lures will last a full hour rather than thirty minutes.

Christmas event, part one

Pikachu

Yes, there's pikachu with a hat. Ok, done with that part, or almost. Completionists, get those medals. January third closes the door on when that will be realistically possible. At least that's longer than the previously announced December 29.

One use incubator

Drops together with the bonus for your daily first pokestop taken. If it doesn't, you're screwed -- like I was December 25. Just suck it up.

You'll either want to use them or stop playing altogether for a week. There are nine eggs in your inventory that have to be cleared out, or at least you need to make room for eggs spawned during the event for that increased chance to hatch a baby to kick in. The fastest way to achieve this is to dump everything you see into one of those free incubators.

Increased chance to hatch a baby

Until January third, eggs spawned (eggs SPAWNED, not hatched) will yield a higher hatch-chance for the pre-evolves announced as an introduction to gen2.

Package deals

During the Christmas event you can buy three packages in the shop:

• 250 coins for 10 great balls and 2 incubators
• 550 coins for 20 great balls, 2 incense and 4 incubators
• 1500 coins for 20 ultra balls, 25 incense and 6 incubators

If you're hunting incense, well the expensive one is the deal. 250 extra coins for 6 incubators is a no-brainer.

If you're after incubators the cheap deal is the way to go. 50 coin rebate for incubator number two. That's an average of 25 coins per incubator.

I'm giving the pokeballs a zero value as even 20 ultraballs quickly drop into the hands of any high level player.

The medium deal is lack luster no matter how you look at it. Another two to four incense had been needed to make it a sweet deal for those who can't make up their mind between incense and incubators.

Am I qualified?

I play at trainer level 35, which is at the lower end of hard core gaming in the city where I live.

My strength lies with understanding game mechanics, but I'm a pretty lousy player. If you want to know how to dodge specific attacks in the most efficient way, you'll have to ask someone else.

I'm also an Instinct player, which qualifies as hard core in itself in an environment where 80% of the player base is Valor or Mystic.

In Gothenburg, a half a million inhabitant city at the Swedish west coast, I belong to the Instinct raid core. Of that core half the players are my trainer level or higher. Together we're about a dozen players, with another dozen or so joining us occasionally.

Now, if this qualifies or not is up to you. This is the player I am.


Edit:

Since the last days in December I've slowly amassed the xp needed to make it to level 38.

Since then we've lost some players, and others have joined. For good or bad that leaves me as one of the higher levelled players in the Gothenburg Instinct raid core.


Edit 2:

Late July and I'm desperately trying to avoid reaching level 40. It's a gimmick thing for me now not to be max level, but the XP keeps coming, and it seems unlikely that I can stave off the unavoidable much longer than throughout August.


Edit 3:

Mid August was as far as I could push it. From now on I play as yet another level 40.

High level, what the heck?

So let's start by setting up a few definitions.

Pokemon Go is basically played at three levels:

• Starting game
• Intermediate game
• End game

High level would indicate the end game.

Starting game

From trainer level 1 through level 19.

This is where you learn the ropes, make all them stupid mistakes and make the next level before you can blink.

Intermediate game

From trainer level 20 through level 29.

Beginning with level 20 one important aspect of the game changes. Every hatched egg is equal. From here on you will hatch a pokemon at pokemon level 20. Implicitly this means this is where you start collecting pokemon for gym battles.

In reality you'll have your first decent combatant somewhere between trainer level 23 and 26. From level 25 you should aim at maxing out one new gym pokemon each level, giving you maybe half a dozen really good pokemons when you hit 30.

During the intermediate game levelling up slows down, but you still collect less stardust per level than needed to build a good line-up for gym battling.

The intermediate game is also where you get the best output from power-levelling with lucky eggs.

End game

The end game is what this blog is about. It starts at trainer level 30.

Three important things change in the game beginning at level 30:

• You get access to max revives. These cut the bag-space cost for reviving kicked out pokemons in half.
• No pokemon you catch will ever be of higher level than 30
• Every time you catch a specific pokemon in a group of players, that pokemon will have exactly the same specs for every player at trainer level 30 or higher.

First post

This post is basically a placeholder to help me select a template and layout.