XP gain, stardust drain

As some of you are bound to have noticed the current fad with huting down legendary raids is a brutal hit to our stardust income.

I'm no better off. Running from raid to raid and spending time waiting for people to group up. In the end very few pokemon get caught per hour played, and dust has dropped from some 25K a day to a mere 10 to 15K.


There really is very little to do about it, and I just wanted to make people aware of it. Especially since the last XP and stardust bonanza hid the underlying dilemma very well.

Some of you might have the problem hidden by the continued inflow of XP. Every time you knock a legendary down another 10K XP flows in, and that has you getting that much closer to next level. Which would be all good but for the problems keeping your line-up maxed out.


Well, I'm off getting more XP and less stardust. There's another bird waiting for me out there.

Gym raiding, staggered attack

And we're talking gym raiding here, not boss raiding.

Unless the gym is populated by utter crap a staggered attack is preferable when attacking in a group.


Basically a third to half of the attackers leave after the first defender is defeated and then reenter battle.

Either those burning through the gym will finish first and then clean out the gym, or those who reentered catch up, in which case one of them leaves and cleans out the gym.


We're taking out gyms fully populated by perfectly decent defenders in about two minutes, so this approach is well worth it when you're downing gym after gym in a raid.


A defended gym needs a slightly different approach depending on the position of the vital defenders, and by vital I'm referring to powered up snorlax, blissey and chansey.


One attacker should burn through the gym while the rest leave and restart combat.

You're shaving the gym, unless a vital defender is the first. In that case you'll just attack it over and over again until it goes down.

When vital defenders are further back in the line-up it's usually more efficient to split the attacking group into three waves and clean out the lower quality defenders first. Keep going until a vital defender is the first one, and wipe it out.

Observe that you still want one attacker to burn right through the gym. This is to force the feeding defender to care for any defenders standing behind the vital ones. However, skip this part if the vital defenders take up slot five and / or six. If they're that far into the gym it's better just cleaning out the road bumps first.


You'll have to try this approach out where you play locally. What feels best for you might vary from our experiences, but the main thing is to make sure that not everyone is beating up the same defender, well with the exception for that blissey standing first in a defended gym.

Gym territory, basics, home territory

This will be the first in a sporadic, and most likely long, series of articles about gym territory given the new gym system and the assumtion that remote feeding will work like it does now.

The series is for those of us who have found out that three or four lost gyms a daily is more than enough to collect those fifty coins, and now we want to have some fun with the other fifteen defenders.

It's also for those of us who have the luxury of an available community with like minded raider of the same team.


Home territory is where you spend a lot of time and have the opportunity to play. So home, or to a certain degree, school / work.

Home territory is where you have a good opportunity to physically walk up to a gym and interact with it the old school way.

Home territory is the best place to establish a long term presence in gyms.


Is it possible?

Yes, by means of remote feeding gyms and walking out to them.


As a raider you need to be aware that there's a cost involved with territory. More so now than earlier.

You'll spend resources making home territory your turf, and you'll make certain the other two teams spend a lot of resources trying to change that.


Rival gyms have to go down. It's going to cost, but they just have to go down.

Friendly gyms have to be fed. It's going to cost, but they just have to be fed.


Now for the theory crafting:

• Use standard berries in your home territory, but not more than two for any one defending pokemon per half hour
• Don't defend crap. That Pidgey some idiot popped inside a gym can burn in hell
• Use Golden Razz Berries to support team members in their home territories
• Use a tit for tat system. Invite team members from other home territories to slot in pokemon in yours, and be prepared to visit theirs in order to slot in your defenders

This means you don't throw standard berries into just any friendly gym you happen to pass. Use them for a cheap boost to CP at gyms in your home territory. Walk to the gyms and deploy the berries.

Be careful to feed more than half a dozen defenders this way.

Be prepared to answer calls for help. From long distance you're supposed to use your Golden Razz Berries to keep vital defenders in the game, which means Blissey and Snorlax.

If your call for help is answered, you'll defend secondary defenders every second time they're beat down. The one helping you will handle the vital ones.

If you're on your own, feed vital defenders and your own deployed pokemon if it's not one of them.


Well, that's it, the basics:

• Burn down rival gyms
• Defend your own
• Have people from elsewhere deploy defenders
• Ask for help when attacked

Gym defenders, lineup July 27 2017

Since Niantic tends to change mechanics on very short notice I have to time stamp this post.

The list depends on remote feeding gyms working again, which it currently does.

There are quite a few conditions that have to be met for this list:

• You're level 37 or higher
• You've maxed out 25 or more pokemon (or at least brought them to the most useful cut-off level)
• You're playing with a raid team that's fairly well cordinated
• You're boss raiding often enough to have a surplus of Golden Razz Berries
• Remote feeding defenders work at least at distances you can see in-game

So, that's the ground work. Let's assume the conditions above are met. That way a number of secondary aspects also kick in:

• You can afford at least five defenders
• Your defenders should be maxed out
• We're calling bullshit on the CP 3000 limit for defending pokemon
• You have access to a line-up of 20 attackers, which is the bare minimum for a smooth boss raiding experience

The ultimate defending line-up:

• 2 Blissey, ZH/DG
• 2 Snorlax, ZH/BS (legacy), ZH / HS or HB (current moves)
• 1 Lapras, Any combination of ice moves

If you can afford another five defenders:

• 1 Vaporeon, WG/AT
• 1 Slowbro, Confusion / WP or IB
• OR
• 1 Slowking, Confusion / any charge move
• 1 Steelix, IT / HS
• 1 Exeggutor, any psychic primary / Seed Bomb
• 1 Arcanince, Snarl / WC

The last two defenders in the 'affordable five' really is your personal pick. I just chose two defenders that screw attackers over a little extra since they're likely to break typing in a gym.

Wild Charge for Arcanine is a nasty response to the likely water type attackers.

If you have the opportunity to add a pokemon into a gym which is already populated by Blissey, Snorlax, Lapras and Vaporeon, then by all means bring in defenders with moves attackers are unlikely to expect. Especially if those moves have a higher statistical chance of being super effective against an attacker.

Well, that's the line-up.

You're home free with five to eight defenders depending on how you pick your gyms. Anything above eight is exessive unless you're in the game for territory, and I'll wait with analysing territory until the warm summers' days are only a memory.

Now, why do I call bullshit on the CP 3000 limit? Well, with remote feeding a raid team is able to rotate gym feeding among team members. There are after all six defending pokemon inside, and added to those actively feeding the gym you have the occasional passerby who'll use the gym as a berry dumpster.

If the gym is attacked immediately the strongest defender is, well, the strongest defender. It's not like it's losing motivation by the hundreds every minute.

It's visually more attractive to feed a pokemon with visibly lowered motivation.

There's an extremely small chance of getting a candy when feeding. Players should feed more often to increase the aggregate chance to receive one.

Keep team members motivated to feed the gyms by visually seeing that their berries count.

Current event, stardust farming

As the event has been extended until Friday here's a suggestion for those of you who spend money on the game and have grown tired of the legendary raids.

Farming stardust. As in farming insane amounts of stardust. It's going to be pretty expensive though.


Bulk up on incubators. You'll be going through tons of them.


Here's the breakdown:

• You gain double stardust from hatching an egg
• Hatching eggs require a third of the usual distance
• A five kilometre egg normally yields around 1K stardust

Basically you drop everything you've got into incubators and start walking where there are a lot of pokestops and gyms. You want to replace hatched eggs as quickly as humanly possible.

Let's have a look at the gain.

Every 1.7 kilometres you'll pop five kilometre eggs. Let's say you pop nine of them every second kilometre on average. That's a buffert of three hundred metres per egg for failing to have nine of them active at all times.

So 18K stardust every second kilometre. A day spent with plenty of time for breaks should still see you cover thirty kilometres, or 270K stardust.

It's reasonable to assume a minimum of 10 pokemon caught per kilometre walked, so there's 300 pokemon for an extra 60K stardust, and we're using extremely conservative numbers here.

In total a bare minimum of 330K stardust. Pushing it a little you'll easily collect 400K stardust per day.

Walking around in a high density pokestop area will have you leave the day with your bag intact as an added bonus.

The numbers above also show that wading around in an ocean of lures is extremely inefficient at the moment for farming stardust, especially as you're running into the soft ban limit way too rapidly.

Legendary raids, city view from the two day event

Observe that I live in Gothenburg, Sweden. We're rabid maniacs when it comes to organising, and the city area houses some 650 K inhabitants.


Legendary raids pop up all over the place. It's quite frankly insane, and to be honest it grows old pretty quickly.


The best part is running into fifty or sixty players coming for each raid. Obviously spread out over time, but still. Apart from a morning raid, which I had to run with six other players, fifteen to twenty players per group was normal. For the last two raids we went for private groups, which was great for individual dps but kind of mean to casual players at the raid.


Overall a 33% catch rate seemed to be the norm. Variation between players was large, but collecting one every three raids seems realistic.


Rather unsurprisingly 15+ random players steamroll right through these boss fights with well over half the time left. At one time we averaged a level of over 35 and the boss basically keeled over and died more or less immediately.


The big groups at the raids aren't just a matter of living in a city. I started this post by stating that we're rabid maniacs for organising stuff. The raid chats numbers well over 300 participants. People congregate on raid points like biblical locust.


Oh, XP intake is also absurd. As is the gifts of stardust and candy. Eggs pop through the incubators at an absurd rate and your buddy is on a feeding frenzy. Add that massive cluster spawns are all around us.

Global event, double everything

Seems the bonuses are active. Double XP, candy and stardust. We're still waiting for people to walk their buddies and hatch their eggs to confirm if those bonuses are currently active as well.

GO Fest, post mortem

Sadly the header seems to be spot on. GO Fest died.

Almost total lack of connectivity wasn't exactly mitigated by server-side infrastructure being unable to handle the load from increased traffic actually coming in.

According to this silph road post a number of patches were duct taped onto the event to somewhat lessen the blow.

• Refunding tickets
• Giving attendees a hefty chunk of pokecoins to cover the worst wounds
• All registered attendees receiving the legendary pokemon Lugia added to theor decks
• The venue being extended to a two mile radius covering the park and another 48 hours for grabbing the candy pokemon
• Criteria for legendary raids were met, as in were set to be met

The official 'we just screwed ourselves over royally' can be found here.

Rumours have it that legendary raids have already opened up in Australia.

All in all we're talking a mostly unmitigated disaster.

GO Fest, feed back up, some info

The feed just came back. The refunding of tickets is confirmed, which means shit really hit the fan.

An indicator of global challenge progress was also published. According to that two out of three challenge windows have brought us half-way, which would be an indicator that the mystery challenge won't occur at all unless Niantic manually tweaks the results.

Notably no graphics for local progress were shown, which in itself pretty much confirms that the game is virtually unplayable on-site.


Information would have it that carrier services were insufficient for the event. Doh! Grab 10K people to play a mobile on-line game in a small area and I'll guarantee that existing infrastructure won't suffice.

Apparently the added wifi-capacity to mitigate the problem wasn't set up in a professional way (read international airport covering wifi), which is a basic requirement for running an event like this.

GO Fest, is it even running

There are reports indicating there might not even be a Chicago event any longer.

I'll see if anything changes within the hour.

Second challenge , did it happen

The live feed from GO Fest died less than ten minutes into the second challenge window. I'm quite honestly not certain the second window actually finished at all.

There are unconfirmed rumours that Niantic are refunding attendees at the Chicago event, which in turn would mean something is seriously not working on site.

Now, over twenty minutes after the second challenge window should have closed, the feed is still dead.

First challenge window

Almost cleared the bronze requirements for players globally.

Players at the event seem to have concentrated on water type pokemon.

GO Fest live, first challenge window just finished

In the end the challenge windows started CDT + 1, which means the first challenge window just finished.

I'll miss out on the first two so will report if any results are published for them soon after the windows close.

Buggy raid bosses

Seems something's up with boss raids. Acording to Niantic themselves this is not a feature.

Apparently raid bosses don't go down the way they should.

New package deals, now we start talking

There are three new package deals in the in-game shop.

Special box, 480 coins:

• 6 X Premium Raid Pass
• 10 X Pinap Berry

Forget about the berries. It's a 120 coin discount for the raid passes. Fair enough.

Great Box, 980 coins:

• 12 X Premium Raid Pass
• 20 X Pinap Berry
• 10 X Lure Module

Once again forget about the berries. Raid passes alone is a 220 coin discount. Add lure modules for over 800 coins and we're looking at a really nice deal.

Ultra Box, 1480 coins:

• 4 X Incense
• 16 X Premium Raid Pass
• 30 X Pinap Berry
• 20 X Lure Module

The berries, well... I'll be harsh enough to say that the incense are fun to have but not much more. Raid passes at a 120 coin discount, but adding in the order of 1700 coins' worth of lure modules makes this package a really sweet deal for those who like to add some petal love to players.

For the solo boss raider the Special Box is the best deal, and for the boss raider who likes to drop a lure occasionally the Great Box likely give the best bang for the bucks.

Those of us who plan to participate in the July 22 event will love the Ultra Box. We're talking keeping dozens of lures running for each challenge. While making space for 30 berries is a pain, the lures alone are worth the cost. Add the opportunity for a raiding galore and you have a winner.

I'll admit it -- Niantic got it right this time.

New game client, fine tuning remote feeding

So a couple of days ago I fed an assigned mon te kilometres away. That was rather obviously broken.

Today I need to get closer than fifty or so metres from the gym. That's inane.


This is unfortunately symptomatic for Niantic fine tuning. When they find out that strategic nukes are probably overkill they replace them with a needle.

New game client, hotfix

Seems the Go to Gym feature has been disabled for now. Apparently Niantic is working on a fix for something that went wrong with the feature, most likely some kind of in-game security handling that prevents players from teleporting from place to place.

Basically the Go to Gym feature is an in-game spoofing application, and it seems likely that a number of players got locked out of the game for using gps-spoofing software, which in this case happened to be the game itself.

New game client, errata

Just fed a pokemon over ten kilometres away with a golden razz berry. It immediately spiked to full CP.

Fun for me but really bad for the game. Some kind of diminishing returns, even for golden razz berries really has to be associated with relatively short distances. Basically, if you can't see the gym in-game rewards should deteriorate quickly.

Well, as of now it's possible to do this. If you spend money, ie run a lot of raids, this is starting to look like pay to win, which is a scenario I dislike. Pay to cut corners is fine, but, well...

New game client, two minor bugs

The new client comes with two small bugs, one merely funny and the other slightly dangerous.

Now, observe that these are my personal experiences from using the client on a Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge.

As an instinct player I find it mildly amusing that the valor team-lead now gives me the appraisal for pokemon, even though the messages are consistent with what they were earlier.


A little more dangerous is that the pokemon you assign to gym drop their favourite star (if you had starred them to begin with). A lot of us star pokemon to avoid deleting them by mistake, so be careful out there will you.

New game client, meta game changing addition

A new version of the app was just released. While other sites happily chat away about legendary raids I've tried out the really game changing aspect.

You can feed your assigned pokemon from a distance.

At the moment I'm sitting in a garden some ten kilometres south of where I usually play, so there are a few gyms in the city and one which I can barely reach from the game. By reaching I mean have a look at it -- it's still a good ten minutes walk away from me.

That gym, which would be way too far away from where I live in the city to be considered a 'home gym', eats my berries and adds CP to the defending pokemon inside.

All the pokemon inside.

Now, as I had an excessive amount of berries I tried feeding the gyms in the city. While I can't beef up the mons inside I still receive all the othe benefits from feeding a gym.

I can see how some players might feel that this is broken, but if you don't play the game in the middle of nowhere, excessive amounts of berries will become a thing of the past.

At least some 1000 to 2000 extra stardust daily from riding your coach seems perfectly viable as you dump your berries inside gyms before you go to sleep. It's mostly a matter of how many stops and gyms you spin on a daily basis -- a certain percentage of the catch will be berries.


Now for the meta game changing part. If your ability to effectively reach gyms
overlap with other players of your team, especially other players you actively cooperate with, then holding territory is back in the game.

When the gym's going down you can alternate feeding the mons inside

This also means that your best defenders are definitely back in business. Those gyms you want to hold should be populated by the six strongest defending pokemon you can muster up. After all you want to feed attackers with a feeling of futility as the defenders come back at full strength every second fight.

You still only need three or four pokemon at high traffic gyms to secure the fifty daily coins, so don't worry overly much about getting pokemon locked inside.


This change also works perfectly fine for hampering spoofers. By selectively feeding defenders from home you now have an opportunity to see the spoofers getting booted out from the gym, and the best of all is that rival players are doing the job.

Obviously you'll be doing the same job when you walk into enemy territory, but that's another story.

Evening event July 22, welcome to moronopia

Now it's well known that the people at Niantic lack the basic ability to read the clock, so the times given here might be an hour off since we have this thing with daylight saving time.

Coincidentally the US has been dabbling with it for almost a hundred years, and we have high hopes the San Fransisco people will be able to grasp the concept in time for the centennial next year.

There are three 30 minute challenge windows starting at 18:00, 19:00 and 22:00 hours CET. Adding one hour for daylight saving time that would be 19:00, 20:00 and 23:00 hours. However, it's unlikely they've announced events at CDT, but rather at CDT + 1, which means the 11:00, 12:00 and 14:00 hours given for the local event would actually occur at the same hours CDT + 1, which pretty much is what people in that park would expect.

Now, we're talking Niantic programmers. Programming time is harder than it seems for some people, and the Niantic people have failed horribly at it since the inception of the game.

So...

The challenge events could actually occur at CDT time, meaning that they'll kick in exactly one hour after when they're announced to start.


In any case, if the first local challenge event doesn't kick in at 11:00 CDT + 1 the news will spread like wild fire, and the rest of us are likely to know within a minute or two. So worst case we'll simply have to wait for another hour.


If, and it's a big if, the challenge events start at 19:00, 20:00 and 23:00 hours CET + 1 (which means when our clocks and phones actually say it's 7, 8 and 11 pm), the first two should go off without a hitch. For the third one the people at Niantic will see a huge drop as it's a bit too late for most of the player base in the European Union.


Then there's the mystery challenge. 1 am July 23 CET, which might very well be 2 am in reality for reasons given above. No matter what, this one is a problem. The mystery challenge event is one hour long, and during that time at night basically the entire playerbase from the EU is gone.


Add that the entire event is placed during screwed up hours for everyone from Australia to Tokyo and we can see how Niantic basically fucked 80% of their global playerbase over.

Sweet way to run an on-line game.

Gym boss raids, the communication game

In a city environment you're still likely to see a healthy bunch of players arriving at the scene for a tier 4 raid. This post is all about the communication aspect of the boss raiding part of the game, and it assumes a city environment.


Build a community platform, one that is live. Discord, messenger, or something like that. It should have some 200 plus members to be truly efficient. Calls to arms go here. Basically you want to get a general idea if a decent number of raiders are going to show up or not.


Build another for your team, preferably the one used for coordinating gym raids before the rework. This is used for flagging a gym raid (not the gym boss one) some twenty minutes prior to the boss spawning. Sometimes rival teams will arrive in force and the raid goes down the drain, but usually you'll be able to flip the gym before the boss spawns. Pop some berries inside if rival team members tries to undo the flip.


Use the chat to check if you have late comers arriving. It could be worth waiting for them.


When you're about to start the raid, either run a private group (if there are a lot of players at the scene), or quickly coordinate who goes into which raiding team. If you're under 10 players it usually quicker to have everyone in one group no matter team affiliations.


Please do make certain everyone in your group successfully entered the boss fight. If not, and if you've got plenty of time, terminate the fight and start over.


If you're a huge group at the boss raid, try having team specific groups. That way everyone gets the benefit from belonging to the team that did the most damage.


When it's time to throw balls at the boss, be ready to state the CP of a 100 IV level 20 version of the boss. That way players have it easier to decide whether to maximise the chance to catch the boss or to maximise the potential candy gain.

Legendary raids, city environment and how to beat them

This is me raining on your parade.

What do you need to do in order to defeat a legendary raid-boss and get a chance to throw balls at it?


Participate in raids now, preferably level four ones.


No matter your level, and totally disregarding whatever legendary pokemon shows up on the first legendary boss-raid you participate in, if you've participated in six level four raids or more you're set to go.


Huh? Are you, the moronic blogger, insane?


Sorry, but no. You'll end up with at least six level 20 pokemon. I quite honestly don't care which level 20 pokemon. Just line them up in random order, or, if you're above level 25, just go with whatever the game suggests.


Success -- you won the fight.


The first weeks of legendary raids, given a city environment, will kick up the hype sky high, and you'll be enough players at the site to faceroll whatever opposition you're presented with despite more or less active attempts to disconnect your brain from the game.


Once again -- there's absolutely no need to give even as much as a fleeting thought about which boss counters are the best. Just go with whatever and you'll steamroll whatever legendary raid boss you're faced with.


Three months down the line? Well, that's an entirely different issue. When autumn kicks the player base down to the basement it's time to bring out the best quality counters available.


Unless, of course, you've already collected enough legendary pokemon that you simply can't be bothered any longer.

Gym defence, flawed meta game reasoning

Reading on-line I see a lot of posts with the strangest reasoning.

Basically the line of (non)logic runs as follows:

• 3000 CP defenders are useless
• Gyms are too easy to attack
• I'll assign pidgeys to gyms because they work just as well as anything else

By assigning nerfed versions (as in not powered up) of high quality defenders the player makes certain that each such assigned pokemon is easier to attack compared to the shelved, maxed out ones.

By assigning utter crap to defend gyms the same player then proceeds to make the entire gym easier to attack.

Finishing the moronic route by complaining about how easy gyms have become to attack is a display of cluelessness on an epic scale.

There are three top class defenders with a maximum CP below 3000. Chansey, Lapras and Steelix. Either keep them for when a gym won't allow you to assign one of your other top class defenders, or assign them to remote gyms you just want to keep indefinitely.

There are a number of second tier defenders with max CP below 3000. I recommend using these as fillers in high traffic gyms where there's no open spot for one of your grade A defenders.

If there are open spots for one of your best defenders in a high traffic gym, then assign it there. A 3200+ snorlax or 3100+ blissey is better than their sub 3000 CP versions.

A high traffic gym will either get attacked before motivation degradation becomes a problem, in which case your maxed out defender hurts the attacker more, or it will be fully populated with all assigned defenders sufficiently fed with berries, in which case motivation degradation ceases to be an issue.

In short, your best defenders from before the gym rework remain your best defenders today. Arguably with the exception of vaporeon who got badly hurt by the power shift when it comes to grass versus water.

Oh, and if you insist on plugging shit into gyms, at least have the decency to stop complaining that the gyms inexplicably are easier to attack now -- your pidgey doesn't help your argument.

Gyms, an observation

I'm a bit unclear if this observation of mine really has any value or not, but here goes.

Gyms seem to be filled to max rather than being torn down while there's still only a single pokemon assigned to it. By this I mean that when you burn down a rival gym and drop a defender inside, more often than not, that gym will be filled to capacity.

This is the exact opposite to how gyms behaved before the rework. A disco usually got wiped out more or less immediately, which was the reason you brought your raid-team together and pumped a gym to max, filled it as well as you could, and called out on communication channels that there were free spots available for friendly players.

It seems counter productive to allow a rival team to fill the gym, but I can see a coupld of reasons for doing so.

Observe that filled gyms do get wiped out, usually within a day, and very often just prior to a level 4 raid.


I get more badge XP for tearing down a full gym.

I'm busy boss-raiding, so I can't spare the time for a gym with one or two defenders on my way to the boss-raid.

The first defender assigned was a respectable blissey, and they're still a PITA to burn down, so I thought: BLAEH, and walked on.

There's very little old school gym-raiding going on, so I'm simply not interested in gym fighting any longer.

Anniversary non-event longer than expected

The anniversary event, or more correctly non-event, doesn't end until July 24. Until then you have the opportunity to capture pikachu with Ash's baseball cap.

Well, that's about it.

Oh, there was an anniversary box.

1200 coins

• 6 incubators
• 2 premium raid passes
• 6 max revive
• 20 ultra ball

Unless you're living in the middle of nowhere this is an awful offer. I'm aware that the in game shop sells poke balls, max revives and max potions, but for players living in a city that's practically a scam. Avid users of PoGo plus might be interested in the poke balls.

At least you're not forced to buy the crap.

The anniversary box is for all practical purposes a loss of 100 coins. 6 incubators is 900 coins and 2 premium raid passes is 200 coins. Max revives and ultra balls have exactly zero value unless you're starved for poke stops and gyms.

Edit: This is not only a bad deal, it's a bloody awful design of a deal as well. When you spend a month hyping up the upcoming raids as the second coming, you just don't follow that up with an offer of a big pack incubators.

Last time we saw these package deals they got exchanged for new ones mid event. Let's hope this is the case here as well.

Anniversary event

The anniversary event should start in some five hours from the time this post goes live.

It seems to be yet another week long event.

Pikachu wearing a hat. Have we seen this before? Well at least it's taking those of us who still have yet to claim the 300 pikachu caught medal a bit closer to that goal.

A package deal in the shop. Incubators, max revives, ultra balls and raid pass. Depending on price it's a deal or not. Thing is that city players really don't have to care about revives or balls in any forms as long as they are disciplined about their bag management.

Despite parts of the content being out of date the above posts about bag management are still valid.

So incubators and raid pass. Which means there's a break even point at 250 coins for one of each. Keep in mind that incubators are rather devalued since the advent of fully evolved level 20 pokemon without the need to walk around.

Well, let's see what it's all about in five hours, shall we?

Difference between smallish Japansese towns and home

One thing is for certain. There are a lot of sponsored stops and gyms in Japan. Now I've only had the opportunity to try my luck at smallish towns/cities (everything is relative I guess), with some 40K to 200K inhabitants.

The difference from Sweden, where I'm used to play, is simply astounding. To begin with we have very few sponsored stops. As in I've spent the better part of a year getting to level 39 in a 600K inhabitant city area without ever seeing one.

We're talking the blatantly sponsored ones here. It's quite possible that there's a different business model where sponsored stops look like normal ones, you know with a photo of a location and all that.

The result is that back home I expect to see a high density of stops/gyms in central areas, including centres of satellite towns, which peters out into nothingness the further away you come from the business to consumer infrastructure.

It also means that while the density is high, you'd very seldom expect to reach more than two resources from one location. Walk another twenty metres and there's another stop/gym and then fifty metres to the next two.

It's hugely efficient for the old school way of hatching eggs while throwing balls at spawns without really running out of them. Using slow moving trams for refilling your bag is also a dream. 150 items of the type you prefer (which means well over 250 in total) in less than half an hour is a given.


Here in Japan (the tiny part of Japan that I visited) resources come in clusters, mostly tied to small parks and shopping malls. Reaching four or five of them from one position is perfectly possible.

Problem being that when you leave them you immediately run into a deserted nothingness despite going past bars, restaurants, coffee shops and a variety of shops in what passes for town centres.

Then the next cluster.

You could very well see absolutely nothing but the occasional spawn for several hundred metres in between.

Also, in the middle of nowhere, if there's a 'shop' belonging to one of the big chains that bought sponsored stops (think 7eleven, McDonalds, and so on), well you'll find a lonely stop there for cetrain.

Players here should love gym version 2. The PoGo landscape didn't promote moving around in the first place, and now you can hunt down the nicer contents from 10 kilometre eggs from inside a shopping mall or a park.


I won't say that it's better back home, but it's definitely what I'm used to. I'd go bonkers if I couldn't reliably spin two dozen stops and throw balls at some thirty of forty mons on my way from one raid to another. Because that's what I grew used to from gym raiding during the previous gym system.

A good raid back then invariably resulted in the relative loss of over a hundred balls and at least 12K stardust gained (and used). Not to mention a minimum of 5 kilometres added to the incubators.


So, what would be your preference?

Beating raid bosses realistically

I won't go into the dream teams. There are numreous listings out there, including this one, and they vary somewhat when it comes to the optimal setup.

The real problem is that you're unlikely to be able to field that kind of line-up.

Instead, let's look at the raid tiers and take a look at what a 'normal' high level PoGo trainer should have available.

Whenever I suggest a specific pokemon I'm assuming you have it maxed out or near maxed out.


Tier 1

Don't bother, just bulldoze right over the boss. Whatever your phone suggests is brutal overkill for the content. And I'm talking about a raid constisting of you, your dog and that pidgeon over there.

Apart from the magikarp the three other bosses are interesting to collect as you get a comparatively high IV first evolve of the generation 2 starters.


Tier 2

If the raid got at least a second human particpiant, just follow the advice for tier 1.

If your only help is that dog of yours, well, now it's time to slowly connect your brain.

When I write a type of pokemon I'm also assuming it has access to at least one attack of the right type.

Now, to be honest, at level 39 I just bulldooze right through the content without giving it a second thought even alone, but then I have to revive a lot of attackers and the raid takes much more time than needed.

• Electrabuzz -- Rhydon and/or golem if you have any high level of those. Pad out with dagonite and tyranitar, or start the fight with those if you lack any level 30+ rock-type pokemon.
• Exeggutor -- Flareon. If you for some reason have access to a 30+ bug type attacker, good for you. They're even better, but you're safe with an army of flareon, which you're likely to have. They don't even have to be level 30. Just kill and revive after the raid.
• Magmar -- Vaporeon. Start with your powered up rhydon / golem if you have one.
• Muk -- If you have pushed an alakazam or espeon for attack purposes, this is what you start with. It'll die, but at least you'll get off one juicy charge attack. Follow up with rhydon / golem if available and pad out with dragonite / tyranitar. Gyarados with Bite work as a poor man's dragonite here.
• Wheezing -- Treat as Muk.

Tier 3

Ok, I really suggest you bring friends here. Sure, at level 38 and above, with the right attackers powered up to max, these raid bosses should go down to a solo player given a few attempts, but it's mostly an excersise in bragging rights.

I'm assuming you're two high level players here.

• Vaporeon -- If you have a grass attacker powered up, victreebel, exeggutor, venusaur or somthing like that, for taking out vaporeon in the old gym system, well it works just as well here. Start with that one. All other slots should be filled with the jolteon army you're likely to have stashed away for slaughtering all those gyarados that used to be standing in gyms.
• Arcanine -- Start with golem/rhydon if available, then slot in your vaporeon army.
• Flareon -- treat as arcanine.
• Machamp -- This is where your problems start. Alakazam / espeon if available. Psychic version of exeggutor or a dragonite with Hurricane. Overall you should have an easier time setting up your army of trash going for psychic type pokemon with at least one psychic attack even if they're as low as level 20. Prepare your revives.
• Gengar -- A dark type tyranitar is golden here, or a suicidal ghost type gengar to start with. Next one for slaughter is that alakazam / espeon if you have one and after that you can pad out with a dragon type dragonite or your Bite / Hydro Pump gyarados.
• Alakazam -- A ghost type gengar should be the first in your line up here if you have one. After that a dark type tyranitar. Anyone who identified pinsir's relatively high attack stats will be rewarded here. The rest of us just go for dragon type dragonite and Bite gyarados.
• Jolteon -- This is where you run into real problems. A ground type golem or rhydon is golden here, but you're unlikely to have more than one, if even that. A dragon type dragonite works as well due to high general dps. You could slot in your attack exeggutor if you have one. After that it's time to dig up your army of trash consisting of ground type pokemon with the right attacks. Donphan and even sandslash. Contrary to any sane advice I suggest you give a look at that powered up snorlax with Earth Quake you might have built before someone told you that Lick / Earth Quake really sucks. Crap general dps but tanks well, and you are two players.

Tier 4

Things get intersting here. These raids seem to attract quite a lot of attention. If you're lucky enough to get into a group in the double digits, just go with whatever your phone suggests, and end with a tank; snorlax or blissey. Then run over the poor raid boss.

If you're just enough players to beat the boss, four to seven depending on player level, then once again it's time to give your line up some thought.

• Tyranitar -- A fighting type machamp is the goto starter here. Same goes for a fighting type Heracross if you have one. After that a grass type exeggutor if available. Then it's time for your army of vaporeon.
• Snorlax -- Fighting machamp / heracross. Just beware Zen Headbutt. After that it's time for your highest dps general dps. Dragonite, exeggutor, alakazam, gengar, tyranitar, gyarados.
• Rhydon -- Start with a grass type attacker. Victreebel, exeggutor, venusaur etc. Pad out with your army of vaporeon. Worst case add a Hydro Pump gyarados.
• Lapras -- Once again a fighting machamp is a good starter, as is jolteon. Suiciding with a grass type attacker helps speeding up the fight. Pad out with your army of jolteon.
• Charizard -- A rock type Golem is golden to start with. A Stone Edge tyranitar also works well. Pad out with your army of vaporeon.
• Venusaur -- Just go bonkers with your army of flareon. Slot in a psychic attacker if you have one.
• Blastoise -- Start with a grass type attacker, exeggutor, victreebel etc. Then pad out with your army of jolteon.

My suggestions won't yield optimal results, but they yield sufficient results for high level players who simply don't have an abundance of attackers to build several kinds of line ups.

What else is there to learn? Well, both for the current content, and in preparation for the upcoming legendary raids, start pushing a rock type golem or two, and give that second, or third, tyranitar a thought.

Shifting meta game, local to Gothenburg and instinct

It's been fairly interesting sitting by the sidelines following what's happening back home over the community tools we've brought to work the last year.

Now Gothenburg works like a city. While the population in what kind of feels like part of the city, including bordering towns, is limited to some 600 000 inhabitants, it's still the second city of Sweden and geographically located in a way that makes it a regional centre to a much larger degree than the population warrants.

Travelling abroad I've come to accept that my home town behaves like a million inhabitant city in nations where those aren't all that uncommon.

For PoGo it means that the city core is packed with pokestops and gyms, especially with the latter after the gym rework.

It's also a city heavily dominated by valor and mystic players in terms of absolute player base.

Still, we managed to build a healthy raid core, including semi casuals, of about 40 players, and made a gym presence in the centre that most definitely didn't correspond to our absolute numbers. Add two large areas brutally dominated by instinct.

Overall, however, numbers take their toll, and given a much larger area we were down to the 25% or lower part of the gyms that corresponded to our player base.


During the initial gym boss raid -hype we effectively got eradicated from the city core.

The strength with a healthy raid core is that it's easy to coordinate game play. The weakness with a healthy raid core is that it's easy to coordinate game play.

They're doing raid bosses en masse rather than using their time for taking gyms. Which just goes to show how quickly a shifting meta game will impact the surrounding parts of the game as well.


Now I'm seeing in the chat how part of that raid core are slowly withdrawing from the raid boss madness, and, not very surprisingly, now I can see on a gym tracking tool (gymhuntr more specifically), how 'order is restored' in one of the two areas where we held a total domination before.

It corresponds to the players who no longer rush like mad to the next gym raid boss.


Notably, I'm the first to admit that had I'd been in Gothernburg rather in Japan these last two weeks, I'd be running from raid to raid myself rather than spending time trying to build territory in gyms that are much more elusive now than before.


And, come to think about it, we really need to come up with another term for 'raids' now that the game officially incorporated the word with a different meaning than the one we used.


So, what use could you possibly have from this post?

Well, two things happened at more or less the same time, not just one:

• The gym rework
• Summer

When you read about great changes in the game you basically only read about how the new gym mechanics, including raid bosses, totally changed the game.

Moreover, you're fed with information that unilaterally states that changed game mechanics alone brought great changes to the game.

Nothing could be more wrong.

While the changes do indeed influence the game, don't forget that the mere existence of raid boss fights change how players spend their Pokemon Go time compared to before.

Also, don't forget that summer, with all that it entails with better weather, vacations and school breaks, brings out a fair number of players. I wouldn't say new players, but rather those who tried the game out last summer and left it when weather grew cold last autumn.

The sheer volume of active players has increased drastically the last month. Most of us high level ones would refer to them as casuals, but casuals at levels 25 to 30 impact gyms to a degree they wouldn't have been able to do with the previous game mechanics.

See, one change that does indeed come from the gym rework itself, but one that wouldn't have had such an impact but for summer.

Come September I expect a large part of the current player base to withdraw into the shadows again. I wouldn't be surprised to see gyms mostly reverting to how they looked before the rework.

Gym defence, The gym is under attack! Try again later

It's a bug and it's known by Niantic.

Well at least it's a bug when you just tore down that enemy gym and everyone in the group tries to assign defenders.

There are two ways to get around the problem:

• Sync your assigning so that everyone push the button simultaneously
• Manually turn your clock (the one on your phone) ten minutes forward. You'll have to find out how to do so on your specific phone.

When the gym is actually under attack this isn't a bug. As of now there are different reports on wether the message (and the disabling of assignments) occurs when the gym is attacked or if it occurs when a defender is kicked out.

In the latter case it makes perfect sense, or you could just camp a friendly gym and reinsert a pokemon as soon as one got kicked out.

Add that it makes shaving a major pain in the arse, which is a good thing in my book.

In the former case, well that would just be either a bug or a horrid implementation. Anyone could permanently lock a gym down by 'touching' a defender every nine minutes or so. I don't even want to have nightmares about bots doing this.