Community day, June 16, a tip

In all likelyhood you've already been flooded by tips for the upcoming three hour larvitar bonanza.

So here's another one. Or rather two.

I hope you've taken note of the word 'community'. Do get them chat channels ready if you haven't already done so. Reporting high IV catches vastly increases the chance you get one yourself.


And for the second one.


With lure clusters lit up like a christmas tree you're likely to run into three minute spawns en masse. It really, really really helps if you make it clear that you caught that marvelous larvitar from a lure. Even a moderate distance is enough to make it more or less impossible to get there in time. Not only won't there be anything to catch -- people running to the spot will be confused and keep looking for something that's no longer present instead of collecting much needed larvitar candy.


Well, that's it for community day from me.

Package deal February 2018

And we have yet another package deal, or three of them as usual.

Special Box, 480 coins:

• 3 incence
• 2 incubator
• 6 star piece

Great Box, 780 coins

• 4 incubator
• 3 lucky egg
• 6 premium raid pass
• 8 star piece

Ultra Box, 1480 coins

• 8 incubator
• 6 lucky egg
• 12 premium raid pass
• 20 star piece

The Special Box looks like a piece of junk at a first look, and it does indeed offer the worst discount. It does, however, have one specific kind of user -- a bicycling rural player. 3 incence plays perfectly with three of the six star piece. While you're slowly biking around you're also likely to put the two incubators to good use.

It's a fair deal, nothing more, but it's not the piece of junk it looks like at a first glance. Well, unless you live in the city. Then it's pretty much a waste of coins.

The Great Box and Ultra Box basically mimic each other. Opening your wallet a little wider gives you a 80 coin discount and 4 star pieces as a bonus. Anyway, if the Great Box is a good deal, then that automatically means the Ultra Box is a slightly better deal, so I'll settle for analysing the Great Box.

The player behind this key board, ie me, hates lucky eggs. They hold negative value for me as I have to discard the crap when they enter my bag. Other players still want their XP though. So the lucky egg part either runs at negative value or a positive one. For the sake of simplicity I'll assign a zero coin value to lucky eggs.

Four incubators sets you back 600 coins. Most of us do prefer to cycle through our eggs in the hopes of grabbing a good 10 kilometre one. Hence incubators always have a value.

Six premium raid passes also come with a 600 coin price tag. You tell me you avoid boss raiding at all costs and I'll start wondering why you're playing the game in the first place.

This is 1200 coins worth of items for 780 coins, which means the package deal is well worth it. Add eight star pieces for four hours of fun with 50% extra star dust and you have a really nice deal. Those star pieces will see good use during the coming community day if you're buying exactly one Great Box.

If you're doing the Ultra Box, then 20 star pieces can seem a little excessive.

Here's a nice trick. You probably dumped every egg in your inventory into an incubator. Keep watch on them. When you're 'soon' hatching just fire off one star piece and enjoy a few thousand extra star dust for no extra effort.

All in all we're looking at a perfectly good setup of package deals. I've seen better, and discarding lucky eggs was a minor downer for me, but in the end I found them to be of good value.

Some X-mas news

Some kind of Christmas event has started, and with it a few new things were added to the game.

You've probably already noticed some new pokemon. Filling out the dex is always fun.


Then we also have three new package deals.


Winter Box, 480 coins

• 2 incence
• 2 standard incubators
• 5 star piece

Great Box, 780 coins

• 4 super incubators
• 10 razz berries
• 10 star piece

Ultra Box, 1480 coins

• 8 super incubators
• 10 pinab berries
• 25 star piece
• 10 lure modules

Star piece? According to this piece of news it's a consumable item that lasts for 30 minutes and increases star dust gain by 50% for that period. I'm unclear if it's an in-game shop only item or if they are distributed yb other means as well, like poke stops for example.

For the purpose of this post I'll assume that it's either a shop only, or at least a stupidly rare free item. In any case they are a very welcome addition to the game.

In that case the package deals have to be compared to each other. As usual I'll assign the berries an exactly zero value.

The Winter Box comes with 300 coins' worth of incubators and hence it's a matter if you think that 5 star pieces is worth more than 180 coins. I'd say it is, but I have difficulties assigning a value to them. We're talking two and a half hours with 50% extra star dust.

I'm not entirely convinced that this is indeed a good deal though.

For 780 coins the Great Box will yield 4 super incubators, which even if valued at 150 coins each is 600 coins worth of incubators. In this scenario the remaining 180 coins yields twice the amount of star pieces. Five hours with 50% extra star dust for 180 coins is a no-brainer.

This is a good deal aimed at the walking player.

The 1480 coin Ultra Box comes with 1200 coins' worth of super incubators, once again if we value them at 150 coins each. Basically anything thrown in after that is likely to push the package deal way above the remaining 280 coins.

In this case 10 lure modules is a little problematic. It's either a sweet 900:ish coins' worth of modules, but at the other hand a lot of players are wading around in those.

25 star pieces, at the other hand, is simply fantastic.

This package deal is also the best designed for long sessions of playing with the package as your only boost since 10 star pieces go hand in hand with 10 lure modules. This assuming that you're not the only one adding lures to poke stops. The remaining 15 star pieces are a perfect boost for consuming those eight super incubators.

I'd argue that this deal is superior to the other two by a very wide margin.

Oh, there are pokemon out there with a christmasy look as well. Just like last year.

Event, update

Since an hour or so ago I'm receiving double stardust for everything. That's an indirect indicator that we've reached 1.5 billion pokemon caught.

So, now we're running the following benefits:

• double XP
• double stardust
• six hour lures
• increased spawns, increment number two

I'm unclear about how much the spawns have increased since the insertion of both spawn-additions during the event, but there are definitely more pokemon to throw balls at disregarding the added number of active lures.

For the high level player this means we've reached the real target. Sure, at 3 billion pokemon caught we get to throw poke balls at a regional pokemon normally not available where we play, but that will get old pretty soon.

Those of you still heading towards level 40, use the coming weekend, and if you're inclined to speed up the XP you gain, then do buy the package deals. It's hard to go wrong with four times the XP gained when you evolve away the crap you'll be getting tons of.

A legendary raid with a lucky egg active is 40k instant XP. Two of those raids close to each other is a no-brainer.

For the rest of us -- just enjoy the stardust bonanza. Six hour lures, increased spawns and double stardust is a huge bonus.

Oh, and this is where you start giving them super incubators a greedy look. Remember, double XP and double stardust. At least slot in ten kilometre eggs inside. You can't go wrong with upwards to 5k dust for walking 6.7 kilometres.


Extra update: If you're worried about the 3500 max pokemon caught during a week -softban, use the added spawns as an opportunity to boss raid and catch pokemon. Normally boss raiding is a huge wrench in your plans to grind stardust during an event like this, but now you should be able to do both.

New event

This one is a  bit odd.

For a week we have to catch as many pokemon as possible. At half a billion, which we have already reached, a double XP bonus for everyone is unlocked as well as more spawn points. Those of you who throw lure modules around you will notice that they stay for six hours.

When we hit 1.5 billion pokemon caught double stardust will unlock as well as even more spawn points.

At 3 billion farfetched will start spawning outside the East Asia region, and they in turn will see kangashkan pop up.


As it is an event, there's the usual package deals.

The smallest one is just one item. At 200 coins you can shop one of the super incubators. If you're wading in coins, go bonkers. For the rest of us this one is a little iffy. While it certainly pops its content quicker than the regular incubator, do you collect enough 10 km eggs to merit the extra 50 coins for faster hatching?


Then there is a Special Box

• 380 coins
• 20 great ball
• 6 lucky egg
• 1 premium raid pass
• 4 lure module

If you've yet to hit 40 and want them XP at a limited budget. Go for it! You're getting 8 lucky eggs at standard price. The extra raid and lure modules are for free. The great balls? Well, I guess you can throw them after something that pops up at a lure near you.

And we have an Ultra Box

• 880 coins
• 16 lucky egg
• 4 premium raid pass
• 8 lure modules
• 30 ultra ball

Once again a deal geared towards players hunting XP. You're basically getting 16 lucky eggs at standard price without having to give up 25 slots, ie the cost should be compared to the 25 lucky egg bundle. This yields you 4 raid passes and 8 lure modules free.

It's a better deal but not a fantastically much better deal.

For players like me? The package deals are utter crap. Not only do I have to shell out coins, but after than I'm forced to manually discard the lucky eggs. So, once again -- if you don't need the lucky eggs, the package deals are shite.

Well, maybe with the exception for the super incubator, possibly.

Halloween event, package deals

This event comes with the three package deal boxes we've come to be accustomed to since summer.

Special Box:

• 480 coins
• 5 Incense
• 6 Premium raid pass
• 10 Pinab berry

Great Box:

• 780 coins
• 7 Incense
• 4 Super incubator
• 3 Premium raid pass
• 10 Razz berry

Ultra Box:

• 1480 coins
• 12 Incense
• 6 Super incubator
• 6 Lucky egg
• 6 Premium raid pass

These deals have different customers.

The Special Box is definitely for the boss raider. 600 coins' worth of value in raid passes for 480 coins mean's you're getting a good deal even if you chose to trash everything else in the box. The berries have zero value, but a rural area player should value five incense at better than zero value. For large city players incense is only useful for use with PoGo Plus when traveling with slow going mass transport.

The Great Box yields 300 coins' worth of raid passes. Add 600 coins' worth of incubators and you once again have a perfectly valid deal for a box that costs 780 coins. As usual the berries have zero value, and the usefulness of the seven incense depends on your playing environment.

The Ultra Box is more problematic. 600 coins' worth of raid passes and 900 coins' worth of incubators. The box comes at a 1480 coins cost. While it doesn't contain any pointless berries the value of the box is highly dependent on player context.

Six lucky egg -- do you want xp?

12 incense -- where do you live?

Depending on your answer this package deal is iffy at worst and a fantastic deal at best.

For the walking boss raider I'd recommend the Great Box unless you have good use for the incense.

If you plan to power evolve for XP during the event the the Ultra Box is a no brainer. Double candy enables you to evolve pidgeys over and over and over again.

New event, Halloween

And another event is upon us.

I'll just refer to Pokemon Go Hub as reference.


October 20 to November 2. That's a pretty brutal stretch. And, yeah, it starts tomorrow.

What's the hype? Let's start with the big news.

We're getting a taste of Gen3. Five new ghost type pokemon to be hunted down. Good mons or not, they're at least new.


Then there's the usual fringe benefits. In this case:

• Buddy distance cut in half
• Double candy for catching pokeomn
• Double candy for hatching eggs
• Double candy from transferring pokemon

Halloween special pikachu, a new hat for your avatar and some kind package deals in the shop containing raid passes and super incubators.

Event finishing, get ready for the daily grind

So, in a couple of hours the equinox event will be history. Now comes the daily grind.

Especially in Europe we're most definitely talking the daily grind since the new doggie is a joke.

So, if we have a look at it from an eurocentric point of view. There's a bloody awful dog for your daily free pass. You're quite honestly better off with a tier four boss raid as soon as you've collected a passable suicune.

It's time to pour out all that stardust you collected unless you've already done so. For those who didn't, well save 205K dust for mewtwo. It'll be released sooner or later, and you're going to max at least one out.

Until then? Pump up another tyranitar unless you already have an ample supply of them. In the longer run the same goes for rhydon in preparation for raikou come November.

Did you get enough chansey and or snorlax to pump up another defender or two? You know my stance on this. Max out your defenders. If nothing else you get extra hit points on them.

A last note. 100 dust per mon caught was perfectly servicable before the event. It's slower, but you probably built most of your mons the hard way. It's not going to change.

Happy grinding.

Equinox event, how to finish

A little more than halfway into the event it's time to give at least a fleeting thought to how to finish it in the best way.

I'm primarily thinking about planning your eggs to be hatched.

If you're running with every egg in an incubator you can disregard this post. It's aimed at trainers who walk with two or three super incubators active at a time.

Basically there are two goals. Maximize stardust or maximize hatching benefits.


If you want to squeeze out as much stardust as possible then only slot in ten kilometre eggs into super incubators the last two days you plan to be active. Wait with the five kilometre ones until you run out of the ten ones. Only use the infinite incubator for two kilometre eggs.

After the event you'll just walk through the stash of two kilometre eggs to see if you got lucky with the content inside. It's quick and you'll be back to normal playing pretty fast.


If you're in it for the hatching then the opposite pretty much holds true. You want to stock up on ten kilometre eggs and rotate through the two kilometre ones as fast as possible during the last active day of playing. Rotating through the two kilometre ones gives you more shots at the event specific hatches.

The added bonus is that you can hatch a sweet batch of ten kilometre eggs after the event at your leisure.

Equinox event, what to do with exess lure modules

Normally I don't use graphics in this blog, but there are things that just can't be explained with words.

Event, on eggs

I've found a pretty sweet compromise between shelling out huge loads of cash and starving for hatching eggs.

The 2km eggs go into the infinity incubator. Everything else is slotted into a 'blue' incubator.


Sure, the day I end up with nine 2km eggs I'll probably reevaluate my position on this. Still, up to now it's been working as a stardust machine.


Since Nintic chose to flood us with 10km eggs the incubators are superb tools for amassing stardust. The main problem is a huge surplus of lures unless you're force feeding them into a route for amassing stardust on the go.

Event, some extras

So, I verified a small but nice addition to the event rewards. You get double stardust from feeding berries as well.

For the first hour there was the usual Niantic error as usual. In this case it turned out you didn't actually get double stardust but an extra 100 dust instead, so I ended up with 400 dust for caching an evolved version of a pokemon. After one hour that bug was fixed.


And... there are package deals this event as well. Let's have a lok at them.

Special box

• 480 coins
• 3 super incubators
• 5 lure modules

Great box

• 980 coins
• 5 super incubators
• 4 lucky eggs
• 10 lure modules

Ultra box

• 1480 coins
• 8 super incubators
• 8 lucky eggs
• 15 lure modules

If you, like me, aren't interested in lucky eggs, then the special box it is. Basically it offers three superior incubators for a 30 coins premium price, and then you get five lure modules for rounding off a day hatching eggs.

It's a perfectly decent deal.

Both the great and ultra boxes pretty much require that you're interested in getting a bunch of lucky eggs. If not then they're awful deals. For that reason we need to look at them from a lucky egg point of view.

For 980 coins you get 250 coins worth of lucky eggs. Are the remaining 730 coins well spent? Five super incubators for 750 coins is probably the best way to look at the remaining coins. Arguably a super incubator is worth more than 150 coins, but just to make the comparison easier.

That leaves you with 10 lure modules. If you're interested in those the great box is a great deal. If not, well...

Lastly the ultra box sets you back 1480 coins. There's 500 coins worth of lucky eggs but let's call it 480 in order to round the remaining coins off to 1000. The eight super incubators could be said to be worth 1200 coins, so you're already ahead here.

If you're interested in lure modules then the ultra box is a killer deal since not only do you save 200 coins for lucky eggs and super incubators alone, but you get a whopping 15 lure modules thrown in for good measure.

In fact...

Let's assume you're discarding all eight lucky eggs immediately upon delivery. That makes them worth zero coins.

Eight super incubators are still worth 1200 coins.

Fifteen lure modules are worth in the order of 1300 coins.

So, if you planned to shop an eight pack lure modules before the event, then the ultra box is still a perfectly valid deal even if you're trashing the lucky eggs.

Upcoming event, preparation

The ten day long event will go live in nite or ten hours from now.

So, how to cram out the most of it for the least effort?


There's no avoiding catching lots and lots of pokemon. It's after all a stardust event. This makes it appealing to stay put at a lure cluster, but that would be pretty suboptimal.

Since the current legendary doggie has pretty much overstayed its welcome in each region let's tone down the boss raiding for a bit. We want incubators for those coins instead.


At the start of the event shop two, or preferably three, incubators. Then get rid of all five kilometre eggs, and ten kilometres if you have them. You want to keep the non two kilometre eggs rotated as quickly as possible.

The infinite incubator should be perfectly fine for handling the special two kilometre ones. Five or more of those hatched per day should be easy to do, or say fifty for the duration of the event. That way you're pretty much bound to get something nice.


Cleaning out every other egg gains you an average of 2000 stardust per five kilometres walked per egg incubated. It's nothing to scoff at.


Unless you're already doing a lot of gym battles you should at least use friendly gyms as trash cans for the excess berries you're bound to amass while walking and catching.

Personally I'll kick down an extra gym or two. It's simply too boring just grinding stardust, and it's a more fun way to get rid of the potions and revives I'll collect while hatching eggs.

In short:

• Stock up on a few incubators
• Get rid of five and ten kilometre eggs
• Hatch 2 kilometre eggs in the infinite incubator
• Keep moving and don't get stuck by lure clusters

Event, Equinox

From September 22 to October 2 there's a new event.

• Double stardust from catches
• Double stardust from hatching eggs
• Triple XP from catching a new pokemon (so not really for high level players)
• 2 km eggs may hatch pokemon normally asociated with 10 km eggs. Chansey, mareep and larvitar are specifically mentioned. Observe that the eggs have to be collected during the event.
• Event specific boxes in the shop
• New incubators that cuts walking distance by a third

Mewtwo, planning ahead

So we're about to receive mewtwo as a new raid boss rather soon. I'll leave the definistion of 'soon' ahead.

But you know all of this already, including the part about an invitational raid pass only.

So let's have a look at the line-up against mewtwo.


Psychic is weak against bug, dark and ghost. A single weakness at that.


Dark

Dark type attackers offer us the best line-up. The best of all options come first in this list.

Rather unsurprisingly this leaves us with a Bite / Crunch tyranitar as a superb attacker. Just be careful if the boss comes with Focus Blast as charge attack, since that's a fighting type attack and you really, really don't want to fail dodging fighting type charge attacks with a tyranitar.

In the dark type leage there's houndoom as well, but it's generally a lackluster pokemon to begin with, so you're unlikely to have a good one.

Sneasel? Well, on paper, but it's horribly squishy and unless you maxed one out for the sheer fun of it, don't.

Umbreon? No, just don't. It's base attack stat is atrocious. So bloody awful in fact that its dark type attacks doesn't even come close to make up for it.

Gyarados? Well, if you're totally out of alternatives then a Bite / Crunch gyara is less bad than several other options.

Mewtwo. Yes, if you get one you can use its stellar base attack stat and set up a Psycho Cut / Shadow Ball combination for the fastest energy gain available. You really don't care all that much for the psychic type primary attacks. The Shadow Ball is what's useful. Beware Shadow Ball bosses though.

Alakazam. Same as Metwto above. Great first attacker if you don't have a gengar.


Ghost

There's basically only one pokemon here.

Gengar, especially if you have a legacy one with Shadow Claw for primary attacks, is your default first attacker if you happen to have one. It's stupidly squishy and will take increased damage from mewtwo's primary attacks. Especially Confusion is a nightmare.


Bug

The main problem with bug attackers is that they're squishy with good but never stellar attack moves. That said, here's a list of what you might have worked on earlier for fun.

Pinsir with Bug Bite and X-Scissor.

Scizor with Fury Cutter and X-Scissor

Heracross with Struggle Bug and Megahorn. Megahorn is a pretty awful one-bar attack though.


General dps

Dragonite does its job as usual. A Dragon Tail / Outrage dragonite will basically do the same job as a Bite Crunch gyarados in this battle.


Observations. It's a sad thing when the STAB attack is the preferred one to encounter on a defender. But Psychic is just a really poor one bar attack. Sure, Hyper Beam is easier to dodge, but both it and Focus Blast hits harder than Psychic even with the STAB bonus included.

On average the worst setup to encounter would be a Confusion / Shadow Ball opponent despite tyranitar resisting ghost type attacks. It's never fun when your opponent starts spamming two bar attacks for 100 damage each. Think of it like a blissey with a faster Dazzling Gleam and more lag added to make dodging harder.

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.