A Fun Beldum Community Day
You know what? I wasn’t too sure when I first heard that Beldum would be the Pokemon of choice for the October Community Day in Pokemon GO. It seems like such a strange Pokemon, lacking in any of the charm that other Community Day Pokemon had. Chikorita, Eevee and all that, they’re generally quite cute. Beldum is rather weird-looking and its evolutions are not cute in any way what so ever. But still, who can say no to the chance of getting more shinies!
This Community Day was on a Sunday, meaning I was joined by not only my brother, AKA “I Eat Rabbits’ Feet for Breakfast”, but my sister and her boyfriend as well. A nice guy from Portugal also joined us. We expected the weather to be awful, as there had been storms the day before, to the point that brother and I saw a dust devil as we drove through town. But no, Sunday was absolutely wonderful, weather-wise.
Before the event started (at exactly noon), we tried to do a Tyranitar raid but we ran out of time. It had a slither of health left. Thankfully Nice Portuguese Guy helped us out. Our second attempt started at 12:01, because Nice Portuguese Guy instantly caught a shiny Beldum. The first one he saw. I’m pretty sure Sister’s Boyfriend did as well, but he didn’t even realise he’d caught THREE shiny Beldums until about ten minutes later.
Anyway, we did the raid. With 6 accounts (Nice Portuguese Guy had two phones on him, because he’s that hardcore a player), the Tyranitar died with a lot more time to spare. Everyone managed to catch it within the first few Pokeballs except for sister, who didn’t seem to want to use berries or curve balls.
Weirdly though, there weren’t that many Beldums. Sure, after the event, I checked my Pokedex and saw I’d caught about 80 Beldums and I’d managed to evolve 3 of them into Metagross, but there was a LOT of other stuff lying around. At first, there were equal numbers of Beldum and Skitty. Unlike the Chikorita Community Day, there were plenty of other Pokemon spawning at the same time. Mostly Skitty though. A couple of Tropiuses spawned, which were great for Nice Portuguese Guy as he’s heading home soon – you can’t get Tropius in the rest of Europe.
Actually, there were times that we had to wait for Beldums to spawn. Hence why we met up with a bunch of other Pokemon GO hunters and did a Mewtwo raid. With my Tyranitar, I only lost 8 Pokemon rather than my normal 11-12, but kudos to the Alakazam I was recommended. He managed to get three Shadow Balls out before dying in an explosion of psychic agony. Remember how sister didn’t catch the Tyranitar because she wasn’t doing curve throws? Well, she caught the Mewtwo with a normal throw. I caught it as well. Both of them had Focus Blast. Four out of the five Mewtwos I’ve caught have had Focus Blast.
A few Beldums spawned after the raid, but most of them were back at Town Hall. To rub salt in the wound, I used an Incense to get more Pokemon to spawn. 6 Skitties and a Jigglypuff. Wonderful. The 5 Cacturns I got the last time I used an Incense were more worthwhile.
But aside from the Skitty Apocalypse, I really didn’t mind the extra spawns. I caught all sorts of other interesting stuff aside from Beldum. I found a Venomoth, two Psyducks, a Lioone, a couple of Tropiuses, several Caterpies (which I only recently unlocked the Pokedex entry for!), some Wurmples and amazingly, I saw a Lopunny on the radar in the wild. Sure, there were your normal Meowths, Mankeys, Rattatas and a fuckton of Snubbulls and Skitties, but there’s all this other new stuff as well. On top of that, I caught multiple Arons, which are always handy.
It’s genuinely a refreshing change of pace. Supposedly common Pokemon that only occasionally spawned, like Wurmple and Catapie, are actually appearing on a semi-regular basis, and there’s a lot more variation among all the Skitties.
Seriously there were a lot of Skitties. They kept on coming back, even after I caught a bunch of them and mashed them up into candy.
Took me about 45 minutes to find my first shiny. About an hour and a half for sister. Brother and Sister’s Boyfriend had a little more luck. But I lucked out with a high CP shiny Beldum which I immediately evolved. It’s, uh, my highest CP Pokemon yet, standing at just over 2700 CP. It looks fucking badass at the top of my list of Pokemon. Shiny Metagross in general looks badass and actually shiny. Silver with gold highlights. Chikorita and her evolutions in comparison look sickly green and Eevee looks like she’s seen a ghost.
What I find strange though is the sudden change in community thoughts on Metagross. He’s suddenly now a really good generalist Pokemon. Thanks to a single move, only available on a single day, apparently. I thought a Steel Psychic Pokemon, a pretty tanky one at that, would be really good anyway.
At the end of the day, I ended up with only two shinies, but that’s okay because there’s only so many shinies you can have. Otherwise they just sit in your inventory, taking up space like all those Shiny Chikoritas I caught.