The Troubles of Organizing for Level 5 Raids

As I write this, there are two level 5 raids across the road. One at a blue gym, one at a yellow gym, both right next to each other. Normally people wouldn’t be fussed, as Cresselia has been the only level 5 raid boss lately and she’s not particularly useful, but between the 15th and the 18th, Ho-Oh and Lugia are appearing in raids.

These are powerful Pokemon. They’re legendary Pokemon and are very desirable. Also they have shiny forms which are even more desirable. On top of that, they are pretty damn rare and haven’t really been available for very long, especially for a lot of newer people and all the people who just came back for PvP.

So basically, people want these Pokemon. But they are literally impossible to solo and INCREDIBLY hard to do in small groups. If you want Ho-Oh and Lugia, you have to organize yourselves with other people.

In a major city, finding players isn’t that hard. If you can’t get people locally, which is uncommon, there’s a chance you’ll run into “spoofers”, people who use GPS spoofing to basically teleport from place to place while never leaving the house. But in events like this current Legendary event, or the Gengar and Moltres raid events, you’ll find people to play with.

Actually, that’s part of the reason why Pokemon Go is, in my opinion, an adult game. Most little kids can’t really go running around talking to strangers asking them to do raids. Young adults though? We’re adults, we can talk to strangers.

Anyway, in a big city, finding a group is easy. Finding a group to do level 5 raids gets harder and harder though the smaller the place you live. I live in a city of about 70,000 people, which honestly isn’t too bad, but is improved by the fact that this is a tourist area so people do come and go. I’ve done random raids on my own, only to be joined by a tourist nearby. But I’ve also seen raids that no one has been interested in, meaning I’ve had to just leave them.

Level 5 raids are a tad harder. And in smaller areas, having a Facebook or Discord group is a godsend. People will say if they see a raid then they can garner interest. Then people can organize who can meet up and when.

Of course, it’s not always easy. There’s always someone who ums and ahs about whether they can make it or not. And some people need to be picked up and drive, or they have work and can’t make it. Luckily, I live in a pretty nice area, so people trust each other. It’s also a pretty small place so walking to gyms is an option for most people. In fact, here, people trust each other enough that me and my brother have stopped off at other players’s work, picked up their phones, done the raid for them and given their phones back.

That doesn’t work for everyone though. It honestly might just be a Cyprus thing.

Still, finding a local group makes things so much easier.

That being said, raids don’t make it easy. Normally you have about an hour and 45 minutes to do the raid, but an hour is spent waiting for the egg to hatch. As I write this, I was waiting for a raid egg to hatch, only for it to be a Cresselia that no one was interested in.  That was basically an hour wasted, and in a small place with not too many gyms, I could have been scouting out other areas. I get that the eggs give people time to organize but you spent more time waiting than actually battling!

I’ll be honest, I miss the Kanto event, with five minutes of egg hatching and 45 minutes to fight. That was awesome. It also meant organizing was way, way easier.

Because the hardest part of raids isn’t the battles, it’s getting enough people.