Rayray’s Danger Noodle Weekend

Rayquaza is awesome. It’s the flying danger noodle of the Weather Trio, the other two being Kyogre and Groudon. But unlike the other two, Rayquaza got left out of the recent event where Kyogre and Groudon appeared in raids, with a chance to meet their shiny forms. Nope, Rayquaza had to wait for ages to have a chance to reappear.

The deadly flying danger noodle ended up reappearing in a raid weekend, similar to the raid ‘weekend’ Latias appeared in. But this time, Rayquaza is actually only appearing for a weekend. For people not in the US, this means that you probably miss out on the Friday. For me, the updates always roll out at 11pm, meaning we basically always miss the first day of these events. Everything else is normally at local time (for example community days always start at noon) but multi-day events always start too late for anyone to do anything with.

But there’s also a HUGE difference between the Latias weekend and the Rayquaza weekend.

No shiny Rayquaza.

No shiny Rayquaza, no new moves and no special move. It’s just a weekend where Rayquaza can appear in level 5 raids.

And it’s not even guaranteed to be a Rayquaza in any level 5 raid. Just like the Latias event, the other level 5 Pokemon has a chance to appear in raids as well. In Latias’s case, Palkia had a chance of appearing, and in Rayquaza’s case, Dialga wriggled his way into everything. Normally I wouldn’t be too bothered about multiple legendary raids available, but Palkia had been out for ages when Latias appeared and Dialga has already been around for a while too.

What makes things worse though is that we have to wait an hour to see what a raid might be.

As for me? Well it was a fun weekend, and for the first time I actually spent real money on Pokemon Go. I spent €11 and got the Ultra box with 15 raid passes in it. For once, all the boxes are actually worth the coins,, and I FINALLY have more than one incubator, which feels amazing. We did a bit of raiding on both Saturday and Sunday and caught a bunch of Rayquazas. We actually managed to get a couple of completely full parties of 20 people, and it was amazing watching a Rayquaza explode in under 20 seconds.

We also helped a British guy on holiday catch his first Rayquaza. He was surprised to see just how large the local community was, but was even more surprised that there were Pokestops in general – as you come into Cyprus via the airports, it looks like there are no Pokestops and gyms at all until you get into the main harbour areas or the town centres.

Speaking of first Rayquazas, my first Rayquaza not only caught with my very first throw, but he’s got an IV of 97% AND has the good moves. Considering my luck with Charge and Fast TMs lately, I’m very happy with that. I also got a Charge TM to FINALLY give me Avalanche on two of my Mamoswines.

Still, it’s a real shame that Rayquaza not only didn’t have a shiny form but he also didn’t come with any nice moves, not even his signature move Dragon Ascent. I can’t help but wonder why.

At least Rayquaza is easy to catch though. I’m dreading the upcoming Latios weekend…