Team GO Rocket Attacks Nearly Every Pokestop – the 2pm – 5pm Team GO Rocket Event
On March 7th 2020, from 2pm until 5pm, Team GO Rocket struck again! They attacked every single Pokestop they could find! For three glorious hours, Giovanni’s grunts, both male and female, took over every Pokestop around, while also giving up bonus stardust. There were also a handful of special Team GO Rocket research tasks. And frankly? It was bloody brilliant!
In fact, this mini-event was so good that I managed to get my Shadow Entei in under 2 hours.
That’s genuinely insane.
I actually started today with just a single Rocket Radar, hoping to defeat one of the Team GO Rocket Leaders. Preferably Arlo, because he’s always the worst. I also intended to spend the day doing Darkrai raids in hopes of getting a shiny (and more candy for my lone good Darkrai)… But you need 4-5 people minimum to reliably do a raid and guarantee a win. And despite there being 5 raids around, we couldn’t find anyone to raid with us.
But because of the event and so many grunts, I managed to defeat all three Leaders. I started with Arlo, who always puts up a horrible fight with his Mawile (which somehow destroyed most of my fire types despite being doubly weak to it) and quite often his Blastoise and Scizor too. Thankfully though, Leader Spawns were increased too. I found Sierra and kicked her ass with ease. Then I found Cliff nearby and beat him somewhat soundly as well. Thanks to so many grunts, it was easy to get the new Rocket Radars needed to beat each boss.
That being said, Giovanni was nowhere to be seen…
Despite how many shadow Pokestops there were, despite how many Pokestops in general we had… Giovanni wasn’t around. In fact, there was only one Pokestop on the Giovanni radar…. in the distance, quite a way off. Thankfully, when we got to it, it actually WAS Giovanni. Still, it would have sucked if the ONLY Giovanni stop in my area was a decoy grunt. I’ve experienced that a lot.
There was something for everyone!
Even if you don’t care about the Team GO Rocket special research tasks, it was still worth joining in. During this time, any Grunt you defeated would net you 1000 stardust! The Rocket Leaders also gave you more stardust too. And these amounts could be increased by 50% with a Star Piece, giving you 1500 stardust. More stardust is always a good thing. And If you couldn’t be bothered to fight the Leaders now, you could get 2 Mysterious Components after every fight instead of one.
Also, during this event, you can (well, could) use Charge TMs to get rid of Frustration. Why would you do that? Because Shadow Pokemon are suddenly way more powerful now, dealing WAY more damage than before. Simply because they’re Shadow Pokemon. Meanwhile all the nice Purified Pokemon I have are… kinda useless. They’re alright against Shadow Pokemon in PvP but that’s it. Still, at least the massive candy and stardust costs mean not everyone will be willing to power up Shadow Pokemon.
It wasn’t all great though.
It’s a massive kick in the ass for me though. After wasting (I kid you not) 12 Charge TMs on my Melmetal in an attempt to get an electric move, I had 2 Charge TMs left. Which I ended up using on my Shadow Entei (because it’s the best shadow Pokemon I have that’s not abysmal CP) and… my CP 47 shadow Gyarados. Because I’m an idiot and went and purified all my good Pokemon, thinking that, you know, the Pokemon we saved and loved us for saving them would be better. Better than the poor tortured bastards that Team GO Rocket uses at least.
And I don’t know if it was just me, but I had awful trouble with some of these fights. Normally I can sweep through Grunts with ease. But I was losing Pokemon left and right. Why? Because my game would freeze and my Pokemon would take damage for no reason. I actually didn’t have this problem at all before the event started. But it happened constantly during the many battles I did.
Overall though, it was a great event and I REALLY hope it comes back soon. Preferably when I have more Charge TMs.