More Pokemon Go COVID-19 Changes and Cancellations

It sounds silly, but I was SO RELIEVED when I discovered that the Lugia raid event had been cancelled. The place where I live is now going to be locked down outside of essential travel. That means I can’t go out and play Pokemon Go at all. Not even isolated walks on my own at the dead of night. So gathering for raids would be out of the question.

What else is out of the question?

Well, most events are gone for now. But we all kinda already knew that. Whether we like it or not, we can’t all be gathering outside for Community Days. And since Lugia requires at least 4 to 5 accounts to reliably beat it? we can’t have that either.

We won’t be having any real events, probably. Sure, events with just Pokemon spawns can be done, but Safari Zones, Community Days, EX-Raids and raid events are all gone for now.

Luckily, changes have been made.

Thanks to the GBL, there’s still ways to catch a Legendary. Coballion’s presence has been extended, meaning you can still encounter him in the GBL and raids too. Coballion being in raids isn’t so bad because he can feasibly be defeated by a duo or trio of players, so a family could reasonably do a Coballion raid. After all, you can’t self-isolate if you share a house with other people.

Gifts have been boosted to give way more items, and you can send and receive more of them. Sucks if you don’t live near a Pokestop to spin and get gifts, but I guess playing by car is an alternative for some. And other people can send you gifts, even if you have none to send back.

And the problem with Pokeballs is being dealt with. We’re now getting a 1 coin box with 100 Pokeballs. This box is apparently going to rotate, so I expect that next week we get a box of 50 Great Balls for 1 coin. Or something like that.

There are things lots of people still can’t do though.

We’re going to run out of razberries and nanab berries soon. Our buddies will keep ups stocked up on that, if you’re great friends, but at a cost. You need to feed your buddy berries to get them to Great Buddies to give you gifts in the first place.

And unless you live near Pokestops, you can’t work towards your 7-day Pokestop streak. Or, more importantly, the weekly research breakthrough. This particularly sucks for me because I’m going to have to break a streak I’ve kept up since December 2018. Thankfully, the research reward right now is Ferroseed and 5k stardust, so we’re not losing too much.

This could all be solved by making one change though. If the radii to interact with Pokestops and Gyms is increased, then a lot more people would be able to play. If you can see a Pokestop, you should be able to interact with it.

It’s better than nothing.

Frankly, considering how Pokemon Go is a game where you go outside and catch things, Niantic have done quite a lot to make sure you can still get some joy out of this game.