A Look at GO FEST Day 1 – Your Mileage May Vary

I know GO Fest’s first day was yesterday, but I need time to write these articles. And I spent most of yesterday catching a fuckton of Pokemon. The day was split into various ‘biomes’, with different Pokemon spawning in each biome. This would change every hour, and was accompanied by some sort of global challenge. If players beat it, they’d be rewarded with some sort of bonus, like double stardust or double candy.

We also had constant raids all day, with shortened timers, as well as a Welcome to Go Fest challenge which rewarded various Pokemon, including Blastoise, Venusaur, Charizard and Gible. There was a bunch of online live stream stuff too, but since I have freedom of movement right now (thanks to my country not being 100% stupid), I decided to make a day of it and go out and play outside.

Battle Biome is Best Biome.

There’s no competition. Sure, the fire biome gives Litwick, Darumaka and Heatmor (which is great if you live on the eastern hemisphere), as well as double candies. Of course, the water biome gives Magikarps out like candy. The grass biome is kinda okay and the friendship biome grants rare candy from gifts.

But the spawns from the Battle Biome were damn insane. Gible, Machop, Dratini, Meditite, Skarmory, Sableye and the regional Pokemon Seviper and Zangoose! These are all amazing spawns! All the stuff a player could really need in both PvP and PvE.

The only weak part about the Battle Biome is the weak challenge reward. Triple stardust and experience isn’t bad for a reward, especially since there are constant and varied raids (including many Gible raids), but it’s not as great as the double candy or stardust from the fire and water biomes. Still better than the double experience from the grass biome though.

Your mileage WILL vary. A lot.

I got quote a few shinies. Including Growlithe, a shiny I’ve been looking for since I started playing back in August 2018.

Just because I had a pretty successful day, doesn’t mean everyone else had a great day catching shinies. My normally obscenely lucky brother didn’t get many shinies. Well, he got shinies, but they were ones he already had. Still, two shiny Machops is always nice.

Heck, it took me over an hour to get my first shiny, half way through the first Grass biome. But it’s ALL RNG. It’s all completely random. Like I said, your mileage varies, people will have very different experiences. Especially those playing solely from Incense. Speaking of Incense, I really wish they’d tone down how aggressive Incense-spawned Pokemon are, at least for events.

“What about Day 2?”

Well, I’m doing day 2 as we speak. Which means I’ll be writing an article about it a bit later. But frankly, I’m already pretty sunburnt from yesterday, so you’re gonna have to give me some time on this. But it’s Team Rocket stuff, which I’ve always enjoyed.

The real question: was it worth €17?

So far? I honestly couldn’t tell you. If it was just Day 1’s worth of Pokemon and spawns, I’d actually say no. The 10 incense, 200 Great Balls and 3 remote raid passes are very nice, as is the 10k stardust, but those alone aren’t quite worth it. Even with the unique spawns (like Alolan Marowak and Gible, not to mention the appearance of Washing Machine Rotom), it’s still not quite worth the real world money.

Now, if you could by a pass with coins? It would 100% be worth it.

But the thing is, I had a really nice day going out and playing Pokemon Go. The monetary value may not have been worthwhile, but I think the experience genuinely was. That €17 was no different from me spending €17 to go to the cinema or something.