A Look at GO FEST Day 2 – ALL THE TEAM ROCKET BATTLES!
Hey, you know how I like Team Rocket battles? You know how much I like them? Well, I like them a lot. So Day 2 of GO Fest was practically made for me. Team GO Rocket has apparently taken over GO Fest and thrown confetti everywhere and it’s up to us to stop them!
There were perhaps too many battles.
Every single Pokestop had a Grunt on it, which would refresh every few minutes. And GO Fest players would get a Grunt in a balloon every 15 minutes as well. With a new balloon appearing not long after beating a previous balloon. If you’re somewhere with a very high density of Pokestops, it IS very easy to accidentally click on grunts and trigger battles.
But all these Team Rocket twerps are good news. Not only are a load of old Shadow Pokemon back, but the Leaders are back with their old Pokemon in their balloons. Beldum, Mawile and Pinsir are the balloon Leaders’ Pokemon of choice. This meant you can easily farm Beldum and Mawile candy and try for the elusive shadow shinies.
Unfortunately though, Jessie and James were nowhere to be seen.
The special research was amazing!
From the special research, we got 3 Shadow Legendaries with at least 67% minimum IVs, we got a Shadow Mewtwo (with special effects) and a Victini.
On top of Team Rocket, 4 Shadow Legendaries, a new mythical Pokemon, we got a lot of other good stuff. The research alone also has a few free incense, 2 free raid passes and a super incubator. The wild spawns are mostly the same as yesterday, with various Pokemon from each of the previous day’s biomes. Sure, we didn’t get a whole hour of heavy Machop, Dratini and Sableye spawns, but the rarer Pokemon from each biome were present.
The raids though, the raids were amazing. Timburr and Klink on the regular, Alolan Exeggcutor and Gible in 2 stars and the Creation Trio in 5 star raids. I mean, who can say no to not just BOTH forms of Giratina, but also Dialga and Palkia as well?
Okay, sure, you could have done the Creation Trio raids without the GO Fest pass, but GO Fest players got 2 free Premium Passes and 3 free Remote Raid Passes to use. One of the bigger complaints IS that non-GO Fest players did have access to a lot of the event stuff, which is fair, but they’re still missing out on the bigger parts of the event.
Despite the battles, Day 2 was less hectic.
Sure, there’s Team Rocket balloons everywhere and grunts on every stop, but there’s no global challenges to worry about. You can fight the grunts at your leisure, and because they are so easy, you don’t need to stress about them. Every Leader fight is the same, Giovanni is easy and grunts are even easier. You can choose when and what you want to battle and you don’t need to worry about biomes, because Pokemon are spread out evenly through the whole day.
I also think, because there wasn’t a sudden rush to do challenges or anything, everything was also less laggy too. Which is nice.
“But I deleted all my potions to make room for Pokeballs! I didn’t know we’d have battles to do!”
Uh, well, clearly you haven’t been paying attention… at all? Tons of the promotional material for GO Fest has had Team Rocket stuff generously sprinkled everywhere.
And even then, you only need to do 9 grunt fights, 3 boss fights and one Giovanni fight to complete the special research. The fight against Giovanni consists of his Persian, a Sandslash and Shadow Mewtwo, and Giratina has been around for ages to counter all of them. The research is piss easy. The above is pretty much all you have to do.
In fact, the fights are actually easier than normal as well so they take less time to do – I completed the Sierra fight with Beldum, Houndoom and Zapdos with a single Machamp using only fast attacks.
Was GO Fest worth it overall?
Itemwise? For €17, you get all the Unowns you can eat, about 20 Incense, 2 free Premium Passes, 3 free Remote Passes, a super Incubator, about 20000 stardust, regional Pokemon, infinite Grunt spawns, easy-to-access Rocket Radars, old Team Rocket Leader bosses, 4 Shadow Legendaries and a new Mythical. On top of the increased shiny chances and other rewards. I probably wouldn’t say that is actually worth €17, but that’s the same price as a Tennocon digital ticket, which is an event that lasts half a day. It’s also cheaper and lasts longer than normal Safari Zone events, which cost $25 and only last one day. Oh, and need to be visited in real life.
That being said, if it had just been one day, I’d have said maybe, leaning towards no. But both days combined were a lot of fun for me personally. That works out at €8.50 a day. Well, plus drinks and stuff, but I could have chosen not to do that and brought a picnic.
But like I said yesterday, your mileage can and will vary. If you’re just playing at home, on your own, using incense? Then you’re not going to have that much fun. But even then, you can still participate in pretty much everything. Day 2 could 100% be completed from your living room. If you were expecting everything to be handed to you on a silver platter, then you probably won’t enjoy it.
As an experience though? It was damn amazing, partially because I had the freedom to go outside and play. I definitely can’t complain. At the end of the day, I had a ton of fun playing Pokemon Go with my friends. I would probably do this again next year.