GO Fest 2021 Day 2 – Raids, But Not The Ones We Wanted

For the second day of GO Fest 2021, there was a very obvious theme. A mysterious Pokemon appeared in the Pokemon GO loading screen, and mysterious portals could be seen floating above us. Rather worryingly, the sky was not a standard blue, but dark, purple and ominous. While Day 1 may have just been a bunch of biomes, Day 2 was all about raids. Lots and lots of raids.

Actually, too many raids.

We had constant raids pretty much all day. Five minute egg timers, and 30 minutes to do raids after they hatch. During this time though, we had almost every single Legendary Pokemon around. The only exceptions were Origin Form Giratina and the Spirits of the Lake outside of their normal regions. Every hour, there would be some sort of elemental theme, and Legendary Pokemon matching that theme would spawn in said hours.

And there was a constant supply of new Legendaries. As soon as one raid ended, there would be about 1-2 minutes before a new egg appeared. However, because of the randomness of eggs appearing, it was quite common to find Pokemon from previous hours overlapping the current themed hour.

Randomness was our enemy.

The biggest issue, I believe, was the randomness of the raids. Where I was playing, we had 12-13 raids visible at all times. Yet, somehow, we only saw one Reshiram the entire time. There were also random 3 star raids for Galarian Weezing and Hitmontop. Why? Who knows? Deino being in level 1 raids was alright, but Galarian Zigzagoon and Pontya were also around. And those two were basically useless because they had hats on and couldn’t evolve anyway.

But yeah, with a limited amount of time and gyms, trying to find a raid we wanted to do was difficult. There were plenty of Heatran and Ho-Oh raids during Lava hour, but Reshiram was absent. Rayquaza would have been cool during windy hour, but Therian Form Tornadus made up 33% of raids at the time.

Randomness was also our enemy in regards to shinies. Our local raid group of about 15-20 accounts started the first 4 hours together. But we only got a handful of shinies. Considering the 1-in-20 chance, you’d think we would have had more success. But no, we got very little. And as the day continued, there was still very little in regards to shiny Legendaries.

Finally, we also had bad luck just getting people into raids. For reasons unknown, we’d be unable to invite people to raids, despite not reaching the cap for remote raid players. Some people also got kicked out of raids or had their games crash. But there was simply no real time to constantly restart phones and apps.

There were still other shinies to be had.

In the mean time, while all these raids are going on, there are plenty of other Pokemon to catch. I’m actually surprised that Deino and Gible were available even for non-paying players. And there were plenty of useful spawns. Larvitar in particular was really common. In fact, I managed to snag a wild, shiny, 96% Larvitar.

That being said, the actual chances of shinies definitely seemed lower. Everyone I spoke to didn’t get nearly as many shiny Pokemon as they did on day 1. Sure, we did spend more time raiding instead of checking, but the difference between the two days was pretty extreme.

Really, this raid event should have lasted a couple of days.

An hour per Legendary ‘biome’ just wasn’t feasible. With so many Legendaries available, it really was tricky trying to find what everyone wanted. And since none of the Legendaries available had their exclusive moves, it turns out that the Raid Day kinda wasn’t as useful as we all expected. On top of that, some Legendary Pokemon lacked both shinies and exclusive moves. Sure, it was a fresh chance at getting Dialga, but I’m pretty certain we’ll get Dialga but better later on. After all, there’s no shiny Dialga (or Palkia, Xerneas and Yveltal) and many exclusive moves aren’t available yet.

A better way of doing this would actually be a week-long event. The idea of Legendary Pokemon spawning in biomes would have been far easier if we weren’t all in some sort of rush. At the same time, I think the raids should have been easier, or at least duo-able for most players. probably should have been easier to catch as well. While there’s no main lockdown where I live, there are still plenty of places in lockdown.

Still, it was a nice day, and if you could find a nice cafe or something, between the raids and incense, we did all eventually manage to catch some nice stuff. Shame that everything felt so rushed…