On Luck and Collections – Collection Tasks and Medals

Over the last year or so, a new type of research has popped up. Collections are pretty simple tasks that tend to run over the course of an event. These events feel a bit like the main series games. All you have to do is catch the Pokemon on the list. Once you have all of them, you get a nice little reward.

But while collection tasks seem simple and fine on the outside, there are some traps that need to be pointed out.

It all depends on what is required.

There have been small collections and big collections.

One of the smallest (and one of the first) actually coincided with the release of the Gen 5 starters. There was a collection challenge that required the starters, Litleo and Bunelby. However, Froakie was so insanely rare that many people failed to finish the collection. And, frankly, thank heavens that Noibat wasn’t included. During that week-long event, I only saw one Noibat and it was gone before I could get it.

On the flip side, the Slowpoke collection challenge also only required a few Pokemon – two forms of Slowpoke, Slowbro and Slowking. You needed to do a raid for the Galarian Slowpoke but it was very, very common in level 1 raids.

Where are the Pokemon needed?

Where things seem to go wrong is how you obtain Pokemon for a collection challenge. Normally you can find most Pokemon in the wild, and find others with research tasks. Occasionally, a Pokemon might be in raids, or locked behind a tedious research. The Slowpoke collection was genuinely pretty easy to do. On the flip side, the Valentines event needed multiple raids to be completed.

The current 5th Anniversary collection challenge though? It’s much more luck-based. For reasons unknown, rather than allowing all starters to spawn, the Gen 2 and Gen 4 Pokemon are in research tasks only. But the research tasks are mixed in with a bunch of very similar tasks that DON’T reward those starters. Just need to keep on spinning Pokestops and hope that you can find the ones you need. While also hoping that you don’t get duplicates.

Because spawns and raids and research tasks are all random, it’s easy to fail a collection task due to nothing but bad luck. And if you are somewhere that has few local Pokestops, then these tasks get even harder.

Too many and it gets tedious.

By far the hardest was the Kanto event challenge. We had to catch all 150 Pokemon in the Pokedex. This wasn’t a particularly easy task at all, because there were so many evolutions that needed doing. On top of all the spawns and incense, you absolutely required trading to finish the collection, as well as a hefty chunk of raids. Not only were the four Kanto legendaries required, all the regional Pokemon were in raids only.

What made it worse though was that, well, despite spawns lasting a week after the Kanto tour, many Pokemon were unobtainable. Doubly so if you needed traded Pokemon, or anything that wasn’t a Kanto starter.

Rewards?

Generally though, the rewards aren’t THAT amazing. It’s generally just stardust and Pokeballs. The encounter reward for the 5 year anniversary for example is a Pikachu on a balloon. Which is really weird for a task that requires you to catch a Pikachu on a balloon.

The Kanto event did have some half-decent rewards, but that was a paid-for event. The rest of the time, all you really get is some stardust or experience.

But still, I do them anyway. Because there’s also a medal tied to collections. And I like to keep that up to date. I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in that regard…