This New, Blue Daily Incense is Pretty Cool

Pokemon GO is best played in a town or city that has lots of Pokestops. Lots of Pokestops means lots of Pokemon to be caught. Some Pokestops turn into gyms, which teams battle over for control. However, the further you travel away from a city, the less Pokemon you find and the amount of Pokestops and gyms swiftly decreases. Often to the point that nothing spawns.

Basically, if you live somewhere too rural, Pokemon GO can be nigh unplayable.

There have been attempts to fix Pokemon GO for rural players. One of the earlier ones was allowing players at level 38 to nominate more places to be Pokestops. These nominations are sent to Niantic Wayfarer, where the community picks apart nominations and vote whether a nomination could or can’t be a new Pokestop. Another little addition is the daily spawn, where one random Pokemon will spawn as you open your game for the first time each day.

Alongside daily research tasks, it is at least possible for a player to keep up on streaks and complete weekly research tasks without having a Pokestop or Pokemon nearby.

Now though, we have something a bit better.

Blue daily incense.

The Daily Incense is an item you can use once a day, and it will spawn random Pokemon, like a normal Incense. There’s a catch though. The blue Incense only lasts 15 minutes, and you only get spawns if you are moving. But those are both reasonable requests, and the walking part doesn’t really need that much effort. It’s a bit of a pain when on a bike, since you have a chance to leave the Pokemon behind, but the spawns are actually quite plentiful.

What’s also nice about the Daily Incense is that it’s much clearer that you’re using it. You get a blue ring around your body, and Pokemon get a small blue effect to show that they’ve spawned via Incense. And on the catch screen, there’s a small, blue icon showing that the Pokemon you are about to catch has come from the Daily Incense. Finally, when the Daily Incense runs out, you get a really nice summary screen, showing you what you caught.

This is how normal incense should have been from the start.

It’s obvious, it’s effective and it helps you burn calories. After all, walking around is the whole point. At the very least, it’d be cool to have a summary for normal and event Incenses. After all, the after-use screen is pretty damn handy.

The only downside to this new Daily Incense? A long, tedious special research, in which you need to walk 10km, catch 100 Pokemon via the blue Incense and using the blue Incense 6 times. So it’s definitely best to use the Daily Incense as you go on your daily travels.

Still, this is a cool new feature, and already I’ve managed to nab a few odd Pokemon. Apparently, there’s a chance of Legendary Pokemon spawning as well, so that just makes things even better. The chance of catching them is stupidly low, as is the chance of even seeing one.

Assuming you can catch them, I guess. Because all Incense Pokemon have to be more aggressive, for some reason…