Rambling over Raid Hours
Every Wednesday, at 6pm local time, we get a raid hour in Pokemon GO. Whatever the current 5 star raid is, it will appear on pretty much every gym, and will stick around for, obviously, an hour before despawning. The raid hour lasts from 6pm to 7pm and can be done in person or remotely. Raid hour also works as a nice way to socialize with other players.
It’s a good idea to get more raids done.
Raid Hours are pretty fun. It’s an opportunity to get Legendary raids done with a small group who normally would be too scattered to play. Instead of rushing about making schedules, you can just type “raid hour at x?” in a group chat and get people to all come to one place. After all, wherever there are gyms, there will be legendary raids. Just select an area with plenty of gyms and go for it.
It’s also cool to see lots of giant legendary Pokemon hanging over gyms. Especially if the raid boss is currently Kyogre, who hasn’t been seen in a while.
The biggest part of a raid hour though is guaranteeing a legendary raid, no matter how many gyms there are. Because, between 3-4 one star raids, 2-4 three star raids, mega raids and legendary raids, there’s a high chance that a legendary raid might not ever appear on a gym. Raid hours are for Legendary Pokemon only.
Well, mostly.
Sometimes though, you get really, really bad luck.
Where I live, there’s four places where we have gyms close to each other. The tourist area has multiple gyms but is very busy; the forest park only has 3 gyms and minimal spawns; town hall is genuinely good and has lots of gyms and spawns. So normally we go to town hall to do raid hour raids. However, last time I went, there were no legendary raids at all.
You see, if a raid already has an egg or Pokemon on it, you have to wait for them to finish for a legendary egg to spawn. But that only happens if the egg and Pokemon leave before 7pm, when raid hour ends.
The last raid hour though? Pretty much every gym we passed had anything BUT legendary spawns. In order to do a decent number of raids in a single location, we had to go back to the town we used to live in, where I spent ages populating with new Pokestops.
My raid hour luck sucks particularly badly lately
I used to be quite lucky in raid events in general, but lately, I’ve had pretty much no luck. I wanted both Xerneas and Yveltal shinies, but failed to get either, despite saving raid passes for those two. The raid hour I did today was particularly bad. The best thing I got in that last raid hour was a 96% that had 13 attack. Meanwhile, my sister gets a hundo and my brother gets a hundo AND two shinies. I got basically fuck all. The last shiny legendary I got was shiny Attack Form Deoxys, and I did that raid all on my own.
Oh well. It’s just bad luck. I hope it’ll pass.