Hoenn Tour Day 1

This February, we had the Hoenn Tour in Pokemon GO. Just like the Kanto and Johto tours in previous years, the Hoenn Tour featured Pokemon over a two day event, as well as special raids and new potentially shiny Pokemon. Day 1 is more of a collectathon, while day 2 is generally a tad more story-based, if that even makes sense.

Anyway, let’s have a look at Day 1.

Day 1 had rotating habitats, during which various Pokemon would spawn. Like the previous tours, we had to catch one of each Pokemon to complete a collection challenge. Unlike the previous tours though, we only needed to catch four Pokemon from each habitat, and there was a little bit of an overlap between biomes. Most of the required Pokemon were also plentiful, meaning there wasn’t too much of a problem actually collecting them.

What was more important though was doing the Kyogre and Groudon raids. Primal Groudon and Primal Kyogre are very tough raid bosses that require at least 6 strong accounts to beat. Beating them would give you Primal Energy, which works exactly like Mega Energy. However, the energy gains are lower – the most you can get is about 90 energy, but most of the time you get 80. If you only have 6-7 people though, you get only 60 candy. And we need 400 primal energy to ‘evolve’ our Groudons and Kyogres.

The legendaries are also doubly important because they get their signature moves, Precipice Blades and Origin Pulse. Both are top moves

The worst part was that the research can easily screw you over. There are two steps in it which require catching both Groudon and Kyogre. So if you don’t manage to catch one at the right time of the research. Those two steps might change after the Hoenn tour ends, but it’s not certain.

I had a good time.

I decided to go into the Hoenn Tour completely blind, and my expectations weren’t amazing. My main goal was to make sure I got enough Primal Energy to be able to evolve my perfect Groudon. And I managed to do that. I sadly didn’t get enough to evolve a Primal Kyogre – I’m just 30 energy off, and just need to do one more raid.

But this Groudon is an absolute beast. I shoved him into some Team Rocket fights and he basically didn’t care. Just slapped them down without issue. Unfortunately he still has Earthquake, and I can’t use an Elite TM on him to get it. Hopefully that will change soon.

I also didn’t do too bad with shinies. I started the day with a Duskull from research, followed by, amazingly, a shiny Latios – which I took a photo of then forgot to save. But yeah, I caught a wild, shiny Latios. It took 20 Ultra Balls to catch the bastard, but it was worth it. The Latios has shit stats, but still, it’s quite a rush finding a shiny legendary in the wild. I caught 7 shinies in total, including both Sunny and Rainy Castform.

At the end of the day though, I expected little from Day 1 and was pleasantly surprised. As of writing though, I have no idea what Day 2 will be like… Guess we’ll find out soon.