Niantic Doesn’t Want You To Get Mega Rayquaza

The Primal Groudon and Kyogre raid days we had earlier this year were great. They were accessible to plenty of players, you could use remote raids and, most importantly, there were lots of them. Every single gym had a raid on it, and those raids refreshed every hour. This meant that, even if you only had one gym, you could do three raids. Mega Rayquaza though, he was made STUPIDLY inaccessible.

First off, he didn’t get a raid day. He got an Elite Raid Day. Which meant that, instead of every gym having a raid on it, only some gyms have raids on them. And there’s only one raid per gym per day. Not all at the same time though. Some of them are at noon, some are at 1pm, some are at 5pm and some are at 6pm. Which raids are at what times is random. Also, there aren’t THAT many elite gyms.

Where I live, I can see 9 gyms, and just past that I know there are another 6 gyms just out of viewing range. However, only 5 of those gyms are elite gyms. One of them had a raid at 5pm, the others all thankfully had raids at 1pm. EXCEPT for the fact that Elite Raids only last 45 minutes (unlike the hour-long raids from the Primal raid days) AND it takes more than 45 minutes to get to each elite raid gym on foot. Heck, even by car, it was only possible to do 3 of those 4 raids, and we only just managed the last one.

Oh, also, you can’t use remote passes on these elite raids. It’s gotta be in-person only. So you gotta make sure you have plenty of people. And shade/umbrellas depending on what side of the hemisphere you are on.

Now, for previous Elite Raid Days, things weren’t so bad because we had at least 24 hours to plan ahead (more if eggs hatched later in the day). This time round, raid eggs didn’t appear until 6am, meaning that we could only reasonably start planning things at around 8-10am when normal people are awake, and even then, that meant that scheduling for a noon or 1pm raid was a tad tricky.

But you NEED to plan for these. Because Mega Raquyaza is a stupidly hard raid. It’s not a level 5 raid like it was in its first appearance. It’s not a technically-level 5.5 Mega Legendary Raid. It’s also not a level 6 Elite Raid. It’s BOTH a Mega Raid and an Elite Raid, and has the increased damage and health of both. Which, I guess, makes it a level 7 raid. And fucking hell it’s hard. You need 4 players with level 40 Pokemon to beat this thing with its easiest moveset. It is theoretically doable with 3 players all using level 50 shadow Mamoswines using Best Friend and Party Play boosts, but, if you feasibly want to beat this thing, you need 6 people.

We had 6 people (somehow). We all still went through two parties of Pokemon. AND we had Best Friend and Party Play boosts. Mega Rayquaza at this difficulty hits so hard that it did 3/4 of the health of my level 50 100% Haxorus WHEN I DODGED OUTRAGE. And I was using the Haxorus because my two teams of Mamoswines all died. Only my level 45 and level 50 Mamoswines were capable of surviving one attack, Ancient Power, but Outrage was a one hit kill on literally any Pokemon. Okay, sure, the three Elite Raids I did, they were all weather-boosted, but still, it was a slaughter.

And, to make matters worse, we actually got LESS rewards for beating these raids, than if we’d beaten a normal level 5 Legendary Raid. The three raids I did, I got 6 golden berries total. 2 per raid. I used 25 golden razzberies trying to catch these Rayquazas, one of which refused to catch at all despite me landing 11 Excellent Throws in a row (which I think is a new personal best for me). I also only got a total of 8 rare candy (2 in 2 raids, 4 in the last raid), 2 silver pinaps, nowhere near enough potions and revives and less charge TMs than normal. Considering this is one of the hardest raids Pokemon GO has seen (as hard as early Mewtwo raids when we only had Gengar), it’s pretty insulting that the rewards are so bad.

You know what’s extra sad? We didn’t even get any free raid passes. You got your normal free orange one, plus one more orange one if you didn’t do a raid the day before, and that’s it. Premium passes from there on. No remote raid passes though. Not allowed. Even though the raid is stupidly hard.

On top of all that? They did a bait and switch on us. Niantic promised us a free Meteorite, in fact, they promised two: one for the event, and one for reaching a number of followers on Tiktok. Except… they didn’t give it straight to us. Instead, they gave us a timed research (that didn’t even last 24 hours), that REQUIRES you to do win an Elite Raid to complete the research. So, to get the free Meteorite, you HAVE to win a raid! It also requires completing 5 research tasks, which is a bit tedious if you’re busy running around organizing raids.

I was really lucky to be able to do three raids. There were two groups doing these raids, and I managed to join one of them, and we doubly lucked out because there were 4 elite raids within reasonable driving distance between one another, and with parking as well. Had we walked, we would have only been able to do two raids at best, and even then, it would have been close. I assume most people, outside of  massive cities, wouldn’t have been able to do more than one raid. If you lived in earlier time zones (Australia and Japan in particular, which have large player bases), it was very possible to MISS a lot of raids, because the rollout was bugged and a LOT of elite gyms didn’t get raid eggs until midday, and they didn’t have 12pm raids AT ALL.

A Mega Rayquaza event could have been so damn good if it had just been a repeat of the Primal Raid Days. But no, we had this horrible mess instead. It fucking sucks. Groudon and Kyogre were so, so much more fun.