Necrozma Raid Day
Oof my luck. I think Necrozma hates me.
Okay, I do love me my raid days. And since this season’s bonuses includes 2 orange raid passes a day, you could squeeze out 8 free raids. Normally though, I get a shiny, and with raid days, the chances are apparently 1/10. So I made the mistake of buying raid passes. After 21 raids, the best I got was one 14/15/14 Necrozma, and a 2-star XXL Necrozma. No shinies, none with decent IVs. Also managed to get a 10/10/19 one. And it sucked knowing everyone else was getting shinies – I can tell, people can see your most recent catches, and if they got a shiny or not. I wasn’t the only unlucky one. My new friend, who is level 33 (well, level 34 after the last raid), he didn’t get a shiny either, but he got a nice 15/15/14 Necrozma.
As for the raids themselves, Dawn Wings and Dusk Mane Necrozma are fusions, Necrozma fused with Lunala and Solgaleo. When you beat the raid boss, they unfuse, leaving the Necrozma behind. That Necrozma has a chance to be shiny, and you get Fusion Energy from the raid to fuse a Necrozma of your choice later on. I wanted Lunala fusion energy, brother wanted Solgaleo, we both managed to get what we wanted. Raids refreshed every 30 minutes, and it was 50/50 which Necrozma fusion would spawn – although the first hour, it leaned HEAVILY towards Lunala, out of 6 gyms, in the first hour, 10 were Lunala, 2 were Solgaleo. The fusion energy though is uneven. It’s influenced by how quickly you beat the raid (same as Megas) but it is also randomized, meaning you don’t all get the same amount of energy, which I find is unfair. If both me and my new friend do the same number of raids, we should at least get the same amount of energy. My friend didn’t get enough for Solgaleo, because he got unlucky. And I got a little shafted on Lunala energy, despite doing more of them.
Luckily, I am strong as fuck, even with a collection of level 32-40 players. I was prepared for both Dawn Wings and Dusk Mane. While both of them have a weakness to dark and ghost, Dawn Wings is Ghost/Psychic, meaning it has a double weakness and dark and ghost hit twice as hard. I did want to try the Lunala solo (apparently doable with a level 40 Mega Gengar, which I have) but other folks wanted to do all the raids and I didn’t want to miss the raid train. I could tell folks were struggling a tad though. I’m pretty good at dodging, but I also have level 40+ counters – level 50 Tyranitar, Hydreigon and Houndoom for Lunala, level 50 Groudon for Solgaleo and Garchomp, Heatran, Charizard, Giratina, Gengar and more for both. So even if I failed a dodge, I could tank one hit, even if Necrozma hits HARD. And it does hit hard. Even Iron Head and Outrage, despite lacking STAB, still do a LOT of damage.
The real MVP though was my Mega Rayquaza, who I had in my 6th slot in my party. He was giving my team an overall 10% damage boost. I could have gone with more direct damage with Mega Houndoom, Gengar or Tyranitar (Houndoom would have been great for both as a fire type) but Mega Rayray was also there giving me XL candies. And he gave me a LOT of them. I had about 120 from GO Fest, but I managed to get about 160 more today. Not enough for level 50, but if I walk one as a buddy (I’ve already walked two to best buddies) then I should have enough. And because we were given Beast Balls for this event, it meant we could use Pinaps. Combined with the Mega Evolution bonus (Rayquaza buffs Dragon, Flying and Psychic, same way Groudon and Kyogre buff more than one type), I got plenty of normal candy as well.
The other bonuses were okay. 20k exp a raid was great, except I KEPT ON FORGETTING TO PUT ON A LUCKY EGG which means I missed out on 40k a raid. But Necrozma is an easy excellent throw at least, and I got some extra XP for making new friends. I only got 2 Rare XL Candy in 21 raids, which sucked. But since we got beast balls, it meant I didn’t need Golden Razzberries, meaning I started with 50 of them and ended up with over 200 of them. I ended up deleting a lot of them (I also deleted most of my normal berries) because I couldn’t buy raid passes from the shop. Rare candy chances were average. I got 3 in most raids, one dropped 9 rare candies. Most of them went to Heatran, Dialga and Mewtwo.
Unfortunately though, if you didn’t already have a Solgaleo or Lunala ready to fuse, then… well, no one got a free Cosmog. I’m hoping there’ll be a Cosmog in this season’s research, but otherwise, unless you did GO Fest (or the other two seasons that gave a Cosmog away), you can’t actually… fuse these. And Necrozma on its own is an inferior Mewtwo.
Still, it was nice to meet a few folks. Most of the people I saw in raids were playing remotely though, I only saw four people in person. Most people we got in one raid was 17, which was pretty impressive. Sure, my luck sucked, but I had fun.