A Thousand-Year Slumber – A Quest for Jirachi

Jirachi, for reasons unknown, is the last Generation 3 Pokemon to be released. Being a mythical Pokemon, we all knew it would be thrown either into some sort of special research or into EX-Raids. Deoxys got the EX-Raid treatment, being split into two useless forms, one okay form and one form that has all the health and none of the damage. Mew and Celebi got special research tasks. It probably would have been weird if Jirachi had been thrown into EX-Raids.

This special research, dubbed A Thousand-Year Slumber, is a collection of tasks which, once you have completed all 7 stages, gives you a Jirachi. Funnily enough, people who went to any of the GO-Fest events (real life events run by Niantic with various spawns, exclusive research tasks and Pokemon spawns and more) actually got to grab Jirachi early. The special research they had was different though.

Finishing the quest gives you Jirachi and a t-shirt your Trainer can wear with Jirachi in the stars on it. No one really has Jirachi yet though because the very last stage of a Thousand-Year Slumber is to spin a Pokestop for 7 days in a row and… well, the quest hasn’t really been out long enough yet. Clearly though, this quest does have a few things put in it so you can’t rush through the whole quest instantly. Mainly the aforementioned 7 day Pokestop streak, but there are other tasks too. Things like “Catch 50 Steel or Psychic Types” and “Earn 3 Candy Walking with your Buddy”, assuming you are walking anything but a Magikarp.

On the plus side, at least the somewhat tedious quests aren’t that difficult. The game literally gives you a Feebas to evolve in stage one, you just need to get 100 candy for it and walk it 20 kilometers, and if you’ve been playing somewhat regularly, you might already be pretty close in terms of candy, should you have gotten Feebas from the Feebas Research event early this year or from previous GO-Fest research tasks.

It’s definitely not as slow as the special research for Mew and Celebi though. Feebas and Steel/Psychic Types aside, most of the tasks are pretty easy, they just seem to vary between taking loads of time or no time at all. Taking a snapshot of a Pokemon is easy. Winning 5 Raids and spinning Pokestops for 7 days in a row is much slower, unless you have a lot of raid passes already. Having a gold Hoenn medal, literally a task in stage 2 of 7, is only really difficult if you haven’t been playing for very long. These tasks are way, way better than the insane tasks of catching a Ditto or evolving a Magikarp. Heck, I’m thankful as heck that “Evolve a Wailmer” didn’t appear as a task.

What’s also nice are the rewards. They’re not mind-blowing (and frankly, aside from the Feebas, a Bronzong and the Jirachi at the end, the Pokemon rewards aren’t very impressive at all) but they’re a nice little boost. A handful of Incense, one of each special Lure Module (meaning you don’t have to pay to evolve Pokemon any more) and a ton of Silver Pinaps. The Silver Pinaps are great because I haven’t seen that nice “spin 10 Pokestops for 5 Silver Pinaps” task in months. It’s enough to get people by.

Assuming anyone can complete it any time soon, Because right now, I do feel pretty screwed over. Stage 2/7 also has the really, really simple task of “Catch 3 Whismur”. I haven’t seen a fucking Whismur since the special research appeared, despite catching FIVE Whismur literally the day before.

Fucking typical.

At least this research isn’t going anywhere.