400 Pokemon in 6 Days

I don’t normally consider myself a hardcore player. I do play Pokemon GO daily, and I do have a lot of Pokemon, but there’s quite a few things I don’t do. For example, I don’t play in the GBL or really do any PvP stuff, because I find it boring and somewhat luck-based with the bugs and lag that you get while playing. But I can’t really call myself a casual player either, because I’m over level 40, on my way to level 45 and frankly I probably play a little bit too much. However, I recently realized just I’m hardly casual at all, all thanks to some special research.

The “A Paldean Adventure” special research has been a funny one. It started off as very basic, but quickly became rather difficult. The research went from catching like 3 Pokemon, to requiring multi-day tasks such as, well, catching 400 Pokemon. From 3 Pokemon to 400 is quite a big jump, and it sounds like a pretty daunting task. Stage 4 of A Paldean Adventure requires you to catch 400 Pokemon, and spin a Pokestop 14 days in a row. I wanted to have completed the task before reaching 14 days so I could immediately see what was next. Somehow though, I managed to catch 400 Pokemon in 6 days.

I’m not even really sure how I did it. I have basically no Pokeballs left, but I completed the Catch 400 Pokemon task before I even reached halfway through the Pokestops task. 400 Pokemon is a bloody huge number and I just zoomed through it. I mean, I do have plenty of Pokemon spawns at my home, but even then, I did more than just catch all my home spawns. I went out constantly and spent a lot of time walking around.

I suppose a massive part of it was the fact that most of those 6 days were in the Paldean Ultra Unlock event, which had x4 stardust and x4 catch experience. And since the weather was sunny for me, half the spawns were Fuecoco and Sprigatito, with a sprinkling of Houndour, both of which were weather-boosted. Really, the catching of 400 Pokemon was made easier by the fact that I wanted to get as much stardust and experience as possible. I think I earned 100k experience (mostly from Excellent throws that gave 4.6k each, but I wasn’t going hard on excellent throws) and I made over 500k stardust. I carried on catching after the Ultra Unlocks ended, and was still walking 2-5km a day, even without the bonuses.

What surprises me the most though is the number of shiny Pokemon that I caught. I caught three shiny Pokemon and none of them were Lechonk. In fact, I caught no shiny Pokemon at all during the Ultra Unlock stuff. Instead, I caught all three shinies on the day after the x4 bonuses ended, on day 6 of the Pokestop task. I caught an Onix, a Gligar and a Gastly. All shiny Pokemon I already had, but I can’t complain. Onix does have a higher chance of being shiny though (apparently something like 1/96).

But the thing is, at the end of the day, while I kinda did go hard on this research task, there are many, many people who completed the task much faster. All I have to do is browse r/TheSilphRoad and see how hard some people play. Heck, someone managed to do the Master Ball research in a couple of days. Including the 60 raids required.

So I can’t really claim that I’m a casual. But those 400 Pokemon in 6 days was mostly a fluke. I think, if I didn’t have that research, I probably wouldn’t have caught nearly as many Pokemon. However, I could also actually see how much I was catching, because the research would pop up, reminding me of how much I caught, after catching every single Pokemon.

Now though, I’m taking a bit of a break. Still gotta spin those Pokestops, but I no longer need to catch so maniacally. I also have to stop, because I need to restock on Pokeballs. If I had way more Pokeballs, it’s possible I could have finished the research even more quickly. But now at least I can relax a little…