On Not Bothering With Shadow Ho-Oh

Today (at least, the day on which I’m writing this article), there’s an event in Pokemon GO where Shadow Ho-Oh is appearing in shadow 5-star raids. The boss itself isn’t that difficult, and can be taken out with two players with strong counters, with Party Play making that even easier. Sure, you need a bunch of Purified Gems, to stop the raid boss from having double attack and double defenses, but overall, it’s not that hard a boss. Ho-Oh has a double weakness to rock, and there are a LOT of Pokemon which can deal a lot of good rock… [Continue Reading]

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Wednesday Raid Hour

Pokemon GO is kinda designed as a community game, a game we have to play together. After all, we have events called Community Days, we have large friends lists that give us bonuses as we level up and we work together to beat raids. One community-based event however happens every Wednesday. At 6pm local time, level 5 Legendary raids appear on the majority of gyms, an event known as Raid Hour. If a gym already has a raid on it, if it finishes before Raid Hour ends at 7pm, then it’ll get a Legendary raid egg after the current raid… [Continue Reading]

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All Legendary Raids Should Be Like How They Were In GO Fest

Legendary Pokemon are a horrible pain to catch. You have just kicked a Legendary Pokemon’s arse and now you have to catch the bastard. A Pokemon which will flail and jump around like crazy, constantly jumping out of Pokeballs. And you can’t even use nanab berries to calm the Pokemon down. If you’re lucky, you can use razz berries, but 99% of the time, you’ll have to use the golden variant, or use silver pinaps. This has been the way since, well, Legendaries first appeared in raids. They have always been a pain in the butt to catch. After every… [Continue Reading]

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Galarian Birds and Master Balls

One of my favourite things in Pokemon GO is free things. In this case, I am talking about the Daily Incense. Upon using the Daily Incense, for 15 minutes, you get one spawn a minute, assuming you are moving. The spawns are generally similar to whatever Pokemon are currently spawning, so if there’s an event, you get event spawns, if there’s no event, it’s just normal stuff. However, there are three incredibly rare prizes to be won. When your Daily Incense is on, there is a chance for one of the three Galarian Birds to spawn. The Galarian Birds are… [Continue Reading]

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How I’d Fix Raids in Pokemon GO

Raids in Pokemon GO have always been a bit problematic. Between the lack of great Pokemon, needing enough people to do a raid and having to forgo normal raids to do legendary raids due to a lack of people or raid passes, these raids can often be quite awkward. One of the much bigger problems is getting enough players to even do a raid in the first place. However, I have some ideas that might help smooth things out. Make them scale My first idea is that raid bosses should scale to the number of players in the lobby. You… [Continue Reading]

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Pokemon That Are a Pain to Throw Balls At

Not every Pokemon is the same. That’s pretty obvious, even if we do have Pokemon that are similar. This also means that not every Pokemon is easy to catch. In main series Pokemon games, you generally need to weaken or sedate whatever Pokemon you can try to catch. The lower health they have, the easier they are to catch, even more so if you put them to sleep. Basically you need to beat them up first. In Pokemon GO however, we don’t really have any of that. We just have berries and stronger Pokeballs, as well as more opportunity to… [Continue Reading]

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I Hate Elite TMs

Elite TMs suck. They are rare and hideously expensive, and you have separate Elite TMs for fast attacks and charge attacks. The only way to reliably get Elite TMs are by buying them in a bundle for Community Days, or reaching rank 20 in PvP. And even then, it still alternates every season, between fast and charge TMs. On top of that, seasons are pretty long, generally 90 days long, so once you reach rank 20, you’re still waiting for three months to claim your reward. Sure, Elite TMs allow you to give a Pokemon any of its move, especially… [Continue Reading]

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Pokemon That Would Be Awesome If They Had Better Moves

Not all Pokemon are equal. And not all Pokemon get added to Pokemon GO. But sometimes Pokemon are added and they turn out to be completely useless. Normally, this applies to ‘early game’ Pokemon like Pidgey or Weedle, but it turns out that even legendary Pokemon can be completely screwed over, just because they don’t have a good selection of moves to choose from. Here are five unlucky Pokemon that are really missing out. Xerneas Xerneas is one of my favourite legendary Pokemon, but it’s in a terrible state currently. As I mentioned in this article, Xerneas is stuck with… [Continue Reading]

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Thoughts on Ultra Beasts in Pokemon GO

I’ve always found the Ultra Beasts to be quite odd. They aren’t legendary Pokemon but they’re not normal Pokemon either. Ultra Beasts sort of sit between pseudo-legendaries and normal legendaries. They’re also… not quite Pokemon. The designs of the Ultra Beasts are definitely quite alien, which makes sense when they’re supposed to be from other dimensions. There’s also a whole business behind tracking and taking down Ultra Beasts, and the guardian deities, the Tapu Pokemon, all fight fiercely against Ultra Beasts, should they threaten Alola. Ultra Beasts are also quite strange in Pokemon GO, where they’ve been slowly released during… [Continue Reading]

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Rambling over Raid Hours

Every Wednesday, at 6pm local time, we get a raid hour in Pokemon GO. Whatever the current 5 star raid is, it will appear on pretty much every gym, and will stick around for, obviously, an hour before despawning. The raid hour lasts from 6pm to 7pm and can be done in person or remotely. Raid hour also works as a nice way to socialize with other players. It’s a good idea to get more raids done. Raid Hours are pretty fun. It’s an opportunity to get Legendary raids done with a small group who normally would be too scattered… [Continue Reading]

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