pokemon go

Jump-Start Special Research – The Best Special Research Ever

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Lapras and Shiny Eevee

For Pokemon Go’s anniversary, a new special research quest was released and frankly, I think it’s the best special research they’ve ever released. Like, seriously, this 6 stage quest is awesome. First off, this quest is really fucking easy. The only hard bit is the fact that you have to make two new friends, one on stage 1 and one on stage 6, but there’s loads of ways to make friends even if you’re the only person around who plays Pokemon Go, and at some point you have to battle another trainer in the Great League in PvP – something… [Continue Reading]

When Friends Are An Inconvenience

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The new loading screen for Pokemon Go

I should be talking about the Pokemon Go anniversary event where you can get SHINY ALOLAN EXEGGCUTOR (one of my favourite Pokemon) but frankly, I’m kinda annoyed. Not just because there’s no shiny Exeggcute, but because of the friend system. The first task of the new ‘Catch Up’ special research is to make a new friend and all it does is bring up the flaws in the friendship system. The friend system in Pokemon Go makes no sense. The first issue is that you can never really interact with these people, outside of PvP battles, battling Pokemon in Gyms and… [Continue Reading]

“YOUR BAG IS FULL”

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Your Bag Is Full

If there’s one thing that has haunted me more in Pokemon Go (except for all the shinies I never find), is the message “Your bag is full”. This message has haunted me ever since I started playing Pokemon Go on a regular basis. Basically, I never have any backpack space. Ever. In fact, I run into the “Your bag is full” message in an almost daily basis. In comparison, I can avoid the error for having no more space for Pokemon pretty easily, because there’s always one or two Pokemon I can delete if I have to. It’s why I… [Continue Reading]

What the Hell is up with Pokemon Go Battle Recommendations?

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Seriously, what the hell is wrong with the recommendations Pokemon Go gives you when you fight things? Unless you have almost no Pokemon or are brand new and don’t know better, going with recommended options is always a bad idea. As in, recommended Pokemon can actually sometimes be the worst thing you can use. I’m not even saying that you need to know everything about Pokemon and stuff like that. Sure, knowing your basic counters (like water beating fire, fire beating ice, ground beating electricity, things like that) is very useful, but it seems like whatever algorithm chooses recommended Pokemon… [Continue Reading]

Pokemon Go and the Chances of Getting a Better Fish

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Medic and a bunch of Pokemon face a massive Tyranitar

After what felt like a small eternity, Cresselia has left our Legendary Raids, swiftly replaced by the badass water beast known as Kyogore. Cresselia’s return brought with it the chance to find a Shiny Cresselia from raids, but the fact that Cresselia is a somewhat boring boss to fight (a tanky psychic type meaning nothing but Tyranitars) and that she’s just not that cool a person meant that getting people to do raids was tricky. Even I wasn’t that enthralled, I just wanted to get a shiny one and call it a day. But I also would have liked a… [Continue Reading]

Splitting That One Free Raid Pass

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Pokemon Go - Tyranitar

In Pokemon Go, you get one free Raid Pass a day. That free Raid Pass can be used on whatever raid you want except for EX Raids, which require a special black EX Raid Pass. Once you use the free, orange Raid Pass, most of the time you have to use a Premium Raid Pass to do raids. That would be fine if you regularly buy Premium Passes or are flush with them after finishing the Special Research tasks. After all, it only takes two days of getting a full 50 coins to be able to buy a Raid Pass,… [Continue Reading]

Why, Pokemon Spawn Locations? Why?

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Pokemon spawning in the middle of a desert

Spawn locations in Pokemon Go are weird. I understand that there’s a system in place that determines when Pokemon spawn (they spawn every hour but only appear for certain amounts of time) and there’s a whole biome system in place as well, but it’s really a bit of a mystery as to why places spawn Pokemon. There’s a few things that we do know. Firstly the map we see in Pokemon Go is based off Open Street Maps, an open source mapping system that works based on contributions by the Open Street Map community. Secondly, a large number of Pokestops… [Continue Reading]

The Slakoth Community Day that Really Slacked Off

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A Slakoth in the wild on Community Day

I’m not sure why Niantic decided to choose Slakoth for June’s Community Day. There’s not a lot of reasons I can think of why it was picked, but I can think of plenty of reasons why it wasn’t a good choice. I suppose it fits the criteria for a Community Day Pokemon. A three-stage Pokemon with a cute basic form and a monstrous final evolution and a second evolution that no one cares about, capable of having a somewhat signature move, having some sort of use somewhere and tends to only come from 10km eggs, while being insanely rare in… [Continue Reading]

The Lapras Raid Event

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Lapras and Mew

I kinda wish Niantic would do more Raid events like the Lapras raid event that just happened. Like the Legendary Birds raid events and the Gengar raid day, the Lapras raid day stuck a raid on every single available gym (assuming it didn’t already have a raid on it) that’s available for three hours. During this time you have an increased chance of getting a shiny (which is a guaranteed catch if you get a shiny from a successful raid) and everyone gets 5 free orange Raid Passes, valid only for the raid event. When I first heard of the… [Continue Reading]

Torchic Community Day

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Pokemon Go Shiny Blaziken

I really enjoyed the Torchic Community Day. Just like the previous Bagon and Totodile ones, the Torchic Community day gave us three hours of KFC battered and breaded chicken fun as we baked in the sun while throwing balls at cute digital flightless birds. Mostly. Torchic Day was on Sunday rather than Saturday this month, meaning I saw a few more people wandering around. There’s normally two good spots to camp and catch Pokemon – the harbour and town hall and while I’ve always opted for town hall (because it’s shadier and you don’t get harassed by people trying to… [Continue Reading]