Pokemon Go

[SerPaladin]

This game puts you on the treadmill. I need to capture pokemon to get stardust. I need stardust to power up my pokemon. I need to power up the pokemon to take gyms (or train). I need to take gyms to get poke-coins. I need poke-coins to buy incubators, I need incubators to hatch high powered and/or rare pokemon. I need potions to heal up my pokemon after gym battles or training. I need to hit pokestops to get potions.

I feel like I am always "short" on some resource, like perdition's own version of Settlers of Catan, where I cannot trade, I must plod along.

On the positive reinforcement side, I finally caught the Gastly that let me evolve Haunter, and I hatched a Voltorb and an Aerodactyl, bringing my Poke-dex to 96.

On the negative side, my OCD is offended by the 96 and is itching to get 4 more and break the three digit barrier.

The game is insidious.

[Guy Kilmore]

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Boy have the crowds gotten smaller at the State house.  Is the game's popularity on the wane?

School is starting to ramp up which takes away people's free time.  Even though it is not quite in session, lots of last minute vacations and errands and such.

[Theda Baratheon]

fucking lost my phone ages ago and the new one that finally arrived was broken and not even good enough to play pokemon go, i've been living vicariously through other people's pokemon go's for far too long now, god damnit

[HexMachina]

In case anyone (like me) missed it, there is now an option to change your nickname under "settings"

[Guy Kilmore]

So it might just be me, but it feels like attacking a rival gym is better bang for your buck and on item use then on training one up.

[AndrewJ]

Definitely - you take off around 1500 to 2500 or so Prestige per fight when battling a rival gym. Training your own gives only around 200-500 prestige (depending on your CP level, compared to theirs).

If you're trying to train up gym and realise someone else is fighting against it at the same time, just give up. There's no way you can counter the damage they do to prestige. If you really want to put your pokemon in so you can collect the coins, just wait for the other team to take it. Then take it straight back (you'll be fighting a level 2 gym with one or two pokemon in it). Then collect your coins - quickly.

 

[Guy Kilmore]

8 hours ago, AndrewJ said:

Definitely - you take off around 1500 to 2500 or so Prestige per fight when battling a rival gym. Training your own gives only around 200-500 prestige (depending on your CP level, compared to theirs).

If you're trying to train up gym and realise someone else is fighting against it at the same time, just give up. There's no way you can counter the damage they do to prestige. If you really want to put your pokemon in so you can collect the coins, just wait for the other team to take it. Then take it straight back (you'll be fighting a level 2 gym with one or two pokemon in it). Then collect your coins - quickly.

 

Yep, I do that all the time.

I just was at work and a Coworker and I were walking around and the only gyms were our teams.  We decided to go around training them up and it just was blah.

[HexMachina]

Won my first gym battle today, my Jolteon (878CP) v Vaporeon (1046CP). This flipped the gym to neutral...of course, numbskull here forgot to place a pokemon in it so it remained empty  

I then won another gym battle, my Hypno (890CP) v Scyther (1198CP) and remembered to put my Pokemon in place. The gym flipped back again now, but I'm rather pleased with myself for having finally managed it  

[AndrewJ]

If you're fighting an opposing gym, you actually get to fight with a team of 6. If there's multiple defenders, you will fight each of them in turn until all of your team are defeated. But you only need to defeat the first opponent in order to damage the gym's prestige (if you take out 2 or 3 in the one fight, you'll damage it more). And as the gym's level goes down, the weakest opponents will be dropped off one by one.

So, if you're fighting a level 4 gym with opponents ranging from 1,000 CP to, say, 2,000 CP - the question to ask yourself is whether your best 6 can take out the top CP 2,000 one. Basically, you can fight multiple times, dropping off the defenders one or two at a time. (And healing up your squad between fights - so bring lots of potions). It's then just your team of 6 vs the one remaining 2,000 CP Dragonite (or whatever).

Taking an opposing gym is very easy - even when they have higher level defenders than you. Training up your own team's is much more difficult.

 

[Lyanna Stark]

On 2016-08-18 at 8:27 AM, AndrewJ said:

If you're trying to train up gym and realise someone else is fighting against it at the same time, just give up. There's no way you can counter the damage they do to prestige. If you really want to put your pokemon in so you can collect the coins, just wait for the other team to take it. Then take it straight back (you'll be fighting a level 2 gym with one or two pokemon in it). Then collect your coins - quickly.

 

If you are alone, yes. If there are more of you, and you have a good lower CP pokemon that works well against one of the guardians then you can annoy the crap out of the people fighting it. For instance, I used a lower CP water pokemon against the fire one in my same faction gym just to slow down the attackers' progress. They brought the gym down two notches, I got it up again, and inserted my strongest pokemon into it. After which point they left, cos they'd just battled 2-3 lower level ones, and got hit with yet another higher one. So it depends

[Guy Kilmore]

So, a week of exploring the Twin Cities and there are some fun places to go Pokemon hunting.  If you any of you ever find your way out in this area check out Rice Park in St. Paul, Centennial Lakes in Edina, and Purgatory Park in Eden Prairie.  Snagged a CP 1200 Nidoqueen in the Wild too.  Not great IV stats, but some good attacks and the CP is nice to add in the Line-up.

[SerPaladin]

Crossed the "100 Pokemon" threshold this week, after vacation let me grab a few somewhat exotic ones. 101 at current count.

Organized my collection into First Team fighters (a 2000 CP Exeggcutor, 1500 Slowbro, Tentacruel & Electabuzz, and the Eevees), Matchups (a handful of fighting, flying and electric types) and "Guard Duty" (high CP, not great in a fight, assign them to gyms). I was getting lost in the selection screen before gym battles, had to start tagging them.

Most of the ones I still have to collect are evolutions, and I just don't see many Grimers or Omanytes, for instance. It will be a slow grind. I still have 7 that I will have to find or hatch: Onix, Hitmonchan, Lickitung, Chansey, Lapras, Porygon and Snorlax. I really don't care about the last few, since they are out of my control, but my sons are constantly speculating on the legendaries, Ditto, and the Mews.

[HexMachina]

Caught two Mr. Mime today, plus a Koffing and a bunch of Magikarp. Also beat two gyms and actually remembered to put Pokemon in them and claim the reward this time. Today has been pretty good Pokemon wise.

oh, and I now have my second eevee evolution, a 1000(ish) CP Vaporeon. I used her to take one of the gyms today, since it was held by an arcanine 

[Maltaran]

There seem to be a lot of Mr Mimes showing up, I caught one on Saturday. I also got my first Dratini.

[HexMachina]

59 minutes ago, Maltaran said:

There seem to be a lot of Mr Mimes showing up, I caught one on Saturday. I also got my first Dratini.

Yeah I saw 3 and caught 2, and I wasn't even anywhere central/busy for two of those (a small village with 2 poke stops and a gym)

[AndrewJ]

Yeah - apparently they've greatly increased the spawn rate of all the regionals. I had one Kanga before the weekend, having played basically since launch (and saw a second, which escaped). In the past three days, I've built myself an army of Kangaroos (and seen plenty more on my "sightings" list that I didn't have the time or inclination to go searching for). I was holding on to all the extras for if/when trading gets introduced - but I think I'll have to do a bit of roo culling soon.

I think it's good they've increased the spawn rates. Not so much for the inhabitants of a region, but if somebody goes on a holiday to a different continent and has close to zero chance of obtaining that region's exclusive while there, then it defeats the purpose a little. I think they could have gone a little too far in the other direction, though - now you can be pretty sure of getting one within a day.

[Maltaran]

Does anyone find the new appraisal thing useful? It seems to give the same stock phrases for each Pokemon.

Also, my Vaporeon has now been sitting in a gym long enough for me to get paid thrice.

(This post brought to you by the word thrice. I don't often get to use it, and now I can do so thrice )

[AndrewJ]

Yeah, for Valor, it's something like...

 

"Your Pokemon is Amazing" means 80-100% IV

"It's quite strong" is 65%-80%

"It's decent" is 50%-65%

"It's a bit shit" means below 50% (I'm paraphrasing there)

 

The other trainers say something different, but meaning the same thing.

[Baitac]

I had a great time Pokemoning in a real city, Kansas City, Mo. What a delight to have Pokestops everywhere and an active Pokemon environment. There were lots of lures, two of which I could reach from my hotel room. 

I caught a couple of Tauros there. There was a nest of Clefaries in the corner and I was able to evolve to a Clefable. I also caught a wild 1008 Magmar. My strongest ones now are a 1868 Gyarados (yes, I caught a million Magikarps, but I live in Florida.) I'm up to 99 in my Pokedex and am halfway through level 23. 

I'm super excited because I will be visiting Spain an Italy here soon and am looking forward to checking out what they each have that are specific to them, plus Mr. Mime.

X-Ray gifted us with a most fantastic Team Mystic Con ribbon. Thank you!!! 

[siyxx]

I figure most of you live in the US? UK? So we just got to play it like a month ago over here and everyone's been losing their minds over this game since! It's somewhat religious around here (debatable), so some people feel offended having shrines and temples turning into gyms and Pokestops (conservatives, you know how they are). And now there's a new law coming; for those playing Pokemon Go while driving on the certain roads during the certain hours will instead find themselves catching pokemons in jail for a considerable amount of time.

At the city center, shitloads of people gathering at the malls because there're limitless sakuras at every stop that it could form a "triangle of pokemon lures". Like a whole street of 'em. If I go out for lunch taking the long walk passing the shopping street and I could catch like 30+ pokemons within an hour. Taxis and motorbike-taxis also have this take-you-around-catching-pokemons service as a new marketing strategy. It's been a crazy month, really.  

On the brighter side, people really do go out more often (obviously). Hanging out at night in the park was a bit weird around here for the past 20 years of my life until now. And I heard the government will use Pokemon Go as a strategy to boost up our tourism industry as well (like release the "rare" types at some exotic destinations and so forth. Overall it's just really well-received here. I mean, Japanese manga and anime has been part of our lives since forever, so yeah.