I bought the Go Fest ticket and had certain reasonable expectations of what should happen. Day 1 had some good things and some not so good.
Saturday was up and down depending on the hour. Being East Coast USA, I started with Battle Hour, which is one I was looking forward to. I like fighting mons and the lineup was really good. Gible , Dratini, Machop (hoping for a shiny), Zangoose (new), Swablu (a favorite), Durant (Rare), Slakoth (working Slaking), and Grimer (I like Grimer!) were the highlights of a highly rated by me lineup. I did get a good number of them while trying to figure out the day in the first hour I was in. I was hoping it would have been later for me though. The first hour of any event is usually trying to figure out what the goals are for the day… especially since the dreaded “make a new friend” was one of the 8 goals of the day. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again… make a new friend should never be a goal beyond the newbie quests. I did find a couple of new people early which eliminated this, but still, if I didn’t run into them it might have been an uphill climb to get that goal finished. Having to concentrate on other goals (especially one that is disagreeable) during the first hour other than going out and catching mons was not something that I was thrilled with. I know there has to be goals during the events, but there could have been something else less bothersome like Catch 20 Fighting Types and Catch 20 Friendship Hour mons instead. After all,THAT is what I was there for… to catch Pokemon. 3 of the other 4 hours had catch 20.
I also have to say, the 200 Great Balls for 1 Incense really busted my item count really good. I am normally around 3000 items at all times, and well… I was over early and I couldn’t spin (for presents and berries), so it was quite annoying losing other items for a good reward.
Next was Friendship hour, which was a complete waste. We just had a friendship based week leading into Go Fest, which turned me off from catching the second hour. There was no bonus for the hour, which lessened my desire to catch even more. We just saw many of these mons during the past week. The only ones I was interested in were Snorlax and Togetic really. On top of that there is no incentive to catch them. Then, there was a promise that if we got to a number of gifts given, we would get a bonus. I couldn’t send but a handful of gifts out, as that portion of the game was broken. That and when we as a world finally got the bonus, there was a whole 5 minutes of the bonus… where we couldn’t access the friendship screen! At least a bunch of them were water and between that and some Kyogre got me to a bunch of water since I was starting to think a bit about lunch. I will say though, I was disappointed that this wasn’t lunch a better hour for lunch though as I was completely underwhelmed by Friendship hour. Plus the very limited time to get the bonus, which was bug plagued left a very bad taste in my mouth.
Fire was good, I at least finished the Litwick to a Chandelure, which was bothering me for a while since I was not able to finish one during the Halloween event. I also saw at least one or two Charizards, which was a help to my collection and I like Ponyta (one of my most wanted shinies that I don’t have). At least first hour there was the 20 fire catches for the challenge.
Water didn’t do much for me, as Blastoise and Mudkip were the only ones I was interested in and I have been catching a lot of shadow Mudkip lately for candies. I quickly caught a handful of water types to get my 20 and went to lunch during the first tour. I was hoping grass was next (I didn’t know the order going in).
Grass was better than Fire… I could have used a good Leafeon, a shiny Tangela, I like Offish, I could use a good Ferroseed, I like Sunkern, and Alolan Exeggutor is a Dragon type, as I only had a silver Dragon badge coming into the weekend.
Second hour I went through one more Fighting… didn’t do so hot there either. I was disappointed, so I decided to go home during Friendship Hour 2. After all, the social part was broken during the first hour and the Pokemon lineup was poor. Just before I left, I did one last Alolan Exeggutor raid and somehow got a shiny. First shiny of the day.
I then played the rest of the day doing home spawns. I did get a shiny Hondour at home. My only wild spawned shiny for the entire day. Now, I expected Community Day Shiny Odds. On a decent Community Day, I get about 2-4 an hour… so I played at least 7-8 hours Saturday, so 20 or so shiny spawned Pokemon during the day would have been a decent haul. I heard about people getting 30 shinies day one. So to only get 1 wild spawn shiny is quite unacceptable. Especially since I paid a decent amount of money for this event. I was hoping for a better Day 2 shiny wise and getting some more of the Pokemon that I wanted and seeing less of the ones that I was not interested in.
Day 2 was pretty much more of the same. I do enjoy fighting the various Rockets, but there was just WAY too much going on at the same time. There were 4 really good top level raids going on. 3 of which were new for me, I only had Altered Giratina going in. Plus there were only three land based Bosses (Arlo, Cliff, Sierra) which was a bit concerning. I was expecting them to be a bit more plentiful without the need to use the balloons. Fortunately, there were the Bosses in balloons, and they were generally easier than normal. That was nice to at least get through those Bosses with very little trouble. I found Giovanni to be full strength, but at least I won that and got the shadow birds and Mewtwo. I did also get the missing 3 Drgaons during the day, though it took 4 or 5 Palkias to get my first, which was the worst I’ve ever done. I did some decent catching. I did get a 98% Giratina Original Form, which partially makes up for the 1 shiny wild (Qwillfish) during the day and 1 shiny raid (Timburr, which is great… but still). To have only 2 wild shinies and 2 raid shinies for a premium event when I played 14 hours the entire weekend. That is just unacceptable for a premium event like this. I would agree that it was nice seeing friends and it was good getting outside, but the overall day was mediocre for the pay. Hopefully the three weeks that were unlocked will make up for the low shiny count.
Moose's Pokemon Go Blog 