Be Excellent To Each Other

Egg hatching:

Do they sometimes hatch without telling you? Coz I just checked mine and I only have two incubating instead of three. Is there a way to tell? I can't see any new Pokemon, but it could just be yet another pidgey, or something.

Hmm, that's odd. I think ice always seen mind hatch.

It would usually pop up and tell you, but I think there are edge cases where it won't - like you switching away from the app when it's about to do it, and stuff. I've missed out on two sets of level-up rewards because the game has been weird about actually telling me when I level up.

They sometimes do, it's a bug.
If you go check your pokemon, you should have it in there, it doesn't show in the journal.

I've missed out on three level up rewards, too! Chesty things!

The game is a little buggy. Boobs!

Ooh, I have a question:

Question: Why do some Pokemon have a blue glow around them? Here one caterpie has a glow, but not the other.

They're the ones you've caught most recently

Ah, okie doke. Ok, yes, Internet suggests kast 24 hours. Cheers! Only just noticed.

Worked out it must have been a Bulbasaur.

Pokevision, Pokehound and other similar services all now shut down, the sites are still there but they show as their services being unavailable. It looks like Niantic lawyered up rather than actually doing anything on their backends to stop them from working.

Still, no one would really mind as long as Niantic had fixed the three-steps bug which made it impossible to hunt Pokemon 'properly'.

Well, Niantic have indeed removed the three-steps bug from the game in a patch issued yesterday by..... REMOVING THE STEPS ICONS ALTOGETHER.

Yes, they're not even pretending that there's an official way to go Pokemon hunting now, you literally just have to wander around aimlessly and hope you bump into something good. (However, they have announced that the spawning behaviour of Pokemon has changed, which early reports are suggesting seems to manifest itself in interesting and rare Pokemon spawning more readily in locations where normally you just get shit Pidgeys and Caterpies and whatnot.)

Personally I'm not too fussed, I did use Pokevision once insofar as I verified that it worked correctly by collecting a few Pokemon nearby which were exactly where Pokevision said they would be (and they were all commons), but I can honestly say I didn't use it after that in any way whatsoever, and therefore didn't gain any advantage from it.

Oh yes, turning AR off seems to be an increasingly popular choice because it means the Pokemon are always centre screen in whatever direction you're facing when capturing, rather than having to 'track' them up and down and left and right like you do in AR mode.

One of the new updates has good intentions behind it, as you Dan now Mark 'favourite' Pokemon that stops you accidentally transferring them to the professor. This is good as I have accidentally transferred my best of a Pokemon type a couple of times, when trying to mass evolve during lucky egg phase.

But, seriously, what bum nugget put the button to add favourite RIGHT NEXT TO THE TRANSFER BUTTON?

You still get the ARE YOU SURE? prompt when you hit transfer so you'd have to double idiot-out to candify a Pokemon you want to keep. I much prefer having the transfer option closer to hand like that, rather than having to scroll down for every single Pokemon when there are three million bastard Pidgeys to get rid of.

You still need to confirm it, so just don't balls up twice.

There is one thing i'm not to sure about now though.

Do you love the feet?

Pfft, who reads stuff?

Everyone loves the feet, Trooper.

Quite amusing walking up the prom at lunch with my Pokechum. He was there with his three million pound iPhone 6 mega-plus S-amazeballs wank-phablet, and yet due to the rain was constantly hiding under things to interact with the game thanks to his inferior device's non-waterproof nature.

And yet there I was, with my plucky cheap and cheerful* Android device, standing out in the driving rain without a care in the world, snagging Pokemon with gay abandon, as he ran to the sanctuary of yet another bus shelter, or shop frontage, to frantically scrabble at the screen of his fragile device.

He's a fucker though, as on the drive down he gets to snaffle everything along the way, which I can't do, because I'm driving.

I have a lucky egg and an incense ready to pop for the walk back down, along with fucktons of evolutions to do. The XP bonanza should see me comfortably up to Level 20.

* Yes I know the S7 costs as much as an iPhone.

Bwaaaark! Bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaark!

you really are a tool

Bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaark!!!

Blimey that worked well, the incense was largely surplus to requirements as I spent most of the 30 minutes of the lucky egg evolving like a motherfucker, so catching Pokemon as well was a risky use of time. (The evolve animation is quite long and unskippable.)

Went from about 1000XP into Level 19 to 31000XP into Level 20, for a total XP gain of around 55000. (I think it's 25000 from 19 to 20.)

Nothing fancy, just LOTS of Pidgeys, Weebles and Caterpies to evolve which I've been stacking for a while, and also the first time I've managed to evolve some of the slightly rarer ones like Magmetites and Drowsees (50 candy required for each IIRC, and you don't get an awful lot of them), so they were giving me the doubled evolve XP and also doubled 'new Pokemon captured' XP. Also had a handful of Zubats and Spearows and suchlike to evolve.

It'll be a few days until I can do another big XP push, but the rewards for Level 20 are quite generous, including two lucky eggs and two incubators, so I can start to get things stacked again for the next lucky egg. (I've got loads of shit 2km eggs at the moment though.)

I'm still not sure that there's any real point to this game, but since I walk about five miles every day anyway, it's no big deal to chuck Pokemon Go into the mix.

There's no point to most games, tbf.

Different locales having different common Pokemon is a bit funny. All I get at home and in The City are Pidgey, Spearow and Rattata, with the odd Drowzee. In Brighton there were magnet things everywhere, and I got like 100 magnet candy in a couple of days.

I still don't get battles, really. I took one slow and dodged as much as possible, but even when it said I dodged the attack, I still took just as much damage as from a normal attack. I think that is as buggy as the rest of it!

Brighton is also full of Voltorbs. Evolved a few of those while I was there.

Title.

If it weren't for the fact I've got a tappable Pokestop from where my phone sits on its wireless charger * all day, I'd probably have binned this off by now. (They can be tapped every five minutes.)

As it is because I always have a decent inventory of Pokeballs, the various detrimental changes that Niantic have made to the game recently (not least the much increased escape rates of even shit Pokemon) haven't resulted in me running out of anything, from Pokeballs through to Great Balls and Ultraballs, and also Razzberries.

If the game had left me at the point I was needing to spend real money for the basic tools to catch Pokemon with, I suspect we'd have parted company.

* Wireless charging may not be available on all smartphones, even 'premium' ones.

I've not run out of anything yet (I have about 70 raspberries and must have binned 50 of them), though I'm low on regular pokeballs. I do have about 70 blue balls though.

The increased escape rates are weird. Some go in easy as pie, but I had a freaking Rattata take TEN captures to stay in the damn ball this morning.

Yeah I noticed the escape rates have shot up.

I stock up on balls when I'm out and about at lunchtime, my regular walk is littered with stops. Then I use them all up sat at my desk at work

Title.

Are the escape rates not just due to the levelling up rather than a change in game?

The only change that has bothered me thus far is that they've ditched power-saving mode, but I had a quick Google and they are bringing it back.

I'm only on level 16, so maybe you've hit a more frustrating part of the game.

It's across all levels and Niantic have acknowledged it now I believe, there are articles up about it at places such as Eurogamer and Kotaku. They also removed the XP bonus for nice/great throws and a few other nasty little tweaks, such as Pokemon attacking more often (which means the ball misses) and smaller secondary targeting circles. (Last I heard Niantic said these were 'issues' suggesting that they weren't intentional, which I find rather hard to believe.)

Mrs Hearthly only dinged Level 10 yesterday and she's been having all manner of crap Pokemon bursting out of their balls repeatedly, and then often escaping completely - in a way they weren't previously.

I'm at the point now where unless it's something I really don't want to get away, I just chuck regular non-razzberried Pokeballs at it until the capture happens, and save Great Balls/Ultra Balls for higher value quarry. (I've just dinged Level 21, for reference.)

Oh and just for reference from the last few levels as best I can remember:

18 > 19 = 20K XP
19 > 20 = 25K
20 > 21 = 50K
21 > 22 = 75K

So it's really started ramping it up.

I've just ordered Pokemon moon. The first Pokemon game I've ever ordered before the release date.... Damn you Pokemon! Look what you're doing to us?!?

Blimey that 75K XP to Level 22 is a bit of a grind, and if anything XP is harder to come by now as there are less and less new Pokemon to add to my collection, and they represent a substantial XP boost when collected with a lucky egg on the go.

Did a mega lucky egg evolve-o-thon and hatch-o-thon at lunch and managed to get to 55K out of 75K XP, but it'll be a fair few days before I can have another XP push.

Looks like the XP requirement goes up 25K per level for the next few levels, it's going to get pretty brutal.

Also, game update today has brought back some vague semblance of tracking with a new 'sightings' feature which apparently should show which pokestop particular Pokemon were last seen closest to, but it didn't seem to be working for me.

The new update has Pokemon 'sightings' (unless you are one of the new subset of selected users with the new system...) I'm not sure at all his the sightings feature is any different from the previous idea, though?

Sorry Hearthky, had obviously missed your post earlier. How does the sightings feature show ehuchbpokestop the pikemen were last sighted near? It's just a list of pictures on mine, and I can't seem to interact with them.

It's not live for everyone yet, they've put the sightings icons in as sort of placeholders for now, only a subset of the user community has the feature running live.

There have been quite a few postings about in the Pokemon Go Isle of Man Facebook group, it looks like it should be pretty good.

By all accounts you get the Pokemon image and a picture of the Pokestop it was last seen closest to.

One of the most feared Klingon infantry units.

Mimi's random autocorrects and phone-barbles are absolutely the best.

Level 20! Nice haul of goodies!

AH right the sightings makes sense now, I'm still getting the Pokémon next to tufts of grass on mine.

That sounds pretty useless if you don't live in a town or city.

Yeah this has already been pointed out in many quarters, but TBH the game is basically a bust anyway if you're not in an urban area.

One of the ladies here at work lives in a village over the west of the island, it's not a tiny place but not exactly a major urban conurbation either, there are precisely zero Pokestops anywhere near her, and pretty much fuck-all Pokemon either - her children were quite upset by it, as they have no way of collecting Pokeballs or other items in or around their home (so they have a hard time collecting Pokemon even when they can find any), and their progress compared to their peers who live in town is practically non-existent.

TBH if you don't live in an urban area, or regularly visit one and have a walk around, the game is basically unplayable.

Maybe there'll be one of those Cabela hunting games for mobile soon where you can use AR to hunt virtual animals and those folk living out in the sticks can have the advantage of having more to hunt.

I am bored of it

The precise tracking thing will probably spark my interest in this again. Got fed up of catching nothing by Pidgey's. Seeing as I only play casually, catching them has a bigger incentive than fighting because all the gyms are being held by players with 1000+ CP Pokemon!

Gotta Catch The Pidgeys!

Though I caught so many I went on an evolving spree with them as I had about 300 Pidgey Candy. Good for levelling up!

Best to catch and evolve everything you can so you can level up quicker.

Save up all the evolves for when you've got a lucky egg to pop as well.

Zubats can fuck off though. I also don't bother with Pidgettos if I see them in the wild.