Pokémon Go Community Day, 5/19/2018

Community Day for Pokémon Go came back today, and it's a good one. If two months ago the Community Day featured the Grass-type starter Bulbasaur, today's edition goes on to feature its Fire-type kin Charmander. It's a good thing that naturally follows. Oh, and this Community Day returns to a Saturday after being on Sunday for two months. It's also a nice change of pace.

As with all other Community Days, special bonuses are in tow. Today's bonuses are the move Blast Burn for any Charizard begotten during the three-hour window and increased Stardust for all captures. And then there are also the Shiny forms for Charmander and its evolutions, which is perhaps the most excellent bonus this time around, one that players even in my raid group had anticipated.

One other thing that should be mentioned is that research tasks at PokéStops became somewhat different during the Community Day window. Instead of the usual assortment of tasks, all tasks received become "catch 3 of the featured Pokémon", which can be used to get extra items in addition to the ones typically gotten. This has been the case since the last Community Day. I find this helpful, especially if preparations are lacking.

As for today, I and a few of my raid fellows repeated the same situation as the February edition: set up Lure Modules around many PokéStops and walk through them all to find Pokémon. This time, quite a few of my fellows joined in the fun, so now it really did feel like a true Community Day. We even got to meet a couple of other players not in our group, even managing to get them in the group. This is what Community Day is really about: bringing people together and making more connections.

One good thing today is that it didn't rain - unlike some of the past Community Days - and the weather was pleasant and warm, allowing for full enjoyment of the event. Two bad things that happened today were that I had login issues in the third hour of the event and lost half an hour's worth of time that could be used to catch a few more Charmander and build up a sizable candy stock, and the other was that a friend didn't catch a Shiny form until near the end. In any case, I did manage to get three Charizard by evolving two Charmander I caught during the event and one Charmeleon I had previously captured before the event. It wasn't too bad.

This was a more or less successful Community Day, and I'm satisfied with how things turned out. And now that two out of three of the first-generation starters have been featured, it's not hard to expect that the third will also be featured. It's just a matter of when. I'm sure that I and my other raid fellows are eagerly expecting this, as well as any other Pokémon that might be featured in later editions of Community Day.

One year ago: On the Mystery of Dungeons