Pokémon Go Event Rollup, 8/30/2018

It's been another month, more or less, so it's time to recap some of the things that have gone on in Pokémon Go. And there has been quite a bit of fascinating events. A keyword of a couple of these events is "Johto", as they do indeed concern Pokémon that hail from this region, or in other words the second-generation Pokémon. Another keyword might be "social" as some parts of the events do concern the newly added interaction features in the game. These can be said to make up that fascination.

Earlier, an event involving the trading feature ran for a couple of weeks, so this satisfied the "social" keyword. During that time, trades were discounted by 25% from their normal Stardust costs, no matter the trade. All trades were also given an additional bonus of three Candies in addition to the ones earned on the basis of distance regarding where the Pokémon came from. Lastly, experience points gained from a trade that added a new PokéDex entry were tripled, making this particular Special Trade rather desirable. By my experience, this event was so attractive to members of my raid group that some even made plans for trading what to whom each day; I didn't, but at least I became a backup on a couple of occasions when someone's plan to trade fell through that day. Due to other things I had going on, I didn't thoroughly partake in the event, but it seems good enough that if it's ever repeated, I'd like to take further advantage of it.

Meanwhile, this month, Field Research became interesting again as its reward returned to a Legendary Pokémon, specifically the Electric beast Raikou, thus satisfying the "Johto" keyword. I appreciate this since I missed the moment when this Pokémon appeared as raid bosses, allowing me (and many others in the same boat) to have the chance to capture it. Along with Raikou, a bevy of quests related to Electric-type and second-generation Pokémon also appeared. This sweetened the deal for many players, but since I'm not a particularly aggressive research player, it was generally business as usual. I'm just glad that Raikou is the big deal.

Just a few days ago, an event had ended, and that event is the Johto Festival. The big thing was increased appearances of Pokémon from this region, but the biggest thing was the introduction of the Celebi Special Research for everyone else; the Special Research was first available for those attending the Go Fest event, but in a different format. This does not replace the Mew Research, and it is concurrent and permanent... at least until it is completed. What is notable is that certain tasks of this research require usage of the newly-introduced interaction features, such as friends and trading, and some tasks are "bottlenecks" that force Trainers to do things over consecutive days, which meant that it took over a week before any Trainer was finally able to capture Celebi. Meanwhile, there was a bit of drama over a weekend as Ho-Oh reappeared as a raid boss, in particular for capturing its Shiny form. Overall, this event satisfied both of the keywords above.

Perhaps the most important thing about the most recent events in Pokémon Go is relevance. The three events above fulfilled one or both of the keywords presented above, and by doing so, they've maintained relevance with them. They're both inherently important to the game as well as Pokémon in general, in a way. There is no doubt that this will continue over the next month and the rest of the year with the events to come. By then things surely will become as big as they are relevant.

One year ago: Stories That You Don't Know