Adventure Week 2024 is over, and it’s a shame to say, but after a 10 day long event, it just didn’t stand up to the excitement of previous Adventure Weeks.
First up, let’s take a look at some of the previous Adventure Week events and what they brought to GO:
- 2023 – Shiny release of Tyrunt and Amaura, Mega Tyranitar debut in raids
- 2022 – Tyrunt and Amaura debut, Shiny Tirtouga and Archen release
- 2020/2021 – no Adventure Week event
- 2019 – Shiny Onix, Lileep and Anorith release
- 2018 – Shiny Omanyte, Kabuto and Aerodactyl release
- 2017 – Increased Fossil Pokémon spawns
Adventure Week has typically been an event that trainers really look forward to, whether that was because new Pokémon debuted in game, or new shinies were released. Even way back in 2017 with nothing new released, the increase in Fossil Pokémon spawning was a big deal because they were so rare! So what went wrong with 2024 and why did it feel like a miss?
No Debut Pokémon
2024 is the first Adventure Week since the original event in 2017 that hasn’t seen the debut of any new Pokémon. Now, I can understand why we didn’t see anything new in terms of Fossil Pokémon. Currently the only unreleased Fossils come from Generation VIII, which we’ve so far seen very little of in game and Gen IX did not introduce any new Fossils.
These four Fossils are really unusual compared to the other Fossil Pokémon. They are based on the ‘Fusion Fossils’ made during the Bone Wars. The Bone Wars are a real life event, also known as the Great Dinosaur Rush, in which paleontologists often put mixed up dinosaurs fossils together, hoping to outdo their colleagues with their ‘new’ discoveries. This led to some inconsistencies in fossils, with things like heads put on tails, heads being turned upside down, or giving them bigger or smaller limbs. For the Gen VIII fossils, they resemble a Velociraptor, Dacentrurus, Dunkleosteus, and Mosasaurus (Pokémon Wiki). They are the first Fossil Pokémon to not have Rock typing, they are Genderless, can’t breed in the main series games, and require more than one fossil to revive them.
- Dracozolt is an Electric and Dragon type Pokémon and is revived from a Fossilized Bird and a Fossilized Drake.
- Arctozolt is an Electric and Ice type Pokémon and is revived from a Fossilized Bird and a Fossilized Dino.
- Dracovish is a Water and Dragon type Pokémon and is revived from a Fossilized Fish and a Fossilized Drake.
- Arctovish is a Water and Ice type Pokémon and is revived from a Fossilized Fish and a Fossilized Dino.
It is likely that Niantic want to save these Pokémon for a season that is more focused on Gen VIII, or simply for further down the line in the game with them being the only unreleased Fossils.
So if there aren’t many Fossils left to release, couldn’t we have had a Rock type released instead? Perhaps, but again, there aren’t many unreleased Rock types even!
From Alola we could have seen:
If Niantic want to save Gen VIII and IX, we are getting quite limited on options. Minior could be a really fun release as it has two different forms, Meteor Form and Cores, and there are multiple different Cores. The Core forms represent the colours of the rainbow: These forms are Red Core, Orange Core, Yellow Core, Green Core, Blue Core, Indigo Core, and Violet Core. It is a Rock and type, and is based on meteorites or shooting stars. That could work with the Adventure Week theme!
If we want to take a look at Ground types, we are still fairly limited:
From Alola, the only unreleased Ground types are the Mudbray family which doesn’t fit the Adventure Week theme with it’s horse-like appearance.
Even if we then look at Pokémon inspired by dinosaurs, bar those Gen VIII fossils, they are all released in game! So new releases are very limited.
No New Shiny Pokémon
OK, so if we couldn’t have any new Pokémon, could we have any new shiny Pokémon debut instead? All the Fossils are already shiny, so again, we look to Rock and Ground types that are already in game, but aren’t available shiny yet. This leaves us with:
Are we starting to realise how problematic the Adventure Week theme is now? Sandygast is a Ghost and Ground type and was released as part of the Water Festival: Beach Week event, and it seems more likely the shiny will debut in a later beach themed event, or even at Halloween due to the Ghost typing. Carbink is Rock and Fairy type and it has been closed tied with Diancie, making it feel like it won’t see a shiny release any time soon. Zygarde is an extremely limited and difficult to grind Dragon and Ground type Legendary Pokémon, again, another Pokémon that isn’t going to be shiny released for a long time.
Shiny Boosted Pokémon and Wild Spawns
Niantic therefore settled on a ‘shiny boost’ for the 2024 Adventure Week, and at first I was pretty excited about this. That was, until I saw that the Pokémon with the boost would primarily be in 7km eggs and mixed pools for field research task rewards. My local group has some serious egg hatchers and I barely saw anyone reporting that they had hatched a shiny.
If Archen and Tirtouga had featured in the wild, this event could have felt a lot better. The wild spawns felt almost like they weren’t event spawns, especially with a Pokémon as random as Bunnelby featuring prominently. I get why Bunnelby, it evolves into Diggersby, you dig to get fossils, but still, does that make anyone feel better about those wild spawns?
It’s always exciting to see Aerodactyl in the wild, and Kabuto and Omanyte can be really hard for newer players to encounter, but outside of those three, none of the other spawns really made me want to engage.
If all the shiny boosted Pokémon had also been in the wild, I personally would have wanted to grind this event. I need Archen and Tirtouga as shinies as I am sure a lot of other trainers do, so these being wild would have given me much more motivation to play the event.
Adventure Week: Taken Over
Lastly, let’s take a look at the second half of the event, with Team GO Rocket taking over. Thank goodness for Team GO Rocket, because with 10 whole days of the same spawns, we needed something to spice the event up a bit. I liked seeing Archen and Tirtouga as new shadow Pokémon tying in with the event theme for the grunts, and it made sense for Lileep and Anorith to be new potential shadow shinies with the leaders. Plus, new Giovanni research is always welcome, particularly when it means we get access to a new Shadow Legendary.
Conclusion
Alas, even Team GO Rocket couldn’t quite save Adventure Week which is such a shame. Adventure Week went from being a highlight of the calendar, to just not quite cutting it this year. 10 days made the spawns feel really stale, and the egg grind just felt bad.
What did you think of Adventure Week 2024? Let us know on social media!
