Ralts Community Day Guide (August 2019)

August Community Day takes place this weekend, on August 3 2019, and features the elusive Pokemon Ralts. If you’re lucky, you may even encounter a shiny Ralts! August Community Day bonuses include Synchronoise as an exclusive move for Ralts evolution line, 1/4 hatch distance, and three-hour long lure modules. During Ralts CD you will need Sinnoh Stones to evolve Gallade and Gardevoir and you will need a male Ralts to evolve a Gallade. Ralts will also be available in Raid Battles during event and you will only collect 10 KM Ralts eggs from PokeStops (2.5 km distance required if incubated during August CD).

 

Basic event information

Date Saturday, August 3rd
Time 4:00PM to 7:00PM in your local time zone. Exclusive move Synchronoise available till 7:00PM
  • Ralts spawns will be massively increased during the Community Day hours
  • Shiny Ralts to be released in the wild, unlocks shiny Kirlia, Gardevoir, and Gallade.
  • Increased chance to find shiny Ralts during the Community Day hours, roughly 1 in 24.5 encounters
  • 3-hour lures
  • 1/4 Egg Hatch Distance
  • All Gardevoir and Gallade evolved during Community Day hours learn an exclusive move that will be announced at a later date. Charged TMs will not grant exclusive move. You must evolve during the CD hours or up to an hour after.

Tips and Tricks from New Zealand

Because of our lovely planet and our lovely time zones, New Zealand is the first country in the world to have every CD event. We’re bringing you a selection of tips for August Community Day:

  • Players have reported epic spawn rates for Ralts with some players reporting 50+ shiny caught. Insanity? Seems like it!
  • Male and Female Ralts were spawning almost the same, meaning no pressure to get your Gallade! Kudos Niantic!
  • You will collect only 10 KM eggs from PokeStops you spin during the CD event. 10 KM eggs collected during CD hours will only hatch Ralts (can be shiny).
  • Ralts was available as a Tier 1 Raid Boss. Although it’s slower to defeat a raid boss than to fast catch, the guaranteed IVs are worth it. Raid bosses have 10 / 10 / 10 guaranteed IVs.
  • No additional Sinnoh Stone were given for Gallade evolution. You only have what you packed with.
  • Ralts was not spotted in Team GO Rocket battles

Shiny Ralts, Kirlia, Gallade and Gardevoir

A table of new shiny Pokemon that will be available starting with Ralts Community Day:

Shiny Ralts
Shiny Kirlia
Shiny Gardevoir
Shiny Gallade

Synchronoise analysis: Gardevoir and Gallade CD Exclusive Move

Ralts Community Day Exclusive move is Synchronoise, a fairly uneventful Psychic-typed charge move. Synchronoise is a 2-bar, 80 damage per bar, Psychic move in Gym and Raid Battles. For all intents and purposes it’s a Psychic-typed Rock Slide clone. They share almost the same cooldown, same damage output and Energy cost. Although Synchronoise is not a bad move in any regards, the disappointment arises from the fact that Gardevoir is already outclassed as a Psychic-type attacker by Espeon, Alakazam and Mewtwo, and Snychro doesn’t change that.

In PvP, Synchronoise is middle of the road, not too bad, not too good. 80 damage for 50 Energy is fine, but compare it to something like Hydro Cannon that gives you 90 damage for 40 energy and it’s clear why there is no hype surrounding Ralt’s Community Day move.

So, the final question is: who wore it better, Gallade or Gardevoir? It’s hard to tell. Gardevoir is often used as a Fairy type attacker and Gallade hasn’t seen a lot of usage in the meta. It’s rather hard to find a good match up for these two – maybe something along the lines of Toxicroak (256% increased damage from Psychic moves), but those are rare occasions to use them.


Ralts IV and CP Chart

Ralts is a Psychic and Fairy Type Pokemon, with rather low CP range. A perfect level 30 Ralts has only 426 CP, while a perfect weather boosted Ralts has 500 CP at level 35. Ralts is boosted by Cloudy and Windy weather, both of which are unfortunately not common during summer.

Ralts Ralts Perfect IV CP Chart
1 7 11 169 21 323 31 469
2 23 12 184 22 338 32 477
3 40 13 200 23 354 33 485
4 56 14 215 24 369 34 493
5 72 15 231 25 385 35 500
6 89 16 246 26 400 36 508
7 105 17 261 27 416 37 516
8 121 18 277 28 431 38 523
9 137 19 292 29 446 39 531
10 154 20 308 30 462 40 539

Weather consideration

  • Ralts is boosted by Cloudy and Windy weather
  • Weather boosted Pokemon have an IV floor of 4/4/4 and can be caught up to level 35
  • In-game weather is affected by level 11 S2 cells, which means it is possible you have favorable weather in your vicinity

Male Ralts, Gallade and Sinnoh Stones

Gallade can only be evolved from a male Ralts, which puts an unique twist on the August Community Day. Gallade is a Generation IV Fighting and Psychic Pokemon which requires a male Ralts (evolved to Kirlia), a Sinnoh Stone and 100 Ralts Candy to evolve.

This makes a shiny Gallade with August CD exclusive move one of the rarest and hardest to obtain CD Pokemon in Pokemon GO. In order to make obtaining it easier, we suggest you stock up on Sinnoh Stones before the event. Niantic hasn’t mentioned having 5 guaranteed Stones like they did in the past, which makes us a bit worried.

How to get Sinnoh Stones? You can get up to four per day, 1 from training with Team Leaders and three from regular PvP.


1/4 Hatch Distances

August Community Day bonus is a 1/4 hatch distance for all Eggs that are incubated during the Community Day hours. The distance reduction creates an interesting scenario in which hatching 10 KM eggs is as easy as hatching a regular 2 KM egg. The following chart shows how hatch distances work during the August CD:

Hatch distances during August Community Day
Egg Type 2 km 5 km 7 km 10 km
Regular Incubator 0.50 km 1.25 km 1.75 km 2.50 km
Super Incubator 0.33 km 0.83 km 1.17 km 1.67 km

Incubators are a must during this CD, as they are your path to massive Stardust gains. You can boost your Dust gains by using all of the items outlined in the “Items to Bring” section of this guide. If you want to maximize Stardust Gain, please ignore 7 km eggs and focus on 10 km eggs. You should ideally stock up on a full inventory of 10 km eggs before the event and pop them all with a Star Piece at the event.

But should you really hatch?

The interesting question is whether or not you should really spend money on incubators. Wait, what? You just told us to do it! Well, yeah, but let’s see it from a different angle. If you’re not big on hatching eggs, or you are swimming in Stardust, the egg hatching aspect of the event could only hamper your experience. Even further, it could adversely influence your choice of game play location, as hatching friendly areas are not necessarily areas where you can have the optimal Community day.

For players that enjoy batch hatching, keep on doing what you’re doing anyways. For everyone else, try, see if you enjoy it and if it’s worth your Poke Coins. I always do it for the Stardust alone, but I come prepared and stack up with 10 km eggs before the event.


Items to Bring

Pokemon GO Star Piece Super Incubator Pinap Berry Pokemon GO
Pokemon GO Incense

In order to be ready for Ralts Community Day, we suggest the following item setup as a minimum requirement for the event:

  • 6 Star Pieces
  • 10 Incubators
  • 150 – 250 Pinap Berries
  • 300 Poke Balls (mixed, but Great and Ultra are always welcomed)
  • 6 Lucky Eggs
  • 6 Incense
  • Lure Modules

Star Piece – Stardust is one of the most valuable resources in the game, next to Rare Candy, TMs and Sinnoh Stones. So the chance to increase your gains, during your greatest time of catching and the default x2 bonus, is a great opportunity indeed. To add on top of that, Star Piece will boost Stardust you get from every Egg you hatch.

Egg Incubator / Super Incubator – The walking distance will be reduced regardless of which you use, but you will find more hatches with the Super Incubator, which in turn means more Stardust and XP. Combine with Star Piece at all times, there is no point to hatching without Star Pieces.

Pinap Berry / Silver Pinap Berry – While we would not recommend the use of Silver Pinaps, both of these could be used to increase your candy gains, and considering how meta-relevant some of the Exclusive Moves can be, candy will definitely be needed.

Lucky Egg – While it might not be incredibly useful for those Level 40s out there, those on the path to the max level will find the benefits of a Lucky Egg great, both during the regular event and the 2x bonus.

Poké Balls – Goes without saying, you need balls to catch Pokémon, stock up on the higher end ones as much as you can prior to the event to get easy catches.

Raid Passes – Weird suggestion right? No, do a raid, with a Star Piece and Lucky Egg on, and catch something with a good chance at high IVs.

Gotcha / GO Plus / Poké Ball Plus – These are good for spinning the stops while you are walking, or catching that random Roselia or something that pops up.

Optimizing Lure Module usage

With Lure Modules lasting for three hours, the optimal usage is to activate one as soon as the event starts. Stick with Normal Lure modules during this Community Day, as Ralts and it’s evolution line can be meta relevant. However, during other CDs, mixing Glacial, Mossy and Magnetic Lure modules with Normal modules can be beneficial for players who don’t have regular access to those. These Lures will also last for three hours. We suggest placing them at a convenient location that’s outside your “CD farming route”.

Note: Placing a Lure at the last minute of the event will make that Lure last for three hours as well.


Where to play

Usually, our Community Day location advice is always similar: pick a spot with ample spawn zones (preferably a park) and with enough PokeStops to benefit from the CD exclusive quests. However, as Ralts CD features 1/4 hatch distance bonus, we have to deviate slightly from this formula.

An ideal place to play during the August Community Day looks like this:

  • Has ample spawn areas and a large number of PokeStops – important for picking up Eggs and Lure spawns during the event
  • PokeStops are distributed along a fairly straight line and you can lure them all up and hatch eggs efficiently.
  • Takes at least 5 – 6 minutes to walk from one end to the other. This will help you get better Egg hatch distance as you won’t benefit from Adventure Sync during the event (works only if the game is closed)
  • The area allows you to get full distance walked from one end to the other end, maximizing the hatch distance acquired while walking. The shape and size of the are should not affect your ability to farm Ralts efficiently – you have to be able to do both things successfully.

Perfect examples of these areas are parks filled with PokeStops along a trail, or urban areas with long streets that are “walking friendly”. As a general rule, you should look for “cluster spawn areas”, aka areas with lots of network traffic where Pokemon often spawn in groups. These areas tend to be perfect spots for CD events, and they’re perfect if they’re easy to lure up.


Trading Advice

As your Community Day draws to a close, we suggest that you keep all of the Pokemon you caught in your storage. Transferring them earlier reduces your chances of getting a Lucky Trade afterwards. This is especially true for high level Pokemon with bad IVs – level 28, 29 and level 30 Pokemon are perfect candidates for rapid trading after the event.

Most of the trading takes place in the 1 hour after Community Day ends and that’s the perfect strategy to tackle this. Our advice is as follows:

  • Trade high level, low IV, Pokemon first. We use the new 0*, 1* and 2* search string filter to find appropriate Pokemon. Sort by CP to get them sorted by Level. Example search string for Ralts:
280&0*,1*,2*

If possible, always trade with a person you have high friendship with. We often forget this, but trading with a friend enforces a IV floor for the traded Pokemon:

  • Good Friend – 1/1/1 IV floor
  • Great Friend – 2/2/2 IV floor
  • Ultra Friend – 3/3/3 IV floor
  • Best Friend – 5/5/5 IV floor

If you’re planning on bulk transferring CD Pokemon, be aware that trading them before will grant you +1 Candy per Pokemon. It doesn’t matter if you enjoy trading or not – it is always beneficial to trade bad Pokemon before transferring them.

If you’re planning to complete a Lucky Trade with a CD shiny, we suggest you pick a bad IV shiny for the trade. Lucky Pokemon have an IV floor of 12 / 12 / 12, which is great for “fixing” bad shiny Pokemon.

Search strings for quick trading

  • Safe to trade Ralts: 280&0*,1*,2* (sort by CP)
  • 82.2%+ Ralts search string: 280&3*,4*
  • 100% Ralts search string: 280&4*

Tips and Tricks

  • As previously stated, Niantic announced that you can evolve your Kirlia to get the Community Day exclusive move up to 1 hour after the the event ends. This means you can focus more on catching Ralts instead of evolving in the last few minutes. Although, as a general cautionary rule, in case there are any issues on Niantic’s end, evolve at least a few before the event end.
  • Being late is never a good thing, get around your spot early and see what changes into Ralts. Pokémon you have not caught prior to the event start can turn into Ralts, it is best to wait to catch until the event starts.
  • Be patient – there will be errors and bugs at the start of the event. It is best to restart the app in some, if not most, cases.
  • To ensure that you have Lures up the entire duration, do not lure prior to the event start, as those will only last 30 minutes. You will know when Community Day is on, just watch for the lag spike, the spinning Pokéball, and the almost inevitable need to restart. Lures will last for three hours then.
  • As stated before, the 1/4th Egg Distance only applies after the event starts, and only for eggs you incubate during the event. Do not expect already incubated eggs, or ones incubated before the event start to be reduced.
  • Super Incubators will be the absolute fastest way to hatch Eggs this event, but this is expensive if you plan on traveling a lot.
  • Use Incense to attract even more Pokémon to you while you’re out hunting. If you are wondering, yes Incense can spawn Community Day ‘mons, that can be shiny. Incense is worth it.
  • Chat with your fellow Trainers and grow your local Pokémon Go community. Make good use of the QR code feature to make some new friends!
  • Promote the new Pokémon Go features and events to Trainers who are just starting their adventure or haven’t been playing for a while.
  • Most importantly, have fun, get some shinies, and hope for good network connections!