With less than a week to go for the Kanto Tour on 20th February, here are some last minute tips for prepping and making sure you can enjoy your day to the fullest!
Pokémon Storage Space
With a whopping 12 hours of play time, that is a serious amount of Pokémon to catch! Give your Pokémon storage a huge clear out and be brutal. If you keep a living dex, make sure you only have multiples of the meta relevant Pokémon. Transfer community day shinies to Pokémon HOME or to the Professor. You are never going to need 20+ shinies of one particular Pokémon (unless it is your fave, I get it, I hoard shiny Turtwig!), it’s time to say goodbye to them.
If you can, take advantage of the increased distance trading this week and reroll some if you can, but you are going to have to be brutal. If you don’t have your bag space maxed out, maybe the morning of the Kanto Tour is the time to go for it. I’m going to wait until the morning of the Tour to max out my bag space, because otherwise I know it’s just going to fill up without me realised.
Do you need one of every Spinda pattern? Do you need to keep that 98% Ampharos when you have the hundo? Now is the time to get tough on your collection and get transferring. Have you hoarded a whole bunch of legendary Pokémon for trades? Sorry but it is time to let them go! There is no double transfer candy this month, so get transferring them now. You don’t need 20 of each legendary, keep your best teams of 6 if you must, but make sure you go through them, you’ll be surprised how many you have.
I also recommend going through your Shadow Pokémon and purifying and transferring them. I say purify first because to hit level 50 you need a lot of platinum badges, and that is a badge you can work on passively. Mind your stardust though, I don’t recommend purifying those 5000 dust Pokémon! You don’t need to keep them all (unless you love them for AR), so get rid of what you don’t need.
Take inspiration from Marie Kondo, does this Pokémon spark joy? No? Off to Professor Willow you go!
Item Prep
Balls, balls, balls, that is all you need to care about this week. Potions and revives soon fill up when raiding, so keep them to a minimum, keep your berries in check, and focus on those balls. I realised the other day that my item bag space was constantly full and I couldn’t figure out why… I’ve been raiding a lot lately and I had over 700 rare candy hoarded!!
Way too much space take up from my bag. I put a bunch into Noibat because no way am I going to 400 candies anytime soon to evolve that cutie, and then checked into which legendary Pokémon I want to power up and put rare candies into them as well.
Other surprising items taking up your bag space might be an excess of berries, so get feeding them into gyms for stardust, or evolution items. You don’t need a whole bunch of each evolution item, either use them or throw them.
Opening your maximum amount of gifts every day this week will help you with your ball hoarding, so make sure you are sending out as many gifts as you can, and be sure to open your full amount each day. With an increased chance of lucky friends, prioritising your best friends is the way to go this week, but once you’ve opened gifts from people you want to try hit lucky with, open, open, open! Make sure you hit your limit each day. If you need more friends, check in your local groups, discords etc, post on social media, fill up that friends list and get yourself more gifts.
If you will be using a GO Plus or similar, make sure you have plenty of Pokéballs over Great Balls, it soon gets through them, so use Great/Ultra balls to manually catch, and leave your Pokéballs for the GO Plus.
It’s key to also make sure you have any incense, star pieces or lucky eggs you might want to use, and remember you can stack them up now, so get them on at the start of the event and then you won’t have to worry about them running out during. The exclusive spawns are incense only, so you you will need incense to get them!
Make a shiny checklist
Before the day itself, I’d recommend making yourself a shiny checklist of what you need from the Kanto region. Go through your Pokédex and make a note of what you are missing, you might be surprised to realise how many you need, or realise you have shinies you had forgotten about. Having a list will help you prioritise what you are going to click on in a cluster of spawns. I’m going old school and am going to make a paper list I can keep in my pocket, rather than a note on my phone, as I don’t intend to be off the app at any point. Every single Kanto Pokémon will be available shiny, and we are hoping for a shiny rate similar to GO Fest (or better, we’d take better!), so this will be your best chance to get that shiny living Kanto dex.
Pick Red or Green with a Partner
With two different ticket options, red and green, and exclusive Pokémon to each version, talk to your friends before you pick if you haven’t already. I’ve picked green, so my bestie Max has picked red, so we can make sure we have our version exclusives to trade to each other so we can get the full 151 Kanto Pokémon on the day. Check with your local raid groups and community and pair off, or at least make sure there is a good mix of you with each ticket version, so on the day you aren’t panicking about finding someone to trade with. Buddy up!
Also, make sure you actually pick your ticket option before the event starts to save time!
Batteries, Chargers and Phones
If you live somewhere you can legally and safely play outside, make sure you have portable battery packs charged and charger cables at the ready. It is a long event, you are gonna need those chargers! Even if you are playing from home, making sure you know where your chargers are and keeping an eye on that battery power can save you. With extreme weather in a lot of the world, battery percentages can drop suddenly, so don’t let it get too low!
Make sure you charge overnight so your phone is ready to go, and that you have plenty of data left if you won’t be on WiFi all day. Last thing anyone needs is to run out of data part way through the day.
Suitable Clothing
We have some serious extremes weather-wise right now, so making sure you are dressed suitably is so important.
If it is spring/summer where you are right now, sun screen is key! Don’t burn or give yourself heatstroke, or you’re gonna have a bad time. Make sure you have access to cool drinks, shady spots, and wear light airy clothing that is going to keep you cool, whilst protecting your skin.
If you wear your hair in a part, make sure that part is covered in sun screen too, it’s easy to forget. Set timers to reapply and make sure you apply a good half an hour before you go out into the sun to let it sink in and work. Sunglasses and sunhats will help protect you too.
If it is winter/autumn, wrap up warm! Multiple thin layers are better than one or two thick layers, and a good waterproof coat. Sun screen is still needed in winter, that sun can be incredibly harsh, especially glancing off the snow. Gloves you can use your phone with, and good sturdy walking boots to keep you from slipping are great too.
Keep an eye on the weather, it isn’t worth risking your health for Pokémon, so stay indoors if the weather is extreme and keep safe!
Check your local Covid 19 Guidelines
Check up on your local laws and guidelines regarding Covid 19 and make sure you are protecting yourself. Mask up, keep 6ft apart, wash your hands, and use sanitiser when you can. Don’t risk getting yourself in trouble for breaking the rules, or at risk of spreading the virus. Guidelines can vary town to town, state to state, country to country, so make sure you are aware of your specific local guidelines.
For example, in the UK we are only allowed to leave our homes for essential reasons or exercise. Exercise does not include meeting up with anyone else, and people have been fined for travelling out of their area to play Pokémon GO. Stay safe and protect your health service and those around you.
Food and Drink
Plan ahead for snacks, lunch and drinks, as well as bathroom breaks. Maybe lunch time is the time you go home (if you are allowed to play outside) so you can have a rest, charge your phone, and refuel with a decent lunch. Keep hydrated and fed and you’ll have a much more fun day.
Last Minute Prep
If you are in the Western Hemisphere, we do have an advantage over other parts of the world. With the likes of New Zealand, Australia and Japan starting so long before us, there will be a lot of available data on social media about the quest lines and what you need to do. It’s worth checking our social media and website to see what the day entails so you can plan ahead, and keep your expectations in check. Follow us on Twitter!
Make sure you know you are following a reputable, trusted source, there are bound to be dodgy photoshops making the rounds, so check your sources.
General Tips and Tricks
If you are planning to really grind, learning the ‘Quick Catch‘ trick can be a real help (though I have to admit, as a leftie, I can’t figure it out!). There are a bunch of videos on how to do this on Youtube, so check them out here.
Another nifty tip is that when you have clicked on a Pokémon to shiny check it, it will turn to face you. So when you are checking a cluster, the ones you haven’t checked, won’t be facing you, so this should save you time on checking the same Pokémon twice.
Be sure to prioritise checking an incense spawn over wild spawns, as incense spawns will only last for a very short period of time with one spawning every minute, and you don’t want to miss out on that shiny check!
Conclusion
Currently we don’t have any idea what to expect in terms of shiny rates, but we hope it will be something like GO Fest, if not better. We hope that the quest line will reward plenty of Pokéballs to keep us well stocked, and we really hope that the quest are able to be completed entirely from home.
Stay safe, have fun, and look after yourselves!
