This weekend was the Global Pokémon GO Sinnoh Tour, and I made plans with my local pals to head to the best spot to play nearby, heading a town or two over to the sea front for optimal grinding.
So first up, a few things to note. I live in the UK, and we were playing on a sea front on the east coast. It is February, and normally that isn’t good news for us, and after a week leading up to the event of torrential rain and flooding, the sun came out and we got really lucky! It stayed dry all day both days, and it wasn’t windy which is a big thing when playing on a sea front. It can be incredibly windy, and with it being a wind coming off the sea, it can be bitingly cold, but it was still and lovely. It did however become freezing cold as the sunset, and I have to give a shout out to my Mum for the gloves she bought me for Christmas from the Pokémon Center. They not only kept my hands warm, but you can use your thumb and first two fingers on your phone! Plus they were on theme for the weekend.
Secondly, my group grind, but we are not incredibly hardcore. We have a variety of chronic illnesses and disabilities, so we take a lot of rest spots and are sure to check in on each other throughout the day so no one feels like behind. I played the full eight hours both days, though the Sunday I did head back to my own semi-rural area for the last couple of hours as I didn’t need much in the way of shinies from the final rotations, so I could grind eggs and not be far from home as it got colder and darker.
Thirdly, I did spend money on this event. It was my birthday a couple weeks ago and I put some birthday money towards coins to get the massive 100 incubator hatch box, as well as buying all the paid tickets for the Road to Sinnoh Event, along with the shiny Shaymin research. I also did remote raid outside my event hours in order to try to grind the legendaries.
In terms of major gameplay issues, we did experience some crashes of the game, with it becoming unclickable, or getting a white screen. A quick restart resolved the issue, and thankfully it didn’t happen too often. As the USA play day started I felt like the drift when stationary increased, but when you want to grind eggs who could complain about eggs? The only major issue any of us had I discuss further down in the research section of this article.
Eggs
First up, let’s talk about the eggs! 30000 steps on Saturday, along with multiple blisters, and constant egg hatching, and I got two shinies from the eggs, but nothing I wanted. I got Bonsly and Budew from the 2k eggs, I was hoping for Mantyke, Munchlax or Chingling.
Sunday however, I got really lucky and hatched three shinies that I really wanted, Hisuian Voltorb, Chatot, and Carnivine! I still have one 10k in my egg storage at the moment, so fingers crossed it is a shiny Pachirisu (or a duplicate shiny I can trade to someone who got more than one Pachirisu).
Talking with my friends, we all had a sprinkling of shinies from eggs, but no one managed the trio for the regionals, with most getting one shiny regional if any at all. I felt really lucky to get two shiny regionals, especially as the egg animation for Carnivine didn’t pop up, so it was a fantastic surprise in my storage when I got home and checked my shiny count for the day!
I did use Super Incubators for all 5k and 10k eggs, and regular incubators for 2k eggs. I’d saved up my egg-spedition access single use incubators for this event which did me well for those 2k eggs to get through them quickly. Eggs are a costly grind, and not for everyone, but with these regionals being from places I will mostly likely never travel to, I wanted to go for them while I had the chance.
Routes
Using Routes to get White Stripe Basculin was probably the part of the event I was most concerned about. We knew the spot we were playing in had several routes we could utilise well, but not all trainers might be as lucky. We were happy with how often White Stripe Basculin spawned, and everyone in our group managed to get the shiny. Albeit a rather tricky shiny to spot.
It also encouraged us to hunt for Zygarde Cells, and interact with Matteo, which isn’t something most of my group prioritise. Once we all had the shiny, routes felt less important, but they were definitely a fun way to include a new shiny! As we deliberately picked an area with many routes we knew we would be OK to hunt for Basculin, but if you don’t have accessible routes where you play, this might have felt like the impossible grind.
Party Play
For some of my group, this was the first time they had done Party Play, so they not only got to work on the timed research, but also the special research for it from when it released. However, having multiple avatars on the map during an event like this with incense running and so many spawns, got frustrating.
Our avatars felt very much in the way, so as soon as the timed research was done, we quit the parties rather than grind out the older party play special research. That will have to wait for another day! It would have been great for us all to get to work on that research too, but it was just too tricky having avatars clustered around you trying to get those incense spawns.
The rewards for Party Play just don’t feel worthwhile, and we could easily defeat the raid bosses without the extra power it gave us as a group, so some tweaking to make it feel more important in the future are needed.
Raids
The first hour we didn’t particular bother raiding because it was the OG forms of Dialga and Palkia, and they felt a bit like a waste of raid passes. Once the space-time anomaly hours hit, we wanted to grind Dialga and Palkia, but it was a struggle! Having the one and three star raids cluttered up the raid pool too much, so the Origin Formes felt a bit few and far between. I ended up doing a bunch of remotes outside of my play hours, and I did manage to get a shiny Origin Forme Dialga, but Origin Forme Palkia did not want to sparkle for me.
Checking in with my local group, it seemed a similar story, with shiny legendaries seeming a little thin on the ground, despite completing plenty of raids. It would have been nice to see a bit more of a boost to the shiny rates for these, because who knows when we will see them back.
Having the remote raid limit lifted felt amazing, but the increased price of remote passes, not so much. I loved seeing invites coming in from my friends across the world, and sending them out and not getting the dreaded ‘limit reached’ notification. It felt almost nostaglic.
Research
I think the biggest criticism we could offer with the the field research, is that it got really costly in terms of stardust. Between Special Rend and the field research, my stardust went down by over 2 million over the whole weekend. I’m lucky that I am a stardust hoarder, but not everyone has resources to burn! I did grind field research in the hopes of shinies, and ended up with two of the Hisuian forms shining for me, from a lot of tasks. I could have spent last stardust powering up low level Pokémon, but that feels like a waste to me, so I powered up things I intended to anyway, which was more costly.
Some of our group did have an issue with a field research task becoming unclaimable on the Sunday, meaning they could only pick up two field research tasks at a time, making the stardust cost feel even worse. Instead of being able to do a full set of field research, they could only do two at a time, and at present, the glitched field research is still unclaimable! Hopefully Niantic fix this soon, as not only is this a potentially shiny encounter that was lost out on, but it is hogging up a valuable space for a field research task.
When we started the day, it felt like we had a lot to do, between the Photo Safari, and the Party Play research, and the new Special Research, but in reality, it didn’t take us that long to complete any of them. With previous tours Collection Challenges have felt a little overwhelming, but we did feel like we missed them this year! Did you miss the Collection Challenges? The chance for a good IV costume Pikachu as a reward from the various rotating habitats would have been fun.
The Special Research wasn’t too complicated to finish, and I was so excited to get to pick Turtwig as my path, my favourite starter. I would have liked a few more Spiritomb encounters as it is a shiny that eludes a lot of us still, but alas, I shall have to wait for Halloween and try again.
Shiny Rates: An Ode to Spacial Rend
Now, social media, and talking to players I know IRL, shiny rates seemed to really vary. I have friends who really struggled to hit even double figures for the whole weekend, whereas the group I played with in person varied from 10-25ish shinies per day. I ended my weekend with 53 shinies in total, the majority of which were shinies I needed as I prioritised checking what I needed rather than clicking everything. We also planned our lunch breaks around the hours we needed less shinies. Looking at the shinies we caught, it was very obvious which were boosted (Hisuians, starters, Pikachu, Stunky), vs which were not. Very few of us got Shellos, Finneon, Burmy, Unown, Cherubi or Combee, whereas we had quite an abundance of some of the clearly shiny boosted Pokémon.
The thing I think made the biggest difference to our shiny hunting, was Spacial Rend. On day one I didn’t have a shiny for almost two hours, losing a shiny Pikachu to my GO Plus+ whilst raiding Origin Forme Palkia, and finally getting an Hisuian Growlithe just as the second hour came to an end. I decided to activate Spacial Rend to see what a different it made, and with that increased distance, the shinies really started flowing! A lot of the shinies I got were in that increased radius, including the shiny Uxie I desperately wanted, that I was then able to alert my group to who didn’t have it active, with another of them also getting it shiny. As the day went on, we all ended up running Spacial Rend and it was brilliant.
For day two when I popped all my incenses for the day, I also opted to put on Spacial Rend for the full day again, and I got more shinies on day two than day one, and I think those extra two hours of Spacial Rend made all the difference. It was expensive to run, even though I had chosen Pearl so had the bonus, but I can’t fault how effective it was, and how much it boosted our play. For major events like this, I think it will be invaluable, and for GO Fest in the summer I know I’ll be making sure I have plenty of Palkia candy and stardust!
Spacial Rend essentially double the spawns, so therefore doubled our shiny chances! I made sure to trade a spare bad IV Origin Forme Palkia to my friend James who had picked Diamond so he could activate it too, swapping for an Origin Forme Dialga, and they went lucky! So he not only got to use Spacial Rend, but we both ended up with a good IV lucky of the Origin Forme we didn’t have the special move for.
I know it is a costly thing to use, but it really helped us all to no end with this event, and I think it is a big part of why we all did so well with our shiny chances. The area we played in has some wild cluster spawns at the best of times, and with Spacial Rend active we could even see Pokémon out in the sea! The whole group really raved about this new Adventure Effect and how well it worked. An amazing new addition to GO for these major events!
None of us really used Roar of Time, because it didn’t feel as worthwhile for an event like this, but we are looking forward to using it to extend our Daily Adventure Incense.
Spacial Rend really is a game changer, and if you weren’t able to get an Origin Forme Palkia with this special move, I highly recommend reaching out to your local community to try to get one before the inevitable Global GO Fest in the summer!
Community
The best part of any event like this for me, is spending time with my friends in the local community. I forgot to take photos with the full group so apologies to those missed out, and I didn’t take any on Sunday either. Too busy nattering and playing! GO is so much more fun when you are with pals, celebrating each others wins, and threatening to push each other in the sea when someone else gets the shiny you want, and just generally laughing all day. It makes all those steps seem not quite as bad with friends by your side. Shout out to Bev, Rach, Mandy, James, Becky, Terri and Scott for making me smile this weekend! I feel very lucky to have met such fab people through this game.
We always start the day with a hearty pub breakfast to keep us fueled up throughout the day, and are sure to make sure everyone knows what research needs doing etc, checking in on our progress so no one is left behind. We got really lucky with some trades, in Rach’s case, all six of her special trades on the Saturday were literally lucky, despite not any being lucky trades! I did four specials on Saturday, one planned lucky, and of the other three, two went lucky also. So fun to see!
Social Media Reports
Curious to see how everyone else did, I posted a poll on twitter to see how people felt, at the time of writing, it looks like 0-10 shinies was the average for the weekend.
How was your Pokémon GO Sinnoh Tour? How many shinies did you get over the weekend and what was your best catch? #PokemonGOTour
— Pokémon GO Hub (@PokemonGOHubNet) February 26, 2024
Check out the replies to the tweet if you want to see people’s best catches and feelings on the weekend generally!
How did you do this weekend? I felt it was pretty comparable to other Tour events, but I do also think I have been exceptionally lucky during the various Tour events. Overall I really enjoyed the event, the addition of the Hisuian variants made a big difference to what may otherwise have felt like an event without much new to hunt added to it. The only major change I’d have liked to have seen is the shiny boost applying to all Pokémon, rather than just some.
