I would advise maxing out your bag as a priority. Ditto, just grind common mons between events, will give you the best chance of finding one. We've had quite a few Kanto events for oddish candies, pretty rare in some areas otherwise, cloudy weather afew still pop up though, pinap them all when they do. As you live in a city, there should be no shortage of gyms, work at getting them gold for more items & get on as many as you can to maximize coin potential instead of banking on your one mon being returned that day.
GamePress
What's the point of special research, if you can't progress? And more - a rant
+++ UPDATE +++ I've got my Ditto! Yeah! Just right before the new year starts! A measly 10 CP Zigzagoon was its disguise, but who cares! Finally progress on the Research. Also got 100,000 XP today to level up!
Happy New Year guys!
Hi there,
I am stuck on "A mythical discovery" on level 5 for months because I don't get a "Ditto". And even worse on Level 3 on "A ripple in time" because I have not encountered "Oddish" or "Gloom" to get enough candy to evolve the one I have already. I mean 100 Candy is a lot, especially when you never encounter the Pokémons. Never mind "Sunkern", never encountered one either.
I have anyway the feeling that you very rarely get what you need. When I needed potions, I got all kinds of balls, but never potions. When I needed berries or balls, I got potions. When I need gifts, well I guess you know by now that whenever I spin the stops and gyms, I don't get gifts ... Also what's the deal with some stops giving you gifts 10 times in a row and others never. I live in a big city and like to give my friends gifts with some meaning to their country (well, I reduced that ambitious goal to once a month or so), e.g. Embassy or some pub or restaurant ... The American Embassy for instance has two! Pokestops. During lunch I can walk past there and spin the stops and if I am lucky I get every third or fourth time a gift. The hold for gifts is anyway limited to 10, when you have maxed out your friends list, it is nearly impossible to exchange gifts on a daily basis unless you upgrade your bag to hold 1500 items, because you have to open the gifts, get up to 8 items and spin a lot of stops to get gifts you can pass on to your friends.
I am also wondering what that 50 coin/day limit for guarding a gym is about. I need one Pokémon to guard a gym for 10 hours to get the max. coins per day. And I get the money only once the Pokémon is returned, regardless whether it was in there for 10 hours or 5 days - 50 coins on the day the Pokémon is returned and that's it for that day. You can waste a lot of berries (which you then can't fill up again, because you guessed it by now - the stops won't give you what you need right now.) So there is no reward for feeding the Pokémon to keep it happy and no reward for guarding the gym for days. Funnily enough, I live near a gym and there are apparently no fighters in the vicinity. Sometimes the Pokémon is very unmotivated and still in there for days. Why are they not returned, let’s say, after max. 3 days not being fed berries and you get for each day 25 coins. If the Pokémon is in there for 10 hours and loses the fight you get 50 coins.
Another mystery are the raids. As already mentioned, there are no fighters in this part of town. In all my time fighting I have only fought the raid boss of a 2nd tier raid with another Trainer. Tier 3 raids with the boss having a max of 15000 CP is all I can achieve alone. I would love to fight a 4 or 5 tier raid, but lack of Trainers prohibit it. With that in mind, I don’t understand why the three gyms in my area have every time a 4 or 5 tier raid at the same time. With all the data that is collected by Niantic, they should be able to modify the algorithms to adjust to particular areas. Meaning, there is no point for 3 gyms within 150 meters from each other to have 5 tier raids 3 times in a row when no-one is EVER fighting in even the 1 - 3 tier raids .
The GPS-connection: Again, I am living in a big city. Why am I losing the GPS-connection when being in the same place for a prolonged period of time, either for fighting in a gym, collecting a bunch of pesky Pokémons, or fighting a in a raid? And although I have enabled the “Adventure sync” (not very comfortable with the data collection there as well) I don’t get the impression that the steps I am walking while restarting the mobile (annoyingly, that is the only thing that helps, not only restarting the app, no - restarting the mobile is what it takes, and also no – it’s not the phone, as Google maps still works with the GPS) are being counted, as the eggs I am constantly “breeding” are not moving along with the km’s walked. Another not-so-funny thing is losing the connection to the server. Neither restarting the app or mobile works then. I have to go first to “use another account”, then restart the phone, and type in my user name and password. Sometimes I have to do that 2 or 3 times. What the heck is that about?
And why on earth are some low-level Pokémons (which I don’t want or need, like “Pidgey” or “Rattata”, which I only catch in hope they are a “Ditto” in disguise) with 200 or 300 CP and a green circle so difficult to catch? One wastes more on balls (yes – every ball catches the irksome thing, but it is released over and over again) and berries than that little stardust and XP you get are worth.
Is it all just a scam, so Trainers go out and buy stuff with real money to continue playing? And I feel most of the time like a beta version tester of a mediocre app. Every update that allegedly fixes some bugs, creates havoc in other places. That all is why I had since downloading (the same week the game came out) a couple of pauses lasting up to 3 months not playing.
Report
Answers
Thanks, I've tried several strategies with the gyms, but there is a distinct lack of Trainers fighting. Not only close by, also in other areas of the city. The one gym closest to me is "Gold" now. And I have placed Pokémons in the two others close by, or in gyms along the way, when I picked a fight just to get rid of the surplus potions, but they are there all for days and if they return, then mostly on the same day I already got the maximum of coins. Also if you are far away from the gym where the Pokémon is placed you have to feed a lot of berries, or use the "Golden Razz Berry" to keep your guy happy in there.
You have my sympathy, if you're stuck in areas with little action in can be difficult without resorting to alt accounting with different teams. What we really need is a gym rework to get trainers back interested in gyms, my area can be the same with mons on there for days, luckily I get around & can hit more active gyms to more or less guarantee the 50 a day but some aren't as fortunate. In some cities around the world the problem is the complete opposite where staying on gyms for any length of time is the problem so there's the conundrum facing Niantic, finding a system that is both interesting & suits everyone. Hopefully we'll see a rework at some point next year now all the features they promised are out there.
Too long to read through. I'll only point out that all special research came with a dedicated event that allowed you to complete the research in less than a week. If you don't take advantage of the launch event it may get more challenging to complete. But otherwise is ridiculously easy and quick to complete.
As far as the special research goes, it can be tough if you weren't playing when the event was released but, although the rewards for each level are good sometimes ie TM's, the final "reward" pokemon is pretty rubbish so you're not missing out on anything that'll be game-changing for you if you don't complete it right now.
With the rest of it, some of it will just get easier with time (I'm guessing you're relatively new to the game as you've only managed to get one gym to gold so far) as you get to know the game better and find other players - if you live in a city big enough to have an embassy you will find some more players sooner or later; try discord or other social media sites. For coins, get in as many gyms as possible. For raids sometimes it's just an area lottery (I still haven't done a legendary raid 18 months into the game but that's my small town for you) although with the recent rebalance tier 3's are soloable much sooner and with lower level 'mons and tier fours are generally do-able with 2 once you have levelled up a few good pokemon. For legendaries, keep on with the daily/weekly tasks to make sure you have max chances at the week reward each month (or two months as it's going to be for Jan and Feb.
To improve your catching, use berries which it sounds like you can get in abundance with so many stops and if you haven't already work on learning curveballs - there's a good guide on here about it as it increases your chance of a catch signiificantly.
Bugs and crashes - part of the game unfortunately but as long as I'm playing for free, I'll live with those.
In short, keep playing and it'll get easier and hopefully a bit more fun for you. Also, if you ask a question in here, it'll generally get answered by someone with far more knowledge than me.
Thx Oaf (love that nick, hope that nomen est omen does not apply in your case ;-) ). I am not new to the game, but made long pauses because I was so fed up with all the crashes. Also, as evolution dictates (female and so ...) I am more of a gatherer than hunter and only recently started to go fighting. And it seems that a lot of others are rather opposed to fighting as well where I live.
Re: playing for free. Nothing is for free. Niantic is getting a LOT of data from players (If I can pinpoint the living/working/school location of my "friends" according to the gifts I get, imagine what Niantic can do with that information!) therefore, I don't think it is presumptuous of players to ask for an actually working app. I will never pay actual money for playing a game and I will only play that one as long as it keeps me entertained. I have no problem deleting it from my mobile if Niantic keeps annoying me with crashes. Although I would miss my "friend" in Japan who keeps sending gifts on a nearly daily basis and out of whose eggs hatch the most wondrous Pokémons. I try to keep my eggs to a minimum when opening gifts as I really love to get "exotic" eggs. And I got a lot of new Pokémons from these eggs.
@all the others: I AM NOT A NATIVE ENGLISH SPEAKER/WRITER. Glad to disappoint!!
I think it depends what you want from the game, if you like to collect all the variants then fighting, whether raid or PVP isn't too much of an issue for you. Raiding does make the difference to me, I love slow building games where I can see my progress and it's almost a disappointment when I'm done which with this game might be almost never. My partner plays and now we can both solo up to T3 and duo T4, it's just a case of building the best teams. I just wish they'd release the new pokemon a bit quicker.
I know what you mean re playing for free (or not) given we have to use an email and then give location data for the game to work but as much as I hate this sort of data collections unfortunately now whatever we do, unless we live in the hills using only cash there's practically no activity that isn't tracked these days. But yes, ultimately, if Niantic want us to keep playing they have to give us a working platform and make it keep working. I don't know if it's because I live away from big cities or if the UK doesn't have the same problems as, say, Asia appears to have but my game is pretty smooth.
As with any game, I'll play this as long as I enjoy it and after that, as you rightly say, I'll delete it and find something else.
Your English, by the way, is better than 90% of the population of the UK and 99% wouldn't understand nomen est omen. I didn't see the post that was referred to re English speakers but I can guess. We went to Berlin last year and half of the locals speak better English than me.
..and yes, I do live up to my name sometimes.
Actually pretty common... You can play in Manhattan between Columbus Circle and say Bryant Park and the action is 24 hours 7 days a week gyms are constantly being flipped and it super rare to find a stop that isn’t lured. Go any other direction from Columbus Circle for a 10 or 15 minutes and it’s pretty easy to be stuck in a gym for days .... Just like in Hong Kong head 15, 20 minuets in from the harbor the less gym action.... but you knew that before you made your post... But you just really wanted to demean the female OP
OP your post is a little long to respond to fully but...
With research tasks you really want to complete them soon after they come out - they're always accompanied by favourable spawns or pokestop tasks that make completing them quickly pretty easy. Having said that you'll be able to complete them eventually anyway. Ditto isn't that rare - just keep catching the common pokemon in areas of high traffic - bus stations/train stations etc. are good hunting grounds. With the grass types take a few trips to large local parks, and keep an eye out for grass events. Just be patient!
GPS problems are common in built up areas with tall buildings although often the underlying problem will be your cell phone signal.
It sounds from your other problems that exploring new areas might help. Exploring off your beaten track can help a lot if you've got the time.
Good luck!
The distancetracker is a joke; i bike from place to place of ~2.5 km (in a linear line) and i get at most 100 meters distance added by the eggs and buddy XD, even though i spin 15(!) pokestops on my way.
When the app is open when i m home (standing still) i also get the 'GPS not found' notify and my 'character' keeps walking randomly (but i DO get the distance then lol) and sometimes even runs at a pokestop nearby (~150 meters from my home) and keeps standing there for like a whole hour.
Luckily i'm done with A Mythical Quest'. I'm now stage 8/9 of Let's GO, Meltan. Stage 8 sucks because finding ALL of the required pokemon is IMPOSSIBLE where i live. The ONLY time they spawned were by the release of the quest.
I also did notice the itemdrop from the pokestops but the other way around; more like when u need pokeballs they do not give u pokeballs (or one and a LOT more berries if u compare the minutes before u lose the pokeballs).
I ques there is a algorithm that detects a shortish of pokeballs (or your case; gifts and berries) and will give u less so u get emotional invested or motivated to play/pay more #conspiracyshiiiiit haha
Your theory on raids is a very good and logical one. Also the stardust and rare candy amounts are a joke if u want to power up pokemons (i m level 38) to the max.
