Water biomes are amazing!
So today ( or yesterday since it is now 1:00 am) I went to the Santa Cruz Boardwalk, and holy crap the spawns were amazing. There were so many Psyduck, Slowpoke, and best of all Magikarp everywhere. I now have enough candies to get Slowking and Golduck, but best of all, I went from 165 to 315 Magikarp candy (that is way more than I got during the entire water event). Basically I was just using my pinap berries on all of the water types. I can't believe I am saying this but I actually might be able to get a Gyarados sometime in the future. I should probably go to the beach nearby as I have never even been since the game came out. Basically what I am saying is that I would definitely recommend checking out a water biomes if you ever get a chance to because it is definitely worth it.
Answers
I am guessing that shiny Magikarp is as rare as shinies are in the real games which would mean it is either a 1/8192 chance or a 1/4096 chance depending on if PoGo is using gen 1-5 ratios or gen 6-7 ratios. Since this game came out during gen 6, they are probably using the 1/4096 chance. Either way, don't go expecting a shiny every time you see a Magikarp or at least until a method for shiny hunting is discovered, if there even is any.
I find this hilarious.
Last year on this board there was complains that trainers were not getting good spawns such as Dratini who frequently spawns in a water biome which they didn't live in or were not close to. When I responded that this is an AR game and you have to actually get off your ass and travel to get good pokemon because if Ash stayed in Pallet Town all his life he wouldn't have all the great pokemon he have now, my comment wasn't well received and they strongly believed everyone deserved the same opportunity to catch the same pokemon no matter where they lived.
My how times have changed.
I live on the coast in a water biome.
I am very happy to be "swimming" in Slowpokes, Psyducks, Krabbys, Remoraids, etc.
I have been playing since last July and have caught 630 Magikarp to date (but no shinys) for which I have 5 x Gyarados (2 with twister) and over 1000 Magikarp candy waiting for that elusive shiny.
On the other hand I only have only 58 catches for my Dragon Tamer badge and 77 for my Black Belt (fighting) badge.
Despite having over 15,000 catches, my team is very poor in fighting, grass and bug types.
Please do not believe all the hype you may hear about being in a water biome. What you gain from being in one biome, you loose out from not being in another.
I'm in a similar situation to you - I'm fairly well off for water types, with a small army ot Vaporeon and Poliwrath, four Gyarados, but only one Dragonite.
I also have only one each of Venusaur, Blissey, Charizard and Machamp.
I do not have a Snorlax. No hatches, and never seen one in the wild.
I've been playing since the end of August and will hit level 34 tomorrow. And no Snorlax...
I live neat water and have caught 1700+ magikarp. And 10 wild gyrados. That's almost 5 a day for a year. I have 7 gyarados with high IVs. I don't even keep the magikarp unless they have >90% IVs anymore as I have about 8 I could evolve now. I still catch them for xp and dust.
Anyway, it's still nice when a dratini shows up in my living room.
