Community Day April 2018 Guide

Show Up Early… or Late?

I still think showing up early is fine as always to familiarize yourself with the location, plan a route, say hi to everyone, and check in with community leaders for the Silph Road Badge. Keeping Gyms your team’s color is much easier to do when you show up early. Trying to flip Gyms during the event is typically much more effort than it’s worth- and the players you’re trying to take the gyms from will be within seeing distance of the Gyms for easy defending.

I’ll talk more on this in the Making the Most of Community Day section but I don’t think timeliness is as important. In fact, your personal start time could very well vary for your community based off what other events you have planned around the in-game bonuses. Because lures are 6 hours regardless, you can still get everything you need to out of CD by showing up 2 hours late, then staying an extra 4 afterwards.

Prepare for Your Day Accordingly

Water, winter jacket, rain poncho, as well as snacks/lunch, water, medical necessities, battery packs, fully charged devices, and water!

Where to Play

Mareep spawns will be drastically increased everywhere during the duration of this event. You aren’t required to play anywhere specifically, but here are some tips for getting the most out of the location you choose.

• Exploring the Community - Use Community Day, and Pokemon Go in general, as an excuse to explore local areas. If you’re blessed with multiple, good locations, make use of them throughout various Community Days. Choose areas with heavy spawn and Stop density so that you can light it up with Lure Modules.

• Playing with Friends - Community Day should be about the community, both the area and your local PoGo Players. Get together with friends, find your local group using The Silph Road’s League Map, or be the first in your area to create a group. If you see other trainers in your gyms, that means there’s others out there playing! More trainers means more fun, and Lure Modules appear for all players, so you can all share the increased spawns.

• Nesting Locations? Maybe! - It’s actually possible that Mareep may nest. Without getting into the technical jargon, know that during CD hours, half of Natu and Marill nests will turn into Mareep nests. That said, I’d actually recommend visiting a nest for a different Pokemon you want to stock up on. I’ll be visiting a Magnemite nest (both because it’s a great Pokemon and because the candy may be relevant in the future).

• EX Eligible Locations - If you’re gathering a large group already, consider locations that can host EX raids. After Bulbasaur CD, a group of myself and roughly 150 other trainers went back two weeks later to battle against Mewtwo (and additional Raid Trains that followed)

• Weather - We haven’t put a huge preference on weather before and it’s not entirely controllable, but I am now fully of the opinion that you should be actively seekingly weather Boosts, at least for this CD (Dratini and Bulba still debatable, really). The bonus stardust is worth a few drops of rain, to me, doubly so as I’ll also be catching boosted Magnemites.

I can’t imagine what we could want in this month’s CD Special Box other than a great deal on incubators. If the deal’s good enough, I’ll likely buy some, but look to the F2P Egg Hatching Tips section for more on that.

Star Pieces are still decent to use if this is a good grinding session for you personally. Mileage may vary. I likely will use 4+ though I could see using less if you have limited time or limited SP. Also, I could see some trainers breaking a few more SP. The event really isn’t limited to the 3 hour window recommended by Niantic. Lures are 6 hours during the Kanto Celebration Event, so feel free to take full advantage of that.

Planning on stocking up on spinnable items both before and after the event is always a good call, but this event I’d put a much lower preference on needing to Pinnap every Mareep you see. With double candy rewards on everything else, I’d much rather save Pinnaps for more battle tested options including Machop, Eevee, Magikarp, Abra, Rhyhorn, Geodude. Also of note, A Mythical Discovery Part 7 of 8 requires you to Berry 50 Pokemon, so consider saving your berries if you’re close to that Special Research Task. Otherwise, Pinap some Machops!

The two previous CD, I believe had no upper bound. There are practical uses for 800+ Dratini and Bulbasaur candy. This time, I think we can set some clear goals. Assuming you don’t have the Gold Electric badge, here’s your chance. Beyond that, I would set the following goals while herding Electric sheep this weekend.

• Try to catch as many Shiny as possible. No upper limit. Try to beat your friends and gloat. Don’t get upset if you lose or only catch one. Really, I always want 3 (for 3 stage families). One Shiny Mareep, Flaaffy and Ampharos each.

• 121 Candy to evolve my highest CP Male Mareep to an Ampharos.

• 121 Candy to evolve my highest CP Female Mareep to an Ampharos.

• 121 Candy to evolve my highest CP Shiny Mareep to an Ampharos.

• 23 Candy to evolve my nest highest CP Shiny Mareep to a Flaafy.

In total, I’m looking to collect 386 Mareep candy. Players going into the event with some Mareep candy, Flaafy, or Pokedex entries can subtract from this number to their liking. The following numbers assume you’re going into the event with 0 Mareep seen/caught.

Catching 50 Mareep with 0 Pinaps awards 300 candy and likely 2-3 Shiny. Transfering 46 will put you at 392, enough to complete the above goals.

Catching 29 Mareep with Pinaps awards 348 candy and likely 1 Shiny. Transfering 25 will put you at 398, enough to complete the above goals.

Obviously, I encourage you to create your own goals and challenges to spice up your gaming and don’t mean for this to sound like something you need to achieve to have fun. I actually bring it up to show how easy it will be to do everything you could really hope to this CD. On the previous two CD, I caught over 3 times these amounts. For this reason, I’m actually going to focus much more on the shiny checking of Mareep and less on making sure I catch every one. I’ll also make sure to catch any with high CP so that I have some good evolve options. After completing the above goals, excess candy will go towards highest IV Mareep, likely stockpiled hatches from before CD.

There’s a reason I’m not stressing about evolving 6 high IV Ampharos. Dragon Pulse Ampharos isn’t something we’re likely to ever care about. I actually love that. I talked in last month’s guide how much I hated the implementation of Frenzy Plant (and it turns out it was a little better than I had thought). Draco Meteor towed the line but this is clearly in the Surfing Pikachu category of exclusive move… for now.

For those unaware, in Gen 6, The Pokemon Company gave certain Pokemon the ability to Mega Evolve. With that, comes increased stats, new abilities, and occasionally type changes. Mega Ampharos gains the type, you guessed it, Dragon. This is the impetus behind Dragon Pulse as an exclusive move. You won’t need a Dragon Pulse Ampharos in your battle parties for anything other than style points for a long time. Even with unique defensive typing, Ampharos’ low stats make it very unlikely to be a top-tier Dragon-type attacking. Mega Pokemon eventually making their way to GO is still years away, likely including multiple battle works, move reshuffles, and stat rebalances.

Believe it or not, April 2018 will actually be my 9th Community Day. Obviously, only 4 of them were endorsed in-game by Niantic. That didn’t stop my own very active community day of meeting up and hosting our own events. Part of the goal of Niantic’s Community Day is to get trainers all around the world out and playing together, and providing them an additional incentive to do so. Making the most out of this Community Day really goes beyond the basics of the game. Definitely, catch some Pokemon and crack some Star Pieces. But let that be only one of the day’s activities! Here are some other ideas for events that my community has also implemented in previous Community Day events;

• Food Drive
• Barbeque Cookout
• Kickball/Volleyball/Basketball
• Park Clean-Up / Upkeep
• Week-long or 24-hour contests that end during CD
• Raffle/Giveaway
• Scavenger Hunt
• Sell T-shirts
• Throw Bonus Challenge

-Raid (we’ve had several CD during Boss rotation days to all raid together). CD is also a great time to trigger EX raids with large groups.

Firstly, I’m writing this before any type of Special Box is announced. I will likely buy it if there’s a good deal on incubators. Otherwise all coins (and money) should go to the Ultra Box that’s currently available with the best deal on raid passes ever. If you’ve ever considered NOT being Free to Play, now’s the time to break.

Generally, the best strategy for maximizing incubator efficiency is to orange incubate 5k Eggs while Eggs don’t have bonuses special hatches and incubate 2k Eggs in Orange Incubators while Eggs do have bonuses and special hatches. This is because 2k eggs have the highest stardust/km ratio and because it allows you to quickly clear a lot of 2k during events and fill up with event Eggs. This is unaffected by Egg distance events. 10k eggs should get your blue and purple incubators and stacking them together to maximize when you break a Star Piece is also optimal.

This during the Kanto Celebration event, I think this strategy mostly upholds, though it’s reasonable to prioritize 5k eggs as well for double candy on particular species. There is one amendment I am making to this advice with the advent of research.

This above research rewards you with a Chansey Encounter every time, and is currently one of the bests quests in the game, doubled by the fact that it can award up to 14 candy during these bonuses! Because of low Chansey spawns in my biome, this is a quest I actively hunt for, and one that can easily clog up your Field Research tab. Now, while on CD you’ll be able to blow through this Research easily, it’s worth preparing for on other days. This means be more willing to save your 10ks + super incubators and your 2ks for when you have this quest. (The Magmar quest for hatching 3 eggs is potentially worth saving for too, though that is a nesting Pokemon).

Durcing CD hours, I plan on primarily orange incubating 5ks. More casual players will probably also want to incubate 10ks to ensure they can hatch them for double dandy before Tuesday.

Because of the decreased importance of catching a lot of Mareep, and evolving a good Ampharos, I wouldn’t stress too much about these numbers but wanted to provide them still for a comprehensive guide.

Mareep has a 50% Base Catch Rate, the highest we’ve seen of a CD Pokemon so far! I also think Pinaping is less important in general. Comparatively, the previous CD Pokemon had the following BCR:

• Pikachu 20%
• Dratini 40%
• Bulbasaur 20%*

*Bulbasaur actually had its catch rate increased during the CD window only. I think it’s unlikely we will see the same for the already high Mareep, but it’s worth keeping in mind for future calculations. Our Catch Rate Calculator can be used to determine exact catch rates for specific throws against Mareep. Also, remember that your ability to Great/ Excellent Mareep (and Kanto/nesting Pokemon )will increase throughout the event as I pointed out when I recently tutorialized all of the steps to reliably making better throws in this article and video. Keep track of how many times you can first throw excellent a Mareep and compete against your friends!

For quickly searching for 100% IV Mareep, you can use this string;

179&cp12,cp39,cp66,cp92,cp119,cp146,cp173,cp200,cp226,cp253,cp278,cp304,cp329,cp354,cp380,cp405,cp430,cp456,cp481,cp506,cp532,cp557,cp583,cp608,cp633,cp659,cp684,cp709,cp735,cp760,cp773,cp785,cp798,cp811,cp823

Pokemon with these CP are not guaranteed to be 100% IV but this could help you narrow that search.

In addition to those, IV check at least your highest CP Mareep and encourage others at your CD to do the same, shouting out any good spawns to your fellow trainers.

You can quickly check a Pokemon’s level by how much Stardust it would cost to power up.

Level 31/32 - 6000

Level 33/34 - 7000

Level 35 - 8000

I recommend evolving the highest level Mareep you catch with the highest CP. A level 30 Mareep with equal or slightly lower CP than a level 27-29 will generally evolve into a higher level Ampharos. Make sure to check level and CP when evolving. Prioritizing IV is fine as well, though you’re very very unlikely to power up any Ampharos.

This CD brings the least to the table in terms of the event exclusive Pokemon. Hardcore players will be left looking for a little more from this event, though some players will get the opportunity to add Mareep, Flaafy, and Ampharos to their Pokedex, in addition to a bunch of sweet Kanto Pokemon. Optimizing your day may mean many different things for you, and there’s still lots to be had from 6-hour Kanto Celebration even lures!

Come early or stay late to participate in all the festivities! If your community isn’t “Making the Most out of Community Day” run some of these ideas by your admins or take the initiative yourself. I still fondly remember the Barbecue that PokerKev took upon himself to organize last October (and I still have the Starmie we all caught that day) Get the ball rolling, and step your game up! I mean that literally too. Some recreational sports thrown into your Community Day can be a lot of fun. The lures will still be going when you’re ready to pick up and play again.

The “Community” part of Community Day is extremely important to me, which is why I took the time to summarize all of the current and relevant information back in February. I wanted my local community and my Reddit community to get the most out of Community Day, which then meant optimizing how many little blue and purple dragon snakes everyone caught that day. Really it’s the people though that make the day truly special. So thank you to all who continue to come out to CD locally and worldwide. All 9 Community Days I’ve been lucky enough to participate in have all been a blast, and I don’t expect this one to be any different!