Community Day April 2020 Guide

• Drastically increased spawns for the Pokemon Abra
• The release of Shiny Abra
  • Obtainable from catches, hatches, research, and raids
  • An increased Shiny rate (roughly 1 in 23) during Community Day hours
• 3-hour Incense (likely not Lure Modules)
• 3x Catch Stardust
• Take a Snapshot during Community Day for an Abra Photobomb (up to 5 times)
• One-time purchasable Community Day Bundle
  • 1,280 PokeCoins
  • 1 Elite Charge TM
  • 30 Ultra Balls
  • 3 Super Incubators
  • 3 Incense
• Exclusive Special Research “Investigating Illusions”
  • $1 or equivalent in local currency
  • Rewards 13,000 Stardust, a Poffin, a Rocket Radar, and more.
• Additional gifts from Buddy Pokemon
  • Most be Great Buddy or higher
  • Contains helpful items, such as Pokeballs
• Buddy Up concurrent bonuses
  • Additional Items and Souvenirs from Buddy Pokemon
  • ½ Buddy Distance (for candy and hearts)
  • Easier Excited Mood Requirement
  • Treats keep your buddy on the map for twice as long
  • 2x Evolution XP
• All Kadabra evolved during Community Day hours learn the exclusive move Counter (Alakazam Only)
  • Fast TMs and learning a New Move will not give you this exclusive move
  • Must evolve a Kadabra during CD in your region (or up to two hours after)
  • Have a stable internet connection and consider doing a test evolve, as Niantic acknowledges server issues can and do happen during CD, yet refuses to compensate/correct this known issue.

Community Day and Covid-19

This is the first Community Day taking place while a majority of the world is on lockdown from the global pandemic of the Coronavirus. Because of this, Niantic has added additional elements to make the event more enjoyable for those impacted by widespread lockdowns. Please use safety and common sense while playing in this event. For other Community Day related tips, check out February's Community Day Guide. For additional Coronavirus considerations, check out our article on that subject as well.

Where applicable, this section will be updated to include new information as our friendly NZ “beta testers” experience CD before anyone else in the world. On Community Days with new, unpredictable features (and this Community Day has a lot of them!), the only way to know for sure how they’ll function is having others experience it first. Check back here before CD to see if there’s any last-minute tips you need to know!

Playing in NZ? Thanks! We monitor reports on The Silph Road carefully, though you can also submit reports here on GamePress or directly to NoLucksGiven on twitter. Additionally, it is even more recommended you have a stable internet connection and consider doing a test evolve, as Niantic acknowledges server issues can and do happen (especially in your region) during CD, yet refuses to compensate/correct this known issue.

2 Incense

Each Incense lasts 3 hours, meaning 2 will allow you to play the entire event while Incensed, a necessity for those hoping to play while at home.

Turn on vibrate or connect your Pokemon Go+. Incense Pokemon are actually invisible for a few seconds after spawning. Navigating through other menus can help reload the map and make these Pokemon appear quicker.

1-12 Star Piece

12 Star Piece is probably overkill, as you won’t be playing to the full extent for 6 full hours. Use Star Pieces during your peak playtimes and consider cleaning up your Research Encounter bank while doing so! Triple Dust is great regardless. Don’t feel bad if you’re out of Star Pieces, but if you only have a few you’re unlikely to find a better time to use them.

Check out the section "Breaking the Bank" for additonal tips on maximizing Stardust and Star Pieces. Using one Star Piece at least at the event's start, in combination with your daily streak, will result in a lot of bonus Stardust.

Plenty of Pokeballs

Make it a priority to open as many gifts as possible each day to restock on Pokeballs before the event. After the event, keep opening to prepare for the next one!

Increase your storage capacity so you can keep opening. This will allow you to stockpile more balls when you’re not playing as much to prepare for events like this.

The Research “Bank” or “stack” aka queue is a feature that is officially not supported by Niantic. This means proceed with caution. Niantic’s official stance is that they will not in any way compensate for any errors that arise from using this feature. That all said, it can be very helpful on CDs offering bonus Stardust.

When you run from a research encounter (or an error occurs or your collection is full), the encounter is stored above your existing research tasks. This gives the appearance of having 4 research tasks.

Fleeing from additional tasks (simply claim your reward then run away from the encounter) will allow you to store multiple encounters this way. This is what is commonly referred to as the “bank” “stack” or “queue”. The research will appear here from oldest to newest, meaning if you accidentally run from an encounter, you will have to clear through your entire bank to find it again. Rewards will appear in the order that you complete the task, with only one visible at a time. They’re not gone. Even though you can only see one at a time, the other research is “underneath” the top encounter in your stack. Catch that Pokemon and the next will be visible. While you can store breakthrough encounters and Special research encounters, these follow different rules and do not appear in the same bank.

What’s the Catch?

There is a limit of 100 banked Pokemon. When exceeding this limit, Pokemon will be deleted from the bank. This is the part Niantic now claims no responsibility for. Bank carefully. If you’re going to make use of this feature, consider downloading a counting widget to track your capacity. Recent reports have the oldest banked Pokemon being deleted (though it's always possible this can change). It’s a good idea to know the first Pokemon you have banked and check to see if that changes after acquiring more rewards. If so, you’re at capacity and should catch a few before completing more research.

Using the bank can be a very rewarding element to quickly completing research tasks. After becoming familiar with throwing at task rewards, banking them will allow you to quickly encounter Pokemon that are easy to throw at. The Research Task List can give you a full list of currently available task rewards.

Even if you currently have 0 banked research encounter rewards, start saving today!

Star Piece Like a Beast

You’ll want to make room in your Pokemon Storage if you haven’t already. Delete room for Abra so you can IV check them after. Clear 100 slots for your banked encounters (which may also have good IV) and clean even more space for wild encounters. You’ll want as much room as possible going into CD and you’ll want to make sure you spend as little time switching menus as possible so that you can catch anything that pops up. Even common spawns during this even grant as much dust as you’d normally receive for a Stage 1 Pokemon on a Star Piece.

1st catch of the day or 7th streak catch of the day is additional bonuses added to the dust value based on evolution stage.

If you will catch around 63 Pokemon before Community Day, it is more beneficial to not bother having your 1st catch of the day occur during CD. This counts after midnight the night before too. Most players shouldn’t aim to capitalize on this bonus- but if you really only play during CD, this is fine to do. Put simply, just play the game and don’t worry about this niche min-maxing. Tripple dust bonuses for daily streaks due to Covid lockdowns make this worthwhile for a much wider variety of players.

However, players with their 7-day streak on Sunday will benefit from waiting if they wouldn’t otherwise earn 31,500 Stardust in the meantime. Accounting for weather boosted and evolved spawns this number is probably closer to 270 spawns. Basically, if you’re planning on playing the morning before CD, you can do so as normal or you can not play and basically receive the same amount of Stardust or more!  For many players hitting thier 7th daily streak, it's advantageous to not catch anything before Community Day starts.

Here are a few other things to keep in mind right before Community Day starts for making the most of the granted bonuses.

• If coordinating Lucky Egg friendships, encourage your friends to egg and advance friendships before the event starts. This allows you to focus on catching once Abra start spawning!
• Before you catch anything before CD starts, consult Breaking the Bank's tips on maximizing your Stardust.
• Existing spawns can change to Abra. Clicking on Pokemon to catch or even just to shiny check will prevent them from turning into Abra. It’s fine though to check for shinies you don’t yet have. If you want to catch the most Abra, avoid clicking on spawns as Community Day is about to begin. Catch them for triple dust instead!
• You can only complete research from each stop once daily.  If you complete a task at a given stop, you cannot receive the “Catch 3” task from that stop during Community Day. Occasionally, receiving the task from a stop will lock it into its non-CD task.

Now, with those in mind, there is still room for choice. If you’ll be playing all Community Day then you might not care about one spawn point here and there, and catching weather boosted Machop or shiny checking a Wailmer may be worth it to you. Likewise, you may not find it necessary to fill your inventory with Community Day eggs.

Use this time before the event starts to prep; spin stops, transfer Pokemon, open gifts (and level up friendships), Raid, check-in, and obtain/give out Meltan boxes.

Set Alarms for Items and Evolving

Before the event, consider setting an alarm on your phone for various CD intervals to remind yourself to reapply premium items if you’re using them. There’s a lot to keep track of during Community Day between quick catching, shiny checking, appraising, and talking and catching up with friends! Setting some alerts the night before could potentially earn you thousands of Stardust you’d lose out on if you forgot to break a Star Piece.

With 11:00AM Community Days, a wake up alarm doesn’t hurt either!

Buddy Up

The current Buddy Up event brings a few overlapping bonuses with Community Day. Niantic has also announced that Great and higher buddies will bring additional gifts containing helpful items during CD. Make sure to have a Great or Higher buddy equipped if you’re low on balls!

In general, getting your buddy excited before CD starts is a decent idea, since CD will generally involve some walking. Your mileage may vary… literally- but it’s something to keep in mind.

Feeding your Buddy currently keeps it on the map for 6 hours. That’s how long Community Day is!

Is Investigating Illusions worth it? Well, that’s a question only you can answer. For trainers happy paying for in-game purchases, the answer is likely yes. This space will be updated to reflect anything we learn about this Special Research during the event.

Currently all we know is that it costs $1 of your local currency and rewards 13,000 Stardust, a Poffin, a Rocket Radar, and more. To some players, this is already enough. Others may want to wait to see what “more” is offered.

Niantic has the ability to reward guaranteed Shiny encounters, and will likely make use of this feature in the Special Research.

 

Part 1/4:

Power up Pokemon 10 Times - 10 Pokeballs

Catch 10 Abra - 20 Abra Candy

Make 5 Nice Throws - Abra Encounter

Rewards: 2000 Stardust, 1 Incense, Abra Encounter

Part 2/4:

Catch 15 Abra - 20 Abra Candies

Transfer 10 Pokemon - Kadabra Encounter

Evolve 3 Abra - 1000 XP

Rewards: 2000 Stardust, 1 Incense, 1 Poffin

Part 3/4

Make 3 Great Curveball Throws - 20 Abra Candy

Evolve 1 Kadabra - 5 Golden Razz Berry

Transfer 10 Pokemon - 1500 XP

Rewards: 2000 Stardust, 1 Incense, 1 Rocket Radar

Part 4/4

Claim Reward - 5000 Stardust

Claim Reward - 1500 XP

Claim Reward - 5 Silver Pinaps

Rewards: 2000 Stardust, 3 Rare Candy, Alakazam Encounter

Past Community Days have also changed all tasks at Pokestops to “Catch 3 (of the featured Pokemon)”. It’s unknown whether or not that will continue to be a feature, but it seems likely, considering recent events have also introduced new research tasks.

Recent Community Days have also introduced encounters as a possible reward for this task.

The featured April Community Day Bundle will be a one-time purchase, costing 1280 PokeCoins and containing 1 Elite Charged TM, 30 Ultra Balls, 3 Super Incubators, and 3 Incense.

Many players stopped reading right at “Elite Charged TM” and that in itself is probably worth the price of the box alone. This event introduces this item to Pokemon Go and is quite fantastic. Here’s some cliff notes.

• Allows you to choose moves when TMing a Pokemon. This includes allowing Legacy choices, old moves removed from the game master and featured in past events.
• Mitigates FOMO. You can now more freely Power Up Pokmeon that may eventually receive exclusive moves.
• Allows you to TM a high-IV or already maxed Pokemon, rather than spending Raid Passes on a new one.
• Community Day, an event introducing exclusive moves to the game, is a natural opportunity to entice players into buying an item that circumvents that. (Niantic kiiiinda missed the mark here though considering Alakazam is leanring an exclusive Fast Move and they’re selling us Charge TMs).
• That said, Alakazam can use an Elite Charge TM to learn the now-buffed Psychic!
• Future GamePress content will undoubtedly discuss the best uses for the Elite TMs. Stay tuned!

Locking such an important item to such a limited window is obviously designed to create FOMO in itself, ironically, since it’s an item that otherwise mitigates FOMO. While future Community Days may also feature the item, it’s impossible to know for sure.

From a cost-analysis perspective, this item is on one hand a great value. Purchasing it allows you to skip, for instance, Aeroblast Lugia Raids, entirely if you already have a good Shiny or maxed Lugia. That’s certainly worth more than the Raid Passes that 1280 PokeCoins could buy you.

On the other hand, this item is priceless. The competitive advantage from access to legacy moves in the Go Battle League is immeasurable. There’s also no price you can put on the ability to make useful an old Pokemon with sentimental value.

On your third hand, ECTMs will unlock new move combinations never before possible in Pokemon Go (like a Counter Psychic Alakazam). For these and other uses, stay tuned for upcoming GamePress content analyzing these options!

The announcement for Community Day mentions taking a picture of your Buddy during Community Day for a special surprise. Could this be a way to spawn additional Abra? Additional guaranteed Shiny Abra? Probably! Don’t forget to take a quick pic!

Abra will photobomb up to 5 times during the event!

Community Day Raids and Eggs and Rocket Grunts

It’s a coinflip whether or not this CD will feature these elements. Once the event has started in NZ, we’ll update this space. Check back later!

For Raiding content, it may be easy to quickly write off Counter Alakazam, as it isn’t a Fighting-type Pokemon. However, Alakazam has an incredibly high Attack stat. Is it high enough to make this Psychic-type shine with it’s new exclusive move?

The answer is… Yes! … and no. Alakazam’s Attack isn’t quite high enough to compete with the best Fighting-types. However, none of the elite Fighting-type Pokemon have been released in Shadow form just yet.

Alazakam loves making a fool of Fighting-type Pokemon, and now it’s countering them at being a better Counter user.

Though expensive, a Shadow Alakazam can deal some damage! Even with the increased damage that Shadow Pokemon take, it deals so much that it’s TDO surpasses everything worse than it other than the unreleased Terrakion!

Shadow Pokemon are expensive enough to Power Up that for many players this isn’t really an option, though at least the candy will be easy enough to come by this event! 

Exclusive Move : Psychic?

With the addition of Elite TMs, Alakazam can once again learn the now-buffed Charge Move Psychic. Unfortunately, many better Psychic types exist, like the legendary Mewtwo. Where does Psychic Alakazam stack up against the competition?

Right… Shadow Alakazam. Shadow Alakazam is ridiculously strong and Shadow Pokemon are clearly still problematic. Just look at that TDO. That's eirie! Shadow Alakazam is ridiculously strong. For 1.2x the dust, it only manages half the TDO of Mewtwo, so Mewtwo is still a much better return on investment as evidenced by out DPS^3*TDO Metric.

This event, along with the addition of Elite TMs, marks the first time Psychic Shadow Alakazam is obtainable.

If you’re feeling so bold, these Alakazams aren’t exclusive to players who TMed them to unlock them during March’s Rocket Takeover. Shadow Alakazam can still be usable by unlocking an additional Charge Move. Alternatively, wait for the next Rocket Takeover, TM your Shadow Abras then, then evolve them in December if you want them to have Counter.

In PvP, Alakazam is significantly held back in CP capped leagues because of its Attack-weighted stat line. It is definitely better suited for Raiding content. One thing Alakazam does have is 6 different Charge Moves, but since its so frail, its limited to playing the ones costing the least amount of energy.

An Elite TM can grant access to a Counter + Psychic Alakazam for PvP, though for coverage purposes Shadow Ball is probably more useful, being less resisted and outputting similar damage. Pair it with Fire Punch too, Alakazam’s cheapest move, for Shield baiting and additional coverage.

Great

Not great. Not even good. Deoxys is a format all-star if you’re looking for a Psychic-type with Counter and a wide variety of even cheaper Charge Moves. It would take a Silph Cup that banned Deoxys to make anyone even look at Alakazam, and even then it’s a stretch.

Kadabra has an even more attack-weighted stat distribution and even worse moves. Avoid that one especially.

Ultra

Deoxys Defense form caps at 2274 CP, 2303 with Best Buddy Boost. It’s still way better than Alakazam- and this is in a League dominated by a Ghost-type. Sorry!

Master

Okay Master League. Let’s have a look. Fighting-type Pokemon have an interesting place in the metagame, answering two of the meta’s biggest threats, Dialga and Melmetal, while being totally walled by the format’s third pillar Giratina.

Alakazam brings subtle differences here; its typing and its low HP. Shadow Ball can threaten Giratina, but you’ll die so quick to the Shadow Claws that it’s impossible to fire off 2, and one won't take it down. At least it dies quick so you don’t get farmed. Against other Fighting-types Alakazam’s low HP counteracts the reduced damage it would take from resisting Counter.

Ultimately, Alakazam sits as a bad Fighting-type, a type that already occupied a bad place in the meta. It’s playable, but Machamp and others are certainly better equipped.

PvP Ready IVs

Finding Pokemon that can be evolved to be near the CP-cap in PvP leagues can save a lot of Stardust. Before evolving, consult a CP/IV calculator to confirm your Abra will stay below the CP thresholds. Looking for Abra with CP around or below these thresholds can be great for trainers interested in PvP with limited resources;

For Great League Alakazam, look for Abra with CP 612-652 and below. Kadabra will have CP 980-1006 in this range.

For Ultra League Alakazam, look for Abra with CP 1008-1091 and below. Kadabra will have CP 1625-1680 in this range.

For this article, let’s skip those sections on setting goals, making trades, etc. Just do the best you can. Now is a crazy time, not just for Pokemon Go, but for the world at large. Make the most of what you can, and have fun with the event. Don’t stress out, and know that Niantic will find ways to recycle these events in the future in ways that allow players that were stuck home another chance to participate.

Catch trade and evolve what you can. If Elite TMs and Remote Raiding are any indicator, Pokemon Go is changing. We’ll be here walking you through these exciting new features, and we’ll be here when everything is back to normal.

Keep the journey fun, and happy hunting