July 2023 Community Day Guide

Kanto's time to shine never fully ends! July is coming to a close, but first we've got a new Community Day to celebrate. This time around Poliwag is coming, and both of its Evolutions have unique Community Day moves to aim for.

• ¼ Hatch Distance for Eggs incubated during Event Hours
• 2x Catch Candy
• 2x XL Candy Odds for players Lv.31+
• 3 hour Incense and Lures
• +1 Special Trade for the day
• Special Timed Research will be available that rewards multiple King’s Rocks to help evolve Poliwhirl into Politoed 
• Snapshots will result in a limited number of Poliwag Photobombs
• Drastically increased spawns for the Pokemon Poliwag with increased shiny rate

• Themed Field Research “Catch 3 Poliwag” for balls, berries, and Stardust

• All Poliwhirl evolved during Community Day hours will evolve into Poliwrath that knows Counter, or Politoed that knows Ice Beam!
  • Charged TMs and learning a New Move will not give you this exclusive move
  • Must evolve a Poliwhirl 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.

Don’t forget to also prepare for your local real-world weather and everything that comes along with that. Make sure that you and anyone with you is ready with appropriate/comfortable clothing, snacks, drinks, and everything else that you will need to keep going for as long as you feel is needed. Community Day is a full 3 hours, so pace yourself and take breaks to not get burnt out.

Most importantly, keep it fun!

This guide will cover all of the in-game knowledge you’ll need to make the most out of Poliwag Community Day.

Should I Buy The Ticket

The ticket for this event will grant players access to a few bonuses via the Special Research Line, most notably a few Poliwag with a 10/10/10 IV floor. While this high base-IV floor can be very useful in many cases, most players will likely be trying for a Great or Ultra League Poliwrath and/or Politoed, both of which appreciate an Attack stat below 10 for maximum stat-product. In this case, it's probably best to skip the ticket and just play normally.

Before the Event

• Decide where to play
• Make sure that you have all of the supplies and are fully prepared to go out hunting for Pokemon for several hours
  • In particular, a Go Plus or equivalent device can be hugely beneficial for Community Day proceedings
  • If you intend to use one, then remember to Check your Go Plus settings in-app before the event! If you want to check every Pokemon manually, then set it to only hit Pokestops/Gyms to make item farming easier
• Get your items ready
• Set reminder alarms
• Research the Exclusive Move to see how valuable it is
  • We’ve got you covered, as we talk about Counter Poliwrath and Ice Beam Politoed just a few sections below this one
• Review additional ways to acquire the Community Day Pokemon (Raids, Research, Eggs, and Rocket Battles), try to catch high-IV individuals before the event in order to make the proceedings as stress-free as possible
• Determine if you need Candy for the Community Day Pokemon, and use Pinap Berries accordingly.
  • Remember; low-CP Pokemon are easier to catch, so using Pinap Berries on any lightweights that you may encounter may be a good idea if you’re gathering candy.

During the Event

• Use your items and set Lures as soon as the event begins.
• Snap up every Poliwag that you see and keep on the move!
• Make note of any Four-Star Poliwhirl Raids that you find along your journey, especially as the event nears its close.
• Quickly hit up Pokestops for items and Research, turn in your research ASAP in order to make room for more.

After the Event

• Appraise everything
• Find a trading partner
• Evolve your Pokemon
• Start preparing for the next event!

Poliwag spawns will be dramatically 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:

Time Travel

Since this event is 2PM-5PM based on local time, those lucky enough to be near a timezone shift in some parts of the world can take advantage by starting an hour earlier or ending an hour later. Start East then make your way West sometime after the first hour. This shouldn’t affect most players but can be a nice bonus to players willing to travel a little more during CD. Remember to stay West as you evolve for the exclusive move.

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!

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 Campfire, or be the first in your area to create a group. If you see other trainers in your gyms, that means that others are out playing! More trainers means more fun, and Lure Modules appear for all players, so you can all share the increased spawns. Returning and new players- ask around and figure out where established players are planning to play!

Clusters and Lures

If you want to catch the most Pokemon, focus on cluster spawns in areas with lots of network traffic such as parking lots and apartment complexes and high Pokestop dense areas that can be easily Lured up. 

Weather

Pursuing weather-boosted Community Day Pokemon grant you higher CP, so it’s advised to hunt in areas forecasted to have a weather that will result in a boost if possible, unless your goal happens to be PvP IVs. This comes with decreased catch rates, but is offset in Stardust gained and saved from catching weather boosted Pokemon. Pay attention to official weather reports as well as other trainers playing in different level 11 S2 cells (in-game weather boundaries).

Weather boosted Pokemon have an IV floor of 4/4/4. This means their IV spreads are more likely to be better for PvE, but less likely/impossible to result in good PvP IVs.

0-6 Star Pieces

For Stardust-Boosting Community Days, a Starpiece is an absolute must. For non-boosting Community Days, the additional gains may still be worth the price for sheer volume of catches alone.

0-7 Incense

Having 6 Incense will let you crack open one every 30 minutes and make it last the entirety of the event. How many Incense you choose to use depends on availability, meta-relevancy, and rarity of the featured Pokemon. Remember to bring more if you intend to hit Four-Star raids to artificially extend the Community Day spawns beyond the normal window.

Keep walking! Incense spawns more Pokémon while you’re moving! Even if you’re stuck at work where nothing spawns during the event window, popping some Incense could help you nab a shiny or two. Remember that “quick catching” your Incense spawns will still make them visible on the map after the catch.

Lure Modules

Lure modules placed during Community Day hours will last 3-hours long. Playing in an area with a lot of stops will allow you access to a lot more spawns too. Remember to bring more if you intend to hit Four-Star raids to artificially extend the Community Day spawns beyond the normal window.

Glacial, Mossy, Rainy, and Magnetic lures roughly double the amount of lured spawns, with half of the spawns coming from a specific list and half coming from the biome, which should be taken over during Community Day. Because of this, using a new, upgraded Lure Module quickly becomes worthwhile during CD’s 3-hour lure bonus.

These lures can bring rarer catches including some evolved forms with bonus Stardust, but you may want to still focus on the feature Pokemon spawns with their limited window exclusive moveset and increased shiny chance. 

PRO-TIP: Use a new Lure at 4:59. It will still last 3 hours and you can catch a few Pokemon while you evolve and trade Poliwag. You won’t be able to lure anything Lured during Community Day, but there's usually a few unlured Pokestops, hopefully ones in air conditioning or with comfortable seating. This may not be possible in urban and extreme rural playing without a lot of communication.

0-6 Lucky Eggs

Community Day can be a great time to coordinate Friendship level ups for both players to egg and receive double XP as it’s likely you’ll both be playing. Even for events that don’t sport an XP bonus, it still may be worth using an egg or two due to the sheer volume of catches. Remember to bring more if you intend to hit Four-Star raids to artificially extend the Community Day spawns beyond the normal window.

Berries and Great/Ultra Balls

It’s always a good idea to stock up before CD. The themed research “Catch 3 Poliwag” can be easily accomplished to help keep the Pokeballs flowing during the event. So it may not be necessary to stock up beforehand in all areas. Active Pokemon from Lures and Incense can also deplete your resources. Players low on resources should remember to always open daily gifts and to upgrade item bag storage as soon as possible. It is an investment that quickly pays for itself, especially if you’re able to occasionally grind and stock up on items.

Saving Incubators

One of the best uses in the game for paid Incubators is Community Day events featuring 10km hatchable Pokemon.  During some CDs, the featured Pokemon was obtainable via eggs at an increased rate. Because of this, it’s generally best to save Incubators for events that feature reduced hatch distance.

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 the featured Pokemon start spawning!
• Existing spawns can change to the featured Pokemon. Clicking on Pokemon to catch or even just to shiny check will prevent them from turning into the featured Pokemon. It’s fine though to check for shinies you don’t yet have. If you want to focus heavily on the featured Pokemon, avoid clicking on spawns as Community Day is about to begin. Catch them with Community Day bonuses active 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.

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.

During Community Day, Research Tasks are changed to “Catch 3 Poliwag”, and the rewards are generally the following:

• 500 Stardust.
• 2 Ultra Balls.
• 5 Great Balls.
• 2 Pinap Berries.
• Poliwag encounter
• 1 Golden Razzberry

This allows you to not stress about Research during the event and concentrate on catching. It also means that Trainers can rest easy knowing that Community Day itself will help provide them with additional Pinaps, Ultra Balls, and Great Balls! There are a few additional things to keep in mind as far as how this functioned last Community Day;

• Research from each stop can only be completed once each day. If you complete a task at a given stop, you cannot receive the “Catch 3” task from that stop.
• Tasks revert to their pre-CD tasks when CD is over but you cannot receive research from Stops where you completed “Catch 3” or the original research.
• Because of this, you may decide to skip over stops during CD that you know give desirable research (from Discord, Facebook, etc.) or complete them before CD starts.
• Many players may do the opposite, choosing not to complete Research in areas they know they will be during CD for easy rewards.
• Check to see if you have completed the Research Task of a given Pokestop by the indicator in the top right corner of a Pokestop

Players should be on the lookout for raid groups that may be hunting down Poliwhirl Raids after the event ends. This four-star raid can potentially be soloed with the top Grass or Electric counters, and is an easy duo even with sub-optimal counters. Catches have a 10-IV base, meaning you have higher than normal odds of finding a high-IV Community Day Pokemon from these raids while also saving a bit of candy due to not having to evolve a Poliwag.

Remember that beating a Poliwhirl raid will basically extend Community Day for 30 minutes around the gym that the Poliwhirl had control over, with enhanced Poliwag spawns/an increased Shiny chance. In this regard, it's possible to extend Community Day greatly by hitting up these raids.

For this portion of the event, try to find an area that has a lot of gyms in order to not only increase the odds of finding a Poliwhirl raid and also give a chance to have overlapping ranges for more Poliwag spawns.

Among the two Community Day moves, Counter Poliwrath is definitely the winner. Counter is among the best Fast Moves in the game for PvP, so granting it to Poliwrath is a huge boost in terms of general utility.

Meanwhile, Politoed's access to Ice Beam is genuinely useful, but not quite as good as Poliwrath's new Fast Move of choice. If you're only going for one of the two, then prioritize Poliwrath, but definitely try for a good Politoed if at all possible as well.

Determine how many of the featured Pokemon you want this Community Day and plan accordingly as far as resources and acquiring high IV individuals goes. Set goals and pay attention to how much candy you earn. Keeping track can help you determine play patterns for future CDs.

As mentioned previously, especially if your CD availability is low, try to score some trades with local players leading up to CD and make use of the Lucky friend feature to help maximize your odds of getting a high-IV individual.

Set goals based on previous Community Days as a benchmark. Use this to let you know how aggressively you need to hunt and Pinap, as well as how many high IV options to target.

Trade Advice

Coordinating with a Lucky Friend during CD can allow you to swap a day 1 shiny Pokemon to reroll IVs. Coordinating with multiple Lucky friends can allow you to reroll a few for IVs, though you can only do two special trades on Community Day.

Here are some additional features to keep in mind about trading:

• Swapping a Shiny will count as a Special Trade 
• Pick a trade partner you have high friendship with. IV floor increases with friendship tier.
  Good Friendship - 1/1/1 IV floor
  Great Friendship - 2/2/2 IV floor
  Ultra Friendship - 3/3/3 IV floor
  Best Friendship - 5/5/5 IV floor
• Pokemon caught farther than 10km (6.21 mi) apart award 2 candy when traded.
• Lucky Pokemon have an IV floor of 12/12/12. 

The featured Pokemon will likely have its Base Catch Rate changed to 40% as we have seen with previous CD spawns.

Here are the breakdowns for players with the appropriate Gold badge(s). These calculations also assume maximum radius Great! throws. Your ability to reliably throw into smaller bonus radiuses may also increase throughout the day, increasing your catch rate.

• Levels 1-7 have an 89% chance or higher to be caught with a curved Poke Ball Great! Throw. 
• Level 12 and below have a 90% chance or higher to be caught with a curved Great Ball Great! Throw. 
• Level 20 and below have a 90% chance or higher to be caught with a curved Ultra Ball Great! Throw. 

Searching “4*” will display all perfect Pokemon. Searching “4*&Poliwag”  will display all perfect Poliwag. 4* and sorting by recent should also suffice. 

Using the tips above, hopefully this will turn out to be a great Community Day for all who join in the festivities. As always, it’s important to be prepared, but a bit of spontaneity and making quick changes to your plans can result in new adventures and experiences. Don’t forget to be aware of the world around you not just for your safety, but also for the sake of creating memories this Community Day, and we hope that everything goes perfectly for all of our readers!