Niantic has announced a new event Pokemon Goand it will happen next week.
On May 22nd and running until May 28th is the Rising Shadows event, during which Shadow Pokemon conquer gyms.
In these Shadow Raids you will face three and five star Shadow Raid bosses deposited by Team Go Rocket. Like most raid bosses, you have a chance to catch a Pokemon after defeating it.
Although Shadow Pokemon are generally not too difficult to defeat, these Shadow monsters become enraged when you battle them, increasing their attack and defense; however, you can tame those angry Shadow Raid bosses with Purified Gems, a new item that can be collected from Shadow Shards.
These gems can drop from Team Go Rocket, and if you collect enough shards to use Professor Willow’s newly invented Shard Refiner, you’ll receive a refined gem.
Drops when defeating Grunts, Leaders, or Giovanni; it takes five Shadow Shards to enable the Shard Refiner and create a Purified Gem. When you form a refined gem, you can use it to battle shadow raids when the raid boss is enraged. Refined gems can calm the beast, negating its enraged state to make it easier to defeat.
This effect will stack if other trainers in the Shadow Raid Battle are also using Purified Gems.
During the event, you’ll have another shot at catching Shadow Meowth and even a Shiny Shadow Meowth if you’re lucky. Pokemon Psychic will be a five-star raid boss from Saturday, May 27th at 10AM until Sunday, May 28th at 8:00PM local time.
One-star Shadow Raids will feature old hats Shadow Poliwag, Shadow Machop, Shadow Bellsprout, and Shadow Beldum.
Three-star Shadow Raids will feature Shadow Bayleef, Shadow Quilava, Shadow Croconaw, and Shadow Sneasel.
From May 22 to 28, most gyms will be running these special raids. On Saturday, May 27, Team Rocket Go activity will increase and they will take over all raids.
However, gyms not controlled by Team GO Rocket can host other raids. One-star raids of this type will feature Clefairy, Tentacool, Marill, Skrelp, and Popplio. Magneton, Lapras, Mavil, and Empoleon will be the final three-star raid bosses.
Tapu Fini will stay until May 24th and Regigigas will finally return on May 25th. Same with Mega Pinsir in Mega Raids until the Bug Pokemon is replaced by Mega Altaria.
PokeRant
Regarding Shadow Raids, it’s worth noting that, as with Elite Raids, you can’t join with a Remote Raid Pass. So. Another special raid that people who can’t gather a group or live in rural areas can’t participate in. But Niantic doesn’t really care. They are worried that people will acquire too many powerful Pokemon and transfer them to PvP, thus distorting the purpose of the battle. Anyway, this is my opinion and I’m just going by what I’ve observed.
According to producer Michael Steranka, some players were “abusing” the remote raiding system, thus contradicting the game’s “core message” with others on the street. So, the company changed the way the game was played. Kind of like when you were a kid, if you got on your mother’s nerves too much, she’d make you go outside and play with your friends. This is essentially what Niantic is doing.
Changing the Remote Raid Pass system was not a decision the company took lightly, Steranka said admitted to IGN they used Remote Raid Passes all the time.
“What we’ve noticed is that the unlimited experience of Remote Raid Passes has led to really unhealthy gaming behavior for a lot of our Pokemon Go players. You’ve seen players use dozens, sometimes hundreds of Remote Raid Passes in a single day. And that’s not really the experience we ever intended for the game.
“So we had to take action on that, and we knew it was going to be an incredibly unpopular (decision), and it was going to be hard for even me to swallow.”
Have there been people using hundreds of Remote Raid Passes in a day? I wish I had that kind of disposable income. Not to mention that I have a lot of time. Not that I don’t believe the numbers the company provided, there really are whales out there, but still. Hundreds of raids a day?
The thing is that these players are outliners. Most players don’t participate in nearly as many raids, and for some, remote raids are an essential feature.
Steranka said that Niantic employees are “constantly playing” with each other, fighting, trading and participating in events. That’s good news for Ninatic’s 800+ employees, who have someone to play with – not to mention being in San Francisco: a huge city full of gyms and PokeStops.
But there’s a huge world outside of California, where millions of rural towns exist, and some players even live miles away from a city with an active Pokemon Go player base. In addition, there are players who cannot leave the house and move around due to physical or mental limitations. These players are not taken into account.
The city I live in, for example, has many PokeStops and Gyms; however, the player base depends on who the current raid boss is. Most of those who have played the game since its release have most of the raid bosses in their PokeDex. This puts new players in our region at a disadvantage, because it’s unlikely that anyone will want to raid for something they already have multiples of. What are these late-to-the-party players supposed to do? Driving 20 minutes to the next town during a night raid just to catch a Tapu Fini? No, they use Raid Pass and invite friends who are not in the area, state or country to join the battle. I just can’t get over how unfair the new remote raiding policy is to so many players and how the company isn’t the least bit concerned that it’s alienating a large part of its player base – and we won’t even get into the price. increasing Remote Raid passes, comparable to a use-only form of punishment.
However, Niantic believes the hype surrounding the Raid Pass changes will die down, especially once players see what’s in store for the rest of the year.
“As players will see in the coming months, yes, we’re trying to move away from remote play, but that’s because we’re going to introduce a lot of new and interesting ways to interact with the game that we think I’m very confident the player will enjoy.” – said Steranka.
“2023 is our most ambitious year yet in terms of feature development, and Shadow Raids is the tip of the iceberg.”
We will see.
In the meantime, I’ll just have to ignore a lot of remote raid invites because I can’t afford to spend $5 a few times a week on PokeCoins just to buy three packs of Remote Raid Passes. But that’s exactly what Niantic is going for, so I’ll basically give the company what it wants, so to speak.
To be honest, I didn’t raid much at all. And that’s what I really liked. I played the game all the time and raided when I could, both in person and remotely. Now I log in once a day, do some field research, and then log out. I’ll be raiding Regigigas when it comes out later this month because it’s not in my PokeDex yet; however, I doubt I will be participating in Shadow Raids. I work weekends anyway, and the likelihood that a group of players in my city will agree on a time to meet is slim.