Weekly Recap
I haven't actually made a weekly recap in over a month, so I forgot to document my adventure sync summary. I believe I had a little over 50 km walked, which definitely is not bad considering I was sick most of the week and there was Thanksgiving.
We got a haul of twenty shinies this week, 15 of which are due to Pikipek comday. Of the other 5 there were actually a couple of new additions, those being Shroomish and Hitmontop. Picking up the DMax Lugia is also very nice, I haven't had a shiny Lugia since I traded one away a few years back. The Virizion is also a good pickup to pad out my lucky trades tag.
We got a nice serving of hundos this week too. Starting with a cool Tundra region Scatterbug, which was also the final Scatterbug I needed to have every region (for the second time.) The Joltik is a new hundo for me, which is always nice, and the Morpeko is actually my second of those. Maybe if I get a third I'll assemble the ultimate rocket battling nightmare team. The same day as the Joltik and Morpeko there was also a hundo Meditite, which accidentally got transferred :/. Not too strained about that though as I already have the perfect Medicham for my 4* Mega Collection. The next hundo is a pretty cool one, that being a DMax Gastly. This is now my second 4* DMax, and this one is going to be super useful if they ever add Max Soup into GO and I'll be able to make this thing into a perfect GMax Gengar. Rounded out the week of 4*s with my first one from the Daily Adventure egg. Quite happy with this one as well, as I have been considering pursuing the perfect water starter collection. And Popplio was one of the ones I was missing.
Monthly Recap
My Monthly Recaps is where I'll be discussing my more longterm goals I set for myself in Pokémon GO. I track these all on a spreadsheet, but as my focus varries and the spreadsheet is a little messy I wont be sharing that today. Instead I'll go over the goals I've achieved recently, the ones I am currently working towards, and some upcoming events.
Even though I have been playing less GO since the release of PLZA, I have actually been pretty steady on my progress. This past month I got my pokedex count up to 916/926, and finally registered Pangoro, which was the final task evolution I needed. Now the only things I am missing are regional exclusives and four of the harder candy evos. Speaking of dexes, I finally finished the megadex, with my final entrant being Glalie. I've been waiting forever to get this guy and they finally put his mega energy into field research tasks. So I grinded them out and this goal I've had for about a year and a half is finally achieved. Another goal that has taken me quite some time was getting my first 4* Max Pokémon. You may have read in the Weekly Recap portion that I caught a 4* DMax Gastly, but the week before I had actually caught a 4* DMax Eevee as well. I am really suprised it took me so long to procure a 4* Max Pokémon, especially since out of most people I know I've done the most Max Battling, and I was one of the only one without a perfect. I guess thats why I got one two weeks in a row now. Hopefully this streak keeps up for this week as well.
Next, lets take a look at the goals I've been busy working on. I've got some pretty big things on my agenda, level 73 and the Pony Tales Masterwork. Unfortunately, they are both a little understimulating. As of right now I am basically just waiting to get my 30 raids in to level up since I am way past the xp requirement for even level 80. Thankfully I lined that up right with the 40 raid requirement for my Pikachu Hyper Training too. And Pony Tales seems to be taking the modern Masterwork route of timegating every step instead of making actually challenging tasks. It is quite frustrating seeing the decline of Masterwork Research. The first handfull were done so excellently. The type of challenge that you would look at and wonder how you would ever finish it. Now the last few I look at and wonder how long until I finish it. Oh well. Maybe I will be wrong and the timegate is just the first step. Or maybe I have just out played the Masterworks. I have friends that did enjoy and find the Meloetta one difficult, because they never caught up to the time gate. I dunno. Anyway, I've got three days left until this current timegate is over, then I expect another 10 day one along with a set of easy tasks.
Something I did not expect to bump up on my priority list was actually Vivillon collecting. Two months ago in my last monthly recap I think I said it would be a more passive grind for me, but for some reason I just locked in really hard to fixing my Scatterbug collection and getting the candy to evolve them all. Maybe all the Kalos energy in the air inspired me. As it stands right now I've got all 18 Scatterbugs I need, and I've got 1521/2250 of the candy for evolutions. I've got one evolved into Vivillon already too that I just realised I didn't account for. So that makes out to at least between 105-183 encounters, with no candy bonus event, and depending on if I remember to use Pinap berries.
The other things I am working on that are on my Priority list are all a little more straight forward. Im currently walking my Snom to get candy for its evo, since its the evolution I need in my dex that I am the furthest away from candy wise. I only need 20 more Larvesta candy to get Volcarona registered, and 75 more to finish the Honedge line. Both of those I can see being done before I evolve my Snom, which is why I am choosing to walk it over the other two. Speaking of evos, I am waiting for this weekends comday recap to take advantage of the decreased evo requirement for Espeon, Umbreon, and Sylveon to get them all for my Living MaxDex. And the last fun thing is trying to get to 10 million stardust. I've got 8 million right now, and to be honest I have not even been trying to save any these past few weeks. I caught a lot of good stuff around and during Wild Area, so I havent been holding back with powering up. Also, I've been purifying every non-useful shadow for my level up requirement. I've got a good feeling 10 mil stardust will be achieved soon though. I've still got a few things I'm working on powering up, but after that I don't really see a reason for me to be blowing my stardust. Not to mention there a Delibird spotlight hour with two times stardust at the end of december that will help me catch up on the dust I've been spending.
My active goals have been a little hit or miss lately. I've been keeping up well with my Mateo eggs and Cliff battles, but slacking on my Meltan and Gimmighoul grinds. I've been a little iffy on the Daily Incense too, but have had some pretty good luck with it lately to make up with my lack of consistency. I think I will make an effort to be better with my Daily Incense at least, but the Meltan and Gimmghoul grinds have lost my interest at the moment.
Looking ahead, the new season actually starts tomorrow! Precious paths! It's looking pretty... normal? I guess? There's unfortunately no announced featured Pokémon for the seasonal questline, although it does exist, so maybe there will be a suprise for us. The seasonal spawns, eggs, field research, and even the raid rotations/leaked events aren't grabbing my attention either, which is fine I guess. Means I get to save my resources. There will be a new Masterball Masterwork, which I will be getting. But I am not holding my expectations to high for it as you can assume from my opinion on current Masterworks that I mentioned earlier. There seems to be a good flow of new Pokémon debuting, normally and in Max battles. So that is some calmer stuff for me to work on.
The real big thing lingering off in the distance is Kalos Tour. We just got the first set of information revealed to us last week and people are definitely reacting to it. I can't believe people have not learned yet that we don't ever know the headliners for big events until about a month before, so I dont think that what they have announced now is anywhere close to the final product. However, what I am really interested in is what will be the headliner. This is one of the rare times in Pokémon GO where there are a multitude of options to pick, and most of them I think will be very interesting. There are Mega Mewtwo X and Y, Mega Zygarde, Shiny Zygarde, Zygarde's signature moves, and even all the new PLZA megas and the new ones we will be getinng in the DLC. I've been thinking about this, and the future major GO events a lot, so I think I'll be making a dedicated blog post soon going over all my spectulation and ideas. Until then, BKVAZ out!
Wildlife Encounters
This squirrel that ran up to me and gave me shifty eyes for some reason.
This nice chunk of a wasps nest I found on the ground and took home with me. No idea where it came from, couldn't find the rest of the nest anywhere in the area.