>> Pokémon GO - TO SPOOF OR NOT TO SPOOF (part 4)

Now is my chance to show the various Pokémon that I've encountered - let's take a look.

I started playing Pokémon GO as it came out in Sweden - over seven months ago. It has always been a great experience until I got to level thirty one and then I didn't see any new Pokémon spawn and the game simply stagnated in the small town I live in. I did manage to do a bit of travelling during this time however. Let's take a look at the rarer Pokémon that you need to travel or be extremely lucky to encounter - I am sick of Pidgey, Rattata, Spearow and the like.

While I had a number of these already (none of them 100%) - it is nice to finally have all six regional Pokémon, some even have the best movesets. More importantly; they are now perfect (100% IV) which means they will eventually have the most possible combat power for gym battles.

   

   

I actually did catch a number of the regional Pokémon legitimately - Kangaskhan in my home town of Margaret River, Mr. Mime in Munich (visiting friends), Tauros in New York and Farfetch'd in a stop over in Hong Kong. Before people start calling our "cheater" - I must remind people I played the game for seven months, got to level thirty one and the game stagnated.

The most elusive Pokémon to collect are the 'Unown' variants, twenty six in total:

   

It took a few days and some waiting for the phone to buzz while sleeping to get all from A through Z - there seems to be a consensus that some spawn less frequently than others. These are definitely the most difficult Pokémon to find, they are easy to catch (rarely flee) but the first person to have all with perfect IV values - hats off to you my friend whoever you are (when it happens).

 

Getting all twenty six earns you the valuable Unown gold medal for bragging rights. That said; if you have all of the Unown variants - Niantic will probably know you have been GPS spoofing and may decide to give you a permanent ban, depending on how you read the terms of service. A recent application update also shows which Unown letters you have successfully caught.

It wont take long before a group of users who have collected Unowns take over a gym and then strategically place specific characters in gyms so that nasty words are spelled out - remember, gym order is decided based on CP value. It has been discussed in some discord channels.

At the time of writing; I am only short of a 100IV Hitmontop, Lapras and Unown - I also need the various evolution items to evolve waiting 100IV Pokémon into their final forms. Since the baby Pokémon do not spawn in the wild - I am limited to what I have hatched from eggs.

Of course; I'll keep watching out for better Pokémon - replacing the ones I have to seek the perfect moveset, heck; if I ever want to start doing gym battles I may need to start collecting for the best attack and best defence for some specific Pokémon. I doubt I will ever do that tho - I have reached the peak of my interest in the game right now. Until the Gen III Pokédex is released, maybe.

Will posting this get me banned from the game? Probably. Do I really care? Not really - was fun.

My parting words to Niantic would be that they really need to look at the balance of the game between urban and rural players. The game has definitely peaked; it'll be hard to maintain the interest of players if they do not make some serious games to the game in the near future.