Shadow Pokemon are taking over raids during Pokemon Go’s Rising Shadows event

Niantic has announced a new event coming to pokemon goand it takes place next week.

Starting on May 22 and running through May 28 is the Rising Shadows event, in which Shadow Pokemon will take over 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 the Pokemon once it’s defeated.

While Shadow Pokémon are generally not that hard to beat, these shadow monsters become enraged as you fight them, increasing their attack and defense; however, you can subdue these enraged Shadow Raid bosses using Purified Gems, a new item that can be assembled from Shadow Shards.

These gem pieces can be dropped by Team Go Rocket, and if you gather enough shards to use Professor Willow’s newly invented Shard Refiner, you’ll be rewarded with a purified gem.

Dropped by defeating Grunts, Leaders, or Giovanni, five Shadow Shards are needed to power up the Shard Refiner to create a Purified Gem. Once you have formed a purified gem, you can use it in a shadow raid battle, when the raid boss is enraged. Purified gems can calm the beast, negating its rage 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 chance to catch Shadow Mewtwo and even a Shiny Shadow Mewtwo, if you’re lucky. The psychic Pokémon will be the five-star raid boss starting Saturday, May 27 at 10 a.m. until Sunday, May 28 at 8 p.m. local time.

One-star Shadow Raids will feature old hats Shadow Poliwag, Shadow Machop, Shadow Bellsprout, and Shadow Beldum.

Three-star Shadow Raids will host Shadow Bayleef, Shadow Quilava, Shadow Croconaw, and Shadow Sneasel.

From May 22 to May 28, most gyms will host these special raids. On Saturday, May 27, Team Rocket Go’s activity will increase and they will take over all raids.

That being said, gyms that are not under Team GO Rocket control can host other raids. Such One Star Raids will feature Clefairy, Tentacool, Marill, Skrelp, and Popplio. Magneton, Lapras, Mawile, and Empoleon will be the final three-star raid bosses.

Tapu Fini will continue until May 24, and Regigigas will finally return on May 25. Same with Mega Pinsir in Mega Raids until the bug Pokémon is replaced by Mega Altaria.

PokéRant

Regarding Shadow Raids, it’s worth noting that, like with Elite Raids, you can’t join using a Remote Raid Pass. Yes. Another special raid that people who can’t form a party or who live in rural areas can’t participate in. But Niantic doesn’t really care. He worries that people will acquire too many powerful Pokemon and bring them into PvP, which would skew the battle meta. That’s my opinion anyway, and just based on what I’ve observed.

According to producer Michael Steranka, some players were ‘abusing’ the remote raid system, thus going against the ‘core message’ of playing outside with others. So the company changed the way the game is played. Sort of like when you were a kid, if you bothered your mom too much, she would make you go out and play with your friends. Essentially, that’s what Niantic is doing.

Changing the Remote Raid Pass system “was not a decision” the company “took lightly,” said Steranka, who admitted to IGN they used remote raid passes all the time.

“What we noticed is that the kind of uncapped experience of Remote Raid Passes led to some really unhealthy gameplay behavior for a lot of our players in Pokémon Go. You would see players using dozens, sometimes hundreds of Raid Passes remote in a single day, and that’s not really the experience we intended the game to be.

“So we had to take action on it and we knew it was going to be incredibly unpopular.” [decision]And it’s a hard pill to swallow even for me.”

Were there people who used hundreds of remote raid passes in one day? I wish I had that disposable income. Not to mention a lot of time on my hands. Not that I don’t believe the numbers the company did, there are indeed whales out there, but still. Hundreds of raids a day?

The thing is, those players are profilers. Most players don’t participate in as many raids as that, and remote raids are an important feature for some.

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 they’re located in San Francisco: a massive city filled with gyms and PokeStops.

But outside of California, there is a huge world where millions of rural towns exist, and some players even reside miles from a town with an active Pokémon Go player base. And then there are the players who cannot leave the house and move due to physical or mental limitations. These players are not being taken into consideration.

The city I live in, for example, has a lot of PokéStops and Gyms; however, the player base depends on which ‘mon the current Raid Boss is. Most of those who have played the game since its inception have the most Raid Bosses in their PokeDex. This puts new players in our area at a disadvantage because hardly anyone wants to raid for something that already has multiples of it. What are these gamers who are late to the party supposed to do? Drive 20 minutes to the next town on Raid Night just to catch a Tapu Fini? No, they use a Raid Pass and invite friends who are out of area, out of state or out of country to join the battle. I just can’t get over how unfair the new remote raid policy is to a lot of players and how the company doesn’t care in the least that it’s alienating a large portion of its player base, and we won’t even get into the price. increase for Remote Raid passes, which one can liken to a form of punishment just for using one.

However, Niantic believes that the hype over the Raid Pass changes will subside, especially when players see what it has planned for the rest of the year.

“As gamers will see in the coming months, yes, we’re trying to move away from that remote gaming experience, but that’s because we’re going to be introducing a lot of fun new ways to interact with the game that we feel like.” I’m really sure that player will enjoy it,” Steranka said.

“2023 is our most ambitious year yet when it comes to feature development, and Shadow Raids are just the tip of the iceberg.”

We’ll see.

In the meantime, I’m going to have to ignore a lot of remote raid invites because I can’t afford to spend $5 several times a week on Pokécoins just to buy a three-pack of remote raid passes. But this is just what Niantic is aiming for, so I’ll basically give the company what it wants, so to speak.

If I’m honest, I haven’t been raiding at all. And it’s something I really enjoyed. I played the game all the time and raided whenever I could, both in person and remotely. Now, I log in once a day, do my field research, and then log out. I’ll be raiding Regigigas when it shows up later this month because it’s not in my PokeDex yet; however, I doubt that he will participate in Shadow Raids. I work weekends anyway, plus there’s little chance that the player group in my city will agree on a meeting time.