Pokemon Go December Community Day – The Climb #659

Saturday 12^th December 2020

Come the end of the year, Niantic holds a special Pokemon Go weekend where all the Pokemon from the year’s previous community days spawn. It’s a great way to catch up if you missed any of the days, as well as get some extras and evolve them for the community day special move.

Inevitably, every year there are some community days that are incredible and you want to use to stock up, but most are a bit meh!

Because, despite the lockdown, I’ve been pretty good at playing community days, and prepare by not evolving any high levels pokemon I catch in case they are subject to a community day, I’ve found I’ve got to the end of the year, and have everything I need. Today’s a great way to catch up. Except, I don’t need to catch up.

So for me, today’s been about possibly getting a good shiny that can be used for Great league or has a high IV. Niantic also recently released new player levels, except now there are conditions attached. As well as XP, I need to do a bunch of raids and catch 200 pokemon in a day before I can hit level 41.

I’m not too worried. Most people will come unstuck by the XP requirements which get ridiculously high. I have the XP so it’s just a case of doing the tasks, which whilst will take many months, will still be quicker than those who need the XP.

However, I had decided that a community day was a good chance to do the 200 Pokemon in a day, and have been stocking up my Pokeballs over the last few days for a big day today… not because I want the Pokemon but because I want to complete that task.

It proved a good choice. Niantic seems to be going crazy over special research lately. These are quests, and for the last few months community day has come with a paid-for research challenge option. It’s 79p and it’s a bit of fun so I tend to do it. It makes catching all those Pokemon have a bit more purpose rather than just looking for something ‘good’.

Normally, I can complete the challenge in about an hour. For the last few months where I’ve not been into the game that much, I’ve been doing the research, getting a few shinies, evolving the high IV ones I’ve kept for a day such as this, and finding myself a decent one for PvP to evolve. And then I’m done after just a few hours.

This research required 15 of each of the various pokemon from the community days that were spawning. That doesn’t sound a lot… but when you are playing from home and on incense, it took me all day. In fact, it took me longer. This end of year community day stretches over 2 days and there are still some I need to catch tomorrow.

I’ll get it done, and more importantly I did catch the 200 Pokemon I needed for my level 41 task. I did that way before even complete stage 2 of 4 of the research this weekend. I burned through all 500 Pokeballs I’d saved up.

I’m not sure if I’m finding my love for the game again, but the fact that I can now regularly play as I work, means I resent these events that take up my entire day a little less. Hopefully in 2021, we can start going out again a bit more, and with it, not feel so crippled by the game for trying to limit social contact during a pandemic.