Niantic has announced a new event is coming Pokémon GoIt happens next week.
Starting May 22 and running through May 28 is the Rising Shadows event, when Shadow Pokemon will take over the gym.
In these Shadow Raids, you’ll fight against three-star and five-star Shadow Raid bosses that Team Go Rocket has stockpiled. Like most Raid Bosses, you have a chance to catch a Pokemon after defeating it.
While Shadow Pokemon are generally not that hard to defeat, these Shadow Monsters will become enraged when you fight them, increasing their attack and defense; however, you can use Purification Gems to subdue these enraged Shadow Raid bosses , the Purified Gem is a new item that can be assembled from Shadow Fragments.
These Gem Shards may drop from Team Go Rocket, and if you collect enough Shards to use Professor Willow’s newly invented Shard Refiner, you’ll be rewarded with Purified Gem.
Dropped when defeating Footmen, Leaders, or Giovanni, it requires five Shadow Shards to power the Shard Refiner to create the Pure Gem. Once the Pure Gem is formed, you can use it in Shadow Raids when the Raid Boss is enraged. The pure gem calms the beast, removing its rage condition and making it easier to defeat.
This effect stacks if other Trainers in Shadow Raid also use Pure Gems.
During the event, if you’re lucky, you’ll have the chance to catch Shadow Mewtwo, and even a shiny Shadow Mewtwo again. From Saturday, May 27 at 10am local time until Sunday, May 28 at 8pm local time, the Psychic Pokemon will be the five-star raid boss.
The one-star Shadow Raid will feature old hats Shadow Poliwag, Shadow Machop, Shadow Bellsprout, and Shadow Beldum.
The 3-star Shadow Raid will host Shadow Bayleaf, Shadow Quelava, Shadow Crocodile, and Shadow Snessel.
From May 22nd to May 28th, most gyms will be hosting these special raids. On Saturday, May 27th there will be a surge in the Team Rocket Go event where they will be taking over all raids.
That said, gyms not controlled by Team GO Rocket may host other raids. One-star raids of this type would include Clefairy, Tentacool, Marill, Skrelp, and Popplio. Magneton, Lapras, Mawile, and Empoleon will be the latest 3-star raid bosses.
Tapu Fini will continue until May 24th and Regigigas will finally return on May 25th. Same as Mega Pinsir in Mega Raids until the bug Pokemon was replaced by Mega Altaria.
PokeRant
It’s worth noting about Shadow Raids that, like Elite Raids, you can’t join with a Remote Raid Pass. Yes. Another special raid that can’t be joined by those who can’t form a party or live in a rural area. But Niantic doesn’t care. They worry that people will get too many powerful Pokémon and bring them into PvP, distorting the battle meta. Anyway, this is my opinion, I’m just proceeding based on what I’ve observed.
According to producer Michael Steranka, some players are “abusing” the ranged raid system, thereby defeating the “core message” of playing outside with other people. So the company changed the game. Kind of like when you were a kid, if you upset your mom too much, she would force you to go outside and play with your friends. Essentially, this is what Niantic is doing.
Changing the Remote Raid Pass system was “not a decision” and the company “made it lightly,” Steranka said, acknowledging to IGN that they had been using Remote Raid Pass.
“We’ve noticed that the uncapped experience of Remote Raid Passes has led to very unhealthy gaming behavior in Pokemon Go for many of our players. You’ll see players using dozens, sometimes hundreds, of Remote Raid Passes in a single day. It’s really not the gaming experience we want.
“So we really have to do something about it, we know it’s going to be a very unpopular [decision], it was a tough pill to swallow even for myself. “
Someone using hundreds of Remote Raid Pass in one day? I wish I had disposable income like this. Not to mention I have so much time on my hands. Not that I don’t believe the numbers the company crunches, there are whales out there, but nonetheless. Hundreds of raids a day?
The problem is, those players are outsiders. Most players don’t participate in nearly that many raids, and ranged raids are an important feature for some.
According to Steranka, Niantic employees are “constantly playing games” with each other, fighting, trading and engaging in events. That’s great news for the 800+ Ninatic employees who have someone to play with – not to mention they’re located in San Francisco: a big city full of gyms and PokeStops.
But outside of California, there is a huge world of millions of rural towns, some of which live miles away from towns with active Pokemon Go player bases. Then there are players who are unable to leave their homes and move around due to physical or mental limitations. These players were not taken into account.
For example, the town I live in has a lot of PokeStops and gyms; however, the player base depends on which monster is the current Raid Boss. Most people who have played the game since its inception have found most of the Raid Bosses in their PokeDex. This puts new players in our region at a disadvantage as almost no one wants to raid for what they already have. What should these late players do? Driving 20 minutes to the next town in Raid Night just to catch Tapu Fini? No, they use a Raid Pass and invite friends who aren’t in the area, state, or abroad to join the fight. I just can’t fathom how unfair the new ranged raid policy is to many players, and how the company isn’t at all concerned that it’s alienating a large player base – and we won’t even talk about increasing the price of a ranged raid pass, which can be compared to As a form of punishment using only passes.
However, Niantic believes the outrage over the Raid Pass changes will subside, especially when players see what it has planned for the rest of the year.
“As players will see in the coming months, yes, we’re trying to move away from more of the remote play experience, but that’s because we’re going to be introducing a lot of new and interesting ways to engage with games that we think are really rewarding. Confident players will love it,” Steranka said.
“2023 is our most ambitious year yet in terms of feature development, and Shadowstrike is just the tip of the iceberg.”
We will wait and see.
In the meantime, I’m going to have to ignore many of the Ranged Raid invites because I can’t afford to spend $5 in PokeCoins multiple times a week for three packs of Ranged Raid passes. But, that’s exactly what Niantic intended — so in a sense, I’m basically giving the company what it wants.
To be honest, I haven’t done too many raids at all. It’s something I really like. I play this game all the time, and whenever I can I’ll raid – whether in person or remotely. Now, I log in once a day, do my fieldwork, and log out. I’ll be raiding Regigigas when it comes out later this month, since it’s not in my PokeDex yet; however, I doubt I’ll be in Shadow Raids. I work weekends anyway, and the chances of getting the players in my town to agree on a party time are slim.
