Pokemon Gotta Catch-Em-All

To join raids, are you certain you're connected to the internet? It seems to default to local network searches only, and you have to hit 'Y' and then '+' to switch to internet searches.

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Bill_Lewis wrote:

So the evolved Pokemon walking around outside of the grass, are they catchable?

Yes, but the level of Pokemon you can catch is gated based on how many badges you have. The more badges, the higher level Pokemon you can catch. Otherwise, you get a message about their guard being up, I think.

Edit: Oh, nevermind. I got a Ponyta through surprise trade but it was named "Rookidee" so I breed it to get one I could name myself. So now I have a few extras if anyone wants them.

Anyone have a Ponyta that they'd be willing to trade for a Farfetch'd?

vlox_km wrote:

I was under the impression it'd be like the Let's Go games. With that one, you could have one save per profile on the Switch. So my and my kids all had our own games going.

I was assuming that's the same for this. I'd guess b/c the profile saves are system wide.

Just to confirm this is how Sword/Shield works, one save file per profile, the same way the Let's Go games did.

As for the game I'm only a few hours in but I am loving the wild area so far. It's fantastic seeing all the pokemon and other characters running around, and the raid battles are a nice for something a little different. I will have to drag myself towards the first gym at some point.

Forlorn Hope wrote:

Edit: Oh, nevermind. I got a Ponyta through surprise trade but it was named "Rookidee" so I breed it to get one I could name myself. So now I have a few extras if anyone wants them.

I might take you up on that. Both for the pokedex purposes, and I may want it for my team.

Is it possible to team up with people on my actual friends list to do raids or do we have to just be lucky enough to be on the same server?

Bill_Lewis wrote:

Is it possible to team up with people on my actual friends list to do raids or do we have to just be lucky enough to be on the same server?

You can play with local only people, so if you are on the same network you should have no problems.

When you are connected to the internet you see a little notification for people looking for raid groups so in theory you would see your friends one if you were in the same area and be able to join via that, although this might be split across different servers as you mentioned so you may just not get the notification at all.

As far as I have seen there is no way to specifically group up.

garion333 wrote:

6 million in sales, 2 mil in Japan alone, becoming the fastest selling Switch game and pushing Smash to no 2. And after all that whining from part of the fanbase.

Naturally. Do you really think they'd actually not buy the new Pokemon despite all those gripes? This is fandom! Must consume even when outraged!

Sundown wrote:
Forlorn Hope wrote:

Edit: Oh, nevermind. I got a Ponyta through surprise trade but it was named "Rookidee" so I breed it to get one I could name myself. So now I have a few extras if anyone wants them.

I might take you up on that. Both for the pokedex purposes, and I may want it for my team.

Yeah, just let know when you want to do it.

I've spent a decent amount of time playing the game but I only beat the first gym and got to the next town. I get too caught up in finding the pokemon in each area. So far my only complaints are that it's way too easy even as far as Pokemon usually goes and the multiplayer being a bit too overly complicated.

garion333 wrote:

6 million in sales, 2 mil in Japan alone, becoming the fastest selling Switch game and pushing Smash to no 2. And after all that whining from part of the fanbase.

Pokemon is literally the biggest entertainment franchise in the entire world. Game Freak could have released Pokemon Stick and Stone with their 100 most terribly designed Pokemon. It still would have been the fastest selling Switch game.

I ran across this comment in a Kotaku article that perfectly summarizes my annoyances with this modern nerd media outrage cycle.

Nerds: This nerd thing is bad.
Other nerds: This nerd thing is bad AND ALSO I’LL KILL YOU
Nerd media: Death threats are bad so the bad thing must be good actually.

The "other nerd" are giant pieces of sh*t. That doesn't mean there aren't plenty of legitimate complaints about the game. It also doesn't mean Pokemon fans are wrong when they say that the complaints are largely irrelevant to them. It'd be pretty great if we could acknowledge that all of the above is true instead of constantly clinging to one extreme.

Jim Sterling has the best take I've seen on this:

All that said, I just finished up the 2nd gym last night and have been having a grand ol' time with the game.

Dyni wrote:
garion333 wrote:

6 million in sales, 2 mil in Japan alone, becoming the fastest selling Switch game and pushing Smash to no 2. And after all that whining from part of the fanbase.

Pokemon is literally the biggest entertainment franchise in the entire world. Game Freak could have released Pokemon Stick and Stone with their 100 most terribly designed Pokemon. It still would have been the fastest selling Switch game.

Except that Let's Go released last year and sold half as much at launch, so ...

I've tried a whole bunch to write about the fact that fandom as a whole has become too much a core part of people's identities. Be it that what you like defines you, or that your fandom and/or nostalgia must be elevated to a Christ-like deity or turned into the new Satan. There's always been this element to fandom, as I've consistently pointed out that Arthur Conan Doyle received death threats when he dared kill off Sherlock Holmes and brought the character back in order to silence the naysayers. That's how old this stuff is, and I would not doubt that it is older.

But once upon a time those death threats would have been unknown to the vast majority of people, and likely gone unseen and unnoticed. With the Internet, we get to see it all over the place, some people feel like that sort of outrage is normalized, and then other people get outraged by the outrage, and it becomes this awful cycle that has turned things like social media into a dumpster fire.

The only comfort I have is knowing that the vast majority of people don't give a crap, and the number of people complaining about the Pokedex are probably far fewer than those simply excited there's another new Pokemon out. That the media -- gaming or mainstream or whatever -- blows these minority voices up to be the majority certainly doesn't help, either.

All I know is my friend's kids wanted to know which version I planned on getting and were excited when I said Shield because they want the one where the wolf has a sword in his mouth. That's how you Pokemon correctly, and I think that's just how most people go about it.

garion333 wrote:
Dyni wrote:
garion333 wrote:

6 million in sales, 2 mil in Japan alone, becoming the fastest selling Switch game and pushing Smash to no 2. And after all that whining from part of the fanbase.

Pokemon is literally the biggest entertainment franchise in the entire world. Game Freak could have released Pokemon Stick and Stone with their 100 most terribly designed Pokemon. It still would have been the fastest selling Switch game.

Except that Let's Go released last year and sold half as much at launch, so ...

Let's Go was also 1) a stripped down version of Pokemon, 2) another remake of Red/Blue, and 3) purely motion-control. I couldn't even play the demo with a pro-controller because they were going to force me to pretend to throw a Pokeball. While that third factor is probably the least of the contributors, I wouldn't be surprised if there was not an insignificant number of people holding out for the "real" Pokemon for reasons 1 and 2.

ccesarano wrote:
garion333 wrote:
Dyni wrote:
garion333 wrote:

6 million in sales, 2 mil in Japan alone, becoming the fastest selling Switch game and pushing Smash to no 2. And after all that whining from part of the fanbase.

Pokemon is literally the biggest entertainment franchise in the entire world. Game Freak could have released Pokemon Stick and Stone with their 100 most terribly designed Pokemon. It still would have been the fastest selling Switch game.

Except that Let's Go released last year and sold half as much at launch, so ...

Let's Go was also 1) a stripped down version of Pokemon, 2) another remake of Red/Blue, and 3) purely motion-control. I couldn't even play the demo with a pro-controller because they were going to force me to pretend to throw a Pokeball. While that third factor is probably the least of the contributors, I wouldn't be surprised if there was not an insignificant number of people holding out for the "real" Pokemon for reasons 1 and 2.

I know all that, but I think my point still stands. It was the most Pokemon-like game that wasn't a true real entry in the Pokemon series. For all intents and purposes it was Pokemon Switch 0.9. There's a ton of that game in Sword & Shield.

Btw, I have yet to use the motion controls (that wouldn't work with the Pro) in my playthrough of the full game, so the "must use motions controls" was a demo thing. I ran into that too when I played the demo. I press A to throw a ball instead of flicking my Switch across the room, thank gawd.

garion333 wrote:

Btw, I have yet to use the motion controls (that wouldn't work with the Pro) in my playthrough of the full game, so the "must use motions controls" was a demo thing. I ran into that too when I played the demo. I press A to throw a ball instead of flicking my Switch across the room, thank gawd.

Not true. What it was is that Let's Go didn't let you use the Pro Controller. You either had to use the joycons detached or play it in handheld mode.

That was the retail version as well. It made it a little bit of a pain if you were docked.

Notably, you couldn't even go through menus with the Pro Controller. So if you started the game docked you had to get up, undock it or undock the joycons and that was the only way to even exit the game.

DSGamer wrote:
garion333 wrote:

Btw, I have yet to use the motion controls (that wouldn't work with the Pro) in my playthrough of the full game, so the "must use motions controls" was a [maybe] demo thing. I ran into that too when I played the demo. I press A to throw a ball instead of flicking my Switch across the room, thank gawd.

Not true. What it was is that Let's Go didn't let you use the Pro Controller. You either had to use the joycons detached or play it in handheld mode.

That was the retail version as well. It made it a little bit of a pain if you were docked.

Notably, you couldn't even go through menus with the Pro Controller. So if you started the game docked you had to get up, undock it or undock the joycons and that was the only way to even exit the game.

Gotcha, I haven't tried playing it docked with the Pro controller which I did try with the demo.

What's odd is that the pro controller is totally able to do everything in the game since playing in handheld is the same as using a pro controller, essentially. Just odd. Short dev cycle maybe being a problem?

(My post was missing a word, I've added it back in.)

ccesarano wrote:

The only comfort I have is knowing that the vast majority of people don't give a crap, and the number of people complaining about the Pokedex are probably far fewer than those simply excited there's another new Pokemon out. That the media -- gaming or mainstream or whatever -- blows these minority voices up to be the majority certainly doesn't help, either.

True. Ever since 3rd gen, I've thought Game Freak was introducing way too many new Pokemon each generation. That was never going to be sustainable long-term, so this so-called "Dexit" was inevitable. I'm honestly a little surprised it didn't happen sooner.

ccesarano wrote:
garion333 wrote:
Dyni wrote:
garion333 wrote:

6 million in sales, 2 mil in Japan alone, becoming the fastest selling Switch game and pushing Smash to no 2. And after all that whining from part of the fanbase.

Pokemon is literally the biggest entertainment franchise in the entire world. Game Freak could have released Pokemon Stick and Stone with their 100 most terribly designed Pokemon. It still would have been the fastest selling Switch game.

Except that Let's Go released last year and sold half as much at launch, so ...

Let's Go was also 1) a stripped down version of Pokemon, 2) another remake of Red/Blue, and 3) purely motion-control. I couldn't even play the demo with a pro-controller because they were going to force me to pretend to throw a Pokeball. While that third factor is probably the least of the contributors, I wouldn't be surprised if there was not an insignificant number of people holding out for the "real" Pokemon for reasons 1 and 2.

Right, plus there are 16 million more Switches in the wild than when Let's Go released, and Nintendo and GF had both been adamant that Let's Go was not the next mainline Pokemon game. All of the Let's Go presentations were bookended by "Heeeeey Pokemon fans, please don't throw a fit because the REAL Pokemon game is coming soon". Hell, I buy every new Pokemon game, and I didn't bother with Let's Go. Well, I actually just picked it up last week on sale for $20, but I don't think that's relevant

Regardless of your personal feelings for Let's Go, Sword and Shield were the first "real" Pokemon games for Switch in the eyes of Nintendo and the fans. They were going to do gangbusters no matter what.

Antichulius wrote:

To join raids, are you certain you're connected to the internet? It seems to default to local network searches only, and you have to hit 'Y' and then '+' to switch to internet searches.

Also there's an option to send a raid code to someone. If you want to team up with friends vs some randos.

Forlorn Hope wrote:
Sundown wrote:
Forlorn Hope wrote:

Edit: Oh, nevermind. I got a Ponyta through surprise trade but it was named "Rookidee" so I breed it to get one I could name myself. So now I have a few extras if anyone wants them.

I might take you up on that. Both for the pokedex purposes, and I may want it for my team.

Yeah, just let know when you want to do it.

I've spent a decent amount of time playing the game but I only beat the first gym and got to the next town. I get too caught up in finding the pokemon in each area. So far my only complaints are that it's way too easy even as far as Pokemon usually goes and the multiplayer being a bit too overly complicated.

I'll PM you later and we can figure something out.

So along the lines of difficulty, I just finished the 5th gym, and I don't know how well this game is really balanced for how Experience Share plus how easy it is to level up with how many pokemon there are to catch and battle in the Wild Area. For the last couple gyms, I found myself about 3-5 levels higher than the gym leaders, and I'm 5-10 levels higher than a lot of trainers I've seen up to this point. And I don't feel like I'm grinding at all, just exploring and catching pokemon. The biggest challenge in the game so far is when I get caught by a pokemon 10-15 levels higher than I am in the Wild Zone and with a bad type matchup.

Two other notes:
1) I got both Sobble and Grookey to their final evolutions, and they look better in motion than their designs initially showed. Sobble especially, since once it was clear what they were going for I was digging it. You just have to see it for yourself. Still not close to my favorite batch of starters, but I'm no longer underwhelmed.

2) As far as ridiculous evolution methods that the series has rolled out, I think Sword and Shield takes the prize. I can't speak for everything yet, but I'm rolling with the Galarian versions of Farfetch'd and Yanmask. Their evolution methods are just about impossible to guess, and even knowing what they were, simply doing them took planning and luck. Which is fine and maybe even fun if you don't mind using a guide, but if you aren't, look out.

Sundown wrote:

So along the lines of difficulty, I just finished the 5th gym, and I don't know how well this game is really balanced for how Experience Share plus how easy it is to level up with how many pokemon there are to catch and battle in the Wild Area. For the last couple gyms, I found myself about 3-5 levels higher than the gym leaders, and I'm 5-10 levels higher than a lot of trainers I've seen up to this point. And I don't feel like I'm grinding at all, just exploring and catching pokemon. The biggest challenge in the game so far is when I get caught by a pokemon 10-15 levels higher than I am in the Wild Zone and with a bad type matchup.

A few of my friends near the end of the game say the difficulty ramps up quite a bit for some of the later battles. It sounds like there should be a good challenge unless you grind.

“Pokemon is the Gran Turismo of Rock, Paper, Scissors” lol

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I knew it was Tim by that quote. Lol

Farscry wrote:

Hah! Tim Rogers entertains me. He called Death Stranding the Gran Turismo of walking simulators. :D

That’s right. I forgot that.

I’ve got a few spare far fetch’d I’d be happy to trade to a shield for ponyta or other exclusive

Antichulius wrote:

I’ve got a few spare far fetch’d I’d be happy to trade to a shield for ponyta or other exclusive

I'll let you know if I get any tonight. I had a bunch of Lotad as well but traded them away in surprise trades.

So I did a direct trade, put up an egg that I’m pretty sure was just a stunky and got a Level 60 ditto out of it. Am I missing something about eggs that would make them valuable?

I'm also available to trade things from Pokemon Shield that anyone may want up to the 7th gym so far (that does include the absolutely fabulous Galarian Ponyta).

I'm available to trade from Sword. I cleared gym 8, which also means that I could now catch a Ditto and can start breeding starters and the fossils.

Does anyone have a Scorbunny or it's evolutions that they're willing to lend me for about 5 minutes so I can breed one for myself? It's the only starter I don't have. I can trade you lv.1 starter you don't have for it, and you can trade me back whatever to get it back.

And with the fossils, we're going to have to coordinate the whole mixing and matching thing, and it'll be easier of the two of us have dittos for breeding. (edit: Nevermind, looks like they can't be bred. So it'll take a bit more legwork for those of us who want all 4).