Ahoy, yesterday the Pokémon GO Tour: Kanto event took place, which I mentioned in my previous blog post. It was announced a few months ago. This event was to celebrate the Kanto-region, being the first ever region of Pokémon. And this year Pokémon is celebrating its 25th Anniversary, making it even more ideal to celebrate this region. Bringing the last 9 missing Shiny Pokémon from Kanto into the game.
The event started at 9 am local time and lasted through 9 pm local time. A friend and I decided to start a bit later than 9 am, so we met up between 10:30 and 11 am. Shortly after meeting up we ran into another friend who did start at 9 and we then walked around as our little group of 3 while keeping a bit of distance. We often ran into another group of 3 that we know and did some Raids with them. There were a few other people we saw sometimes. We mostly stayed in the city center, with Raids hatching quickly and not staying as long we could find plenty of Raids and didn't have to go further out for those.
Upon launching the game and having chosen the team, I received this medal. I chose for Red so I got Charizard inside the medal. Those who chose Green have Venusaur.
There was a Timed Research which involved defeating Tour Challenger Trainers that could be regularly found at Pokéstops. Defeating these Trainers gave 20 Poké Balls and then possibly revives or potions and a bit of Stardust. This was a great addition to receive more Poké Balls in case you started to run low on them. This one had to be completed during the event.
You can see it in the next photo alongside all of the Collection Challenges and I'll add some info about them after the picture.
As I mentioned in the previous blog post, there were going to be a lot of Collection Challenges featured during this event. A total of 10 Collection Challenges. They all featured some Pokémon that you have to capture, with one Challenge for all of the 5 regions featured on an hourly-basis during the event. For Pallet Town, Pewter City, Cerulean City, Fuchsia City and the Pokémon League.
Two of them were based on the Version you chose for the event, as you get some Version-exlusive Pokémon as spawns from your Incense. For the other one you had to trade with a friend with the other version for their Incense spawns.
There was a Research one too. This featured Pokémon that were rarer spawns during the event, but were also obtainable as spawns from some of the Special Research encounter rewards. I've had a Field Research Task to Hatch 3 Eggs too which gave Snorlax encounters.
The Raid one required capturing Pokémon found in Raids. Farfetch'd, Kangaskhan, Mr. Mime and Tauros are regional Pokémon found in the wild, but for this event were brought into Raids worldwide. I'd been hoping those 4 would spawn globally, but unfortunately not. One downside was that our own regional Pokémon didn't even appear in the wild during the event.
I didn't include one of the challenges. Which is the Evolve challenge. The list for it was too long to include in one picture. So I separated the screenshots for it.
This one required to Evolve all Pokémon. One of my friends had chosen the Green version. After I obtained his Incense spawns through a trade for the Trade Challenge, I immediately evolved those to have them for that Evolve Challenge. For the event, Pokémon seemed to be giving 4 Candy instead of 3 per capture. Some Pokémon like Bulbasaur, Charmander, Squirtle, Eevee and Dratini even gave 13 Candy! I absolutely loved that for Eevee and used a Pinap Berry on every encounter to get 26 Eevee Candy per catch. I managed to get over 1,000 Eevee Candy during the event!
I completed all of the Collector Challenges during the event already. Here you can see a photo of my Elite Collector badge showing 15 completed in total, and the list of them. As there were 5 already earlier this year.
One of the two friends I was walking with came across a Shiny Hitmonchan during the Pokémon League hour when they were spawning more. That was the first of the newly added Shiny Pokémon that any of us three found. Later that hour I was able to encounter my first Shiny Hitmonlee!
During this time we were still working on some of those Raids as well, we already did some Legendary Raids and a few of the regionals. But didn't get all of them yet. Especially because Moltres didn't want to appear as a Raid nearby for quite some time and we preferred walking to the Gyms for those Raids, and use our Remote Raid Passes for elsewhere. Eventually we did get them all. Here are the Regional ones that I can't normally find here and that I got from doing one Raid of each. It was really unfortunate with this Kangaskhan.
Shiny Ditto could be obtained from the Pokémon GO Tour: Kanto Special Research that was included with the event ticket. As it's a Special Research it has no expiration, but we did try to finish it during the day as that would be easiest. Eventually I had my Shiny Ditto encounter, which you can see here.
After completing that Special Research, you receive a new one called "All-in-One #151". This one is meant to take some time to complete and you will receive Shiny Mew as a reward from it. In this picture you can see that it requires sending 151 Gifts to friends and making 151 Great Throws. The first step is to get the Platinum Kanto Pokédex medal, which requires having all 151 Pokémon from Kanto registered in your Pokédex. Which was automatically completed for me.
My item bag is currently overloaded because of all the items received from the Collector Challenges. So I'm going to have to get rid of some, or catch a lot of Pokémon, before I can start getting more Gifts to send to friends. It'll take me a little while to complete this first step.
Throughout the event I also made use of the Pokéball Plus to help with additional catches. So it is possible that I encountered some Shiny Pokémon that then ran away because it only uses 1 Poké Ball and then stops catching. It definitely did catch some Shinies too. Others were caught by myself. I already had plenty of Shiny Magikarp so I didn't even bother catching those, but the Pokéball Plus did. In total I caught 15 Shiny Pokémon during the event including the Ditto. You can see them here.
The Krabby, Drowzee, Ekans, Scyther, Hitmonlee and Ditto are all new Shinies for me, the others I already had. This Abra was quite an accident, I wanted to click on a different Pokémon near the Pokéstop but I missclicked on the Abra and well it turned out to be Shiny 😂
We walked around for about 10 hours during the event. When it was close to 9 pm and thus the end of the event, we decided to grab some food and then go our separate ways home.
Overall it was a really enjoyable event! It was also really sunny weather making it a wonderful time to be outside!
How did your Pokémon GO Tour: Kanto go? Did you manage to get some of the new Shiny Pokémon?