Another week, and we have another episode!
Meet ‘n Catch
This week I’ll be merging our usual Meet ‘n Greet and Catch ’em All segments into one! The reason being that the event I’m covering this week merges the two so seamlessly.
The event in question? Fionn MacCool’s Patio Party this past Thursday. They leveraged the fact that someone very kindly put a PokéStop right outside their establishment, and invited the Pokémon Go community down to enjoy some good eats, special drinks, and take part in prize giveaways. And they put on a really good show.
You entered the contests by texting a photo of the objective they wanted you to complete — like, say, a Pidgey over 60CP — to their “hotline” with your name, and after everything was tabulated, they would then text you back if you won. There were contests for every team, and for everyone that could participate, which was really neat!
The drink specials were something else as well. They had nine different drinks on order, covering the four starter Pokémon and all five Legendaries (they went for the gusto and included Mew, who is #151 on the National Pokédex). All of them sounded amazing, with Bulba-sour and Pika Jolt being fan favourites (it even had fellow AYB Contributor Kate Rhiannon saying that she wished the Bulba-sour could be on the menu full-time).
Overall, with the food and drink being great, and the staff friendly, it was a cool event. I really hope that they put another one of these parties together, and I hope that other food establishments do things like this for the community in the future!
Professor’s Notes
This week on Professor’s Notes, I’ll cover a minor issue that has been plaguing the game since the Canadian release: those dang paw prints that are supposed to help you locate Pokémon. Well, it should be no news to anyone that they haven’t been working for forever. But there are ways that you can track down those elusive Scythers and Electabuzzes without being glued to Lures all the time.
The first one, and probably the most commonly talked about, is PokéVision. Not wanting to throw out the local flavour in this, there is another option from Lattasoft, called Go Map. Both are functionally the same, as they locate the exact-ish locations where Pokémon spawn at, they just each just have a different way of giving you the information that you are looking for.
Both use Google Maps, and then just overlay the information of the location data for the Pokémon. PokéVision gives you a little timer under each icon to let you know how much more time there is left to track down the critter you’re after, whereas with Go Map, you have to click the one you want for that information. But it’ll give you the exact time that Pokémon will disappear, so if you’re driving or biking you can figure out exactly how much time you’ll need to get there.
Now, each website (yes they are websites, so if you are on your mobile device, you’ll need to open your browser of choice to access them) has minor differences in accuracy. PokéVision seems to be a little off with the overall quantity of monsters on screen, whereas Go Map is a tad more accurate because they hide some information from the user until they want it. The only major difference is that PokéVision allows you to toggle which Pokémon you want to see, so you can effectively filter out common Pokémon like Pidgey, Rattata, Weedle, and Drowzee, and get to the meatier Lapras and aforementioned Scythers.
Overall, choose which one you prefer. Just so that you all know, though, this is technically against Niantic’s Terms of Service, so please do use these resources are your own risk. But until they fix the Three Paws Glitch, these are fantastic alternatives to help make hunting easier.
And with that, we come to the end of another episode of the Hitchhikers Guide to Pokemon Go! As always, if you want to see something covered please leave a comment below! Oh and one final shout out: Go check out Kate Rhiannon’s article Oh, The Places You Will Pokémon Go! as it’s a fantastic look at the community, and their travels!
Quinn Smith is a Contributor to AYBOnline.com. His opinions are his own.
