Pokémon GO community day: real life pugging for dratini

Tomorrow Pokémon GO celebrates Bulbasaur Community Day. For the first time I'm actually planning to participate, and that has a lot to do with how much fun I had the last time around, catching dratini.

Articuno, Moltres, Zapdos and Lugia: calculating legendary bird catch rates in Pokémon Go

Last week Pokemon Go's legendary birds (Articuno, Moltres, Zapdos and Lugia) departed to make room for generation 2's legendary dogs Entei, Raikou and Suicune. The past weeks, I've been passionately hunting down these birds with other pokémon enthusiasts in my town - and with success. I now own all legendary birds; of most I even have multiple copies. During this period, I've kept track of the raids I attended and the times I managed to actually catch them. All so I can now calculate how I did. Have I been lucky with catching them, or unlucky? Let's take a look.

Pokémon Go day trip to the Amstelveen Safari Zone

Last weekend was the last opportunity to visit one of Europe's so called Pokémon Go Safari Zones. For three weekends in a row, in various shopping centres that partnered with Niantic, kangaskhan (normally only available in Australia) could be found. In addition, an increased spawn rate of the unknown letters forming E-U-R-O-P-E was in effect in these areas. You didn't have to pay anything in order to participate in the event; you just had to be there and look for those pokémon.

I do love catching myself some cool pokémon. And while I don't usually travel beyond my municipality for pokémon and shopping isn't exactly my greatest hobby, it seemed silly to let the opportunity go. Especially so when I found out that the closest Safari Zone, in Stadshart Amstelveen (the Netherlands), was less than an hour drive away.

I was prepared to spend some time on my own, maybe drop by the Cobra Museum (modern art) if I got bored of the shopping centre, but then I found out my brother and his girlfriend wanted to go as well. So past Saturday, all three of us got in the car early to catch us some pokémon.

Rav's Review of the Year 2016

A lot of bloggers have been writing about their past year and their new gaming goals and I love reading those posts! I wanted to join in the fun and do something similar, but I'm not one for gaming goals: planning how to have fun makes my hobby feel like a job. But then I read Kay's post Bye-bye, 2016 and discovered the Review of the year tag by Princess Deia (how could I have missed a blog with such a title?!). I liked it so much that I decided to do my own version! So here is my year reviewed in her nine categories. Warning: there is little gaming involved; this is mostly an off-topic personal reflection of 2016. There are plenty of geeky and nerdy elements, but you're safe from the mushrooms. Promise.

Alright, here we go.

Drawing diary: November

These drawing diaries have slowly transformed into nature nerding sessions and I'm totally okay with that. Usually, I keep my blog posts strictly on the topic of gaming, but I've found it's really nice to have a place to talk about my daily, analogue life every now and then (and post photos of pretty things). My Drawing Diaries are best suited for that. I've added the label Nature to the appropriate posts, so you know beforehand you'll not only have to suffer through those drawings, but through my nature fangirling as well.

I've considered removing the "drawing" part of the title, but for now they are a great reminder for me that I actually need to draw stuff.

Pokémon Go's Halloween event

Although I haven't written about Pokémon Go recently (I haven't been able to write as much as I'd have liked overall), I have been catching pokémon whenever I could. I know the hype has died down a bit, but that's no reason for me to throw in the towel. Catching "wild pokémon" just doesn't get old for me. Despite my relative immobility, I have even managed to catch up to most of my friends - who became less fanatic over time - by sheer obsessing determination.

So when I heard there was going to be a Pokémon Go Halloween event, I was pretty excited... that is, until I realized I would be abroad in Sweden without mobile internet for the full duration of the event.

Drawing diary: July

Drawing for me is not just about skill, it's also a psychological challenge of sorts. You never know exactly what the result will be beforehand. It is addictive, yet damn scary. Confession time: there's always a barrier I need to pass before trying something new, even though I know I'm just drawing for my eyes only and nobody else would care if the result sucks. In July, I tried not to be a whimp and drew a lot of things just for the heck of it.

Of course I'm screwed, because I'm going to post them here for everyone to see even if I'm ashamed of the result myself! With my degree of perfectionism, I wouldn't end up posting anything otherwise. And it's always interesting to read you guys loving the things I hate, and vise versa.

Playing Pokémon Go when chronically ill

One morning, about one year after I started Ravalation, I fell on the floor and couldn't get up again. It happened a few times that month, and ever since I'm experiencing chronic pain in my legs and extreme fatigue. An MRI scan revealed irreversible brain damage and from that moment onward it was clear my life would never be the same.

I will spare you the details of my journey onward, but for this article it's useful to mention that, as I had to give up most of the things I like doing, gaming suddenly became a more important part of my life than before. Physical activity makes me suffer more when in a lot of pain; gaming, however, requires little of it and creates a positive distraction so I am not aware of it as much. Due to my fatigue, I don't get out to meet people as much as I'd like anymore: I simply don't have the energy to spare. Voice chat allows me to still socialize with people on a regular base. I can definitely say gaming has saved me from isolation, in a way. But what about augmented reality?

If you read Ravalation regularly, you know that I loved the pokémon Game Boy games and that I couldn't wait to start playing Pokémon Go. There is one problem, though: the game revolves around moving around in the real, physical world to find pokémon, and it is necessary to walk distances to let eggs hatch. Because of this, I was a bit worried that I would not be able to enjoy the game. Nevertheless, I had to try. In this post I'll share my experiences of playing Pokémon Go while chronically ill. I am aware that everyone is affected differently by disabilities in some form or another and I definitely do not want to pretend that my story represents that of everyone in a similar situation! However, I could not write about my experience of playing Pokémon Go without mentioning my health: the two are strongly tied together. Thus I hope you'll forgive me that this post will be a bit more personal of nature than usual.

Pokémon, mobile phones and hype resistance

My latest blog post I'm dying to play Pokémon Go mostly got responses from fellow bloggers that said they did not grow up with pokémon and hence didn't understand what all the fuss is about. (I decided to take this as a compliment: I'm obviously young in spirit.) Bhagpuss even wrote a post in response entitled Why I'm Not Playing Pokémon Go (Like I Have To Have A Reason). Spoiler: it's because he doesn't own a phone. To keep up the tradition I'll now reply to him with another post about hypes and, err, phones. (I know, it's not exactly MMOs, but it'll have to do.) This is a lengthy one, so you're warned.

I'm dying to play Pokémon Go

1 April 2014 I geeked out on Ravalation about Google's April Fool's joke of catching pokémon with your phone. You'll have to forgive me for using this drawing I made back then once more. I still can't believe it's reality now!

Like so many, I grew up with Pokémon. I never really liked the TV series (I was a bit too old, I guess), but I dug the Gameboy games. Pokémon Gold was the first game I bought in my life, after jealously watching my younger brother play Pokémon Red; he shared his Gameboy with me and let me train his pokémon sometimes, the sweetheart. I spent months working in the garden and doing all kinds of menial tasks to earn enough money to buy it, but it was so worth it!

Drawing diary: May

Following up on your enthusiastic response to my Soul-searching, the blogging edition post, I'll be posting the drawings I've made in May today. Yes, especially to annoy you, unsuspecting gamer reader! Okay, not really. It's more an attempt to motivate myself to draw more. After all, in order to be able to post drawings monthly, I'll actually have to draw something. This is a waterproof plan, I'm sure of it!

Mums in games

Pokémon mums, by ViViVooVoo

When I saw that last week's 5 Fandom Friday* theme was "favourite fictional mums", I knew I was going to have a hard time adapting this to "favourite mums in games". What I did not know was that I would have to scratch the "favourite" part altogether, because there simply wasn't enough data. With games traditionally focusing on the combat adventures of healthy, young characters; mothers, associated with homeliness, parenting and familial relationships, don't exactly score high on the agendas of game developers.

I'm sure there are some games featuring great mothers out there, but for now I'll focus on two questions: how many mums are there actually in the games I play? And: in what way is motherhood portrayed?

The games I love to play

F.l.t.r.: Valiant Hearts: the Great War, SWTOR, Guild Wars 2, Pokémon Emerald, LOTRO

This week's Fandom Friday* challenge was themed "the five games you love to play". Now for me this was a bit of a problematic challenge, as the only things I talk about are games, so most of you guys will already know what games I play (also, the text underneath "About this blog" to the right sort of gives it away). However, I play my games in different manners: for me there's a game for each time and mind state. So in addition to providing you with an overview, I'll look into what I get out of these games as well. When do I choose to play them, and why is that so?

Pokémon: Gotta catch 'em all (for real)

I haven't written about pokémon for ages. But I got a good reason! Naturally, I was too busy secretly preparing for this:

Okay, maybe not. Maybe I don't even own a smartphone... I would totally get one just for the sake of being able to do this, though!

PS Sorry for the unimaginative post, but hey, at least it gave me an excuse to pull out the Bamboo again.

Pokémon: May contain bad language

Mirror, mirror on the wall: which song's the most awful of them all?

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So Unowns. Maybe you remember how I told you that there are 26 different varieties of this pokémon species, and that I never managed to catch them all before - but now I was determined to do so. It took me several months or so, but now I have!

And remember how much I hoped there would be some sort of reward for collecting them all? Like, a special item, or maybe even a special combined Unown species to catch? Super exciting! So was there a 'reward'? Yes there was.

Scientist: "You caught all the Unown variations? That's a great achievement!"

Yes, yes, I know, and a darn boring and long one at that. Now give me the loot!

*drumroll*

"I've set up the printer here for handling Unown. Feel free to use it anytime."

My jaw just dropped. The Pokémon printer? I mean, really? (In case you don't know, it's an extra device that you could buy and put on your Game Boy to print out pictures of your pokémon - a thing that nobody actually owned. Including me, I don't own one. And I wouldn't know what to do with a piece of paper with an Unown on it anyway, I rather drawn them and put them on my blog.) Well, that was an epic anti-climax.

But wait, there's one spot vacant at the printer, after Unown nr. 26? And what do those message on the wall, e.g. "Escape", mean? Is there another enigma after all?

Pokémon: Hated by all

You know that feeling? You're walking through a cave and then... *groan*.

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So there are also pokémon I don't like. Many, actually. Today's post is an exception in that I actually drew a pokémon that annoys the hell out of me. You know the one, imagine you're walking through a cave (any cave, I don't think there are any without it)...

Apart from annoying, Zubat is also quite ugly. But if anything stopped me from ever leveling one, it's its evolution Golbat, which is remarkably even more ugly. I usually just catch both forms for my collection and never look back.

However, now Tiger told me that there is another evolution, Crobat. He showed me a picture and I grudgingly had to admit that it looks pretty awesome. So now I need to take a deep breath and level a Golbat. The positive side is that I potentially don't have to level it more than one level. It just needs to like me.

Pokémon start to like you if you drag them around large distances within a pokéball in your bag (no way). Since I don't want to be physically close to Golbat for that long, I'm going for the alternative, bribery haircuts. While I myself procrastinate going to the barber until I really can't comb through my hair anymore because it's so dead, pokémon apparently really like going to the barber, and in turn start to like their trainer more for being so kind as to take them there. The fact that many of them (Golbat included) don't really have any hair doesn't matter, the mere imaginative thought of being at the barber already makes them superhappy. I'll spam the hell out of these 'haircuts' and will try to acquire a Crobat this way. You'll hear about the result in another post.

Last but not least, I found this comic that made me laugh so hard:

By Jallcomics.com

See? It's not just me!

Apart from this particular comic being hilarious, I thought it was pretty cool that Jall writes on his site that he started drawing pokémon just to experiment with how to use a tablet. You know, basically like I'm doing now with this pokémon article series. So who knows, there might still be hope for me. Maybe. If I'm lucky!

Pokémon: Lapras

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Recommended listening: Surf theme.

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I admit that this isn't my best drawing and I made it rather quickly, but nevertheless, my newest water pokémon issssss... Lapras!

I have a terrible problem with water pokémon. There are simply too many nice ones of them, so I never manage to pick one. I usually level one up, evolve it, then switch it for another one I like etc. This counts for grass type pokémon as well, by the way. This way I keep leveling new pokémon over and over.

But I managed to catch this Lapras on a Monday (which is the only day it appears in the game, in some backwater cave) and decided to stick with it for a bit. In the TV series, Lapras apparently functions as a ferry, carrying loads of people over the water. As I was busy surfing along the Whirl Islands, I thought it was appropriate to use him (it even shows a Lapras icon by default if you're surfing).

Why Lapras? 1) Both ice and water type, therefore being less weak towards plant type 2) Gentle, soft and cute ( 2) of course being the most important)!

More grave dilemmas and water pokémon to follow in my next pokémon post.

Pokémon: Into the Unown

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Recommended listening to get in the mood: Ruins of Alph tune.

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So this is me catching pokémon! I'm super awesome because I apparently have blue hair in ponytails (hey, it was either a dude with a cap or a girl with blue hair - easy choice, right?). The maniacal laugh is what you get when you've spent too much time looking for Unowns - or listening at the tune posted above, for that matter. It has nothing to do with me being unable to draw healthy looking human beings, believe me. *cough*

Unowns, I say? Yes, those are them pokémon vaguely resembling letters, introduced with 'Generation II' (using the proper nerd word here). They are all called identically "Unown", but as many different appearances exist, I thought it was time to catch all different looking ones, and see if something special happens (if you already know, please don't tell me, I'd like no spoilers!). These are the ones I've caught so far:

ABCDEGHIJKXYZ

Catching Unown is actually pretty boring, because you run into the wrong ones you already have all the time. Also, I need to check the paper lying next to my bed at each Unown encounter to check whether I've already caught this particular version. Nevertheless, I will prevail! I'm looking for Unown each evening when there's some downtime, so I'm bound to get the collection complete one day.

What happens then... that's for another post.

Pokémon: 8-bit nostalgia

There's something that I should tell you. I hope that it doesn't hurt our relationship badly, but I just can't keep it a secret anymore... I like pokémon.*

As I was off for holiday (aka meditational trip) with my brother and parents, I jested to my brother that he should bring his Game Boy, so we could sit at the back at the car for good ol' times sake and play the the 8-bit sound tunes loudly in my parent's ears (we have a weird sense of nostalgia). For the record, my brother and I are grown-ups now (at least, officially).

So we actually did that, and we ended up playing a lot of Pokémon that holiday. I started a new playthrough of Pokémon Crystal and it's now the game I play in the evenings while waiting for Tiger to come to bed - cause that totally doesn't take long at all (blasted addictive MMOs).

I always used to pick Chikorita as a starter pokémon because I'm a sucker for grass pokémon, but I decided to go for Cyndaquil for a change. It already evolved into a Quilava as we speak.

Drawing

As I cannot make in-game screenshots in Pokémon, I thought it was a good time to dust off my Bamboo and practice some drawing. My personal challenge is to draw a pokémon for each post I write about the game. Since my photoshop skillz are not very sophisticated (read: non-existent) I don't know how to make colours fade and overlap into each other, so this explains the Quilava above. In a way, the simple design does have its charm, I think.

Out of the three forms (Cyndaquil - Quilava - Typhlosion) I think Quilava might be my favorite, so cute!

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*Not the TV-series, I guess I was always too old for that, but I always used to love the games.