My Game of Pokemon GO - Stage III: Nest Hunting

Although the program PokeVision was gone, developers realized Pokemon’s API could be used to create new generation Pokemon maps.  Among all the map programs, the best of the best is called FastPokeMap [see previous blog]. FastPokeMap allows one to click on a map and pretend to be anywhere, this way I could mouse click and mapped out all Pokemons even in places, where no player was physically on ground zero.  I started monitoring two shopping malls and other neighborhood hot spots within 8-min driving distance and my desktop was my "Map Room".  As Pokemon spawns only lasted 15 min at that time, I needed to response to spawns just like fireman would respond to 911 calls.

At this stage my play was extremely purposeful, as I had already hunted most not so rare ones in beach locations.  My only remaining goal was to complete the North American Pokedex, nothing else.  So I did not battle gyms, I did not hatch eggs, I only caught enough Pokemon to gain level twenty in order to get Ultra balls, then pretty much only caught the Pokemons I needed, i.e., either it had to be a new species, or the ones I could exchange for evolution candies to eventually gain new species.  This was why my trainer level is still far behind my friends till this day, as I was not actively gaining XP points (I finally reached level 30 before my seven-month mark onFeb 12, 2017, still behind my friends) .

As my only goal was to collect new Pokemons, I did not battle for the first four months. My first Gym standing was only till Nov 25, 2016 at Costco.

There were certainly pleasant surprises during this period.  I hatched a Tengela from a 5km egg the moment I got home one afternoon.  I discovered three hot spots within 100 meters away from home that spawned rare Pokemons at exactly the same minute every hour, which was how I got my second Grimer.  One night I saw a humongous silhouette in the sightings, while driving back from Del Mar beach.  I pulled up to the side and used FastPokeMap to locate my first Dragonite!

Dragonite (center) encountered by super good luck on Sep 16, 2016.

Rare but evolvable Pokemons can be secured through hard work, such as Gyarados could be evolved from the common Magikarps.  Even though it requires hunting 100 Magikarps, very time consuming but nevertheless manageable!  However, Venusaur, Charizard, Vileplume, Victreebel, Gengar and Muk were the toughest, as their ancestor forms were already rare.  At that time I already started following Silph Road on Reddit and some local Pokemon Facebook groups.  Through crowd sourcing, I learnt there were something called "nests", where rare Pokemons spawned at the rate of one per 10-20 minutes or so, much higher than background occurrence.  Nest hunting was probably one of the most memorable game period.  I visited many small parks, places I would never visit otherwise.  Gastly were harvested at the Del Mar Fairground Parking lot at night; Bulbasaur at Eucalyptus Park in Chula Vista; Bellsprout at Hilltop Community Park in Rancho Penasquitos; Charmander at Martin Luther King Jr Memorial Park in Oceanside, and Oddish at the beautiful Liberty Station NTC Park.

Screenshots taken at the peak of spawn in nests.  Each hunt lasted about two hours.

I got three Grimers with ten candies, I still needed fifty candies to produce a Muk.  Grimers were super rare and nearly only sporadically spawned in Coronado Island.  That was a problem.

Bonus Material

Nests migrate, i.e., every few weeks, a Jynx nest may turn into Jigglypuff nest, then into a Nidorino nest, etc.  The trainer community start their crowd source efforts and maintain a Nest Atlas [1]. However, the atlas is not well maintained, probably because beginners do not know about nests and advanced trainers do not care about nests.  Really rares do not have a nest.

Reference

1. https://thesilphroad.com/atlas