Lapras is a myth. It only patronizes certain hot spots along the coast, with zero interest in showing up at other random locations. This behavior is drastically different from Snorlax or Dragonite, I would say with confidence that Lapras is the most desirable Pokemon by most players.
A Lapras artwork by our youngest Pokemon GO team member SZ. Lapras is loved.
After the FastPokeMap setback, developers realized a 100%-open-source
community-transparent hacking model simply would not work, some decided to
pursue an underground model. Cracked
hash keys were kept as a secret and were only accessible to very few developers. Once a new hash key was cracked, hackers provided
paid hash-key encoding services, so that subscription apps such as PokeAlert on Android,
PokeWhere on iOS could continue to call Niantic API. A paid subscription model was established; cash incentive enabled developers to continue
their hash key cracking efforts version after version. Even after Niantic
introduced reCAPTCHA to block bot accounts, developers figured out how to rely on crowd sourcing efforts to
crack reCAPTCHA (or used paid human solvers). Niantic then stopped
providing time-to-hide (TTH) information in their API (TTH data is not returned until the last 1.5
minutes of a spawn), i.e., you could no longer know how many minutes left for a
remote spawn. Developers figured out a clever workaround. For example, if you
continuously monitor a spawn point, the program would soon figure out exact
when a Pokemon is expected to be spawned at that coordinate and how long that spawn
lasts (repeative scans detect when the Pokemon disappeared). As each spawn occurs at the exact
minute at each hour, computer program will know not only TTH, but also when to
scan a spawn spot.
How clever! No matter what
Niantic came up, developers always found a counter measure. However, Pokemon map was still not good enough for catching Lapras, it was simply too rare.
As tracker packages resurrected and became more mature and easier to setup, a volunteer setup a private feed
for Coronado using a Slack server. I signed up without hesitation. It was also discovered that Niantic had
increased the spawn duration for rares from 15min to 30min in December, probably because the change of
their nearby feature required players to travel further to catch a rare. Thirty minute made it feasible for me to go
to the island by myself. Learned from our
previous mistake, my friend and I decided to visit the island the day before
Christmas to hunt for Lapras, hopefully before the history repeated and Slack server would be shut down
by Niantic. We got lots of Grimers, Dratinis
and a Snorlax on that day between 8am and 3pm, however, Lapras did not show up. We were nevertheless confident that the Slack
feed worked and agreed to come back after the new year.
On the New Year’s day, the morning after I was back from
Cancun, I drove to the island at 10am alone.
Every chime on the phone brought up a hope. Finally one chime at 10:45am carried the long-overdue alerts for a Lapras near Hotel de Coronado with plentiful 26m left and
I was merely 5min away. Still excited,
drove, parked, ran to the beach, the moment I have been waiting for three
months to complete my Pokedex was finally arrived!
I had tons of Ultra balls and Razz Berries stocked, preparing for the
toughest final battle I could imagine. Well, the difficulty of catching Lapras is nowhere near the challenge of catching a Dragonite, one berry and one Ultra ball, game over!
Mission accomplished!! I made it!!!
My very first Lapras was caught near Hotel De Coronado on the New Year's Day. Another gorgeous one was caught in a week after at the Dog Beach (3rd screenshot).
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