On August 3, 2019, Pokémon GO held a Community Day featuring Ralts. I was able to participate in this event, in a very limited way. By the time it was done I felt like I had accomplished something.

The entire reason why I decided to try this Community Day was because a friend mentioned it to me. I was sleeping when my friend sent me a direct message about it. All I could understand, while still asleep, was the friend’s name and something about Pokémon GO. Then, I fell back asleep.

What is Ralts? The first time I caught one, I thought it was some kind of plant-like creature. It didn’t look much like a flower to me. Is this a radish? Later, I learned that my guess was entirely wrong. Ralts is a Psychic / Fairy type of Pokémon. Ralts is number 280, and is part of the Hoenn collection.

I had already gathered enough of them to evolve a Ralts into a Kirlia (number 281).

After I woke up all the way, I responded to my friend’s direct message. This friend and I do not live in the same time zone, so we wouldn’t be able to meet up in person and walk around together while the Community Day was going on.

At first, we thought that the Community Event would start, in my time zone, at 1:00 p.m. I had gotten up earlier than usual that day, and was starting to get some writing work done. I confirmed that I would be available for Pokémon GO at that time.

But, we were wrong about the time of the Community Day. It turned out that the event started at 4:00 p.m. in everyone’s time zone. As I mentioned, my friend and I were not in the same time zone, so this took some figuring out because we wanted to coordinate.

For those that don’t play Pokémon GO, let me explain something. You can add friends and then send those friends gifts. The gifts are “freebies” that can drop from PokéStops. The only thing you can do with a gift is send it to a friend. When your friend opens a gift from you, or you open one from them, your friendship level rises (and unlocks stuff).

My friend realized that we were one gift away from becoming Pokémon GO “Best Friends”. So, we were trying to coordinate when he opened the gift I sent him that day with me launching an item called a Lucky Egg that gives the player additional experience points.

The difference in our time zones meant that it would be 4:00 p.m. earlier where my friend was then where I am at. That worked out fine. We coordinated through direct message. The friend let me know that they opened the gift I sent. I launched a Lucky Egg and told them so. Success!

Except, not exactly. I mean, what the friend and I did worked as planned. The problem was that I suddenly realized that I had “double-booked” myself.

Every Saturday, and every Monday, I play Dungeons & Dragons with a group of friends. We do not meet in person, because we are scattered across the United States. Instead, we meet online on Discord. The Saturday game would start about half an hour after the Pokémon GO Community event would. I would not be able to go outside and collect Ralts during the event. This had no impact on my Pokémon GO “bestie”.

The goal of the Ralts Community Day event was to catch as many Ralts as possible, and then evolve one that was caught during the event all the way up before the event ended. I happened to have a lot of Poké Balls to throw, and knew that I could catch some Pokémon while sitting inside my home. (I’ve done that plenty of times before).

The Dungeons & Dragons game was a one-off, that I expected to be incredibly amusing. We were all playing very low level characters that could quickly end up dead. It was entirely possible for me to play a very relaxed, one-time-only, D&D session while occasionally throwing a few Poké Balls at Ralts.

What’s this? I unexpectedly encountered a shiny Ralts. It has a blue head instead of the green one the Ralts usually had. I was able to catch it, and decided that it would be the Ralts that I leveled up during the Community Day.

The shiny Ralts turns into a Krilia that is blue and white instead of green and white. I needed to evolve it to the its final evolution before the event ended – and I was running out of time. The solution was to start using the pineapple berries while trying to catch a Ralts. Doing so would give me extra Ralts candy when I transferred them.

With just a few minutes left in the event, I was able to gather up (and transfer) just enough Ralts to turn the blue Krilia into a blue Gardevoir.

Players who are able to evolve the Community Day Pokémon all the way up get an advantage. That specific Pokémon gets a special attack that it would not usually have. In this case, my Gardevoir got the Synchronoise attack.

#Blaugust2019

Pokémon GO: Ralts Community Day is a post written by Jen Thorpe on Book of Jen and is not allowed to be copied to other sites.

If you enjoyed this blog post please consider supporting me on Ko-fi. Thank you!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *