Raids are finally here in Pokemon go and I know a lot of you have questions. So lets start answering them. First things first, raids are available for trainers level 25 and up worldwide. Raids will take place randomly at any gym around you. It was previously limited to sponsored gyms only. But since being opened to trainers level 25 and up, they can now take place at regular gyms. So don’t worry if you don’t have sponsored gyms near you. Raids are going to be taking place at just about any gym. In case you haven’t been paying attention to YouTube or Twitter or anything for the last few days.
Raids are essentially boss battles where theres one very strong Pokemon that requires a group of people to team up and take it down. If you beat the raid boss you have a chance to catch a version of that Pokemon at a much lower level. Raids have five difficulty levels one through five obviously. One and two will have pink eggs, levels three and four have gold or yellow eggs and level five is a dark or legendary egg.
So what are the expected Raid Bosses on Pokemon Go?
So far the Pokemon that have been reported as possible one star or level one raid bosses are Magikarp, Bayleef, and Kraken. For level two we’ve seen Electabuzz, Magmar, Muk, Weezing and Exeggutor. Possible level three raid bosses includes Alakazam, Gengar, Machamp, Arcanine, Jolteon and Flareon. Currently the reported level four raid bosses include Venusaur, Charizard, Blastoise, Lapras, Snorlax and Tyranitar. Like I said earlier, level five is going to be reserved for legendary Pokemon and of course I’ll let you know as soon as those start showing up.
Raid bosses have greatly increased stats with maximum CP appearing anywhere between 8 to 10 times the pokemons normal maximum CP. So these are big, very strong versions of the Pokemon that you’re going to be battling against. And for a lot of them the higher level raid bosses at least you will need a group of people. Level one and two raids can definitely be soloed.
If you have strong enough Pokemon to find raids you can just look around at gyms and see if theres any gyms with an egg on top. Those eggs will have a timer to let you know when the egg is going to hatch. And the raid will be available for you to participate in. Or you can open up your tracker, your radar and there’s a new tab for raids. It will show you all the raids nearby which will also be visible on the map that nearby race lists will only show you raids at gyms that are currently visible on your map.
Once you find a raid that you want to participate in, I would suggest trying to get there early or right on time. Because for the most part it seems like that’s when people are showing up in my experience. A group of people will generally be there right when the raid starts especially if it’s a higher-level raid like 3 or 4. So you’ll probably have better chances of meeting up with a group if you get there right away.
How to join Boss Raids on Pokemon Go:
Once you’re in range of the gym you can battle the raid boss. You can either click battle to join the public lobby or you can join a private lobby which you’ll set a password for. And if you give that password to your friend they’ll join the same private lobby as you. So each lobby has a limit of 20 players per group. Again if there’s like a ton of people around and you want to do it with your friends you’ll have to set up a private lobby for that.
To join a raid you will need a raid pass. You can get one free RAID pass per day by spinning PoGo stops or gym stops. Spinning gym photo discs and besides that you can buy premium raid passes from the in-game shop or a hundred polka coins each. Once one player enters the raid lobby a timer will start for 120 seconds or two minutes. And all the players that join in that two minutes will enter as a group. Together during that two minute lobby you can set your lineup. Choose the Pokemon that you want to bring into battle.
How about for bigger groups?
For bigger groups it really doesn’t matter because the program on the raid boss is going to go down really quickly when you have a lot of people attacking. But if you’re by yourself you definitely want to choose the best Pokemon to counter the specific raid boss that you’re going up against.
Once you’re in the battle it functions exactly the same as a normal gym battle. Tap for your fast attack, charge up your charge bar, pulled for your charge attack and swipe to dodge. The only difference here is that the raid boss doesn’t have a warning flash for its attack. So you wont know when to dodge.
When the raid boss is attacking with its regular attacks I definitely recommend just spamming your attacks especially in a group. It’s going to deal a lot of damage and you wont waste time with dodging. But when a raid boss uses its charge attack you definitely want to try to dodge if you can. You’re going to have to pay attention. Watch the animations, look for the warning text if it actually appears. But again you’re not going to get a warning flash when the raid boss uses its charge attack. Your group will have 180 seconds or three minutes to defeat the raid boss. And that’s plenty of time as long as you have enough people.
There are also some pretty good rewards for beating a raid boss. There are new items including rare candies, golden raspberries and TMS. Rare candies are great because they can be converted into any Pokemon candy. So if you were to use that rare candy on a five-kilometer buddy like a mory that one rare candy is essentially worth five kilometres of walking.
So definitely a very valuable reward golden raspberries are great. Because they give you a greatly increased chance of catching a Pokemon in the wild. You can also use them on a raid boss to really increase your chances of catching that. They can also be fed to Pokemon in gyms to fully restore their motivation. Personally I think I would save them for catching raid bosses because some of them can be pretty difficult. These are fully evolved Pokemon a lot of the times and they have pretty low base catch rate.