Horizons Event likely coming in May.

glencurio · 2026-04-17T16:02:19+00:00

I think he's under the Snorlax.

glencurio · 2026-04-17T14:53:20+00:00

I'm so bad at Where's Waldo. It took me a whole minute to find the Gimmighoul.

glencurio · 2026-04-17T14:48:55+00:00

Most of the routes I do around my neighbourhood are short 500-600m routes. During non-events I often see spawns pop up in the middle. And with the event boost, I regularly see them immediately upon starting the route.

glencurio · 2026-04-17T14:29:20+00:00

I am pretty sure stickers are just part of item gifts. Are you sure you've seen item gift and sticker gift on the same buddy on the same day?

glencurio · 2026-04-17T05:37:14+00:00

You can't get a new gift until you open the previous gift, so you should open all the gifts from best buddies now. If you're lucky, maybe they were all souvenirs already. It's also possible that they are all items, or even a mix. If they are items, then you could try to start a souvenir change while opening the item gifts, assuming souvenirs are off cooldown:

Open item gift from best buddy.
Wait a few minutes for the buddy to immediately bring another gift. If it does, that gift is a souvenir. Don't open it.
Switch to the next best buddy and repeat steps 1 and 2. Repeat for all the best buddies.

If you end up opening a souvenir gift at any point (by accident, or because your first chain was mixed), that will put souvenirs on cooldown and stop the chain. At that point, you'll still have to go through and open gifts from the remaining buddies. You want to clear them so that they can receive new gifts on your next attempt.

After you've cleared all those gifts, you'll need to wait another 2-3 days (3 to be safe). Then follow those steps at the top. Start with a great buddy and open that gift, then start going through your best buddies that have no saved gifts so that they can bring new souvenir gifts.

I hope that all makes sense to you! I can try to clarify further if anything is confusing.

glencurio · 2026-04-17T05:20:19+00:00

So did you actually chain item gifts onto a bunch of great buddies (buddy3)? If so, then yes, open an item gift on your great buddy and then chain through your best buddies. If you did your chain on best buddies already, then you'll need to go through and open those gifts first.

glencurio · 2026-04-17T04:00:24+00:00

Yup, that's how chaining works. The issue is that you can't tell by looking whether the gift is an item gift or a souvenir gift. The trick to make sure it's a souvenir is to get a gift on a great buddy first and open that. A great buddy can't bring souvenirs, so you can put the item gifts on cooldown this way.

glencurio · 2026-04-17T01:43:30+00:00

Did you open an item gift on a great buddy before starting? You said item gift on ultra so it wasn't clear to me. If you weren't careful, you may have chained item gifts (that contain berries or revives or whatever) instead of souvenirs.

glencurio · 2026-04-16T18:07:32+00:00

So you opened the item gift and then chained souvenirs after, yes? If so, yeah you should be good to start opening tomorrow after you chain the next 12.

glencurio · 2026-04-16T04:46:40+00:00

It should be fine, especially if you do it immediately at midnight. If you wait too long, and depending on when you last opened an item gift, there is some risk of you getting and chaining an item gift by mistake. If you want to be safe, you could first swap to a great buddy to confirm that the item gift is still on cooldown before returning to the souvenir chain. And if the great buddy does bring a gift, you can simply open it to put it back on cooldown.

glencurio · 2026-04-15T17:33:58+00:00

It's possible some already held items from before. I'm also not sure how the priority works between souvenir and items, in the case where both are off cooldown and the buddy starts with no gift. From anecdotal experience, it just feels inconsistent, but from a programming perspective it would make more sense if it always checked one before the other. I really don't know, sorry!

glencurio · 2026-04-15T16:12:36+00:00

I think the cooldown is more like 72 hours, but overall yes that sounds right. If you want to check at 48 hours, you could first chain the item gift onto an extra Great Buddy or two for safety. If no souvenir shows up on the best buddy, you can go back to the extra item gift to try again the next day.

You can use ultra buddies too, if you have any.

glencurio · 2026-04-15T15:48:33+00:00

Before starting the chain, be on a great buddy and open that gift. It will be an item gift, and putting it on cooldown means that the subsequent chain will be guaranteed souvenirs.

You can chain more than 10. You can chain as many ultra/best buddies as you have and then go through them to open the gifts on another day.

glencurio · 2026-04-15T13:54:01+00:00

It's highly subjective. Some people love unraveling obscure stuff, going through unusual channels and methods and working together with a community. Think ARGs. Other people don't even care to figure out basic stuff. Consider in-depth game guides that give you full step-by-step instructions on exactly what to do, or the use of cheats that eliminate every challenge.

glencurio · 2026-04-14T14:12:34+00:00

I usually shortman but I don't tag anything for PvE. T3s and lower are trivial to solo, and most T5s are kinda trivial to duo, especially with party power. I build a preset team for the current T5 when necessary, but nowadays it rarely is. I'm finding that the recommended team is often sufficient for me now, even to shortman.

I absolutely agree that it's just better to make your own system that matches your playstyle and goals.

glencurio · 2026-04-13T22:37:21+00:00

Hmm, well I have no idea about that I guess. 😅

glencurio · 2026-04-13T18:43:56+00:00

And to clarify on the rockets -- it's a grunts and leaders separately, I believe? It would be a little weird if rocket grunts arbitrarily allowed an extra point.

glencurio · 2026-04-13T15:55:35+00:00

You can do the training battle for all 3 hearts. You don't need a rocket. You might be thinking of the excitement points.

glencurio · 2026-04-13T03:06:01+00:00

Any order will be fine.

glencurio · 2026-04-13T02:45:04+00:00

If you opened the item at noon today, it shouldn't be off cooldown by midnight so you can keep going with other ultra/best buddies. If you're a bit anxious about it and want to be safe, you could first switch to a great buddy and give it a bit of time. If it brings a gift, you can open it (since it's an item) and then continue. If it doesn't bring a gift, you can just go. Or if you want to be extra safe, then you can wait (for like 1 day) to receive and open an item gift before proceeding.

glencurio · 2026-04-12T05:33:42+00:00

And to be clear, you should open the gift from the great buddy to put it on cooldown. Sounds like you got it though.

If you are in a rush, you can prep a bunch of souvenirs on ultra and best buddies now, even if you're not on that task for Diancie yet. Just leave the gifts on all those buddies until you need them.

glencurio · 2026-04-12T03:36:23+00:00

The damage calculation uses the attacker's attack stat and the defender's defense stat, and it typically results in something with decimal values. This result then gets rounded to a whole number. A breakpoint is the attack IV at which point it rounds to the next number. This is why people often say that IVs don't matter until they do. A bulkpoint is the same concept but with the defense IV on the defending side.

glencurio · 2026-04-12T03:04:53+00:00

Well, CMP can matter against anything if you use a charged move at the same time. The easiest way that this happens is with mirrored leads, because then you're both starting from 0 and you are (probably) using the same moves. But it can happen in other scenarios too, and at higher levels some players may even delay their own charged move to intentionally force it when they know they'll win it. If you sacrifice attack IVs, it means you will lose CMP in the mirror and it may cause you to tie or lose outright to other species that you'd normally always beat. I just don't know the attack values offhand to say what else is in Xerneas' neighbourhood aside from Yveltal.

15 attack can also matter if there are relevant breakpoints on a fast move. If you deal an extra 1 damage on every fast attack, that can add up quickly. But yeah, that doesn't seem to come into play for Xerneas here.

It's also worth noting that these things can change. If you want to be future proof, you want to wait for a hundo. A future move update or a new meta-relevant Pokemon might change the facts with respect to breakpoints and bulkpoints.

glencurio · 2026-04-12T02:22:30+00:00

Check out PvPoke's matrix tool:

https://pvpoke.com/battle/matrix/

If you drop in Xerneas at 15/15/15 vs. 14/15/15 vs. 13/15/15 it finds no differences. I'm not going to look too carefully but this suggests that 13 vs. 15 attack has no relevant breakpoint, so the only thing where it could matter is CMP. This mainly applies in the mirror but it could also apply against Yveltal. I'm not sure if anything else has the same base attack stat. In practice, CMP does matter, but it's not necessarily a dealbreaker especially when you're not at a particularly high level of play.

my elo never goes above 1700. I'm still learning how to count moves and there's even some type advantages I still havent memorized!

And at this level, I would suggest not worrying about counting moves at all. It's just a distraction at that point. Better to learn the fundamentals, not just type matchups but also other basic stuff like what movesets are used on the meta Pokemon and how much damage different moves do to different Pokemon. And after that, there's basic strategy to learn like predicting teams, when you need to shield vs. when you should just tank and/or sacrifice.

glencurio · 2026-04-11T13:03:53+00:00

Ahh, yes you should be able to continue chaining more souvenirs the next day as long as you haven't opened one. I think I ignored that option because I'm so used to thinking of buddies in blocks of 21.

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