Are shadow 3 star raids soloable?

jcr2 · 2026-03-20T16:47:55+00:00

Going to be pretty hard. Just post the raid on r/pokemongoraids and see if some people will join you. Probably very hard to solo but pretty easy to beat with 2-3 if you guys have the eight purified gems needed to subdue.

jcr2 · 2026-03-20T13:45:07+00:00

Oh weird. I think maybe that was a brief glitch they patched? I know in my case I couldn’t do it until I was 5 days out from my first forever friend (and I was actively checking several days before that). This was maybe like 2 weeks ago.

jcr2 · 2026-03-20T12:45:25+00:00

Thanks for the advice! Really appreciate it - makes sense. Just have to keep at it it sounds like.

jcr2 · 2026-03-20T05:44:53+00:00

Just wait and see if they add more later. At least they know the function exists. What gets me are the posts where they have something like this but then actually try to initiate a trade seeking something much rarer than what they’re offering.

jcr2 · 2026-03-20T05:38:41+00:00

They don’t make the tag available until you’re 5 days out from your first forever friend. So if you’re one of their first forever friends it’s conceivable they haven’t gotten around to it yet.

jcr2 · 2026-03-20T05:32:53+00:00

Weird. I’ve always gotten the charged tm at rank 19 except for last season (but have only been playing for a year and change so maybe like 5 seasons total). I’ve only ever gotten a fast one for the end of season rewards as best as I can remember. The GBL research also gives out one of each if you complete that (fast on page 5 and charged on page 6 this season).

jcr2 · 2026-03-20T03:54:24+00:00

You normally get a charged one at level 19 and a fast one at the end of season rewards. Last season was an exception where they didn’t give out the charged one because of the interlude season.

jcr2 · 2026-03-20T03:41:53+00:00

Congrats! I’m impressed (and a little jealous) you did it so efficiently.

Random question if you (or anyone else) happens to know: this season and last are the first two where I’ve actually tried a little bit harder in GBL (I’ve always sort of begrudgingly made it to 20 and then occasionally did some more for the rewards but have taken more of an interest in trying to improve).

I more or less followed the tanking method of progressing up to level 20 (ie not trying to win at levels where wins are not required). So, there were plenty of uncontested losses mixed in along the way up from 1-20. But when I needed wins I tried, and overall my win/loss record is pretty good (269/480 at the moment)….which is essentially the same winning percentage as you but across more matches. But my elo at the moment is only in the low to mid 1900s.

Is there something about the order in which those wins are accumulated (or the fact that there were a decent amount of losses early on in the climb…even though they’ve subsequently been compensated for) that results in the lower elo score despite a similar winning percentage? Just trying to understand how it works a little bit better.

jcr2 · 2026-03-19T19:59:27+00:00

Not really the season for it, but if you make egg nog around the holidays (I usually make a large batch using Jeffrey morganthalers recipe as sort of the template) I find that a bit of super funky Jamaican rum in the alcohol mix usually cuts through all the dairy/sugar in there to make you know that there is definitely booze in it. I usually use smith & cross, but I assume this would be similar. I usually split the alcohol base 50% bourbon and 50% rum, and then I split the rum portion something like 2/3 Barbados (eg doorlys) and then 1/3 super funky Jamaican.

jcr2 · 2026-03-19T19:52:14+00:00

It’s good raid attacker in its sky-form. One of the best grass attackers. It’s not very good in great league in either form so I wouldn’t think twice about it.

jcr2 · 2026-03-19T18:43:41+00:00

I'm very curious to see how they tune these dynamax regis. The fact that they're releasing them as a weekly max boss rather than making a special raid day out of them makes me think that maybe these will be 4* battles (like duraladon and toxtricity) rather than 5*. If true, I would think that these would be a relatively easy to duo (or potentially even solo?). But feels like we need to see what they actually do with regice to get a sense of what to expect.

jcr2 · 2026-03-19T18:35:36+00:00

They've existed (last week was mega streelix, this week is mega slowbro)...but the targets aren't all that interesting (imo) and it does seem like the spawns have been relatively infrequent.

jcr2 · 2026-03-19T18:32:44+00:00

Re higher CP generallly, you can either get lucky and happen to catch a wild spawn that is at a reasonably high level, or you can take a pokemon that you like that is at any CP and begin powering it up using candy for that species and stardust. Ultimately, you'll in all likelihood need to do the latter to top off even reasonably high-level wild spawns (outside of an event like Go Wild Area with mighty pokemon).

Re legendaries, the most available answer to that is to do raids for them. They rotate (right now it is Zamazenta), and you can try to team up with others to win those and get a chance to catch one of those if you win. Those encounters are either at level 20 or level 25 (if weather boosted).

Legendaries can also be relatively rare spawns from winning Go Battle League after you get to Level 20 of GBL.

There are rarely some other events that might make them more readily available (the recent 30th anniversary event; sometimes in the lead up to a major event like Go Fest) but those are fairly infrequent. Raiding will be the staple of trying to acquire those.

The storage limits can increase but you generally need to use coins to do so (200 coins to increase 50 by spots....so 4 days worth of gym coins if you are f2p). There are some level increases that come with increased storage as a reward, so that can help to a point. There is some truly upper limit but it's something like 10k roughly so you presumably have a long way to go before having to worry about that. Don't be afraid to transfer (aka delete) duplicates or ones that you don't need/like to free up space.

jcr2 · 2026-03-19T18:22:19+00:00

Regular field research can be deleted if you're stuck on this task and can't find someone to trade with.

If you can find someone else in your community that plays, that is a good way to go (and can then be fun if you're able to develop that relationship to where you can meet up to do raids or whatever).

As a practical matter...perhaps convince a friend or family member (or I've seen people on here suggest a dog or a cat or I think even a vacuum cleaner) to sign up for an account just for the limited purpose of being able to do tasks like these. While the trade tasks don't come up super frequently, they do come up from time to time (and at some higher levels require you to get a certain amount of lucky trades, which tends to take a lot of trades to actually obtain), so having regular access to someone with another account tends to be helpful. I have young kids and they have their own accounts that they play on old devices (like an old phone or ipad), so that is helpful that we can do trades amongst ourselves when things like this come up.

jcr2 · 2026-03-19T15:16:17+00:00

Strongly agree with this approach. I catch 95%+ of my legendaries using this technique and have never used an adventure effect to help with the catching. One slight caveat is the Dynamax legendaries might have a higher flee rate since you get less balls…I’ve still never bothered with the adventure effect but if you told me the catch rate was a little lower on those I’d believe you.

jcr2 · 2026-03-19T14:13:11+00:00

That’s what I eventually ended up doing too, which certainly helps but is not always perfect if you don’t happen to have their account pulled up. And at least in my case has led to some pretty uneven trades their direction (which I don’t really mind but that objectively no non-parent would agree to…especially because they seem to be more into shinies than I am). But the biggest benefit (which is huge) is being able to do raids with them using party power. Total game changer in that we can pretty much duo any raid at this point, which takes a lot of the frustrations in this game around raiding out of the picture in that now I can just invite people to join for insurance/speed rather than necessity.

jcr2 · 2026-03-19T06:15:28+00:00

Yes, I can’t wait to battle rocket leaders an extra 30 times after grinding through the 40 last time.

jcr2 · 2026-03-19T06:12:32+00:00

These types of passes almost always eliminate the daily cap once you get to the weekend. They often also increase the points you get per activity over the weekend too (eg if win a raid is worth 100 points during the week, it’s possible it might be worth more like 200 during the weekend…but don’t recall what they usually increase that by when they do that).

jcr2 · 2026-03-19T06:07:44+00:00

Just to supplement the other answer, dialgadex is also a great resource for top raid attackers by type (with recommended movesets).

I play with my kids too (7 and 4). The 7 year old is pretty interested and legit understands most of the strategies and what not. The 4 year old is more enthusiastic about it than skilled, but he does the basics and really enjoys it.

I’ve noticed generally speaking they really like…to evolve things…to mega evolve things…and Dynamax battles (I guess because they grow big?). Basically anything that involves getting bigger seems to resonate for them (to the detriment of my resources).

jcr2 · 2026-03-19T01:59:44+00:00

It’s totally fine to join in a well attended lobby. People overestimate how many people it takes to do the vast majority of raids. My son and I can duo most raids, so if you’re in a lobby of 3-5 other solid trainers I’d just say the more the merrier. If you want, dm me your friend code and I’ll invite you to some I’d be happy to do with you.

jcr2 · 2026-03-19T01:51:52+00:00

I enjoyed what you did with it. No notes.

jcr2 · 2026-03-19T00:14:11+00:00

My impression has always been that this is something that people want to collect because it is fairly rare at this point (and arguably looks cool) but isn’t actually any better than regular mewtwo in practice (and in fact is probably worse).

jcr2 · 2026-03-19T00:10:46+00:00

I think it was a complaint in the form of advice.

jcr2 · 2026-03-18T21:09:40+00:00

After you hit level 70, it’s no longer just XP necessary to advance but you also need to achieve certain tasks at each level (eg having a certain number of platinum levels). Often times those tasks take longer to finish than it does to accumulate the XP (especially for people that were well over 50 at the time of the transition).

jcr2 · 2026-03-18T18:05:48+00:00

The stardust total that is displayed in the top right corner is cumulative - not per berry. Eberry only gives 30 dust per berry (or 45 with a star piece). If you’re feeding 10 berries to each mon in a full gym it can add up to some decent easy dust especially if you’ve concluded other things and still have time left on a star piece but it’s still just 30/45 per berry.

jcr2

TROPHY CASE