So lately, I guess everyone has been all in a stir over Pokémon GO’s legendary raids for Articuno, Moltres, and Zapdos.
I was only a level 24 on Pokémon GO at the time the raids started. Now, this does mean that I couldn’t play the raids for the birds myself, because it was my understanding that you had to be level 25 to participate in raids.
But hey, I could still tag along, right?
So when Shane saw that there was going to be an Articuno raid at the gym in our backyard, I did just that.
There I was, happily minding my own business, looking at my phone and waiting for cool things to spawn around the gym. Just randomly pressing things, watching a huge crowd gathering and waiting to start the raid once everyone had gotten there.
Then I decided to try the gym spinner, and that’s when it all went downhill.
I didn’t clue in to the fact that something was happening until Shane looked at my phone and asked why there was a timer. I didn’t know. He did, though.
He asked if I could leave the screen with the timer. I could, but the game told me I had used a raid pass. How was that possible, though? I wasn’t a high enough level to use raid passes yet.
As evidenced by the timer and the panicked looks on the faces of everyone at the gym, though, it seemed that the game had taken out the limit for those events so everyone could try to get the legendary birds.
I had accidentally surprise-started the raid when everyone else wasn’t looking.
As I looked around at them all, my first thought was “Whoops.”
My second thought was “They probably don’t know it’s me, right?”
And so began the raid.
I was already off to a good start, but obviously, at level 24, I didn’t have enough strong Pokémon to do any actual damage to an Articuno. I still managed to participate, though, which meant I could try to catch it.
That was pretty exciting, as far as I was concerned. If I could catch it, it would be just about the strongest thing I had.
The next way I ruined the raid, though, came a solid five Premier balls later:
I didn’t even manage to catch the darn thing.
From the looks on the others’ faces ranging from disgruntled to full-out rage monster, none of them had caught it, either. So now, I know: don’t touch the things on the screen before someone else does. Lesson learned.
