It looks like the main purpose is to keep someone from holding a total stranglehold over the gym once they take it. In theory you can still do this...you just have to be VERY dedicated to it, instead of setting your Pokemon and forgetting it.
Can you still only get Pokeballs through Pokestops? Because if so RIP still.
Pretty sure I got a ball from a gym earlier.
The gym system itself doesn't seem too bad to me but they definitely intentionally cratered the rate at which you can get coins for free. At 1 coin per hour it takes one pokemon 100 hours to make $1 worth of coins. That's brutal.
Raids appear to be unlocked. My wife's account is only level 25 and we were able to play. Kinda interesting, got a Weezing off a gym next to us.
Since gyms went live my Gyarados has been living in a local Church Gym. There's another gym at a park nearby that I tossed my Flareon in, he lasted about 5 hours and got a notification on my phone saying "Your Pokemon battled hard and has returned to you!". I checked the shop and noticed my coin total went from 450 to 455.
Friday afternoon (yesterday) during lunch I tossed my Charizard into that same park gym around 12:30pm. On my way home tonight around 11:30? I swung by and saw he was still in park gym, feed some berries then headed home. Just checked my phone (1:30AM now) and my Charizard is back, no notification that he had battled hard and returned, and now my coins are at 495 from 455. Gyarados still hanging out in Church Gym...
I don't understand how this coin system works... Did a raid spawn at that gym and since it was under my teams control I got... 40 coins?
Your pokemon gains coins at a rate of (currently) 1 coin every 10 minutes. When they get returned to you you get the coins that they collected (up to a max of 50 combined, per day). I'd assume the lack of a push notification telling you your Charizard got returned is just a game bug. Someone battled it down.
Shouldn't I have gotten 50 then for Charizard being in the Park from noon to midnight? O-o
Got kicked from a gym battle because GPS dropped out (which is a frequent issue). Also, it's dumb that you have to wait around for a raid to start before you can participate. Would much rather drop off a pokemon and let it do it's own thing.
Tried my first raid today at Church Gym, was a 4* Venusaur. Proceeded to get my ass kicked, waste of a raid pass.
Can you keep retrying if all your pokemon are defeated? Or do you have to run away before they all get KO'd?
Got a raid pass, but everywhere I see an egg it just pops up a message saying I'm too low level to participate =/ lv29.
I beat a Quilava raid today by myself with one pokemon, but it was only like 5k CP.
I have to say I hate that raids overwrite the gym. I drove around to drop some berries around my area of town and couldn't get into a lot because they were raids...
If all your Pokemon are defeated but there is still time left you get to pick another 6 to use until you time out. When you time out you can try again an infinite amount of times during the 1 hour that the raid exists.
I think raids are pretty dope. Got my shit pushed in with a group of 5-6 versus a 21000 Lapras (we all kept timing out) but managed to solo a 11000 Electabuzz. Lots of fun, just hope they fix the network issues with battles (charge bar/hp yo-yo, etc)
Once you burn a raid pass, you can keep trying until the raid times out or you beat it.
Level 1/2 (the number of "faces" is the difficulty) are soloable. Three's are soloable with great difficulty, unless you're top level (in which case it's just frickin' tough). Fours are group up (at least 4 people, more is better) or get dunked. Level 5's will be Legendary Pokemon (read: special events).
I did five L4's today. Snorlax, Tyranitar, Rhydon, Charizard, and another Tyranitar. Managed to catch the Snorlax, Rhydon and one Tyranitar, got a few TMs, and a decent amount of rare candy and gold razzberries. Plus a metric fuckton of revives and 3000xp per win.
Note that Gyms will stop raids at 9pm local time, meaning you can drop by late at night and not have to worry about a raid blocking anything.
I think if you fail a raid you get up to three tries on your pass? Not sure, I've never failed one yet.
Also the push notification for pokemon being returned from gyms is totally random so don't rely on it.
Finally got my Gyarados back after 4 days! 50 coins
Thursday - 5
Friday - 40
Saturday -13
Sunday - 50
Considering it was gettign 10 ever 21 hours prior... I say this new system is much better
Has anybody gotten rare candies or Golden Razz Berries other than completing raids?
What level do you need to be to do a Raid?