A few days ago, raid battles have been released! Yay!
The raid battles are basically huge boss battles which are sometimes very difficult to defeat by yourself. For example, this electabuzz currently has 11,311 cp, which is quite a bit. There were some, like Bayleef, which only had around 5 or 6 thousand cp, or Tyranitar, which had 34,707 cp.
Here’s my first ever raid battle:
Basically, you and up to 19 other people can join in the fight. You have 180 seconds to defeat the boss. The strategy to make sure you can defeat the boss is to defeat the boss once it just spawns; there is usually a group of people already waiting there if you’re in the city, for example. I camped it to make sure that I got into the first wave of people. The two faces above 11311 means that this is a difficulty of 2. 5,000-6,000 cp pokemon are roughly difficulty 1; 10,000ish cp is difficulty 2; 20,000 is difficulty 3; and 30,000 is difficulty 4. As we were driving by, we saw a 19,000ish cp Jolteon boss battle and a 20,000ish cp Vaporeon.
We had roughly 3 other people there. We defeated it really fast. It’s exactly like a normal gym battle, except it has like 1000 more health than normal.
My friend missed out, so he battled by himself and defeated it in around 90 seconds.
After the battle, you get a certain number of pokeballs to catch the pokemon you just battled. It will be roughly a level 20 pokemon (similar to an egg) with at least an 80% IV. The cp is random for every level up to level 30, similar to catching pokemon in the wild.
Now here, you get however many pokeballs you earned to catch the pokemon. The pokeballs are silver, but they’re called Premier Balls. The cp’s are a little buggy, or so I’ve discovered, in the fact that you don’t actually catch the cp that’s displayed. For example, this is a 1222 cp Electabuzz. But when I caught it, the cp was actually 1239. This happened as well with the Charizard boss battle. It was 1490ish but we ended up catching a lower cp than that.
In addition to catching that pokemon, I was given some Golden Razz Berries and a Fast TM (see picture at the very bottom of the page), while my friend got Rare Candies and Revives.
The next day, there was a Rhydon Boss battle near where I was, but it was already half way over, so I went there and tried to defeat it by myself.
I tried to defeat it with Vaporeons, but even though all my attacks were super effective, its health was too high, and I only defeated around a fourth of it when time ran out. If you lose, you don’t get anything, but waste your raid pass. You can infinitely try again to defeat it, as long as you’re within the time. I could have tried to defeat the Rhydon again, but what’s the point when there’s no one there to help me?
Later, there was a Tyranitar raid battle, so we decided to go to it, even though it is more than half way over. Since we already used our free raid passes, we had to buy the premium one with 100 pokecoins. That was easy, since we had so many from conquering many gyms over the past few months. It had a cp of 34,707. It was really hard. The three of us went there and ran into two other people who were waiting for other people to battle with. They were about to leave, but when they saw us approach, they went back and battled with us. There were five of us, levels 28, 31, 32, 35, and 35. We defeated the Tyranitar with roughly 2 seconds to spare. Therefore, I logically concluded that the absolute minimum to beat a difficulty 4 boss is five people, assuming they are all around level 30. We decided to stop dodging and just keep tapping, because we decided that dodging in boss battles was more difficult than normal, and it wastes time. I would say that since we had 2 seconds to spare, using Vaporeons and Dragonites against the Tyranitar, the minimum group size is 5 for a boss battle of Tyranitar. Everyones movesets were different. For example, I got Fire Blast and Iron Tail, while others got the moveset Bite and Crunch. I finally got my first Tyranitar!
In between the Tryanitar boss battle and the Rhydon boss battle, we decided to raid a 11,200 cp Muk and a four-star egg that was about to hatch. More on that later. The muk was easy, there was the three of us along with two other people. We defeated it in 30 seconds. I won 3 rare candies and 2 golden razz berries. I got 11 pokeballs to catch a 1239 cp Muk, and I decided to try out how good the golden razz berry worked. I spent four golden razz berries and it still broke free every time. Maybe I’m just that unlucky but it fled.
After Muk, there was a four-star egg about to hatch. We walked two blocks to get there, and when we arrived there, there were 14 other people waiting there. It hatched and there was a Charizard. All 17 of us took it down in roughly 30 seconds again. It was very easy when you have a lot of people. I got 18 revives and 3 rare candies and 4 golden razz berries again. But sadly, I overestimated the golden razz berries and all 7 of my Premier Balls either got punched away or the pokemon broke free again. I spent 4 golden razz berries again and it still ran away. I’m starting to think golden razz berries are not a very high increase in catch chance.
They also increased the bag size from 1000 to 1500. It’s nice that my bag is bigger, but the pokemon bag is still capped at 1000.