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Feature Article:

The Berry Battle!

The Berry Battle, a competition hosted by May of the Devon Corporation, wages on into its second week! Who can cook the most Hoenn Tonics? There have already been nine winners, some of whom the PH Times had the pleasure of speaking to!

In this longer-form article, we spoke to several Pokéheroes players who had different strategies, opinions and tips about the ongoing Berry Battle. Let us know your thoughts (PalPad me anytime!) on this new format of opinion and information piece. Cloudfairy likes the principle, expressing the idea that it could get more people involved and invested with the Times. "I mean I'll definitely be curious to see who said what," she commented.


What you can win:

Everyone gets a prize! Everyone who participates in a day (by entering any number of Hoenn Tonics - even just one) will receive some festival points. We spoke to Zellane, a site-wide renowned gardener, who described their findings:

Quote from Zellane

[Y]ou get a certain amount of Festival Points per Tonic you turn in but you also gain a bonus from where you place.

So, entering the same number of Tonics on two different days and coming in different places on the leaderboard will get you a different number of festival points at the end of the day. Hard work is rewarded by the Tonic, but the Berry Battle is exactly that - a battle - and doing better than everyone else pays off too!

In addition to festival points, there are some rare items, and even a Pokémon, on the line - see the spoiler for details!

Managing your garden:

It can be difficult taking care of all your plants, nurturing them with water and fertilisers, all the while preparing an ample supply of seeds and filling your cooking pot with the ingredients, stirring when necessary.

It's particularly difficult when different gardens have different fertilities, and different berries have different growing speeds and levels required, because all your berries end up finishing at different times. Perhaps it's best to plant them in blocks, so you don't end up fragmenting your real estate: Qiaokeli, who's ranked among the top ten no fewer than six times this season, does whole gardens at a time of just one berry. Having unlocked all four gardens, he used the first two gardens (a total of 84 slots, with a medium fertility) for Pumkin berries, the third garden (96 slots, but a slower growing rate) for Eggant berries, and the fourth (just 27 slots, but berries grow most quickly here) for Drash berries. This was fairly balanced, but he still recommends keeping track of your stock and adjusting accordingly if you're low on one berry or the other.

TheLemonLord's strategy is quite different. He has three of the gardens unlocked, and has hit the ranklist for the first time this Sunday. At the moment, they work on solely Pumkin berries most of the time, and works in a third of the other two whenever she falls below 100 of either.

Taking care of your levels is another way of ensuring you can stay on top of everything. Of course, the higher the level is, the more slowly it grows, so keeping the berries no more than one level above the threshold (lvl2 for Eggant/Drash and lvl5 for Pumkin) is ideal. Usually, around 20-30% of berries get ranked up to the next level when they're turned into seeds - the plan Zellane (who's come fifth place or better six times) holds to involves planting these higher level seeds, and using them solely for making tonics. She estimates that 9 in 10 of her tonics are made from these higher level berries, and the majority of the correctly-levelled berries get turned back into seeds to multiply in the fields.

Time management may also prove difficult - remembering to visit the garden every now and then is my most throttling vice. Keep track of your waiting periods, and try to minimise (ideally eliminate) the time your gardens spend fallow.

Quote from Qiaokeli

[K]eep grinding, but make sure to not overdo it, cuz you wouldn't wanna lose track of your [IRL] responsibilities[.]

Taking advantage of May's Green Thumb, the feature that boosts the growth of all your Hoennian berries, is one way of spending time while you wait for seeds to grow and berries to cook. You can activate the thumb by feeding 200 berries to Pokémon - using clicklists with mostly hatched 'mons, such as "Random Clicklist", is quickest - and heading to the Berry Battle page. This cuts a quarter off your growth times. The most fun part is that it stacks multiplicatively: activating it once cuts an hour of waiting time down to 45 minutes, and activating it again (after feeding 200 more berries, of course) cuts that down to around 34. Most interviewees I spoke to activate it around twice per batch, when they're at home at least, but Qiaokeli (who actually holds second place on the ranklist for most berries fed) says they activate it up to ten times per batch (which would cut an hour down to 3 minutes, 23 seconds) - by which point the berries are probably all grown!


Tips from the top:

Rack up the tonics over several days. By simply not collecting your tonics when they're brewed, they can stack up over two or more days and become much more numerous than if you entered them immediately. Personally, this is certainly the only chance I have at getting into the top ten on any one day. Even Zellane, who's been in the top ten on eight of the nine days at the time of writing, had to use this strategy to make first place (accounting for the missing day).

Invest in some upgrades. If you're not an experienced gardener, it's worthwhile to upgrade all your seed makers to the maximum, so you don't spend as much time filling them up and you can have longer queues. The same goes for the cooking pot. Having more gardens can increase your throughput a lot, but they're quite large investments so it's not absolutely necessary for success.

Stock up - and not just on the Hoennians. Make sure you always have a small backlog of each of the three required berries, so when you start running low you can make sure to focus on that one and prevent any downtime in your cooking pot. But you should also make sure you have an ample supply of other berries to feed to Pokémon as part of May's Green Thumb. Consensus among experts seems to reocmmend Oran and Cheri berries, which are easy to grow and often available at the Item Shop (check daily to get the best offers!). Oran has a lot of flavours, so is preferred by most of Pokémon, as can be seen in your Berrydex.

Plan. Although this isn't always an explicitly given tip, everyone we spoke to was able to explain with quite a lot of detail how they managed their gardens and seed makers. Take a minute to work out which seeds and berries you need more of at the moment. As TheLemonLord put it, "plan how you distribute [the berries] between the seed makers, because you'll loose a lot of time to that".

Don't stress yourself! It's important to balance life and video games, so don't feel pressured or stressed by the competition to be fanatical about logging onto Pokéheroes. Everyone we spoke to, at all levels of the pecking order, echoed this.

Kyurem's in Town!

Quote from BREAKING NEWS

Kyurem seen in Emera Town

Kyurem has returned to Emera Town in its annual winter migration! In its search for caring trainers who spread the love of interacting, it will offer gifts to trainers who interact a bunch. It could take just a few clicks or it could take hundreds of thousands, so it will reward the most patient of players. But, interacting with berries has a 20% higher chance of causing it to appear!!

This year also sees a second gift from Kyurem available: the Kyurem Plushie! By choosing the plushie, you can increase the chances of getting a shiny Kyurem from the egg! The more plushies you collect in a row, the higher your shiny chances, but be careful, because once you adopt the egg, the chances will reset. If you're a particularly patient trainer going for 100% chance, the chances will roll over to next year.

Kyurem will appear in your userbar, as you can see in this image from the days when PH was in Times New Roman. Dark times they were indeed.

Quote from BREAKING NEWS

Poor old man eaten by Kyurem

That better have been the Daycare Owner...

Kyurem will stick around until the end of the 10th of February. See the announcement post for more information and FAQs.

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Pokéradar Update
In your Pokéradar history page, you can now click on the images of the shiny Pokémon to go to their profile (so long as it hasn't been released). This feature was suggested by RoyalGecko.

In order to work retroactively, shinies you've already hatched have to be searched for, which might take a little time longer for a couple of Pokémon, so don't worry if the link isn't quite working yet.

P.S. is it Pokéradar or PokéRadar? Riako can't seem to make his mind up... eh

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Complete these Pokémon-themed sudokus!! Answers will be revealed next week. You can take a screenshot of your attempt and send it to the editor-in-chief Absbor, to have your name featured in the next issue! Find the answers to last issue's sudoku linked under this week's, inside the spoilers.

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EXAMPLE:


Complete these Pokémon-themed sudokus!! Answers will be revealed next week. You can take a screenshot of your attempt and send it to the editor-in-chief Absbor, to have your name featured in the next issue! Find the answers to last issue's sudoku linked under this week's, inside the spoilers.

EXAMPLE:



[the links used in this example are the answers to this sudoku - usually, we'd keep the link to one side for a week. in the first issue, we can replace the [url] tags with something like "OUR FIRST WEEK".]