Safari Zone Liverpool: Live from Lockdown
The biggest event of Pokémon Go’s calendar had been adapted for players in isolation. Here’s how I got on…
My preparations for Safari Zone Liverpool were pretty normal. That is, aside from a general feeling of dismay that I wasn’t welcoming my friends and family to the city I grew up in, everything was normal.
You see, Safari Zone events are a chance for Pokémon Go players from across the world to gather in a park or green space and play together. You can trade region-specific Pokémon with players from different continents, enjoy event-exclusive tasks and rewards, and make the most of lots of rare Pokémon spawns to try to complete your Pokédex. This is usually accompanied by highly sought-after shiny Pokémon, briefly exclusive to your event.
However, developers Niantic postponed the event — the first of its kind to be held in the UK — due to the coronavirus pandemic. Stopping tens of thousands of people from gathering in close proximity to one another was the best decision for public safety, but it was nonetheless gutting for fans looking forward to the event.
Pokémon Stay (home)
With players’ interests at heart, Niantic soon rolled out measures to make it easier to play Pokémon Go from isolation. They immediately gave away hundreds of Pokéballs for next-to-nothing, as it is harder to collect more when you can’t go outside and spin Pokéstops. They also halved the distance that you need to walk to hatch eggs — making it easier to do so entirely inside your home. Incense — an item which makes Pokémon spawn in your vicinity — was also improved, meaning Pokémon would spawn more often and the item would be in effect for longer. They also gave away a bundle of these for pennies.
Niantic has promised players even more — remote raiding is on most players’ lips, but they’ve done admirably well to convert their “get-outdoors-and-exercise” game to entirely playable from quarantine.
Anyway, my preparations were pretty normal. I blitzed my Pokémon storage, releasing with abandon to make space for the inevitable sea of rare monsters I would be catching the next day. I’d also been stocking up on balls extra hard, but I needn’t have worried.
On the day of the event, I bought another of those cheap-as-chips item bundles from the store, giving me 50 balls and 30 berries to aid my capture crusade. And as soon as the event started, special research rewarded me with 100 Great Balls for evolving three Pokémon — a simple task obviously aimed at helping players keep their stocks up.
On your marks, get set, catch!
As normal as my preparations had been, the event itself started very abnormally. I wasn’t heading out of my door half an hour in advance to get to the area of Brighton with the highest concentration of Pokéstops. I wasn’t even getting dressed. After a leisurely shower, I lay in bed as the event started, and clicked on the first Pokémon to spawn — a Relicanth. Usually only found in New Zealand, I was already off to a great start.
No need for a power bank to keep my phone charged, I was plugged into the mains. This is the life. No need to worry about Pokémon not appearing, Niantic made all Incense — the item that attracts wild Pokémon to you — last for eight hours if you had an event ticket. I sat back and started catching.
In keeping with Liverpool’s history of dockwork, the theme for the spawns at the event were all water-types. It was fitting, therefore, that my first shiny was a whale. Eight minutes in, the enormous purple sphere of a Wailmer landed on my screen as I hastily rushed for a Golden Razzberry. I caught it with ease, pleased to have got the first shiny out of the way early. It’s always nerve-wracking when it’s been half an hour — an hour even — and you’re still searching for that elusive glow. Luckily I’d caught my white (purple) whale early on.
I was filled with excitement early on, buoyed by the research tasks and regular spawns of exciting Pokémon. I used the AR+ function to photograph my Relicanth in the bath, to catch a Krabby in the kitchen, or to grab a selfie with a Pikachu wearing a bowler hat. We’re in lockdown — don’t judge.
Isolation
However, with my partner at work and my flat empty but for augmented monsters, things got a bit lonely. Pokémon Go is about community and playing together — as I’d experienced firsthand when I first moved to Brighton. The game was how I made friends and got to know the city.
I was quickly realising that I belonged in Liverpool, in Sefton Park with thousands of other like-minded people.
Such is the recurring motif of lockdown, I guess. To paraphrase Britney Spears, this loneliness was killing me. And in the words of Liverpool’s most famous export, “All the lonely people, where do they all belong?” I was quickly realising that I belonged in Liverpool, in Sefton Park with thousands of other like-minded people, and with my family who live nearby. I hadn’t been outside in about 10 days, hadn’t been to a park in much longer. And while phone calls and Facetime can help you stay in touch, it’s no replacement for seeing people in real life.
But, it was better than nothing. My brother Peter joined me on a Zoom call, playing from our parents’ house on the Wirral, a peninsula one River-Mersey-width away from the city where this event was supposed to be taking place. We grew up sharing copies of the main-series games, and he’s my go-to Pokémon Go partner if we’re ever in the same city at the time of a Community Day or other minor event.
We were quickly lost in discussing how the event was going, showing off shinies to one another, and calculating which Unown letters we were yet to find. Unown is an ancient Pokémon with 28 different forms — taking the shape of every letter of the alphabet as well as an exclamation and question mark. In the main series Pokémon games, they only appear after solving a complicated sliding tile puzzle in the Ruins of Alph, but in the mobile counterpart they can only be found at special events such as this one — and only in letters that correspond to the event.
Despite my actual location, we were on the lookout for L-I-V-E-R-P-O. Some variants are more valuable than others when it comes to trading — as the letter E appears in many place names that hold such events, whereas V would be much rarer…
For all my misgivings, the video call worked well. We chatted away on our respective sofas about 250 miles apart, stopping every few seconds to yeet another Pokéball at an unsuspecting monster. For a few hours I forgot we were so far apart and not actually playing together.
Wingull, Wingull everywhere
The best moments were when one of us found a shiny — usually a loud gasp followed by pointing your phone screen at the webcam and trying to let the other know what you’d found. Pete was unsuccessfully hunting for a shiny Carvanha, I was just happy with whatever I could find. Anything except Wingull.
The first time I found a shiny Wingull, it was great. A new shiny, and I guess the green stripes are pretty cool. Minutes later, I found my second, allowing me to evolve one and keep the other, so all was still good. But by the fourth, I didn’t know what to do with the bastard seagulls. The irony of finding so many shiny seagulls in a seaside town famed for its resident chip-thieving skyrats was not lost on me. I cracked on in hope of something else. Anything else.
It was only when we were four or five hours into the event when things started to drag. There was just something about being cooped up inside that didn’t feel the same as our usual jaunts. Safari Zone was meant to be the pinnacle of all things Pokémon, the climax of Go events, but I felt more tired than when Niantic announces Lugia as the new Raid Boss, again.
Perhaps it was because I was in a dry patch when it came to shinies, or maybe it was because I’d been sitting on my arse all day rather than taking in the sea air and sitting under a tree to do some trades with friends. It could have been either, but was likely a combination of the two.
So, I said my goodbyes to Pete and did some jobs around the hose to get up and about. A bit of tidying, washing some dishes, that kind of thing. It helped clear my head a little, so I loaded up Animal Crossing to check my turnip prices and see if I could replicate my PoGo luck for catching coelacanths (my final count was 34 Relicanth). Alas, no avail.
I kept one eye on my phone, just in case of any excitement in its pocket reality. And it was a good job I did. I’d only been away for half an hour when I half-heartedly clicked on a Pikachu, and from underneath her little bowler hat flew sparks of light! A shiny! In the cutest little hat! Undoubtedly the catch of the day, this particular Pikachu — or more specifically her hat — is exclusive to this event, and these eight hours are the only chance anyone will ever have to find a shiny Pikachu wearing a tiny bowler hat. You love to see it.
An event worthy of champions
With that one shiny, I was back in. The final couple of hours of Safari Zone: Ben’s Flat were relatively uneventful. I had neither the energy of the first couple of hours nor the lethargy of the middle period. I was running low on Pokéballs, so I had to be conservative about the monsters I caught. But, I knew I was happy with my results. I came away with a complete collection of Unown letters, a bunch of new shinies including four Wingulls and a very special Pikachu, and a small headache. It turns out you probably shouldn’t stare intensely at your phone for eight hours straight. Who knew?
Thanks to Niantic’s quick thinking, this event had been saved. Initially, it had been indefinitely postponed, and I wondered if it would occur at all. But, thanks to the quick implementation of key gameplay changes, the availability of item freebies, and changes to make tasks easier to complete from home, we had a full day of Pokémon Go goodness. No, it didn’t have anything on the real thing, but it was so good to have something to break up the monotony of lockdown life.
This event also taught me a lot about surviving this extended period of isolation. The onus on being productive — whether it’s working well from home, picking up a new skill, or hunting for shinies — can become overwhelming and all-consuming.
I’m not going to tell you to put on a suit and tie and posh shoes just to feel alive, because I spent the whole day in my pants and was happier for it. But getting up and doing something else is important. Take breaks, do small jobs, take your mind off the task at hand, take your mind off this that we’re living through. It doesn’t matter what that thing is, so long as it is different from whatever you’re concentrating on so much. You don’t have to get a six-pack, you don’t have to learn how to juggle, and you don’t have to catch every shiny. You don’t have to catch any. Take care of yourself, take care of each other, and we’ll all meet up when this is over for a proper outdoor Pokémon Go session and the finest pint any bartender has ever pulled.
