Niantic
The challenges to release a Legendary Pokemon have been met. Every type of bonus was unlocked and taken up to gold. So all bonuses will be extended. Meanwhile, worldwide trainers have been catching Pokemon and reached gold also. This means that all the requirements were met! The mystery challenge will unlock the Legendary Pokemon Lugia, which will be released worldwide in raid battles within the next 48 hours. And trainers who successfully checked into the Fest will automatically receive Lugia in their account.
This likely also means that the Festival is now over. There was going to be a raid at 6 p.m. Central featuring the released Legendary, so trainers could try to defeat and then catch it. But now everyone is getting Lugia, so it looks like the rest of the raid isn’t happening. The live stream has also ended, so it’s safe to assume the Festival is over.
Lugia is not the only Legendary announced.
Team Mystic came in first place with the challenges (and Valor was second and Instinct was third.) This means that after Lugia, Articuno will be the next Legendary to appear. We have no information yet on when Articuno will appear, but we will update this post as soon as we know.
It looks like Niantic helped trainers along a little. Despite all the problems plaguing Pokemon Go Fest, some alert players noticed that it looked like Niantic was manually lowering the challenge limits so that players could meet the threshold needed to release a Legendary. Niantic hasn’t officially confirmed this, but trainers are thankful for the help if true.
CONFIRMED: Niantic is manually lowering challenge limits to meet the threshold!
With all the connection issues and crashes plaguing the festival, it seemed like it was going to be impossible to meet the challenges’ original requirements. And Niantic was very aware of this problem. They’ve been working all day to fix iPhone bug crashes and authentication errors, and they haven’t been able to find a lasting solution.
Hosts have been booed when they’ve taken the stage, had water bottles thrown at them, and all sorts of unpleasant experiences. Denying a Legendary because a challenge couldn’t be met, when the reason was because of problems Niantic was having, would definitely have been a huge issue.
So it looks like Niantic decided to avoid this. And now they’re giving everyone who participated a free Legendary, which will definitely make up for all those problems and headaches. If you want to make sure you get your Legendary and your refund and PokeCoins (if you attended the festival), make sure your QR code is scanned. This is apparently how Niantic connects your account with your attendance. They’re enabling PokeStops within a two-mile radius of the Festival to scan QR codes until Monday morning.
