Mega Blastoise Event Launches in Pokémon Shuffle, as Free-to-Play Title Passes Three Million Downloads

10K in Europe is a bit of a downer, considering we had around 50K entrants, if not more by the end of the competition last time.

I didn't get a Lucarionite this time since I suck.
However, I know possess Zaptos, Sceptile, Mega Ampharos, and Raikou. Apparently, EVERYONE is using these Pokemon, so I guess I will as well. Hopefully I will get Mega Blastoise then USE HIM TO BEAT BLAZIKEN!! Has anyone seriously beaten Blaziken before?

I beat Blaziken using the Home button trick, simply press Home after every match to give yourself extra seconds to see your next Pokemon match. That way it's much easier to keep chains going.

It's the only level I've ever used that on.

Only 10K in Europe... cries I'll try my best, though.

I would love to get Blastoisinite since I have actually had Blastoise caught for a good while now. But I participated in the last event and ended up around rank 24000, so I'm not super hopeful. I don't play many match three games. Hardly ever in fact.

I'm currently 54th in Europe out of 32K people.

This competition is going to get crazy.

The completionisy in me has already failed at this game. I hate it and can never finish it now. Die, Nintendo. Fix Amiibo before you do, though.

@Sanicranfast

As a matter of fact by the end we (europe) had 110 000ish players in the lucarionite competition. Lucklily I paced 4000something so I have mine. I just placed 42/30 000 something in this one, so this score may carry me to the end of the competition (though I did pay for a complexity -1 to get that score)

Also to those going on about blaziken: if you just grind coins on the meowth level, you can beat/ S-rank any level by using power ups.

I didn't realise it was that high. I vaguely remember seeing it around the 80K mark, but I couldn't remember clearly enough to estimate that high.

I used a complexity -1 as well. I plan on Max levelling the 4 Pokemon throughout the week in the hopes that it improves my score when I try one more time on Friday or so.

I originally read it as the top 10,000 players in the world.
I nearly cried.
Anyway, I'm 4000 something currently, but we all know how long that's going to last...
@Sanicranfast same, I plan to level them up for one last push on 1am on Monday

EDIT: Oh yeah. Just fell about 500 places since I tried an hour ago. (I only recently got the EX pokes, so they're pretty low levelled...)
And on an interesting note, Electric types will always be a pain, because they're unlikely to do any ground type megas with the current megas (All ground-type megas are secondary typed...) I just hope they release Groudon with a Red Orb. (But please, no more competitions... My competitive side cannot deal with the constraints of not spending any real life money...

Starting out very cynical of this game for it's in game transactions, I'm now quite obsessed with it and have not spent a penny. I very much doubt I'll be good enough to get ranked, but I am having fun participating.

This is a terrible idea. Imagine if Pokemon were locked away to only the top 10k players in the regular series games.

This game started out so well but it's slowly turning into more and more of a money-grab, with the near-impossible added levels and stuff like this.

Another thing that's helped me a LOT is Homepass. In the past week I've used it to amass over 1000 streetpasses, which means another 90 lives and 10 jewels.
As we all know 12 jewels = 46000 coins, or 5 comp-1s and change. So if you have a computer around with both a wired and wireless connection, I'd say google Homepass and start raking in those streetpasses.

By Europe they mean RoW, including Australia and the like! Looks like we have some work to do my pokemans!!

@TheXReturns

https://tcrf.net/Pok%C3%A9mon_Shuffle

They've found data for a primal Groudon, so I guess you're in luck.

I finished just outside the top 20,000 in NA in the last competition. I'm looking forward to trying to place in this one.

I got 5k on my first try. I hope I'll get it, only 10k could be tough.

@DarkCoolEdge
A score that is 5k at this point will probably end up at around 25 - 30k by the end...

@linforcer How do you do it?

@DarkCoolEdge Do what, calculate that number, or get my score (that is #53 now)? EDIT : or do you mean the streetpasses?

@lividd3ad To me it was a money grab as soon as it launched. All free to play games which don't have a way to download the complete experience for a specific price are money grabs. With Pokémon Rumble World confirmed in the April 1st Direct, it's clear that Pokémon is going to be Nintendo's free to play franchise. I expect it to be the first franchise to be part of the DeNA/Nintendo smartphone game partnership.

Nintnedo is getting good at this, every time I give up - level 165 Milotec seems impossible - they add something else to get me to play some more.

I'll never make the top whatever but I'll play once and take my free jewel

I barely got Lucarionite (ranked more than 19,000 when I got it), so I don't know if I'll get the Mega Blastoise. It would be nice though...

UPDATE: Scored 11,379 and am currently ranked 5,323/38,647. Will keep my eye on this over the next week, but I expect to play this stage again (...and again).

@rjejr If you want to beat Milotic, replace one of your 4 super effective Pokemon with a Febas. You should cause chains when the level starts and whenever the level resets.

@Sanicranfast - Is Febas the Pokemon Milotec fills the board w/ it? I always just assumed it was Milotec, I don't real know much about Pokemon.

Does seem like the correct move, I really should have thought of it. Guess I deserve it for not hand picking Pokemon and letting Optimize button do all the heavy lifting.

Thanks, I'll let you know how it went after breakfast, my Eggo waffles are getting cold.

@Pikmiin99 I beat Mega Gengar last night. I used my coins to buy five more moves, starting mega evolution for Sableeye, and disruption delay (around 4,600 coins).

@rjejr Yep, Febas is the Pokemon Milotic floods the board with, so bringing Febas into the stage with you makes the level so much easier. It may take a few tries, but you can get some great chains with a bit of luck.

That usually doesn't work though. In most stages if you bring the pokémon they add, they add a different pokémon instead. I'm surprised this works.

@linforcer It's the only stage where this does work. I know if you try the tactic anywhere else then it floods the board with another Pokemon, but not in Milotic's case. I guess the programmers realised the stage was hard enough with a Febas in your team.

Yeah, I hate it when they pull that kind of reverse learning on you, though. Effectively "teach" you a rule, and then break that rule, punishing people who paid attention to the patterns.

EDIT: To the people wondering if their rankings will see them though. If last time is any indication in PAL, we'll have between 100 000 and 125 000 scores. If the amount of players is on the heavy side, the top 10 000 players = the top 8%. Now again, based on last time, your percentile will drop a little bit over time, so to be safe you probably want to be in the top 5%. If you're below the top 10% right now, you're probably going to be knocked out of the 10 000.

I think NA had around 2x the players PAL had last time around (which explains the adjustment this time) so your percentages for NA are probably the same.

@RupeeClock Yeah, I spotted you in 1st this morning. Made me smile to see a name I recognised.

I'm not particularly good at the game - 13,000 was about my position after a few attempts.

@Sanicranfast - Thanks, still couldn't beat it, but got his health half-way down the first try so I realized you set me on the right path. 2nd try I spent the coin to Mega up my main and beat it w/ about 3 moves left. Couldn't capture it, but that's not a big deal to me, I just prefer it when I do Only realized afterwards it was the new end point, which makes sense why it was so difficult, I thought the new end point would be closer to 200.

That inspired me to try the special Blastoise, where I came in around 39k out of 42k. Realized I didn't have the right main so went back and beat it again, captured it after I spent the coin for the Megaball (50% w/o it and oh so close) and tried Blastoise again where I moved up to 28k. I'm still not winning anything but I'd rather be near middling than bottom 5%.

So thanks for the advice. Now I'm back to waiting for the next update, just checking in every day for my 500 coins.

The main reason why I'm avoiding this game is because I've already missed some of the creatures only available through events. I would much prefer it if all items and pokemon were available through normal gameplay, while events like this could still occur for very hard to obtain items.

@lividd3ad If they were locked away to the top 10k players of the main series games, cloning and breeding would fix that promptly.

Haven't spent money on it yet but I gotta admit I am hooked. I might just make a small purchase just because I do actually enjoy the game.

I am still enjoying this game, and its now the first game my son (5yrs) has been able to play by himself.

But I'm up to level 150, and pretty stuck - unless I use some big powerups (can't be bothered grinding for coins) or cheats (never knew about the home button trick, but it makes sense).

I don't have the Pokemon everyone else is using for the comp, but ranked about 9000 / 24000 earlier this evening. No doubt I'll miss out

The thing is, there is still tons of people who have a lot of coins from the exploit and therefor, will probably score a lot higher and get the reward because of the exploit.

You can't have more that 99999 coins, which I have had and used twice already without using any exploit or spending any money. If you have enough coins to pay for the comp-1 one or two times you're going to get as good a score as your skill (and pokémon levels) allow.

Deleted the game a few weeks back, felt great ever since.

I got bored of this game, I never play it anymore.

@linforcer
ah, cheers! Well, at least Electric types won't be such of a pain.
Also, I just thought of something... If they run the Charizard competition next, unless they add some basic game megas, it will be heavily biased in favour of those who won the Mega Blastoise... So, we're not just playing for this competition, but future ones as well...

I'm 700 something in North America and I made sure to use coins to help after losing the lucario event.

@Sanicranfast Yeah, it seems that it's set for the Top 10% of each bracket. In the last one, Europe had around 100,000 entrants, North America around 200,000 and Japan had around 500,000

Another limited?
Damn you (put name of person and/or institution who invented this).
@ Pikmiin99
I'm too stuck on Mega Gengar .

@linforcer The streetpasses.

@DarkCoolEdge

I can't be bothered to go into detail as it's kind of technical, so I will repeat what I said in the other post:

"If you have a computer around with both a wired and wireless connection, I'd say google "Homepass" and start raking in those streetpasses."

Got knocked out of the top 20,000 a few days ago. However, I caught Sceptile this morning and it did make help my Mega Blastoise score (especially since its green palette stands out among the yellow of my electric types). Still not in the top 20K though, so I think I will train my guys on Blastoise for the next day or so and then try again on the last day.

EDIT (4/12/2015): I spent my coins on both power-ups (Complexity -1 & Disruption Delay) and they helped greatly! My scored nearly doubled, putting me ranked at around 2,650/20,000. Hoping the score will hold until the competition ends. If you have the coins, use them!

Just made it to the top 20k (around 4,700). Still, many people are waiting to the last second to try to get into the standing. However, I think it will hold till at least the top 9k or 10k , at most.

Got in to the top 9000 (like 8700 or something).

many people waited to the last minute to participate (around 300K participated).

Used both "cheats" in order to get to this place. (yeah, I suck at this).

@DontPlayDumb
I just a matter of luck. Clearing those many tiles without using a power up is almost impossible.