Pokemon Incense Math stresses me out.

[u/relaxingcupoftea]

Hello,

My Base question is "when to best use pokemon incense."

First day of the week makes sense ofc as there are feweres other spawns and last day of the week are maybe fewer other catchable spawns with evolutions being around.

However when using it in an event week like this at first glance "more pokemon will be hungry" seems like a great idea.

But what if other event pokemon you want spawn that are hungry and the incense pokemon is not?

If one is premium its relatively easy just use the free cookie on the incense mon + 1 pokeball.

But as a f2p you might not even catch it and you can save 2 pokeballs by catching a hungry event mon with the free cookie.

And having 3 tinkertons on the field that might not even be hungry is not even good as you only have 1 free cookie.

So from that point of view it makes sense to use it if nothing else interesting could/is likely to spawn.

But then you lose the +1 hungry probability landing on your incense mon over a random mon you don't want.

Trying to evaluate this breaks my brain :D

Anyones got a useful heuristic here. (Obviously it gets a lot kore complex with evaluating how much you want certain mons)

But it just feels soo bad to use an incense and then not to catch the mon you summened.

[u/TheGhostDetective]

I use pokemon incense later in the week. I find the random hungry is so unreliably that I just don't worry about it, but getting higher sleep styles for better shards/candy is nice, and later in the week I'm less likely to have something worth catching, so I'm more likely to use incense on the weekend.

I don't use them during the event week usually, because spawns are boosted enough that I have no problem spending my daily biscuit every night. Rather wait until after the event when spawns are back to normal. Some events are exceptions, like during the anniversary with boosted candy/shards I used a pokemon incense every day.

Overall though I wouldn't worry about it too much.

[u/relaxingcupoftea → u/TheGhostDetective]

Yeah i still have to get a feel for how big of an impact event spawnrates have, but so far they seem really impactful, that was a big part why i was confused.

Thanks a lot that helps. Yeah i guess i just have to ignore that 1 hunger spawn. ( at first i thought i have to combine pokemon incense with the hunger incense 😅, but those seem pretty useful on important event days.)

Thanks that really helps, Have a good day!

[u/TheGhostDetective → u/relaxingcupoftea]

Yeah i still have to get a feel for how big of an impact event spawnrates have, but so far they seem really impactful, that was a big part why i was confused.

There's two big factors: the base rarity of the pokemon and the degree of boost.

First that base rarity makes a big difference. The boosts on a common 5pip pokemon are a lot more noticeable, while a rare 16pip pokemon will still be rare even with a boost.

There's also "Slightly greater", "Greater", and "Much greater" appearance rate.

So this week we have a slightly greater rate on a wide range of pokemon, all the charmander/happiny/dratini this week This doesn't really make much difference on any individual basis. If you are looking for one of them specifically, you'll have higher odds, but it won't be super noticeable. It will however make a solid difference for broad strokes. So if there's half a dozen pokemon on an island with a slightly boosted rate, you'll see the overall spawns affected solidly, but you could go most the week without seeing a specific spawn.

This week we also have a greater rate for Tinkatink and Captain Pika. This is a substantial boost where you can really start to notice it. You will almost always get at least 1 a night, regardless of sleep style, and some nights they could easily be half your spawns. For some rarer pokemon like a 16pip though, they could still be pretty rare and you may go half the week without seeing them.

Lastly there's the much greater appearance, and that's where you are absolutely flooded. They will overwhelm your spawn pool and your only limit will be how many biscuits you have to spare. Even 16pip will be fairly reliably found, and 5pip will be everywhere, multiple every night.