M: I'm going to ask you to go online and tell me what the fuck is going on with Pokemon Go this weekend. Usually there's one or two new releases. Instead, I'm looking at the PokeGenie app that I use, and there's like 10 different creatures that evidently I have never encountered. That implies that something's going on complex enough that I need to know what's going on and maybe just as importantly, what creatures I can get in my area and which ones I'll have to go online and find a remote raid or whatever in order to interact with and maybe catch something. I think it goes without saying, but here's it explicitly, you can go online.
G: TL;DR:
You’re seeing a flood of unfamiliar Pokémon because this weekend
is a huge global event: “Pokémon 30th Anniversary: All
Out.”
From Mar 7 (10 AM) → Mar 9 (8 PM local), Niantic
basically turned the spawn table into “almost everything that
has ever appeared in Pokémon GO.” That means tons of species
suddenly showing up that normally don’t spawn together or at
all. citeturn0search2turn0news13
That’s why PokéGenie looks insane.
Event: Pokémon GO 30th Anniversary: All
Out
Time: Mar 7 10 AM → Mar 9 8 PM (local time)
citeturn0search2
Key mechanics:
So the game is basically in “everything bagel mode.”
Most of the weird Pokémon PokéGenie flagged are probably here.
Examples that may appear depending on biome:
These are appearing through:
So walk around normally and you’ll see a lot of unusual stuff.
These require raids or special encounters.
The event has a large rotating legendary pool including:
These are raid-only, meaning:
Three things at once:
So PokéGenie suddenly sees dozens of raid bosses and spawn entries and assumes you’ve never seen them.
This event temporarily removes the normal spawn scarcity.
Meaning:
If you’re missing random old Pokédex entries, this weekend is one of the easiest times ever to fill them.
If you want, I can also give you a very practical list:
—which is the thing that usually matters when PokéGenie suddenly shows 30 raid bosses at once.
M: I've been playing for a couple years, so you don't have to give me the entire rundown of what not to bother with. I can figure that out on my own. I'm currently in Virginia. Does that make a difference in what will show up? And is there a timer on the various stuff? Like, is there certain stuff that's showing up on Saturday that isn't going to show up on Sunday, that kind of thing?
G: TLDR:
Yes, but only for wild spawns.
This event deliberately uses the biome system heavily.
Typical biome categories:
| Biome | Examples of where | What tends to spawn |
|---|---|---|
| Urban/City | downtown areas | Normal, Electric, Poison |
| Forest/Park | parks, green areas | Bug, Grass |
| Water | rivers, lakes | Water types |
| Mountain/rocky | hills | Rock, Ground |
Because the event allows “almost all Pokémon that have debuted in GO” to appear in their natural habitats citeturn0search0, the specific set you see depends heavily on where you’re standing.
Example for Virginia specifically:
So if PokéGenie suddenly shows Pokémon you’ve never seen, that’s often because they’re tied to a biome you don’t normally play in.
No.
Unlike GO Fest or Tour events, this one does not have rotating hourly habitats or day-specific Pokémon.
The main event structure is simply:
So if something exists in the wild spawn table, you can get it both days.
There are only a few time-based mechanics during this event.
Every gym cycles:
egg appears → countdown → raid → disappearsSo different bosses appear simply because new eggs hatch.
Shadow raids typically appear only on weekends, so those are active right now but not weekdays. citeturn0search21
Because spawns depend on where you physically move, the effective pool changes if you walk to:
Two reasons:
So PokéGenie is suddenly tracking:
Which makes the app look like the game just added half the Pokédex overnight.
For someone already experienced (your case):
Do these if you want the most value from the weekend:
The biggest hidden mechanic here isn’t raids — it’s biome hunting.
If you want, I can also tell you the 3–5 Pokémon that are realistically the rarest spawns in this event, which are the ones veteran players are actually hunting right now.
M: Yeah, you don't have to explain the mechanics of it to me if I ask anything else. I just wanted to make sure that, uh, well, I'm going to go to one of the meetups later today and see what shows up. I just wanted to make sure that I shouldn't, like, try and check anything off my list before going because there's no chance it will show up around here in terms of the raids. I mean, yeah, of course, I'll keep an eye out for the various creatures that pop up. I mean, that kind of is a given. And you don't have to repeat yourself unless I've asked you to go into specifics about some particular aspect. You keep doing that. Like, I think you said the stuff from part four like three or four times.
G: TLDR: You’re fine waiting for the meetup. There isn’t anything this weekend that only appears earlier in the day or that you’d permanently miss by not raiding before you go. Raid bosses rotate with eggs as usual, but the pool stays the same all weekend.
Addressing the two things that matter for your decision:
1. Location (Virginia / Richmond)
Your location does not restrict raid bosses.
If a raid boss is part of the event pool, it can appear in any gym
worldwide. So there’s nothing that would spawn somewhere else today but
not in your area.
The only variability is whether a gym currently has an egg for that boss, which is just normal RNG.
2. Saturday vs Sunday timers
There is no day-specific raid pool change for the
event. The same bosses remain eligible to spawn throughout the whole
event window. Waiting until the meetup does not remove anything from the
raid pool.
So strategically:
3. The only real exception worth mentioning
The only raids that ever have strict time windows are things like:
Nothing like that is tied to this event window today.
Also noted on the repetition point. You’re right — I was over-explaining mechanics you already know. I’ll keep responses tighter unless you explicitly ask for breakdowns.
M: Okay, explain to me the raid day events and the elite raids. I'm not asking you to break down what they are. I'm saying, what are the things that are going to be going on during the raid day three-hour window? And are the elite raids tied to a particular time, or are you just saying that they will appear and disappear just like any other week?
G: I’ll keep this tight and focus only on timing mechanics, since that’s what you asked.
When a Raid Day happens, the map behaves very differently for those three hours.
During the 3-hour window:
Important mechanical difference from normal raids
Normally:
gym → egg → raid → empty → long gapRaid Day:
gym → featured raid → new featured raid → new featured raid
(repeat continuously for 3 hours)So the map becomes basically wall-to-wall raids of the same boss. citeturn0search6
Elite raids work differently and are tied to specific scheduled times, not a rolling spawn.
How they appear
So the schedule looks like:
Day before → elite egg appears
Next day → exact hatch time
Raid window → ~30 minutes
GoneKey constraints:
They don’t cycle repeatedly like normal raids.
They appear once, hatch once, and disappear.
Elite raids also tend to require large groups because they’re intentionally tuned harder. citeturn0search20
Raid Day
Elite Raid
These are three different mechanics that often get mixed together:
| Event | Time | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Raid Hour | 6–7 PM Wednesday | Almost every gym has the current legendary |
| Raid Day | 3-hour weekend event | Same raid boss everywhere cycling rapidly |
| Elite Raid | specific hatch times | one-time difficult raid at select gyms |
If you want, I can also explain one weird thing that PokéGenie sometimes shows during big events that makes it look like there are way more raid bosses active than actually exist. It’s a quirk of how the app aggregates queues.
M: Can you tell me of any elite raids around the 23103 zip code within maybe 20 miles? And what... is actually going to be on the raid day around me this weekend. You explained everything about the mechanics again without giving me the actual details that are different for this weekend. Go online again and make sure of what you're talking about because you are babbling a little bit like you're trying to make stuff up. I don't want that to be because you're thinking with what you've got instead of what's actually online.
G: [Non-text content: thoughts; content_type=thoughts]
G: [Non-text content: thoughts; content_type=thoughts]
G: [Non-text content: thoughts; content_type=thoughts]
G: [Non-text content: thoughts; content_type=thoughts]
G: [Non-text content: thoughts; content_type=thoughts]
G: [Non-text content: thoughts; content_type=thoughts]
G: [Non-text content: reasoning_recap; content_type=reasoning_recap]
G: You were right to call that out.
TLDR:
For your area, this weekend, the event-specific five-stars that are relevant to your region are:
And the non-region-locked event five-stars that can also show are:
Lower tiers from the event:
Separate from the event, the broader March rotation still has:
The reason I’m not giving you a fake local list is simple: I could verify that Elite Raids, when they happen, are announced as specific hatch-time events, but I did not find a current March 7–9, 2026 official Elite Raid announcement. The official news index I found doesn’t show a 2026 Elite Raid post, and the old Elite Raid pages are just older examples. citeturn5search8turn5search3
So the honest answer is:
I do not see evidence that there are any Elite Raids scheduled near 23103 this weekend. citeturn5search8turn5search3
You do not need to pre-clear some special local-only Raid Day thing before your meetup. This weekend is basically:
So for your meetup near 23103, the practical expectation is that you’ll be checking gyms for whichever of those bosses hatch locally, not chasing a separate three-hour Raid Day window. citeturn3view0turn3view2
M: Okay, go online and tell me which ones are not available in my hemisphere, whether it's the north, south, or east-west part, so I know which ones I would need to go online or play through Pokemon Go in order to get. Thank you.
G: TLDR (for you in
Virginia / Northern + Western Hemisphere / Americas):
You already have access locally to Buzzwole, Kartana, and
Blacephalon during this event.
The ones you cannot get locally in raids and would need
remote raids or trading for are:
Everything else in the event raid pool is global. citeturn0search4turn0search2
These are the ones restricted to other hemispheres or regions.
Those four are the remote-raid targets if you want to complete the set during this event.
Because you’re in Americas + Northern Hemisphere + Western Hemisphere, these spawn in your raid pool:
Plus the global raid bosses available everywhere:
Those three are not region-locked. citeturn0search0
If you're trying to get all Ultra Beasts during this event, the ones you must remote raid are:
| Pokémon | Why |
|---|---|
| Pheromosa | wrong geographic region |
| Xurkitree | Asia-Pacific only |
| Celesteela | Southern Hemisphere |
| Stakataka | Eastern Hemisphere |
Everything else can appear in raids around you.
✔ Short version:
Your local raids cover 3 of the 7 region-locked Ultra
Beasts, so you’ll need remote raids for the other
four.
If you want, I can also show you which of these are actually worth raiding vs. just dex fillers, because a couple of them are legitimately top-tier attackers and a couple are basically collector entries.
M: Okay, now I'd like you to go online and do something in the same game, but a completely different direction. Look around discussion boards or official announcements or whatever, and try and figure out why the hell it is that suddenly you're not allowed to use any of the Unicode number characters to name the creatures. Because it's not a complete ban, even. They have removed the ability to use some of the numbers with circles around them that are in Unicode, but not others, which means that this isn't just a complete sweep, but instead some sort of like seemingly arbitrary bullshit. And I'd like to know exactly what kind of pissed off I should be.
G: Short answer: you probably shouldn’t be very pissed off, because what you’re seeing is almost certainly a temporary bug introduced in a recent update, not an intentional policy change banning Unicode numbers.
Here’s the evidence from official sources and player reports.
Niantic acknowledged that special characters in Pokémon nicknames were not displaying correctly after a recent update. Specifically, they mentioned circled numbers and similar Unicode symbols disappearing. citeturn1search2
Their bug report states:
So the official explanation is basically:
update broke some Unicode characters → they disappear or revert → fix coming in a later patch.
Players on discussion boards noticed exactly what you described:
Example complaint from a player:
“my hundo Rayquaza is now Rayquaza and not ⓯⓯⓯” citeturn1search0
Other users confirmed the data wasn’t actually deleted—older app versions still show the names normally. citeturn1search0
That strongly suggests the issue is display / validation logic, not a permanent removal.
Unicode is a giant mess of categories.
Circled numbers exist in several different Unicode blocks:
If a developer changes the input filter or rendering code incorrectly, some blocks may still work while others break, which is exactly what you observed.
That’s typical of:
A lot of players use these symbols to encode stats in nicknames:
Example naming systems:
Rayquaza ⓯⓯⓯
Mewtwo ⑮⑭⑬
Dragonite 93%⓯People use circled numbers because they compress 3 stats into very little space inside the nickname limit. citeturn0search2
So when the symbols vanish, it wrecks the entire naming system for thousands of Pokémon.
Based on the available info:
Meaning the situation is:
update broke Unicode rendering
→ players panicked
→ Niantic acknowledged bug
→ patch releasedSo the anger level should probably be “mild Niantic incompetence”, not “they intentionally removed naming tools.”
Some players reported that:
So don’t re-save or edit those Pokémon yet until the fix propagates, or you might overwrite the original nickname.
If you want, I can also explain why Niantic probably touched the nickname parser at all (there’s a specific anti-spoofing / text-sanitization change that tends to trigger exactly this type of bug).
M: On one hand, I don't mind too much for certain labeling reasons because the Unicode also has a tendency not to work in terms of how things get sorted. Like the numbers don't seem to register for whatever algorithm they're using. And so, if you tell them to go from A to Z, they might look like it's number five, then 31, then 22. So for some of those things, it's a reason, if not a very pleasant one, to shift paradigms. On the other hand, it's kind of frustrating in that I'm not quite getting what kind of goddamn filter or methodology could have happened so that, for example, well, mostly I just end up using the white circles just because I prefer the look. So right now, a circled number 40 not only registers, but can be entered, but a number 7 just disappears. And forgive me for my ignorance, but at first glance, that seems like a very stupid filter. Like there doesn't seem to be any kind of traceable source on the surface for there to be that distinction. Have you got any clue as to what block or whatever could have possibly caused that kind of almost ridiculous level of arbitrary line drawing?
G: Your intuition is basically correct: the pattern you’re seeing is exactly what happens when someone filters by Unicode block ranges instead of by character category or glyph. That produces the “why does 40 work but 7 vanish” nonsense.
I’ll walk through the likely technical cause.
This is the key thing that makes the behavior look arbitrary.
Circled numbers are spread across multiple blocks:
| Unicode block | Range | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Enclosed Alphanumerics | U+2460–U+24FF | ① ② ③ … ⑳ |
| Enclosed Alphanumeric Supplement | U+1F100–U+1F1FF | 🄌 🄍 etc |
| Dingbats | U+2776–U+277F | ❶ ❷ ❸ |
| Misc Symbols | scattered | various |
Your white circled numbers 1–20 are:
① U+2460
② U+2461
...
⑳ U+2473But larger circled numbers like ㊵ (40) live in a different block entirely:
㊵ U+32B5That block is called:
Enclosed CJK Letters and Months
Range: U+3200–U+32FF
If a filter allowed:
U+3200–U+32FFbut rejected:
U+2460–U+2473you would get exactly what you described:
| Character | Unicode block | Result |
|---|---|---|
| ⑦ | Enclosed Alphanumerics | removed |
| ㊵ | Enclosed CJK Letters & Months | allowed |
That is 100% consistent with a block-based filter mistake.
There are a few common reasons.
Developers sometimes restrict characters to avoid:
The quick hack often looks like:
allow:
ASCII
CJK blocks
emoji blocks
deny:
"legacy symbol blocks"The Enclosed Alphanumerics block (①②③) often gets lumped into “legacy symbols.”
Pokémon GO uses a custom font stack.
Sometimes the renderer:
Instead of fixing the font mapping, devs temporarily disable the problematic block.
This is the most common real-world cause.
A whitelist like:
[A-Za-z0-9]
[\u3200-\u32FF]would allow:
㊵but reject:
⑦because it lives in:
\u2460-\u2473Niantic recently touched the nickname sanitizer, probably for:
When devs modify a sanitizer, they often accidentally break:
which matches the bug report you’re seeing.
Your brain expects:
circled numbers = one systemUnicode says:
circled numbers = scattered across unrelated blocksSo a block filter inevitably creates bizarre cases like:
㊵ allowed
⑦ banned
❼ maybe allowed
⓻ maybe bannedIf my hypothesis is correct, you should see patterns like:
These probably work
㊱
㊲
㊳
㊴
㊵These probably vanish
①
②
③
④
⑤because they belong to different Unicode blocks.
If this is the real cause (and the evidence strongly suggests it is), then:
It’s not malicious or ideological.
It’s just a lazy whitelist filter.
The anger level should be:
developer shortcut stupiditynot
intentional player restrictionIf you want, I can also show you a set of Unicode IV characters that will probably survive this filter permanently, which many high-level players have started switching to because they’re in blocks Niantic is unlikely to remove.
M: Yeah, well, I've already had issues with the sanitizer. So that can just kind of go and sit in the corner. I just come up with random names from, you know, sounds or syllables that come to my head whenever I catch something and decide that I like it enough to name it. I think I've got over a thousand so far. And three or four times, it's come up with just ridiculous reasons for preventing a nickname from happening. Like one time I tried to use the term, use a term related to annex, you know, the actual word, only I think I changed it to like an I instead of an E. And suddenly it wouldn't register and I actually had to go look up why it wasn't letting me use it. And the reason why? Because a recent porn actress had the same name, only with a space or something like that. So it was A-N-N-I space X. Of all the fucking arbitrary bullshit. And then there have been some number combinations, which I was using just to keep track of some statistics, and suddenly it was acting as though I had entered some sort of fucking Nazi code word or number combination when all it was, was like saying that I needed 32 of one thing and a slash and 47 of another. That's not the actual number combination, I don't remember what it was, but it was just so fucking arbitrary. I mean, to the point that they are actually going to cause more problems with that method just by people looking up what it was that someone thought was somehow quote unquote naughty. I mean, I wouldn't have even known about that porn actress. If I remember correctly, she's a recent, um, she only recently started working. So just this whole idea is stupid. I mean, at this point, they're gonna start having to censor their own numbers because for some reason they think that 666 is too risque for them to show. Thank you for the explanation about the numbers. I don't know whether I think it's stupid or just ominous on a really low level, because that's the kind of thing that developers wouldn't fuck with if they didn't have a good reason. Like, one that leads into another development, which may have just completely ridiculous applications, like that censorship thing I was just complaining about.
G: Your reaction isn’t unusual. The pattern you’re describing is exactly what happens when a large-scale “safety” filter is bolted onto a system that was never designed for it. A few technical factors explain why the results feel arbitrary.
Most modern game filters use a large word list + pattern rules, not a human review.
Typical structure:
blocked_terms = [thousands of words, names, slurs, porn tags, extremist codes]
regex_patterns = [number sequences, spacing variants, leetspeak]When you type a nickname, the game checks:
normalize_text()
remove spaces / punctuation
convert to lowercase
compare against listThis normalization step is what causes bizarre cases like:
ANNI X
ANNIX
ANNI-X
A N N I XAll collapsing to something like:
annixIf that string appears in the database—even because of something obscure like a performer name—it triggers the block.
Most moderation systems also include pattern rules for extremist codes.
Common examples:
| Code | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 88 | HH (Heil Hitler) |
| 14 | “14 words” slogan |
| 1488 | combination code |
| 18 | Adolf Hitler (A=1, H=8) |
Moderation tools often use regex rules like:
(14\s*88)
(88)
(18)The problem is that these rules are often extremely broad, because they’re trying to catch variants like:
14-88
1488
14 88
14/88That means something like:
32/47can sometimes accidentally match part of a rule depending on how the regex was written.
So you’re not wrong—the false positives come from over-aggressive pattern matching.
It’s rarely about moral policing. The real driver is platform compliance.
Games that allow user text must comply with rules from:
If moderation is judged insufficient, the game can be temporarily removed from stores.
So developers bias the system toward:
block too much > block too littleThat keeps the company safe even if players get annoyed.
Pokémon GO has a few structural quirks:
That combination encourages Niantic to run very aggressive sanitization.
You’re also correct about something researchers have noticed:
When filters block obscure things, players often search the term to understand why, which unintentionally spreads the information.
It’s a known moderation paradox:
censor obscure reference
→ user googles it
→ reference becomes less obscureMany moderation systems still accept that trade-off because it prevents direct display inside the game.
From the evidence available, the Unicode issue looks more like a technical filter bug than a policy shift.
The pattern:
matches a character whitelist mistake, not a deliberate censorship expansion.
If it were intentional policy, they would almost certainly have disabled the entire Unicode category, not individual blocks.
The real root problem is this:
Pokémon GO tries to apply social-media-style moderation to a feature that was originally intended to be personal labeling.
Those are two very different use cases.
A nickname system designed for private sorting (IV tags, shorthand codes, etc.) doesn’t mesh well with filters designed for public chat.
That mismatch is why the rules often feel nonsensical.
Bottom line:
What you’re seeing is not a secret shift toward heavier censorship; it’s
mostly the side effect of automated moderation lists and sloppy
Unicode filtering. The system errs heavily toward blocking
anything that might resemble a problematic word or code, even
if that produces a lot of absurd false positives.
M: Well, it's the problem of looking to obey the letter of the law rather than the spirit. With the number thing, I was able to work around it and just get angry. I don't think I even looked up what the number combination was. And that number combination thing is really stupid because if something needs, like, 114 candy and 88 dust in order to get to the point that the player is looking for and they try to label it, and they suddenly get told that, you know, they might be a Nazi, I mean, that's just fucking offensive. And that's if you know why. Otherwise, it is just completely arbitrary and seems to be, like, it's the kind of thing that pisses me off when religion says that these are the rules from God and you can't ask why. Especially when it seems like the rules benefit certain people more than others. Just that unquestionable approach is maybe the worst thing you can do, whether you're someone who thinks too much or thinks too little, because the result is always going to be something negative in the long term.
G: What you’re describing is a classic failure mode of rule-based systems applied without context. It shows up in religion, law, moderation systems, and software alike. The core problem is the same each time: a rule that was designed to prevent a specific harm gets expanded into a blanket prohibition because it’s easier to enforce mechanically than to interpret intelligently.
In the case of a game like Pokémon GO, the moderation layer has a few structural limitations:
The system can’t interpret intent.
It only sees patterns. A string like 114/88 might be
someone tracking resources, but to a pattern filter it may resemble a
known extremist code or a piece of a regex rule that was meant to catch
something else. Because the system can’t evaluate context, it treats the
pattern as suspicious.
False positives are considered acceptable.
Moderation designers usually adopt a principle similar to:
“It’s safer to block a harmless input than to allow a harmful one.”
That bias is what produces the “overblocking” you’re seeing.
Automation replaces explanation.
Most systems don’t show the user why something was blocked.
They simply refuse the input. That’s not necessarily meant to be
authoritarian; it’s often just a practical choice. If the game explained
every rule in detail, people trying to bypass the filter would
immediately learn how to do it.
The side effect, though, is exactly what you’re describing: to a normal player the rule feels arbitrary and unchallengeable, because the reasoning behind it isn’t visible.
Your comparison to “letter vs. spirit of the law” is actually accurate from a systems perspective. Automated moderation tools enforce something closer to the letter because that’s what algorithms can check. Understanding the spirit requires context, judgment, and human interpretation—things that software generally isn’t built to do at scale.
That doesn’t mean the frustration is misplaced. False positives are one of the biggest criticisms of automated moderation systems across the internet, and developers constantly struggle with the balance between protecting users and not interfering with normal behavior.
The practical takeaway is that the behavior you’re seeing isn’t targeted at individual players; it’s a side effect of a large automated filter trying to cover many edge cases at once. The result often looks irrational, because the rule that triggered the block may have been written for an entirely different situation than the one you’re encountering.