Unbelievable, I was really hoping to find at least ONE Hawlucha last week. I wasn't even hoping to catch a good one, just wanting to catch one to fill in the dex or something. I got to a really high score last week too! And despite all that, the spawns were just disappointing. Did this happen to anyone else?

And this is even after a long string of disappointing new mons too, Hawlucha isn't even GOOD! All these Ingredient Draw mons. In fact, none of the new additions were since Pumpkaboo, all this is just poor game development. These new mons are just dud after dud, I'm so, SO close to just quitting this game altogether.

This is an absolute JOKE!

No, seriously. This is a joke. I wanted to see if people would read this far before voting or leaving a comment. I had a great week last week, also I managed to get to M20 on AC the first time too!

If you read this far, I love and appreciate you. Muah.

I love the idea of Alexandrite and went to a showroom to see it in person, I saw a nice 3 carat diamond shaped (not cut) piece. I'd take a picture if they allowed me.

But unexpected to me, the lab Alexandrite seemed rather dark at the center, with the greenish blue hues mostly on the sides, and it stayed looking that way no matter what angle I looked at it. We sat at a standard office room with florescent office lighting and sunlight out the window.

It's only when the handler pointed a small spotlight at it that the gem changed to a more red hue, but I find it hard to imagine in what general situation would a light like that would hit the ring.

That made me think that the gem is too dark. I wanted the gem to be used on an engagement ring. Is this the right expectations for this gem?

So I'm thinking of when would be a good time to propose to my girlfriend, and I thought that I can do it during a trip to Peru with her and my friends. We are going in about a week, and I'm now looking at rings.

Since we're going to Machu Picchu during the trip, I thought that what I can do is when we reach the summit with a scenic view, I can do it there. I can ask my friends to take photos or whatever there.

I told this to the guy friend this idea who is also going, and he criticized me that this sounds like I'm doing this in too short of planning, too casual and low effort. He says I'm basically just bringing a ring and that's it.

He's not wrong in the sheer mechanic of what's happening, but is that really low effort to do it in a scenic spot far away from home even if in the end of the day it's just a ring?

I wanted to jot out how much Candy Boost do I need for the mons that I currently have, I felt as if I have a massive backlog of mons to level up and I can't catch up.

Many of these mons are fresh new basic mons with good stats. I have massive FOMO raising them without Candy Boost, even though I already feel there isn't enough Boost to go around. Others are mons are raised a bit but require more Boost to reach full power.

So far this totals to 10 mons of varying levels, sorted by High and Low priority. Low Priority means it's trying to replace an existing role, High Priority means it is filling a whole new role.

My target is Lv 50. Ideally some mons (such as Legendaries) I would go over 50, but for now I calculated how much Boost I would need to just bring them to 50, factoring in their Exp+/- natures of course. With this, I used up and over the total Christmas Boost of 3500 this year already.

Mama mia that's a lotta Candy Boost.

Looking at this, it reinforces to me that there isn't enough Boost to go around. Maybe there will be more mini-boosts available this year, but there might also be new mons I want to raise as well, and maybe Mewtwo too! In fact, I beg for a mini-candy boost to be available before the Mewtwo event, I think Natu would be the tip-top priority at the moment and I'm really trying hard to hold out for a Boost.

I'm thinking if I should severely jack up my standards for stats, but I feel my standards are already going up quite a bit compared to before. Nevertheless, I can't wait to see my mons living in their full potential, ready to handle any crazy island the devs throw at us.

What y'all thinking?

Just a random thought in my head. I've passively collected about 100 Pumpkins over a few weeks (thanks Latias) with the intention of just using it as filler ingredient while I make other dishes this week, and I compared it directly with Slowpoke Tails.

So what's the role of Slowpoke Tails? They are a nutrient-dense, space-efficient ingredient that is used in few dishes, mostly used as filler ingredients to boost up other dishes especially in a Tasty crit, but rare to the point of non-existent.

Plump Pumpkins essentially does the same thing, except it is also used in some of the strongest dishes. Though its base power is considerably lower (250 vs 342 of tails, but still considerably higher than the third best of Leeks at 185), it is relatively more common and easier to passively gather. It feels as though the total strength added is higher than from Tails just because you can come by it more often.

The only real thing that Tails does better in is to create those world-record dishes where someone obsessively piles hundreds of Tails into one Tasty crit and get like a bajillion strength in one go. That's cool to see, but I would hardly describe Tails as a useful filler ingredient because of that feat.

So what's the takeaway from all this? I think it's just that if you happen to run into space issues with your ingredient bag, if anything you can still pile up Pumpkins around be the last to let go. At the very least you get good filler, and at best you can even make a good dish out of them. Maybe this is obvious to you already, but I thought I'd say it anyway.

On the side note, when I run into space issues, Apples are the first to be sold to open up space, they are practically worthless as filler ingredients. Milk and Soybeans come next, though I feel Milk is getting increasingly important.

Just curious to see what people are aiming to do for Curry week. I know these options aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive, so the question is what’s your PRIMARY goal, the main thing you’re trying to achieve.

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I've been keeping the Latinas on the team on and off the last couple weeks to get a feel of them on the team, and now I got two weeks of dragon berry on GGEX, so I'm spending quite a bit of time with them.

Latios I think is fine. He's only at around Lv 40 with decent skills, so I'm not expecting some prophecy-level bringer of end times as of yet. I'd like to appreciate the animation of Draco Meteor though, the end times is nigh.

Latias is around Lv 50 and good skills, so I've been trying to use her as a sole healer and see how it feels like. I've only been using them as a pair, hard to say how worth it is without.

In the end of the day, the team can hover anywhere between 65-90 energy, which isn't great for a dedicated healer. I was thinking though, an end-of-day energy level of 80 or above is an ok heal day, 70+ is not ideal but functional enough. So does that mean while Latias is not the best healer, it heals just enough to matter? (I do secretly wish the pair bonus increases the heals instead of the helps though)

And about the extra helps, 7 x 2 helps per trigger gives about as much total helps as regular Extra Helpful, but with a high likelihood that it would hit a non-skill mon. Its effect relies entirely on the rest of the team of course, but since my teams are all Lv 60+, a hit on a Berry mon is almost as much as a Charge Strength M trigger, and a hit on an Ingredient mon gives a big burst of ingredients. I find myself able to switch out Ingredient mons a lot earlier, given that a single hit is about 7-9% of the total daily helps of a middle-speed ingredient mon.

So, does the extra helps make up for the lower heal amount? That's the question I keep pondering. My Latias can trigger 5-6 times a day, so if split perfectly evenly, 42 extra helps fall to non-skill mons (of 70 total). This amount is almost like having an extra half teammate on the team, is that enough to compensate the lowered total heals?

I tried plugging all this info into Raenonx, and while it can give me a perfectly balanced prediction on how Latias would perform, I'm thinking how well it reflects the reality of its skill if you are able to use Berry or Tasty Chance mons more because you got enough extra ingredients.

But despite all of that, I can't tell whether I actually like Latinas on the team or not. What do you think?

I’m just wondering what dish you’ll be preparing and for what island you’ll be preparing it for, just to see if I myself am on the right track.

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Forgive me for I have sinned.

October last year I began some home renovations which took a bunch of funds in preparations for a bit move in, I even had to sell a small portion of my portfolio to help fund the project. I paused investing in anything since.

Before then I've regularly invested in FWRA, about $700 a month manually invested. Now that the renovations are done, I haven't continued the investing and my cash on hand has slowly pooled back up for a few months now.

I hesitate to dump all investable cash into the ETF right now, I dunno, I think I'm a little spooked with the market at the moment. I know this isn't the Bogleheads way to care about the market, but there's something internally I have yet to overcome after pausing for a while and I would appreciate some sense talked into me.

At this point I'm thinking if I should just do auto-investing on IBKR and be done with it, I did manually before because it gave me some sense of control over my life. Is auto-investing something everyone here does?

So the Relaxing Nap tickets are now available, and it comes with a pretty hefty 700 diamond cost. That's a lot, but let's see if it's worth it compared to other buyable Exp sources.

Value of Relaxing Nap Tickets

The ticket makes extra Exp available for 7 days and provides an additional 450 Exp a day, the maximum then would be 3150 Exp for a single mon. So taken at face value, it translates to 4.5 Exp per diamond spent.

Now let's compare this to two things: Growth Incense and Handy Candy.

Growth Incense

The Incense provides double the Sleep Exp gain, at maximum you can get an additional 300 Exp per mon on Good Sleep Day (without subskills), which totals to 1500 Exp across the team. The Incense sells for 200 diamonds in the store, which means if used at max potential, it comes to 7.5 Exp per diamond spent.

On the side days of Good Sleep day, Growth Incense provides 200 Exp per mon, totaling 1000 Exp. In this case, it comes to 5 Exp per diamond spent.

If used on any regular day, Growth Incense only provides 100 Exp per mon, totaling 500 Exp. In this case, it comes to 2.5 Exp per diamond spent.

Handy Candy

Handy Candy cannot be directly bought from the store with diamonds, but using u/professorprotecc's formula of turning Sleep points into diamond value, each Handy Candy is valued as 56 diamonds after its recent buff. Each Handy Candy S is equivalent to 75 Exp (3 x 25 Exp), which means this is 1.34 Exp per diamond spent. Wow, those candy are expensive!

In the Premium store section, Handy Candy M is equivalent to 200 diamonds. It provides 500 Exp (20 x 25 Exp), which means this is 2.5 Exp per diamond spent.

Summary

To summarize, the items and their Exp per diamond spent would come down as:

Conclusion

In conclusion, what do I think about the Relaxing Nap Ticket?

Well, it does have some advantages over other buyable Exp sources.

1. It is applied Exp, meaning Dreamshards are already factored in as a free resources.
2. It's passive, and you don't need to worry about your Sleep Score to get max potential.
3. It can pause when you take a mon out, so it's pretty hands-off to raise your mons.
4. It's an anytime thing, unlike Good Sleep Day which is once a month.

So if you asked me, would I buy the Relaxing Nap Ticket at current cost?

Absolutely not.

Definitions:
(For Berry, Ingredient, Skill specialists)

Very high: BFS+HB/2 Speed, AAA+HB/2 Ing, 3 Trigger (or equivalent)

High: BFS+1 Speed, AAA+1 Ing, ABB+2 Ing, 2 Trigger (or equivalent)

Average: BFS only, AAA/ABB only, 1 Trigger (or equivalent)

Anything goes: No particular preference

Acronyms:
BFS = Berry Finder S
HB = Helping Bonus
AAA = Mono ingredient list
ABB = Second slot ingredient list
Speed = Speed subskills or nature
Ing = Ingredient Finder subskills or nature
Trigger = skill trigger subskills or nature

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With the third anniversary coming up, I thought it would be interesting to see how many Pokemon there are (by unique niche). I've done this count last year as well!

To me, each evolutionary line counts as one, I feel like counting the Bulbasaur line as three would skew your interpretation as they retain the same niche & role. There are exceptions such as the Slowpoke line, where Slowbro and Slowking are arguably different enough. Conversely, though it has many main skill options, Mew counts as one. Pumpkaboo's sizes also counts as one.

If the mon changes type upon evolving, then it counts as two niches, as you always have the option to stay unevolved and run ribbons. This means both Onix and Steelix are counted, and the Paldean trio would each count as two.

Variations, such as Halloween Pikachu and Alolan Vulpix, count as a seperate niche, as they are effectively in their final forms with a different role.

With this criteria, the number of Pokemon niches in Pokemon Sleep are (descending order):

Observations:

1. Compared to last year, the number of niches rose by 25. All missing specialties have since been filled.
2. The average number of niches by type is 7.16, this means 10 types of 18 are below average.
3. Although no new Electric types have been introduced since last year, it remains with the largest number of niches filled in the game, only tying with Water type AFTER Piplup is introduced.
4. Despite that, Electric type skill mons are still the most inflated niche in the game.
5. Fighting and Electric type are the only types to have no new introductions in the past year.
6. Dragon type had the most introductions in the past year, with a total of 5.
7. The lowest number of mons in the game are coincidentally in the mineral subgroup (Steel, Rock, Ground).
8. The Dark type to me has the most surprisingly high representation.
9. As Berry mons are still underrepresented, my prediction is the new starter trio will be type-changing and involved with Berries. (same as my prediction last year)

I saw this question asked on another sub and I thought it would be good to ask here as well.

A "Third Place" is basically another social space you would go to, separate from the "First Place" (Home) and "Second Place" (Work).

Examples of a Third place can be a cafe, library, park, bar, whatever space you would frequent as a means to socialize and connect with others.

For the longest time I personally do not have a Third Place really, I'm either at work or at home except for occasionally meeting with existing friends. I don't feel like Hong Kong's culture is very accustomed to casually meeting people, and I feel you pretty much never talk with strangers outside of dedicated social events (and often because you want them to buy something).

1. When Cheese Cutter Zombie is defeated, he says a sad "Ohhh nooo..."
2. When Electric Boogaloo shows up in the VS screen he says a drawn out "Daaaaaamn"
3. When Binary Stars show up they say "Ahhh~♪" which reminds me of the song Dilemma - Nelly
4. Ketchup Mechanic is the best pun in the game and whoever thought of it deserves a kiss.
5. Kitchen Sink Zombie's design around the saying is so stupid yet so clever (Imagine if it had Untrickable too...)
6. The Garg Throwing Imp's concept is so hilariously stupid especially considering the Garg thrown also be an Imp Throwing Garg.
7. I love the flavour text of each card. Have a look at lil buddy's. Also, Blowgun Imp's.
8. I find it funny how Laser Cattail is just a literal cyborg cat head with a laser pointer. It's barely even a pun, let alone ressembling a plant.
9. There's no reason why Intergalatic Warlord should sound like Dracula in a choir, yet he does.
10. There's also no reason why Banana Split needs to look at me like that, yet he does.