As the sun rose over the Penn State Altoona campus June 28 and 29, several Pokemon Go trainers were out and about for global Go Fest, arguably the game’s best event of the year.

Some, like myself, got up as early as 6 a.m. to battle Zamazenta and Zacian in raids before wild spawns began appearing in rotating habitats from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. each day. Others came out later, when temperatures rose as high as 85 degrees.

The grind for this year’s Go Fest was all about completing the $20 Go Pass Deluxe: Ancients Recovered event pass, which introduced gold bottle caps — an item used to hyper train a Pokemon’s individual values to perfect stats.

After playing the Ancients Recovered event leading into global Go Fest pretty heavily, I unlocked the gold bottle cap in the early hours of Saturday, June 28 and used it on a shiny Jirachi I caught on my birthday in 2023, two days before I started working at the Mirror.

By the end of global Go Fest, I was able to hyper train my Jirachi’s individual values from 12 attack/12 defense/13 HP to 15 attack/15 defense/14 HP — the IVs of a level 50 “functional hundo.”

A functional hundo is a Pokemon with the same technical stats as a hundo, despite not having perfect IVs in all three stats, due to the way HP is calculated by hidden stats — like stamina — and rounded down.

Not every Pokemon is eligible to be a functional hundo and the rule is dependent on a Pokemon’s level, or CP, in the game. Websites like www.pvpoke.com help show whether a Pokemon is a functional hundo or not.

Needless to say, I now have a functional birthday shundo Jirachi, thanks to those who came out and helped me defeat 40 raids with Jirachi in my team, which was one of the challenges I needed to complete in order to increase its attack stat by one point.

In order to increase the HP stat to 15 and make Jirachi a full-fledged shundo, I have to walk 200 kilometers, about 124 miles, with it as my buddy. A cool idea I have is to wait until the temperature and humidity levels drop and complete that task in November on the anniversary of when I caught it.

Gold bottle caps are a nice addition to the game. While this opinion might be unpopular with some players, I hope we get more of them.

I agree it would be egregious to award the item once a month, but I think a fair limit would be three bottle caps per year to coincide with the Go Tour, Go Fest and Wild Area events.

That way, trainers are logging into the game every day and are constantly working toward strengthening their Pokemon’s IVs instead of completing the hyper training tasks and waiting forever for the release of the next reason to play the game.

I don’t think it’s going to take a full year to complete hyper training as I pretty much completed it during Go Fest weekend, and although I want to wait until November to complete it, it’s nothing for me to walk 125 miles in a month.

If Scopely likes money, releasing more bottle caps in the future is definitely something the company should consider.

Across the globe, there are about 90 million monthly active Pokemon Go users. If half of them buy a $20 bottle cap, that’s an easy way to generate about $1 billion in revenue.

I understand the sentiment that if hundos and shundos become less rarer then people won’t come out to raid for Pokemon anymore. But I disagree.

For one, trainers still need rare candy and candy XL to maximize the CP of their Pokemon. Both of those resources can be easily obtained from completing raid battles.

There are many players who already have hundos, even shundos, of Pokemon and still participate in raids with their communities. Raiding is also evergreen because the content basically changes every week and raid bosses only come back around once a year — if that.

I spent hours raiding for a shiny Zacian in New Jersey a few weeks ago and was still eager to hunt for the shiny during the recent global Go Fest event.

After battling Zacian raids on campus for hours, I met up with my brother at the East 25th Avenue McDonald’s restaurant for lunch and continued the grind.

On the third remote raid, I caught a functional shundo after battling with a friend from Greenwood, Indiana.

When Zacian inevitably returns to raids, I’ll still raid for it because it’s fun.

Mirror Staff Writer Matt Churella is at 814-946-7520 and mchurella@altoonamirror.com