Even though the game discouraged people from playing, for some players, the benefits outweighed the risks.

Pokémon Go, though not as booming as it once was, still has a pretty big following in Japan. Even just two months ago, swarms of players were in Shinjuku trying to catch as many Eevees as they could during one of the game’s Community Day events, and many of those enthusiasts will go out to hunt Pokémon no matter the time or the weather.

That’s especially true nowadays, because the weather in the player’s area now affects what Pokémon appear and how they level up. That might encourage some of the more dedicated players to go out even during serious storms, but Niantic, the creator of the game, has put systems in place to discourage players from going out in extreme weather, as Twitter user @Z774SX learned when they tried to open the game during last week’s Typhoon Trami:

▼ “Make sure you’re safe first!” Say the large letters in the first screenshot, and underneath: “When playing in stormy weather, always check your residential area’s various advisories and alarms, and be especially careful!”

The netizen says “I opened up Pokémon Go and it was like the game was yelling at me, like ‘Now’s not the time to go Pokémon hunting!'”. The warning was clearly in vain, though, as they immediately tapped “I checked”, which took them to the game as usual, as in the second screenshot above.

Though the game tries (and probably generally fails) to convince players not to play during dangerous weather, it doesn’t outright block them from playing, unless there’s an extreme weather alert for the area. In that case, the game shows a message saying “Pokémon seem to dislike these conditions”, and prevents Pokémon from spawning.

But that didn’t seem to happen in this instance, so once the player hit “I checked”, they could freely take advantage of the benefits of rainy weather, which means water, electric and bug type Pokémon appear more often, drop more stardust when caught, and get a boost in power during gym and raid battles.

The especially attractive thing about playing the game during a typhoon is that you can enjoy windy weather benefits as well as rainy weather benefits, which means you might run into far more of the rarer kind of Pokémon: dragon Pokémon!

▼ The game also includes visuals of the weather on the map, like in the video below where you can clearly see the wind blowing across the ‘landscape’. It even registered the weather during the typhoon as “Strong wind”!

To be extra discouraging, there was a red banner at the top of every menu that repeated the initial warning statement about advisories and emergency information, so Niantic made a decent effort to discourage players from behaving dangerously. But was it enough?

Perhaps not, since many of the netizens who responded to @Z774SX’s tweet commented about the increased possibility of catching the coveted legendary Pokémon Mewtwo:

“They say that Mewtwo gets really strong if you catch it during really windy weather, so let’s go risk our lives and launch a raid battle!”
“This game has a lot of consideration for its players, doesn’t it?”
“I went to an Aeon Mall that has a McDonald’s and got two Mewtwo’s.”
“I really don’t need this kind of announcement. It just gets in the way.”
“Let’s go look for a Dratini raid!” (Dratini is a rarer kind of dragon Pokémon.)

Of course, we at SoraNews24 don’t encourage you to go out into a major storm to catch and train Pokémon, but if you happen to live near a gym or Pokéstop and can play the game from your home, it would probably be worth your while! After all, you might want to build up your team as best you can, since the upcoming Let’s Go! Pikachu and Let’s Go! Eevee games will be connected to Pokémon Go, which might mean that the game will see a resurgence in popularity. You will want to be prepared if it does!

Source: Twitter/@Z774SX via Hachima Kiko
Featured Image: Twitter/@Z774SX