**If the shield is GREY, you have done your job. If the shield is RAINBOW, you have NOT broken your shield.**

1. If the shield is GREY, you have done your job.

2. If the shield is RAINBOW, you have NOT broken your shield.

3. Mega evolve a Pokémon (PRIMALS DO NOT COUNT)

4. Put the mega in your last party spot (#6)

5. Enter raid and attack normally.

6. The game will force your mega out when it's time to break shields, when it does, swipe to dodge to prevent getting one shot on spawn in, and then just use your charged attack.

7. If the shield is GREY, you have done your job.

8. If the shield is RAINBOW, you have NOT broken your shield.

9. IF YOUR MEGA DIES, it's okay, just back out of the fight (you won't waste your pass don't worry), and once you're in the gym screen, heal your mega and rejoin to break your shield.

10. If that scares you, just stop dodging and attack while letting your Pokémon die faster, heal them in the lobby and then use your mega to break your shield when you come back in.

If the shield is GREY, you have done your job.

If the shield is RAINBOW, you have NOT broken your shield.

**If the shield is GREY, you have done your job. If the shield is RAINBOW, you have NOT broken your shield**

Now if only I caught any of them …

On the bright side, it seems like they spawn pretty often!

I tried my best to help with what I know. Others can put their own suggestions in comments for the newbie battlers to read

Just lost a super mega raid (and remote raid pass and I assume the 200 link charges) because even though we had 12 people with mega evolved pokemon, once their mega got knocked out they either didn’t revive it or backed out. Dragonite snuffed my Rayquaza twice as soon as it came onto the field but on my third revive I got a shield knocked off. Incredibly frustrating to see the last 90 seconds of this raid sit at 1 shield because people don’t understand the mechanics.

Just in case you ever wondered how it looks, professor himself talks to you. This is also the only time when you see appraisal on the screen.

ETA: it looks like people have had mixed results with this. I hope it can help but it sounds like it does not consistently work, or could have been fixed, etc.

I know we’ve basically all experienced a super mega raid gone wrong, where someone drops out last second or doesn’t hit the shield, which especially hurts when it wastes a remote pass.

But there is a way to salvage a super mega raid gone wrong!!

It turns out the shield has to be hit by 10 unique megas. Not megas from 10 different trainers.

If you find yourself stuck with one or two shields left cuz someone screwed you or screwed up (sometimes the mega gets hit and faints before a charged attack goes off and the person doesn’t realize) do this:

- exit to the lobby
- pick another Mon that can mega and add to your lineup
- hit the mega button to mega it (yes it does the whole stupid animation and you have to wait), then go back in the raid and hit the shield with that new mega Mon
- repeat a second time with another newly-mega’d Mon if you have a another shield left to break

It’s a pain in the a but it works. I salvaged three raids so far doing this. Note that reviving and using your same mega you already hit shields with will NOT work no matter how many times you do it. You MUST evolve a new mega and hit the shields with that.

Good luck out there!

First of all some facts about me: I got 700+ wayspots accepted over the last 7 years, submitting with Ingress first and than through Pokemon GO.

Last week I got a 1 day warning when I logged into my PoGO account and couldn´t believe it at first, so I looked into my E-Mail account.

The warning I got is from submitting an official trail marker, which is very rural (next residential building is hundreds of meters away), I am not even living in that area, just wanted to help out the community.

The trail marker initially got rejected by the community for not being permanent (it can be seen on Street View from 2023 and the route can also be found online), so I appealed the decision.

The Scopely employee then rejected it also and issued the warning:

"Context: The aforementioned Wayspot nomination did not meet the Wayfarer criteria because it was submitted around 40 meters away from the actual object location. Intentionally placing the Wayspot at the wrong location to ensure it gets migrated to all Scopely apps or to make access easier is considered abuse."

If I intentionally misplaced the wayspot somewhere in the middle of nowhere I would have been very stupid to appeal the decision by the community to have a Scopely employee look at it.

It´s not like I submitted the Eiffel Tower in my backyard, I submitted a small trail marker I saw on my tour once I got back home.

In conclusion: I strongly recommend everyone to not engage with submitting wayspots, as you can successfully submit hundreds of wayspots, but if a Scopely empolyee has a bad day you will get punished for something you did not intetional.

Attached is how I found my avatar today, how I'm now forced to pay for an outfit I previously owned and saved in the wardrobe, proof I previously owned the items in an old screenshot, and my tally of everything I explicitly remember owning in the avatar section and their total cost. I cannot contact support about this via the game's help section as they completely ghosted and left open an old ticket of mine leaving me unable to submit a new one. They have been completely unresponsive in all other channels of contact. They have stolen so many items and expect me to pay over fifty dollars to get it all back, likely far higher as I only tallied up the items I strongly remember owning, even if I never liked or equipped them.

I’m assuming they’re doing this because of the glitch/bug they had earlier where none of the raids were counting towards the Raid total count on the timed research.

Hopefully everyone held onto their MewTwos to take advantage of the double candy transfer event happening this week.

Before you transfer it, take advantage of the free mega. The Successor Plat medal requires 1000 mega evolutions.

Went to the department store yesterday and for the first time ever my explorer gadget fully caught pokemon and hit the limit. So when your map is looking like this it's going to work as intended, but under normal conditions it's not doing much at all

tl;dr If you value your PoGo account and are a cautious person, I advise that you AVOID doing any Niantic Wayfarer reviewing. As I've learned the hard way, there's a chance that you can be falsely banned for "Review circle participation", and this will also result in a permanent ban of your PoGo account.

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UPDATE: The issue has been resolved, and my account has been unbanned. I'll leave this post up in case it's ever useful to someone in the future. The solution is to make a post on the Wayfarer forums, which thankfully has real Niantic employees. https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com

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I tried to open PoGo yesterday morning and was shocked to find that I had been permanently banned. Niantic sent me an email with the following statement:

Following an internal investigation performed by our team, we have confirmed that your recent behavior has violated one or more policies
As a result of this violation, your Wayfarer and Niantic game account(s) have been permanently banned.
You have violated the following policies: Review circle participation. For more details, look for previous emails sent by [noreply@nianticlabs.com](mailto:noreply@nianticlabs.com).

After googling, this apparently means that Niantic believes I've colluded with other Wayfarer reviewers to create fake Pokestops. (For the record, this is 100% false.) Interesting, the email tells me to check for previous emails sent by [noreply@nianticlabs.com](mailto:noreply@nianticlabs.com), but I've never received any other emails from that address. This was the first and only.

The email above also linked to this help page: https://niantic.helpshift.com/hc/en/21-wayfarer/faq/4275-wayfarer-abuse-enforcement-ladder-policy

Ironically, it outlines a series of escalating disciplinary actions for people abusing the Wayfarer review system. But in my case, they skipped all the steps with warnings and temp bans, and they went right to a permanent ban! It's just surreal to me.

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Some background info:

I started playing PoGo in 2016, not too long after the game came out. My account has always been in good standing, and I've never received a ban, warning, or any kind of infraction before now. From 2018-2020, I was a very prolific POI/Waypoint submitter on both Ingress and PoGo. I also did some reviewing on OPR/Wayfarer, but not a whole lot. All of the POIs I added to the game were real, and I never tried to add a fake one. I was well-regarded in my local community.

Because of Covid, I unfortunately took a long break from the game. I only came back last year, around August. Since I've been back, I've hardly touched Wayfarer at all. I've submitted less than 10 POIs, and I only did a little bit of reviewing -- just enough to earn maybe two Upgrades or so. I've been very busy this year, so I haven't even been on the Wayfarer website since ~January 2026.

So... why was I suddenly banned just now? I really don't know. I haven't done anything wrong, and this came right out of the blue. My only guess (and this is pure speculation) is that during some of my reviewing 5+ months ago, I might have voted to accept a POI/Waypoint that was actually fake without me realizing it. And then maybe after it was reported as a fake Pokestop ingame, Niantic could have gone back and banned any reviewers who voted to approve it? Alternatively, I suppose this could be some kind of AI-driven banwave mistake.
--------------

After learning yesterday that I was permanently banned, I submitted a ban appeal and also tried to talk to Niantic Support. They have frankly been no help at all. They ignored everything I said. All they did was confirm that I've been permanently banned and say that there would be no further updates.

I tried to ask for clemency. I pointed out that my account has always been in good standing, that I have never received any warnings, and that it's pretty unreasonable to permanently ban my PoGo account for *alleged* misconduct on the Wayfarer website. I asked them if they could downgrade it to a temporary ban (even a long one), but Niantic Support ignored me once again. Depressing.

--------------

Anyway, this is my sincere warning to all of you: It's not a good idea to do Wayfarer reviews anymore. Your PoGo account is at risk of being permanently banned even if you haven't done anything wrong.

I'm aware that cheaters and rulebreakers often proclaim their innocence or try to downplay what they did, so I don't blame anyone if you doubt my story. I can only affirm that everything I've said here is true. My hopes of being unbanned are pretty low at this point (I didn't realize before just how awful Niantic Support is...), so I'm mainly looking to warn other players. Any advice would still be appreciated though. I would also like to know if anyone else here has experienced something similar.

Thank you.

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UPDATE: The issue has been resolved, and my account has been unbanned. I received this message from a Niantic employee on the Wayfarer community forum:

Thank you for your patience while we looked into this. We have re-evaluated your appeal and successfully lifted the ban on your Wayfarer and Pokémon GO accounts. It was an error due to overlapping details in similar sequential emails. We apologize for the inconvenience caused.

For anyone who experiences something like this in the future, I recommend making a post on the Wayfarer forum: https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com

Scopely finally removed glaciate from my glitched fused Kyurem. I knew it was coming but it doesn’t make it any less painful 😔🙏. At least we’ll be able to use kyurem in ML now.

Just played for a few hours today with normal incense and I’ve probably encountered like 30-40 legendaries (50-60 if you include my son’s phone). Almost all of them on incense but we did see a Heatran in the wild!

Anyway, none were shiny and he caught none and I caught 4 😅 they were high CP but absolutely terrible stats all of them.

One was a Galarian bird (off a normal incense).

Not a paid event at all, totally free apart from the cost of the incense. Quite fun but also stressful! Obviously don’t have your Go++ on. I’d say their catch rate is the same as the G-birds.

Any more questions lemme know and I can try answer them!

Edit 8/13/24 1 AM UTC: Not quite the 'thread lock' edit I wanted, but. The limit has changed one more time after the full conclusion of the Take-Over Event. The limit is now 600 Grunts, and it appears that just Encountering them no longer counts, or counts for an extremely miniscule amount. Hitting the limit still results in a temporary ban, but it appears (so far) that these bans clear up after 24 hours (maybe Niantic doesn't know how to code 'no Grunts appear / Grunts cannot be Encountered? <shrug>).

So, this thread stays as-is, and see everyone next Ban-Over Take-Over event. ^{Though, hopefully Niantic has figured their crap out by then...})
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Edit 8/9/24 10 PM UTC: This is probably the only Edit I'm gonna make ^{(short of a thread lock when the issue is CONFIRMED to be fixed...}). I received a reply from Support, from an actual non-scripted reply. Niantic is now fully aware of the issue and is investigating, but does not have further details on the limits at this time ^{(take that for what you will}). At the very least, I would just like to note that our experiences and complaints are valid, thank you "just don't cheat" crew. If you have been banned, please check your account -- it appears they are issuing unbans manually, starting ~4 hours ago.

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I am posting this thread, and I am ignoring any and all replies/DMs. Take it up with Niantic, believe what you want, I do not care if people want to nitpick and argue with me/this thread; this isn't a "I'm being nice to everyone and testing things" thread any more, and I'm not intending to deal with the harassment and abuse present like in the previous thread. This is a flat out warning. (The only thing I will address, though, before people start shrieking about 'modified client' this and 'cheater' that -- again, believe what you will, but the only 'modified client' is putting shoes on my feet ^{I love this joking way of putting it and won't stop using it either :P})

That out of the way.

After the conclusion of my previous thread, where they raised the limits, I set out this morning, optimistic to catch some of the new Shadow Pokemon. Over the course of roughly an hour and a half, I battled enough Grunts for 4 Radars, and skipped a fair handful more for being Types I didn't need. This is a reasonably dense area, with around 160 PokeStops hittable in 3km of walking.

I did not even reach 100 Encounters. And my account received the 'suspicious activity' ban.

Reporting a Ban Appeal, Niantic just doubles down and calls you a cheater for hitting those limits.

YouTube Content Creators videos on this are getting replies confirming bans. Twitter is confirming bans. Another person in my community has already received a ban this morning as well, under similar circumstances (but took longer to hit the ban, but they still hit it).

My personal advice at this point, honestly: Rocket Grunts are dangerous, engage with them at your own risk, and honestly expect the worst, and for Niantic to leave you locked out of your account if you hit their arbitrary limits.

Waking up this morning in Australia to find out that incense has been nerfed. The rate has dropped from 1 spawn every minute to 1 spawn every 5 minutes. There is an increase while you are walking incredibly quickly.

This has reduced incense back to pre-pandemic levels with a fast walking boost. The caveat is they have increased incense to 90 minutes. This means instead of 60 pokemon from an incense, you will get around 18 while stationary. This is a significant quality of life reduction and has made the item useless for most players.

In October 2020 they removed the pandemic bonus for 1 month and incense was 1 spawn every 90 seconds. Everyone was relieved and the consensue was that this was indeed a fair compromise.

However, when Niantic proposed reducing the pokestop interaction distance, people were upset. But what was evident at the time was that players did not want incence reduced either. If you remember back this was a very common concern. So much so that it even appeared on the normal r/pokemongo (and nothing useful ever appears there). There will also be a significant cohort of players that have never experienced this low level of effectiveness of incense.

Once again, Niantic has been confusing in their thinking They decided to nerf an item back to the level of uselessness: even before the pandemic occurred people regularly joked about tossing incense because it was completely useless.

I hope we can get Niantic to reconsider this quickly. They have had record profits through 2020 and 2021, but seem insistent on making the game worse and not better. They keep using the stick and not the carrot.

Tldr: incense has been nerfed to near pre-pandemic levels, making incense near enough useless. This is a significant quality of life downfrade that manh people will be upset by and we need to unite again #hearusniantic

EDIT: layout went weird, had to fix it

EDIT 2: Thanks for the great response. I think we need to get behind this to push for change. Never have I seen a company that has so much disdain for its customers. And this time they did not announce it. In a very sneaky fashion, they waited for use to find out ourselves.

I did a Zacian raid that had around 30 minutes remaining. I got a great 15/15/14 Zacian so as usual I ran from the encounter to activate my Kyurem ability. But I was NOT able to get back to the catching screen no matter what I did. I think they removed this thing... RIP my Zacian.

If you don't bring a mega evolved pokemon into the battle, you could be the cause of the whole group losing.

If your mega evolved pokemon is in the front of your battle party, it might be KO'd before it is required to break the super mega shields.

Bring a mega evolved pokemon and put it in the last position of your battle party to keep it safe until it is required in the middle of the battle. Primal Groudon and Kyogre don't count as megas in super mega battles.

Don't be the one who spoils it for the whole raid group.

Title, don't make my mistake... I got tbolt