Today I was able to get two new Pokédex registries from the gen 5 Pokémon that have been recently added to the game. Well one of them was after midnight when I checked my game before writing this post, so it doesn't entirely count as being on the same day I guess :P
Earlier today while walking around with two of the people from the group we take the Houten Schip Gym, a Karrablast spawned. I didn't have this one yet as they don't seem to spawn around these areas that often and I didn't manage to get one from an egg yet either. So that one was a new Pokédex registry for capturing it!
After midnight when I opened my game, a 5 km egg hatched that was likely already pretty close to hatching. Thanks to adventure sink from walking around a bit after I was done playing it must have gotten the rest of the distance to hatch. I was surprised to see a Roggenrola hatch from the egg as it is another one that I didn't have yet. I saw Raids of it before, but preferred hatching it or encountering it in the wild. So that one is also a new Pokédex registry!
When I did an appraise for this Roggenrola from the egg I was even more surprised! I could even hardly bayleef my eyes as I saw all the bars fill up and saw that I just hatched a 100% IV Roggenrola and that being my first ever Roggenrola!! It was definitely a pleasant surprise!
This week we had two brand new, 1 hour events. The first one took place on Tuesday from 6 pm through 7 pm local time and is called Spotlight Hour, the other one took place this Thursday from 6 pm through 7 pm local time and is called Mystery Bonus Hour. These events are being tested this month. Due to other events later this month there wasn't a lot of time to spread both over the month so we got them in the same week. Niantic will likely look at feedback and decide whether or not they'll bring them back next month and perhaps make tweaks to them.
For the Spotlight Hour one mystery Pokémon would spawn more often in the wild. This one as a first test run featured Onix. I walked around with another friend during this event and we would sometimes come across others too and talk for a bit. We placed some Lures at some Pokéstops and walked around near them for a while before walking around a bit more. Overall the Onix spawn were pretty decent, not as many as with a Community Day. The most I've seen on the nearby radar at once was like 3. Although it may have been a bit higher because obviously I also caught the ones that would show up. I didn't encounter a Shiny, but I did find a few that I will have to check for possibly being able to use in PvP if they're evolved to Steelix, which I will still have to check out.
The Mystery Bonus Hour is a new event they're testing out where during the event hour a mystery bonus is active for the hour. This one featured a double catch Stardust bonus. I walked around together with one friend during this one too, with a Star Piece active to get some extra Stardust from the Pokémon I caught. As it increased the Stardust gained by 50%, that is a nice additional bonus on the double catch Stardust.
The timing for these events may not always be so ideal for me as I often eat around this time and I imagine others might too. Though I wouldn't mind eating something small before the event and then eat dinner after the event, if I'm interested in it at least. Both of them might only occur once a month though if they keep these, so it could also be easier to plan around them.
When it comes to spawns in the Spotlight Hour, I think they seemed pretty fine. They shouldn't be as frequent as the Community Day spawns. As I haven't played in a big city with like easily 5+ Pokéstops over 100 meters it is a bit hard to tell how good the spawn rate was. For me personally where I played a slightly higher spawn rate could've been nicer. For smaller low populated areas this could be a bit of a problem for some people. I feel that this event is best to play in areas with lots of Pokéstops so you can put Lures on them with others and walk around to get a lot more spawns that way.
This would also apply to the Mystery Bonus Hour if it features something related to catching Pokémon like double Stardust on catch. Of course these bonuses could also be related to Eggs distance and other bonuses could possibly show up too.
The double catch Stardust seems a bit of an odd choice for the first Mystery Bonus Hour, because later this month we will have a triple catch Stardust bonus for 3 hours during the monthly Community Day. So that choice is a bit strange, but perhaps Niantic felt that this one would be the most appealing for their first test run of the Mystery Bonus Hour.
Have you participated in one or both of these 1 hour events this week? What did you think of them?