Pokemon GO Player Loses 3 Legendaries in Tragically Unlucky Streak

Highlights

• One unfortunate Pokemon GO fan lost three Legendaries in under two minutes.
• After activating their Daily Adventure Incense, the player encountered all three Galarian Legendary birds, ultimately failing to catch a single one.
• The odds of stumbling upon just one of these creatures are exceedingly low.

One extremely unfortunate Pokemon GO player managed to lose all three Galarian Legendary birds in just a couple of minutes. Their exceedingly unlucky streak later emerged on social media, adding to the ever-growing list of such ill-fated Pokemon GO experiences.

July 25 will mark the second anniversary of Niantic’s hit mobile game adding the three Galarian Legendary birds. Galarian Articuno, Moltres, and Zapdos debuted in the game alongside the Pokemon GO Daily Adventure Incense, an item that increases creature spawn rates and has a chance of luring some unique pocket monsters. The Galarian bird trio is part of that group, as it can only spawn while the Daily Adventure Incense is active.

Pokemon GO Player Misses Out on 3 Legendaries in 2 Minutes

And while those Legendary birds are normally exceedingly rare encounters in Pokemon GO, one Reddit user recently stumbled on all three of them in roughly two minutes. Unfortunately for them, it would appear that just doing that exhausted all of their luck, because they ultimately failed to catch every single one. A screenshot of their Journal history immortalizing this bizarre streak has later surfaced on the front page of the game’s largest subreddit, prompting some fans to discuss whether the player was primarily unlucky to lose out on this trio or lucky to even see it in such a short amount of time.

While this cannot be confirmed without access to Niantic’s player data, it is quite possible that losing out on three Legendaries in two minutes is a Pokemon GO world record. The way Daily Adventure Incense works is that it compares the user’s GPS location every 30 seconds and only spawns another creature if the new position is roughly 50 meters (~164 feet) away from the previous one that yielded a spawn. In other words, the theoretically shortest time frame in which three Legendary Galarian birds can be encountered is 90 seconds. That is assuming the player never stops moving while trying to catch the first two creatures.

Given those requirements, one fan even questioned the legitimacy of the recently shared Journal screenshot, suggesting that it might have been doctored. But there are no concrete indications of that being the case.

The two-minute time frame would also appear less tight if the unlucky player was a Poke Ball Plus user, as that device significantly streamlines the process of catch attempts without even looking at one’s phone. The accessory also only uses regular Poke Balls in Pokemon GO, which increases the likelihood of missing out on creatures with low catch rates, which the Galarian Legendary birds most certainly are.