"5 minutes at the end of each hour": Pokemon GO players furious with lucky encounters in December Community Day 2022

The December Community Day 2022 event is supposed to celebrate all the things Pokemon GO players love about these pocket monsters and the Community Day event in general. Yet, an issue with lucky encounters with wild spawns has already cropped up that has begun souring the community's mood regarding the occasion.

The December Community Day 2022 is in full throttle, with the long-awaited event finally coming online worldwide. Being 2022's final Community Day, Niantic has decided to bring in all the featured pocket monsters from Community Day events of 2021 and 2022 in a two-day affair.

These Pokemon appear as wild encounters specific to either day, while a few can appear to lucky trainers. Irrespective of what players thought this meant, the actual reality is that these rare lucky encounters only spawn for a ridiculously short period of time, and fans are unimpressed with the fact.

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December Community Day 2022 lucky wild encounters have left Pokemon GO players furious with Niantic

The December Community Day 2022 event is running on Saturday, December 17, 2022, and Sunday, December 18, 2022, from 9 am to 9 pm local time, letting everyone around the world partake in the event.

Pocket monsters from earlier Community Day events have been divvied up into two neat batches that will spawn on the two days for a certain period.

On Saturday, December 17, 2022, Pokemon GO players will come across Sandshrew, Alolan Sandshrew, Alolan Geodude, Hoppip, Spheal, and Stufful spawning in the wilderness of the overworld from 2 pm to 5 pm local time. All of these pocket monsters can appear as their shiny variants.

On Sunday, December 18, 2022, Pokemon GO players will encounter Teddiursa, Galarian Zigzagoon, Starly, Roggenrola, Litwick, and Deino, spawning as wild encounters from 2 pm to 5 pm local time. Similar to the earlier bunch, all of these pocket monsters have the potential to appear as their shiny variants.

Along with these two groups, Niantic also mentioned that there will be some wild encounters that lucky trainers can come across on either day. These include Bulbasaur (with the possibility of a shiny variant), Dratini (with the possibility of a shiny variant), and Mudkip (with the possibility of a shiny variant).

Now that the event has finally begun, it turns out that these lucky encounters are happening in Pokemon GO as follows:

• Bulbasaur - 2.55 pm to 3 pm
• Mudkip - 3.55 pm to 4 pm
• Dratini - 4.55 pm to 5 pm

This has expectedly left the Pokemon GO community furious, with some considering whether it was a joke as they thought there was no way Niantic would limit these lucky encounters to merely five minutes.

Someone else mentioned that the lucky encounters didn't even have an increased spawn rate for the stated short time period, which could have somewhat justified the decision.

For those trainers who are specifically looking to catch the shiny variants of the three pocket monsters mentioned under lucky encounters, they are facing an uphill task.

They only have five minutes on either day to encounter the said Pokemon and then have to hope that they run into a Shiny Bulbasaur, Shiny Mudkip, and Shiny Dratini.

A few decisions by Niantic have not gone down well recently with Pokemon GO fans. The choice to limit the debut of Keldeo behind a paywall was largely criticized. The five-minute lucky encounter period will go down as another example of such decisions made by the developers.