"To all Rural/Suburban players: Stop looking for pokemon; look for biomes!"

#PokemonGO: Dear lamented rural trainers,Like many of you, I have spent the past two months green with envy of our city dwelling brethren. My hands have itched and involuntarily contracted into fists various times, subconsciously ready to punch the next urban player in the gut/face/wherever lies your fancy, who comes here to post screenshots of his journal showing a dragonite who ran away. Oh yeah? Well, I haven't even SEEN a dragonite (or dragonair or dratini for that matter), never mind the joy of having it run away.In fact, up until last week, I hadn't seen many pokemon that others took for granted. Sandshrew, more like Sandscrewyou! Geodudewhereareyou, Ekan't, Polysgone, and Neverseendra are the pokemon that describe my experience best as a rural/suburban player. Those and Pidgey, Rattata and Weedle.But this post is not about complaining, it's about an insight I got this last week.Let me first describe my own living situation. I live in a small town of 20k inhabitants, about 20km from a "major" city of 600k and, in the other direction, 30km from a 1M "metropole". The nearest pokestop I have is about a pidgey egg away from my home (I live a little outside the "centre" if that's what you can call it). This centre of our little stick-in-the-woods has about three gyms and a handful of pokestops.In short, the situation isn't even that bad, compared to most rural players.But the spawns, all over hamlet, are pretty much only ever pidgey, rattata and weedle, with an occasional caterpie, kakuna, paras and venonat thrown in.Worse, my work location is completely identical, so I can't just head out on my lunch break and catch some cool stuff. (I can however, go out and catch a lot of uncool stuff!)My pokedex has pretty much exclusively been filled up on eggs and on my once per week visit to either of the aforementioned major towns/cities. Still, even these places have a huge bias for those pokemon that you could best describe as "helpful in making you level fast with a lucky egg". So basically, I would get into the city, notice an extremely rare pokemon on my sightings list like Magikarp or Bellsprout (I'm not even kidding here) and head out looking for that one specifically.My unevolved pokedex has been filling up steadily, but even so, I was becoming accutely aware that at this rate, I would never manage to ever evolve the one bellsprout I found into a Weepinbell let alone Victreebell.So a few days ago, I changed my strategy and this has drastically altered my success chances.To put it succinctly, I stopped looking for pokemon and started looking for biomes.Reading a lot here on the Silphroad makes you realise how the game works and this could be used to my advantage.I used an incense close to my home where there were never any pokemon appearing at all on the sightings list. All I got was the same old crap, so even if that area was empty, it was still part of the suburbian biome.Then, I used one on a place close to my work where there's a river (more like a creek to be honest) running by the side of the road. Same results.I then took some colleagues of mine and we drove to a nearby park on a lunchbreak with some overlapping pokestops. The natural spawns were crap; and what came out of the lures was even worse.After that, I looked on facebook for some PoGo groups of those two cities and found out where the players tended to gather for lures. I went to one of those and bloody butter! In the space of 30 minutes, I caught more new pokemon than I had in the entire previous month! Not to mention quite a few doubles of things which to me, are still labeled "rare". Now I plan to go back there next time I'm in the city and I can't wait. Not because I'm hopeful that something good will pop up, but because I KNOW it will.I then noticed there was a major river not too far from my home, with a dyke that's intensely used by cyclists and pedestrians. It's even quite scenic so I'm winning regardless of the spawns! But even if it were ugly as yo momma, it turned out to be a 100% valid water biome. Without any lures, incense or anything, me the suburbian Champion of the Pidgey Covenant, was suddenly drowning in water pokemon. I currently have over a 100 magikarp candy. Again, to many of you that might seem trivial, but a few days ago I had about 20, most of that from eggs.I tried an industrial zone, hoping to find electric pokemon, but got greeted by my good old flying friends. No sweat, I left. There's another one about a Lapras egg away that I'm planning on checking out later this week.So to conclude. To all players who are in a situation similar to me, that is, Pidgeyland, here's my advice:Don't walk around the same old places that show the same old pokemon in your sightings list. You'll never ever find something worthwhile there (barring the occasional lucky spawn). It's much more effective to open up google maps and look around for places that seem like they could be interesting biomes/habitats. Then go there and open your sightings. If you only see pidgeys and weedles, it means it's still just the same old suburban biome. If it's anything else, you'll see it, I promise. When I went to that river and opened sightings it immediately showed Poliwag, Magikarp and Psyduck (and later on I caught Krabby and Goldeen there as well). There's really no doubt when you hit upon a more interesting biome. In my limited experience, biomes are never much bigger than a Drowzee egg in square kilometers, so there's bound to be something interesting not too far away from you!TLDR: If you're stuck in the purgatory of Pidgeyland, stop looking for pokemon and start looking for biomes. Facebook groups and google maps are your friends. Don't walk around in an area that only shows crap on sightings, it's not likely something better will show up soon. Explore your broader area and find places that consistently have better spawns.And if you're truly truly rural, then I guess you're still sandscrewed... via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2bBpBMW