All the Pokemens

[Aura]

The Wonder Mail Password for today's dungeon is:

? ? M H   C J ... ?   4 4 ? P

C F ? 8   7 J 6 R   ... M ? 1

 

This is another request from Jigglypuff to rescue Pikachu from yet another new dungeon: Marvelous Sea. And, you guessed it, the dungeon is unlocked as soon as you get the mission!

================

Marvelous Sea

This dungeon is once again rather strange. It's more or less a bite-sized version of Stormy Sea, but it's actually one of a pair of these Wonder Mail dungeons, the other of which is more or less the same dungeon but slightly longer, increasing its difficulty. 

                            

The items you can find in this dungeon include: Poke; Def., Pass, Pecha, Sneak, and Warp Scarves; Detect, Patsy, Power, Racket, Stamina, and Twist Bands; Gold, Heal, and Plain Ribbons; and Tight Belts.

 

Since this dungeon is similar to Stormy Sea, I'll be going in with Storm and Nature.

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

Marvelous Sea [B1F - B5F]

   

The similarities to Stormy Sea are apparent right off the bat! For the first several floors, you'll find Wingull, Shellder, Tentacool, and Omanyte. Wingull can be recruited with Shallow Beach, Shellder and Tentacool with Bountiful Sea, and Omanyte with Deep-Sea Floor. You'll want to be wary of Shellder's Aurora Beam! And if they get close, Icicle Spear and Supersonic can be a terrifying combo.

Of course, we need to make sure we rescue Pikachu!

And on B3F, I was able to recruit a Shellder! I named him Hidaway.

=============

New Recruit: Team Recover

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

Hidaway (Shellder); Lv. 25

Item: None

Ability: Shell Armor | Moves: Withrdraw, Icicle Spear, Supersonic, Aurora Beam

=============

Marvelous Sea [B6F - B8F]

    

Slowpoke and Seel join on B6F. Slowpoke can be recruited with Bountiful Sea while Seel requires Ice-Floe Beach. Seel are a bit more threatening at range than Shellder with both Aurora Beam and Icy Wind. But they aren't nearly as powerful up-close.

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

Marvelous Sea [B9F]

   

Shellder leaves on B9F.

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

Marvelous Sea [B10F - B13F]

   

Remoraid and Spheal join in the absence of Tentacool and Omanyte. Remoraid can be recruited with Treasure Sea while Spheal can be recruited with Ice-Floe Beach. Remoraid is even more of a sharpshooter than Seel, with not three different long-range moves: Psybeam, Bubblebeam, and Aurora Beam, but also the move Lock-On which can guarantee the attacks connect. Spheal is more or less a second body for Shellder's Icicle Spear. Watch out for Ice Ball!

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

Marvelous Sea [B14F]

    

Anorith is on the next floor and can be recruited with Treasure Sea.

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

Marvelous Sea [B15F - B19F]

  

Slowpoke and Seel are gone for the next few floors.

And on floor 16, you've reached a deeper level of the sea with darker waters.

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

Marvelous Sea [B20F]

  

On the final floor, Remoraid and Spheal disappear leaving Anorith alone with the newcomers Grimer and Omastar. Grimer can be recruited with Poison Swamp.

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

And with that, we've reached the end of yet another dungeon! We have just one more Wonder Mail dungeon to explore which we'll be covering in the next post.

[Aura]

Today we'll be covering the last of the dungeons locked behind Wonder Mail! Our last code here is:

? ? M 1   C J Y ?   4 4 ? P

H F ? 8   7 J 6 R   ... M ? 1

 

This one is linked to a request from, guess who? Pikachu seems to need rescuing from our final dungeon: Fantasy Strait.

=================

Just like the others, this dungeon becomes available once you obtain the Wonder Mail for it.

As alluded to before, Fantasy Strait is more or less just a more challenging version of Marvelous Sea. The similarities will be apparent pretty quickly. The main purpose for this dungeon seems to be for grinding money, mainly because of the dungeon's final floor which we'll discuss when we get there.

                            

The items that can be found include: Poke; Def., Pass, Pecha, Sneak, and Warp Scarves; Detect, Pasty, Power, Racket, Stamina, and Twist Bands; Gold, Heal, and Plain Ribbons; Tight Belts; Insomniscopes; Scope Lenses; Whiff and X-Ray Specs; Geo Pebbles and Gravelrocks; Cheri Berries; Allure, Blinker, Heal, Sleep, and Totter Seeds; and assorted Wonder Orbs.

 

This time, I decided to go in with Blizzard and Allia instead of Storm and Nature. I figured their typings would allow them to explore more freely and protect them better against the prominent Ice-type attacks in the dungeon, an oversight I've consistently made in previous water-themed dungeons.

=================

Fantasy Strait [B1F - B4F]

    

For the first four floors, you might notice already that every pokemon available on the first floors in Marvelous Sea is present here, too. That's no coincidence: Every single pokemon that could be found in Marvelous Sea can be found on the same floors in Fantasy Strait. Of course, the addition of Qwilfish shows that this dungeon adds a few extras to the party, too.

Wingull can be recruited with Shallow Beach, Shellder and Tentacool with Bountiful Sea, Omanyte with Deep-Sea Floor, and Qwilfish with Serene Sea.

As always, we'll need to make sure to rescue Pikachu on our way through the first floor!

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

Fantasy Strait [B5F]

      

Corsola and Kabuto tag along on B5F. Corsola requires Shallow Beach while Kabuto requires Deep-Sea Floor.

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

Fantasy Strait [B6F - B8F]

       

Wingull is gone on B6F and replaced by Slowpoke and Seel. Slowpoke can be recruited with Bountiful Sea while Seel can be recruited with Ice-Floe Beach.

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

Fantasy Strait [B9F]

      

Shellder is the next gone.

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

Fantasy Strait [B10F - B13F]

      

Tentacool, Omanyte, and Qwilfish are replaced with Remoraid, Spheal, and Horsea on B10F. Remoraid and Horsea can be recruited with Treasure Sea, and Spheal with Ice-Floe Beach.

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

Fantasy Strait [B14F]

     

Anorith replaces Kabuto and Corsola on B14F.

On B14F, I made a new recruit: Chill the Seel!

==============

New Recruit: Team Recover

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

Chill (Seel); Lv. 30

Item: None

Ability: Thick Fat | Moves: Rest, Growl, Icy Wind, Aurora Beam

==============

Fantasy Strait [B15F - B19F]

     

Slowpoke and Seel are replaced with Krabby and Staryu on B15F. Krabby can be recruited with Shallow Beach and Staryu with Bountiful Sea.

On B15F, you might be surprised to find a floor-wide Monster House! That's right, this happens here just like in Silver Trench. But this time, we're a bit better prepared thanks to Blizzard's Powder Snow.

  

It feels really nice to be able to show off the total devastation you can unleash in these rooms with a move like this! I was able to KO all but four pokemon in the entire room with just a single attack! Sometimes being OP really just feels good.

On B16F, the waters become a deeper blue.

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

Fantasy Strait [B20F]

      

Vaporeon, Grimer, and Omastar replace Remoraid and Spheal on B19F. Grimer can be recruited with Poison Swamp.

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

Fantasy Strait [B21F - B23F]

    

Horsea and Vaporeon are gone on B21F.

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

Fantasy Strait [B24F]

   

Anorith is the next to go.

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

Fantasy Strait [B25F]

   

Kabutops appears in place of Krabby on B25F.

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

Fantasy Strait [B26F - B29F]

   

Kingler appears in place of Staryu next.

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

Fantasy Strait [B30F]

    

On the final floor, Grimer and Omastar cease to appear, but Slowbro, Seadra, and Carvanha show their faces. Carvanha can be recruited with Treasure Sea.

On this final floor, there is a potential to find a large amount of Poke. From what I understand, you can find up to 1000 Poke in a single drop, though the bulbapedia page is a bit inconsistent. The blurb about the dungeon in Gen III says this is on the 30th floor, while the blurb about the gen III items only mentions the cap increasing to 1000 on floors 12 and 27. Either way, I suppose these are the floors to search if you're here looking for money. It could be a good opportunity to use Trawl Orbs as Kecleon Shops cannot appear in this dungeon!

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

And that's it for Fantasy Strait! Another very straightforward dungeon with not much to say.

================

Of course, we'll once again accept our thanks from Jigglypuff for rescuing Pikachu and see the pair off. While this is the last of the Wonder Mail dungeons, it's not the last we'll be seeing of Wonder Mail. There's just a little bit more I'd like to cover and it's related to the topic we'll be covering in the next post: A general guide to the most challenging recruits in the game.

More importantly, this I do believe is the final new dungeon in the game! Well, there is one new dungeon sort of but we'll cover that as a bit of a send-off to the series. There's also another "dungeon" which is just a small feature I'd like to touch on in a cleanup post.

[Aura]

Today we're focusing not on a specific dungeon, but rather the pokemon found within them! More specifically, much like how I usually do a cleanup operation at the end of a generation of main-series games, I want to cover the general details you'll need to know if you want to reach 100% completion in these games!

I should go ahead and say right now that, no, I am not intending to 100% complete these games myself. This game asks a lot out of you for completion and it's definitely a long-term project in and of itself. Even moreso, I'd say, than the Battle Frontier! You see, getting every pokemon in Mystery Dungeon is a lot more complicated than simply finding them like in the main series. You also have to be lucky enough to recruit them! Beyond that, you'll also have to do a lot of grinding for evolution. Needless to say, due to all the RNG involved in this venture, you'll definitely need some set up.

First and foremost, some things you're definitely going to want:

Access to every dungeon in the game, preferably cleared at least once if the dungeon has a boss at the end. Many bosses cannot be recruited the first time they've been defeated.

A single pokemon, at least level 90, with a well-rounded moveset capable of dealing with just about any challenge in the game. If you're wondering where to grind your levels up, the best place would probably have to be Western Cave. The pokemon there, especially on the later floors, offer a ton of exp. Having a level of at least 90 guarantees that you'll not only be able to effortlessly take out any enemy, but that you'll get the highest possible rewards.

The Friend Bow: An item that can be obtained from a hidden chamber in Mt. Faraway. You'll need to bring a key to floor 30. Believe it or not, this item is more than just helpful by adding a bit more leeway with the RNG. It's outright required for some of the hardest recruits in the game.

X-Ray Specs

This item will help you pinpoint the location of all pokemon on a floor. It's already incredibly useful for sussing out the locations of rooms where the stairs might be hidden, but in this case, it can help you make sure you hunt down every pokemon on the floor you're after.

Tight Belt

There will be certain pokemon that only appear on very specific floors in long dungeons. This item will aid you in exploring the entire floor without having to worry about hunger.

Every friend area

Make sure you have every friend area purchased from Wigglytuff Club as well as any that are exclusively rewards from rescue requests. It should go without saying that every friend request in the game is required to recruit every pokemon in the game. Also be sure you have free space in every friend area! There is just enough space in every friend area for every stage of evolution for every pokemon at once. There is no logic preventing you from having duplicates of pokemon that don't evolve so make sure you don't have, say, two Tauros. (Two pokemon that evolve is okay since you can leave one as-is and evolve the other) If you have difficulty finding the friend areas from rescue requests, you can always turn toward Wonder Mail to get your solution.

Lots and lots of Escape Orbs and Cleanse Orbs

In the interest of saving time, you're going to want to use Escape Orbs to safely escape from a dungeon after recruiting a rare pokemon, and you'll regret not having that extra layer of protection from Cleanse Orbs in dungeons with traps.

==============

  

Once you've gathered your supplies, it's time to take on the quest to recruit every pokemon. To start with, you'll want to go through every dungeon and check the recruitment search menu on every floor.

 

These menus will show you every recruitable pokemon on every floor on one page, with the other page listing every one of those you currently have recruited. A pokemon will disappear from the recruited list if it's evolved since it technically becomes a different pokemon. Of course, you can also manually go down the list of pokemon and look them up. I recommend using Serebii.net's spindex to look up the pokemon and the dungeon it appears in. I also recommend looking up the dungeons on Bulbapedia to find what levels they appear at in each one. It's really nice to recruit a pokemon when it's already high enough level to evolve! It'll save you some time with grinding.

Some things to watch out for:

Some dungeons, like TIny Woods and Purity Forest, don't allow you to recruit any pokemon by normal means. Don't waste your time trying to recruit a pokemon where it's impossible! Make sure the dungeon allows you to recruit!

Second, make sure you have room in your party! You'll probably be surprised by how many pokemon are only size 1, so it might be easy to overlook when a seemingly arbitrary pokemon is size 2 or 4. Your team can have a collective size no larger than 6! This is why I recommend having your level 90 pokemon be size 1. You'll get the most mileage that way!

Try to explore alone whenever possible. If your partners get the final hit, or you KO the opponent with a status or item rather than an attack, you won't get the chance to recruit them. You also must be one space away from the pokemon you're trying to recruit.

Finally, make sure the pokemon is recruitable at all. Most fully-evolved pokemon can't be recruited under any circumstance in normal gameplay.

It can take a long time, but with the Friend Bow and a level 90 pokemon, you'll have an additional 34% boost to your every recruitment rate. This will make this process a lot more painless.

Still though, some pokemon are incredibly rare. Let's no toverlook especially elusive pokemon like Chansey in Joyous Tower.

But once you've seemingly recruited every pokemon from every dungeon, you'll definitely begin to notice gaps in your friend areas still. This is where several different categories of "difficult recruits" comes into play.

==============

The first category of difficult recruits are the ones I alluded to with Chansey. They are pokemon that only make brief appearances and disappear as quickly as they came. Be sure you've recruited every standard encounter.

Once you've gone through every dungeon and recruited every pokemon available, you may notice some evolution lines that are MIA. These are probably your version exclusive pokemon!

    

  Porygon2, Lapras, Minun, AIpom, and Magikarp cannot be found in the wild in Red Rescue Team.

    

Meanwhile, Blue Rescue Team will be missing Porygon, Mantine, Plusle, Roselia, and Feebas.

I've noted where these pokemon appear in their home games, but you might be confused as to how you could possibly recruit these guys in the opposite game without a trading system? Well, aside from Porygon2 in Red REscue Team, but we've already gone down that tangent.

  

   

Well, have no fear, because once again, Wonder Mail is here to save the day! As it turns out, these pokemon can be made to appear in the opposite game, but the requirement is a little bit tricky. In order to unlock a version exclusive pokemon from the opposite version, you'll need to complete a mission that involves that version exclusive pokemon! To my knowledge, they'll never appear in your mailbox or the bulletin board, though. The only way to encounter these missions is by sharing Wonder Mail with someone playing the other version of the game... or use a Wonder Mail generator. I imagine the intention here is something akin to trading. Instead of trading pokemon directly with a friend, your friend would find a Wonder Mail with the version exclusive and share it with you. It seems rather obtuse, though. I don't think it's a natural conclusion to just assume this would unlock the pokemon in the other version of the game. Maybe the instruction booklet mentioned this?

There is a guide by GameFAQs user ZombieInfection that lists some of these wonder mail codes. But I'll list them here as well.

For Blue Rescue Team:

F ? 4 N   + W T ?   ? + 6 N

F R ? J   F ? 6 6   8 5 ? W

Corresponds to a rescue mission in Tiny Woods involving Roselia.

4 ? ? N   2 2 ... ?   ? Q 6 J

H 3 ? (Male)   8 4 7 0   J N ? W

corresponds to an escort mission for Tiny Woods that involves Mantine.

1 ? 6 9   (Female) J Y ?   ? X 6 Q

X J ? Q   F 4 ? 6   Q ! ? X

involves Feebas in a mission in Thunderwave Cave.

1 ? N 9   X 3 + ?   ? + 6 5

+ ! ? Q   + 4 7 0   S 0 ? W

brings Milotic to Thunderwave Cave

1 ? 5 8   T 5 + ?   4 J 7 8

W S ? 7   F ? ? R   N Q ? X

brings Porygon to Thunderwave Cave.

F ? R P   F ? ... ?   ? + 7 ?

C T ? H   6 4 ? 0   R ? ? ?

brings Plusle to Thunderwave Cave!

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

As for Red Rescue Team:

4 ? R C   W (Male) T ?   ? 0 7 6

F M ? Y   2 4 ? 5   + N ? W

brings Aipom into Silent Chasm

F ? J ?    6 9 0 ?   4 Q 6 C

C ! ? ?   8 ? 6 6   8 Q ? (female)

brings Lapras to Tiny Woods

X ? ? S   ? ? X ?   4 6 8 ?

(female) + ? ?   9 7 5 6   S Y ? ?

introduces Magikarp to Stormy Sea

4 ? 8 N   % Q T ?   4 R ? H
5 J ? ?   6 4 6 R   ... 9 ? W

brings Gyarados to Tiny Woods

4 ? M 9   F Q X ?   2 8 N 7

H R ? H   P 5 ? 0   ! 4 ? W

brings Minun into Mt. Blaze

F ? 5 N   - Q F ?   ? + 6 !

? H ? ?   F ? 6 R   6 9 ? W

brings Porygon2 into Tiny Woods.

  

  

Once you've obtained the Wonder Mail requests, you'll need to go and complete them. Keep in mind you can only carry four jobs at once and only accept one job per floor. You'll have to take multiple trips if you want them all!

After completing a mission involving any of these version-exclusive pokemon, you can then find them in the dungeons they would appear in the other game, like here where I found Plusle in Thunderwave Cave in Blue Rescue Team! These version exclusives still follow general recruitment rules, though. Fully-evolved pokemon like Gyarados and Milotic can't be recruited directly. You'll have to evolve Feebas and Magikarp.

Porygon can be found in Buried Relic B5F - B10F and can be recruited with Decrepit Lab.

 

Mantine can be found in Grand Sea B30F while Lapras can be found in Far-Off Sea on B45F - B50F. Mantine can be recruited with Serene Sea while Lapras requires Mythical Lake.

 

Plusle and Minun can be found in Thunderwave Cave B4F - B5F, Lightning Field 7F - 19F, and Joyous Tower 5F - 8F. They can be recruited with Thunder Meadow.

 

Roselia can be recruited from Uproar Forest 4F - 7F with Beau Plains while Aipom can be found in the same dungeon from 1F - 6F with Energetic Forest

 

Feebas can be recruited from Waterfall Pond B16F - B19F while Magikarp can be recruited from B7F - B11F. Both require Waterfall Lake.

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

    

The next category are evolved pokemon. As mentioned frequently throughout this playthrough, it's usually easier to evolve a pokemon than it is to recruit their evolved forms. Often, said evolved forms are impossible to recruit in the first place. Different pokemon have different evolution requirements. Most pokemon evolve via levelup, but some, like Steelix, require items to evolve while others, like Blissey, require a high enough IQ. Espeon and Umbreon both require a special item as well as IQ requirements, so you'll want a lot of gummis.

While individual types of gummis might be easier to find in certain dungeons, Stormy Sea is home to every type of gummi, so you might want to do your searching there. Keep in mind, if you're desperate to train up a specific pokemon's IQ, the gummi doesn't have to match their type. It's also a good idea to use a gummi that reflects a type that's super-effective against their own! For this reason, pokemon that are weak to their own types like Ghost and Dragon often gain IQ faster!

Grinding pokemon levels is easiest by visiting Western Cave, just like with trianing your own pokemon. Expect to spend a lot of time KOing pokemon. Dragonair and Pupitar in particular have to be level 55 before they can evolve!

Of course, there are evolution items to worry about as well, and these are the kicker.

          

Link Cables are the most important of these items. There are many pokemon who evolve with Link Cables as well as Link Cables in conjunction with other evolution items. Some of which you may have noticed we haven't even found yet and you probably haven't either! Some of these evolution items are incredibly rare so I'll go over them at the end of this list. Link Cables can be found in place of any special items you already have either on hand or in storage. They do not replace items you have lost due to consumption or getting KO'd. So thankfully, no items are one-and-done deals. You can always go back to the same sealed chamber and get another copy of an HM or evolution item you've lost. It's used on its own to evolve Kadabra into Alakazam, Machoke into Machamp, Graveler into Golem, and Haunter into Gengar. It's also needed in conjunction with other evolution items in order to evolve Poliwhirl into Politoed, Slowpoke into Slowking, Onix into Steelix, Scyther into Scizor, Seadra into Kingdra, and Porygon into Porygon2.

 

 

The DeepSeaScale and DeepSeaTooth, used along with a Link Cable to evolve Clamperl into Gorebyss and Huntail respectively, can be found in Grand Sea on the 15th and 25th floors respectively. They're 

The Dragon Scale, needed alongside a Link Cable to evolve Seadra in to Kingdra, can be found on the ground on Floor 29 and 30 of Wyvern Hill.

 

The Metal Coat, used in conjunction with a Link Cable to evolve Onix and Scyther into Steelix and Scizor, can be found in the last two floors, B49F and B50F, of Southern Cavern.

  

         

Fire Stones, Thunder Stones, and Water Stones needed to evolve lots of different pokemon, can be found on the 29th floors of Firey Field, Lightning Field, and Northwind Field respectively. The Fire Stone is needed to evolve Vulpix into Ninetails, Growlithe into Arcanine, and Eevee into Flareon. The Thunder Stone is required to evolve Pikachu into Raichu and Eevee into Jolteon. The Water Stone is needed to evolve Poliwhirl into Poliwrath, Shellder into Cloyster, Staryu into Starmie, Eevee into Vaporeon, and Lombre into Ludicolo.

 

      

Moon and Sun Stones can be found throughout Solar Cave. The Moon Stone needed to evolve Nidorina into Nidoqueen, Nidorino into Nidoking, Clefairy into Clefable, Jigglypuff into Wigglytuff, and Skitty into Delcatty while the Sun Stone is needed to evolve Gloom into Bellossom and Sunkern into Sunflora.

 

 

The Moon and Sun Ribbons needed to evolve Eevee into Umbreon and Espeon are found in sealed chambers on the 20th floors of Northwind Field and Wyvern Hill respectively.

The Beauty Scarf, needed for evolving Feebas, is in Western Cave on B59F behind a locked door. Make sure to bring a key!

You might notice that leaves a few evolution items left unaccounted for. That's because, for reasons unknown to me, these items are much more difficult to find.

  

      

Leaf Stones, King's Rocks, and Upgrades can only be found in Kecleon Shops within Wish Cave making them by far the rarest evolution items in the game. That's especially frustrating considering you need several Leaf Stones and two Kings Rocks in order to evolve every pokemon that needs them. The Leaf Stone is required to evolve Gloom into Vileplume, Weepinbell into Victreebel, Exeggute into Exeggutor, and Nuzleaf into Shiftry. The King's Rock is needed alongside the Link Cable to evolve Poliwhirl into Politoed and Slowpoke into Slowking. The Upgrade is requried alongside the Link Cable to evolve Porygon into Porygon2.

I truly cannot fathom why the Leaf Stone is hidden away in Wish Cave when it so easily could've been placed in a dungeon like Howling Forest. Or they could've just made another Forest dungeon! Why not a jungle? It's not like they're any strangers to far more redundant dungeons. But yes, be expected to take several trips to Wish Cave in order to evolve all of these pokemon. You'll also need to be lucky enough to find enough money to actually buy the items, too. And no, the Kecleon Shop in Pokemon Square will never sell these items to you. Only the shop sinside Wish Cave.

Once you've evolved every pokemon you've recruited, a significant portion of pokemon shoiuld be filled in, but you might want to recruit more of their earlier forms if you want the friend areas to be stuffed. Otherwise, it's onto the next category to fill in the remaining spots!

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

Up next are standard Boss recruits. You might not think about revisiting bosses you've previously defeated even though it is required to recruit Moltres, Zapdos, and Articuno in order to unlock Silver Trench. Many of the boss pokemon you may not have recruited either have incredibly low recruitment rates or downright cannot be recruited your first time through. Some of them require you to have their Friend Areas while others will automatically give you their friend areas. This post will only cover the difficult recruits or the ones you're likely to miss. The ones that have a 99.9% recruitment rate will not be listed here. If you've cleared all the dungeons, you most certainly should've recruited these guys unless you either didn't have their friend area where necessary or didn't have room for them in your party when you fought them.

  

Among these are the Legendary Beasts Entei, Raikou, and Suicune which are the bosses of Fiery Field, Lightning Field, and Northwind Field respectively. These three pokemon require the Sacred Field friend area in order to recruit. In addition, they all only have a 0.1 recruitment rate, so the Friend Bow is more or less a necessity for recruiting them.

Perhaps the easiest recruit I'll list here is Kyogre who has a 50% recruitment rate. You may have gotten unlucky your first time through Stormy Sea, but Kyogre has a base 50% recruitment rate making it the easiest Legendary boss to recruit outside of guaranteed recruits. It's practically guaranteed with the full +34% boost bringing it up to a whopping 84%!

Kyogre will reward you with its friend area Seafloor Cave after successfully recruiting it, meaning it's not needed to recruit Kyogre.

 

Groudon and Kyogre are both in similar boats to each other. Being main story bosses, neither of them are recruitable your first time through. But unlike the Legendary Birds, these two aren't recruitable right away in the postgame either. This is because they both have a base -10% recruitment rate. Be sure to bring your Friend Bow because even with it, you'll only have a max 24% recruitment rate for these guys.

 

Groudon will grant access to Volcanic Pit while Rayquaza will provide access to Stratos Lookout. Neither of these friend areas are needed to recruit their residents.

Mewtwo cannot be recruited your first time through the dungeon. You'll need to revisit him again after his initial defeat. You'll also need to make sure you have his friend area, Cryptic Cave, before this rematch. Thankfully, he's a guaranteed recruit your second time through.

The last pokemon to cover here is Deoxys who also has a -10% recruitment rate like Groudon and Rayquaza.

  

To answer any nagging questions: No, the mirage Deoxys you fight throughout Meteor Cave cannot be recruited. Only the real one on the final floor can be recruited.

Upon recruiting Deoxys, you'll gain access to its friend area: Enclosed Island.

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

This next category is a bit of an offshoot of the previous one: These are pokemon that require special circumstances in order to recruit.

  

The easiest of these to recruit would probably have to be the Legendary Golems Regirock, Regice, and Registeel who are fought throughout the Buried Relic. Your first time through the dungeon, you won't be able to recruit any of these guys.

  

Upon their defeat, as you should be aware, Regirock, Regice, and Registeel will drop the Rock Part, Ice Part, and Steel Part. Gathering all three parts together will cause them to combine and create a Music Box. As long as you have the Regirock's respective part, or the Music Box, the regi will become recruitable. If the given part has broken or otherwise been lost, fear not, the regi will drop it again on defeat. In addition, if a legendary golem has already been recruited and you find yourself missing their part, you can find the part lying unguarded in that golem's room.

The three Legendary Golems do require you to have their friend area, Ancient Relic, before they can be recruited. They also have a 0.1% recruitment rate so don't expect them to be easy recruits!

 

Next, there's Mew who will only appear if you have the completed Music Box on hand. Mew is one of three pokemon who are commonly regarded as the toughest to recruit in the game. I've detailed this one during our trip through Buried Relic, but long story short, Mew can appear on any floor from B36F - B99F. Only one Mew can appear per floor and you more than likely won't recognize it on the surface because it'll more than likely be transformed unless it appears in a Monster House. Lastly, even if you do happen to be lucky enough to encounter a Mew, you'll still need to defeat it and hope to actually recruit it. It has a base 0.6% recruitment rate, so good luck with that one! Mew also requires you to already have its friend area: Final Island, so make sure to have that prepared as well!

 

Jirachi is another pokemon that's incredibly difficult to recruit, but I wouldn't consider it one of the three contenders. In order to recruit Jirachi, you'll need her friend area Mt. Moonview as well as the Wish Stone from Medicham. If you've somehow lost the Wish Stone, you can find another one on B50F of Wish Cave. Once you have the requirements, bring the Wish Stone to the bottom floor of Wish Cave in order to awaken Jirachi and recruit her. Do keep in mind that, once recruited, Jirachi will no longer be present at the bottom of the dungeon to grant your wishes. So you may want to make sure you don't have any interest in her alternative rewards.

Celebi here is really the only reason I don't consider Jirachi to be a contender for hardest pokemon to recruit. Celebi has very similar condiitons to Jirachi, but she's found in the depths of the significantly more challenging Purity Forest. It'll take not just skill, but a lot of luck and a lot more patience to be able to reach Celebi. Thankfully, there's no boss fight involved for this one just a free recruit.

On recruiting Celebi, you'll gain access to her friend area: The Healing Forest.

=================

So, you might be wondering... we've gone through every legendary pokemon now and I said there are three contenders for most difficult recruit in the game, and I excluded Jirachi from that list... so who could that last pokemon possibly be? Well, if you look through the pokedex, you might notice just one pokemon remaining that I haven't covered yet.

Mew is a contender because of its sheer rarity.

Celebi is a contender because just getting to her is a challenge.

But the true final boss of completing the game?

It's Kecleon.

So, this might be a shock to some, but Kecleon in the Mystery Dungeon has gained the reputation of Cuccoos in Legend of Zelda. He is somebody you quickly learn not to mess with.

You may have noticed that Kecleon has never been encounterable in any dungeon so far. If you recall, however, stealing from Kecleon's shop without paying him for the items you've taken will cause him to warp to your location and ask you to pay. If you refuse, or can't afford the items, he'll demand you pay with your blood. You might be able to see where I'm going with this, but this is the only way Kecleon can be recruited: You must shoplift from his store and live to tell the tale.

The first step to recruiting Kecleon is to get access to his friend area: The Overgrown Forest.

 

After this, you'll need to track down a Kecleon shop. They seem to appear most frequently in Wyvern Hill, so I recommend going there. You should be able to identify a Kecleon Shop on the map by using X-Ray Specs and searching for a cluster of items like the one shown here.

  

Once you've found a Kecleon Shop, simply help yourself to any items you want and then step out of the shop. Kecleon will ask for you to pay, but of course, you have the option to say no. At which point...

Kecleon will call for help! And the boss fight begins.

Vs. Kecleon

Now, right away, it might seem like I'm overexaggerating. Kecleon goes down fairly easily, even for a level 90 pokemon. But the problem here isn't him...

 

   

It's the army of Kecleon that won't hesitate to swarm you after he calls for help. Every single one of these guys has their speed maxed out from the get-go, is also level 90, and will tear through your HP like paper if they hit you with an attack. Escape Orbs become unusable, so you're going to have to make your way to the stairs.

In the case of trying to recruit Kecleon, there's an added layer of complication to all of this chaos: Not only do you have to fulfill the normal requirements of recruiting a wild pokemon against these maniacs, but these guys have a -33.9% recruitment rate. This means every single one you KO only has a .1% recruitment chance at the very best. If you have anything short of the full 34% recruitment boost, you have absolutely no chance of recruiting one of these guys. Not only that, but you'll also have to make your way to the stairs before you or the Kecleon gets KO'd.

The best way to accomplish this is to use a Trawl Orb while standing on top of the staircase. Using the Trawl Orb on the same floor as a Kecleon Shop will pull his items toward you and it will count as theft, triggering the Kecleon ambush immediately. Wait for the Kecleon to come to you. It shouldn't take long at all since they move several spaces every turn. Then, make sure to get them with your strongest attack because if they get just one hit in, they're likely to KO you instantly.

If you have the luck of a god, you will recruit Kecleon before you die and you can quickly take refuge on the next floor then use an Escape Orb to get away.

=================

After following the steps in this guide, you should have every single pokemon in the game recruited! We only have a few more small things to cover in the main game and then a brief cleanup to cover some miscellaneous stuff. I think next time we'll start to address some of the ways this game foreshadows the next generation of Pokemon that's been hovering just over the horizon for so long now...

[Aura]

If you recall, a long time ago, we obtained this Bonsly Statue which was placed outside of our team base.

  

This statue was gifted to us by Makuhita for clearing every single one of the training courses at the Makuhita Dojo.

  

Well, as it turns out, there are three other statues very similar to it that also portray pokemon that are not available in the game and won't be formally introduced to the games until Diamond and Pearl. These pokemon are Mime Jr., Weavile, and Lucario.

 

The only way to get the former two statues, you'll have to receive them as rewards for completing rescue requests.

 

As per usual, you can get these figures more easily by use of Wonder Mail!

F ? C 4   F H T ?   4 4 0 P

M - ? (Male)   2 C N 0   J X ? +

This code is tied to a mission where you'll have to escort a Salamence through Pitfall Valley to meet a Mr. Mime on the 19th floor. Be wary of Pidgeot's Whirlwind blowing you away from your escort! It could get you in some serious trouble. You'll also have to forge your way through a few Aerodactyl so come prepared!

 

Your reward: The Mime Junior Fig.!

1 ? N K   (Male) (Male) F ?   4 S S 9

M F ? +   C N N 0   J X ? W

This password is tied to another escort mission, this time brining a Poliwhirl to a Zubat on the 24th floor of Northern Range. This is a significantly harder escort mission due to the Beautifly on the first few floors who like to use Silver Wind. Your best bet is to bring a Pokemon with a room-wide attack to deal with them.

 

This one will reward you with a Weavile Fig.!

The three statues will be placed like this, leaving a wide space for the missing Lucario Statue. This statue is... going to be missing for quite a while, though.

Before we talk about getting the Lucario Statue, we'll first need to talk about Rescue Team Ranks.

==================

      

I've briefly touched on these ranks, but I'll describe them in a bit more detail here since this is pretty much the only situation where they actually matter.

Every time you complete a rescue request, you'll earn some Rescue Points which are essentially experience points for your rescue team rank.

You'll start out at Normal Rank.

And you'll rank up to Bronze Rank at 50 points.

At 500 points, you'll reach Silver Rank.

At 1500, you'll reach Gold Rank.

And it takes 3000 points to get to Platinum Rank, that's where I am. But things go even further beyond!

Diamond Rank is achieved at 7500 Rescue Points.

And the ultimate tier, Lucario Rank, is achieved at 15000 points.

Arguably the easiest way to reach Lucario Rank is to simply reach Diamond Rank and then bring a Wish Stone to Jirachi in Wish Cave and ask for "something good." Note: This can't be done if you've already recruited Jirachi.

I don't think it takes too much effort to figure out that higher difficulty missions reward more rescue points than lower-difficulty ones. If you're after really high boosts of points, you might want to go for those *-rank missions! Just be wary as these are typically incredibly challenging escort missions taking you to the depths of dungeons like Western Cave. If you're after Lucario Rank, come prepared to sink a lot of time into it!

Once you've finally reached Lucario Rank, that's when you'll also be rewarded with the missing Lucario Statue to be placed outside of your base.

The end result will be the four statues lined up under the trees just like this!

==================

Now, there is one additional Diamond and Pearl pokemon we can find in this game, this time actually in the flesh and blood! However, he's pretty well hidden.

This is none other than Munchlax! The little gremlin whose been plaguing us since Gale of Darkness! This Munchlax is a lot friendlier, however.

I haven't mentioned this yet because I was kind of hoping it would happen naturally as I played through the game, but it never did. Instead, this video will have to suffice:

There is an incredibly rare chance while passing through Pokemon Square that you'll see Munchlax stumbling through. He'll complain about being hungry and needing food. If you give him a food item, such as an apple, he'll be satisfied and reward you with a Munch Belt!

The Munch Scarf increases the stats of the equipped pokemon, but causes their stomach to empty faster meaning you'll be munching on a lot more food items in exchange for some extra power. Not really worth it in my opinion. I'd usually prefer to have the extra inventory space rather than lug a whole bunch of Apples around, but it's actually surprised me how little of an issue Hunger has actually been throughout the majority of this game.

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

One of the most interesting details about Munchlax is that there is actually data in the game that suggests he may have been intended to be recruitable in this game. Even though Munchlax never appears in any dungeons, he does have all the necessary animations finished and in the data of the game. If you hack him into your team, you'll find that he only knows Tackle but he is programmed to evolve into Snorlax at level 40. To my knowledge, even though it's pretty obvious just from the surface level, this would've been the first time Munchlax's ability to evolve into Snorlax had ever been officially confirmed.

Again, it's worth noting that the game outright crashes if you try to hack other unrecruitable pokemon like the Mirage Deoxys onto your team. This seems to imply that Munchlax may very well have been intended to not only appear in a dungoen, but quite possibly to be recruitable as well!

=================

Well anyway, that I do believe to be all the single player content of Red and Blue Mystery Dungeon. All that's left, now, are to cover the various ways you can interact between these games and with other players through these games. We've already covered most of it so there's no need to go into that, but we'll be focusing specifically on stuff we haven't checked yet. I do believe our next post will be the final one on Mystery Dungeon Red and Blue Rescue Team!

[Aura]

Today is our very final post about Red and Blue Rescue Team! It's almost surreal to be saying this since starting this game felt like such a monumental task and it most certainly was! But we'll reminisce toward the end of the post. As mentioned, today we'll be focusing on the various ways this game can communicate with other Red/Blue Mystery Dungeon players that we've yet to really cover.

There are a few additional options on the home menu that we haven't touched on. First, we'll start with the Adventure Log.

 

 

The Adventure Log is a list of all major milestones your rescue team has reached over the course of their adventure. I suppose if you're interested in 100% completion, you'll want to fill out every line in this log! So I'll detail what each of these are and how to get them! It'll be really brief here, it's all pretty simple, but if you want more detail on the larger tasks, check back at the earlier posts!

Page 1:

-Reached the Hill of the Ancients: Complete the dungeon Giant Chasm for the first time. This is accomplished over the course of the main story when Alakazam suggests you make your way there to ask Xatu about why you became a Pokemon.

-Took to the road as fugitives: Not long after the previous one, this obviously refers to the point in the story where Gengar accuses you of being the human from the Ninetales legend and the reason the world's balance is off. This one will again be completed over the course of the main story.

-Prevented the meteor's collision: After defeating Rayquaza at the end of the main story, he will ascend and destroy the meteor that threatens the world with a powerful Hyper Beam! This event marks the end of the main story and is the starting point for multiple plot threads in the postgame.

-Broke the curse on Gardevoir: You must complete the Gengar's Resolve plot thread. This requires you to rescue Medicham from Wish Cave which is a request that will only be available after talking to Medicham and Ekans a few days in a row. After doing this and talking to Medicham and Ekans a bit more, Gengar will meet you at your base and ask for your help. You'll need to escort him to the top of Mt. Freeze to meet with Ninetales, then to the depths of Murky Cave to lfit the curse on Gardevoir.

  

-The Rescue Team Base was Completed: The fact that this part is listed so low kind of implies to me that, perhaps, completing the Rescue Team base was originally supposed to be a post-game event? Or perhaps it was meant to be an optional questline. Either way, it'll be done by the end of the postgame after dealing with the Mankey Gang and delivering them the Peeled Chestnuts they need for motivation to help finish construction.

-Rescued Smeargle: Completing Smeargle's rescue request in Howling Forest will unlock this task. This request will only appear on the bulletin board after obtaining the Sky-Blue Plains friend area as it ultimately culminates in a free recruit of Smeargle.

-Spotted Munchlax: This one is simple; Munchlax can occasionally be found walking through Pokemon Square. It's entirely random whether or not you can do this one, so just keep making quick visits there whenever you get the chance. You'll find him eventually!

- X Moves Learned: This one is just a statistic showing how many moves you've learned since the start of your adventure.

[Page 2]

-X Friend Rescues were successful: Another statistic, this one shows how many times you've rescued a fallen rescue team using a Friend Rescue.

-X Pokemon Evolved: How many pokemon you've evolved since the start of your adventure

-X Pokemon Joined the team: The number of pokemon that have joined your rescue team.

-X Thieving Attempts Succeeded: Kind of a rude statistic to keep. This one keeps track of how frequently you steel from Kecloen's shop and survive.

-X floors were explored: How many floors in dungeons you've explored throughout your adventure.

-All Friend Areas were Obtained: Of course, this one requires you to obtain every Friend Area available in the game. This includes Friend Areas from Wigglytuff Club, Rescue Request exclusives, and Friend Areas obtained upon recruiting specific pokemon.

-All Pokemon were made leaders: An odd one that requires you to take control of every pokemon in the game at least once.

-All Pokemon Joined the team: Recruit every single one of the 386 pokemon available in the game. Not an easy task in the slightest. Keep in mind the unholy trinity: Mew, Celebi, and Kecleon.

[Page 3]

-Moltres joined the team: Recruit Moltres from the summit of Mt. Blaze.

-Zapdos joined the team: Recruit Zapdos from the summit of Mt. Thunder.

-Articuno joined the team: Recruit Articuno from the depths of Frosty Forest.

-Deoxys joined the team: Recruit Deoxys from the depths of Meteor Cave.

-Entei joined the team: Recruit Entei from the edge of Fiery Field

-Raikou joined the team: Recruit Raikou from the edge of Lightning Field

-Suicune joined the team: Recruit Suicune from the edge of Northwind Field

-Ho-oh joined the team: Recruit Ho-oh from the summit of Mt. Faraway

[Page 4]

-Kyogre joined the team: Recruit Kyogre from the depths of the Stormy Sea

-Groudon joined the team: Recruit Groudon from the depths of Magma Cavern

-Rayquaza joined the team: Recruit Rayquaza from the top of Sky Tower

-Lugia joined the team: Recruit Lugia from the depths of Silver Trench

-Celebi joined the team: Recruit Celebi by reaching the end of Purity Forest

-Mew joined the team: Obtain the Music Box and use it to recruit Mew from the Buried Relic.

-Mewtwo joined the team: Recruit Mewtwo from the depths of Western Cave

-Jirachi joined the team: Recruit Jirachi from the depths of Wish Cave by bringing the Wish Stone.

=================

The next option I wanted to take a look at today was "Unknown Dungeon"

 

The name may sound imposing, but it's actually very simple. This is a mode akin to Pokemon Trozei's Espionage mode. It allows the game to communicate with other players while your DS is kept in sleep mode. You can see it as a bit of an awkward precursor to the 3DS' Street Pass feature.

With this mode, you can send your current leader off to explore an unknown dungeon. If you pass by other players, your leader will join theirs for an expedition and return various rewards!

                   

There are a handful of items you can get from this mode, some of which are actually exclusive! Useless, but exclusive! You might want them for collectors' sake. The items you can get include: Cancea Spikes; Corsola Twigs; Golden Fangs; Bananas; Curve, Patsy, Power, Racket, Stamina and Twist Bands; Def. and Warp Scarves; Heal Ribbons; Whiff Specs; Assorted Wonder Orbs; Joy and Reviver Seeds; Max Elixirs; assorted TMs; and Link Boxes

  

Cacnea Spikes, Corsola Twigs, and Golden Fagns are some of these exclusives. They're functionally identical, being incredibly weak throwing items, only slightly stronger than sticks.

Bananas are functionally identical to Apples, just a cute new sprite!

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

Interestingly, this mode is also capable of communicating with agents from Pokemon Trozei using Espionage Mode. The Trozei player can receive a message card and prize coins as if it had communicated with another copy of Trozei in Espionage Mode. I'm actually curious whether or not this was intentional or just a side-effect of using the same code. I honestly have no idea what this looks like when it happens so I can't say one way or another.

=================

  

Both Red and Blue Rescue Team can trade items. Red Rescue Team requires a Link Cable while Blue Rescue Team requires wireless communications. If you got your hands on a double of a rare item, you may want to use this to share with a friend! Unfortunately, it doesn't seem that Red and Blue Mystery Dungeon can connect directly together with this feature using Dual Slot functionality. Your best option for transferring items between these games is through Thank-You Mail.

===================

Finally, the most exciting feature to me, is the Receive Team option. This one is only available in Blue Rescue Team.

This mode will receive data from a copy of Red Rescue Team in the GBA slot and unlock an additional, very special maze in Makuhita's Dojo based on this data.

Unfortunately, my playthrough of Red Rescue Team was physical while this playthrough of Blue Rescue Team is emulated, so we won't be communicating with Aura and Kindle this time around. But I did go ahead and start up a new playthrough of Red Rescue Team on emulator just to see this through. Even though it's kind of pointless, I do think it's a really cool feature.

If we make our way to the dojo after receiving a team from Red Rescue Team: We'll find a new maze option: "Rescue Team Maze." Let's check it out!

================

Rescue Team Maze

This dungeon follows the same rules as the other Makuhita Dojo dungeons, so no recruiting pokemon here, unfortunately.

Rescue Team Maze [B1F - B2F]

    

The pokemon you can find here are PIdgey, Rattata, Voltorb, Exeggcute, and Sunkern. They're all incredibly low-level, so they're easy to pick off. Especially in the post-game. That also means this dungeon is incredibly accessible in the early game! These pokemon are about on par with those from Tiny Woods, and the length of the dungeon is just like the other Makuhita Dojo mazes: Two floors.

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

Rescue Team Maze [B3F]

On the final floor, you'll be met by the rescue team from the other save file: The main character and their partner. In this case, we have Tora the Torchic and Chance the Pikachu. These two make up Team Red!

These pokemon are identical to the ones on the other save file right down to stats, moveset, and even names! Needless to say, though, that makes these guys total pushovers... but maybe we'll be an inspiration? I think we know the direction their journies will go in time... let's inspire them to grow!

===============

And that's the end of the dungeon  and the last we'll be seeing of Red and Blue Mystery Dungeon! 

I'm gonna be honest, even though I've griped a bit about this game overstaying its welcome, a part of me is sad to see it go. We do still have more Mystery dungeon to come, but finishing this game really is a huge milestone! I hope when I get around to the sequel, I'll have an overall cleaner experience.

Ultimately, all of my opinions on this game still stand. I absolutely love the main story. It's very simple but really cool to explore the world of Pokemon from the perspective of Pokemon. It's got a lot of lovable characters and shockingly emotional moments. Recruiting new teammates is really exciting, though I do have some complaints about the way it was implemented. Due to the heavy emphasis on the protagonist and his partner, especially during the fugitive arc, they ultimately end up being your most powerful pokemon by far and you kind of have to force yourself to use other pokemon instead of them. I think the game would've been much better if it incentivised you to specialize your team for each expedition rather than just letting you power through everything with a really strong pokemon.

And then we have the postgame. I'm gonna be honest, this game really starts to fall apart, in my opinion, at the postgame. I think they try too hard to make the game challenging in order to artificially inflate gameplay time. I can understand where they're coming from with the harsh traps that can completely ruin your run, it keeps you on your toes and constantly having to adapt to unexpected events, but stepping on a trap can range from completely inconsequential to a minor annoyance such as de-linking your moves with a PP-Zero trap, to world-ending like a Sticky Trap that gums up an important item or a Pitfall Trap that skips a floor you needed to explore. It really just leaves me in a constant state of anxiety when exploring dungeons that have them and it makes the game overall far more stressful than I think it needs to be. It makes the postgame dungeons feel like a chore rather than a fun challenge like the dungeons in the main story.

And, while I appreciate the postgame's effort to continue the story beyond the main story, it's deifnitely not where the writing efforts shine. They briefly explore the lore behind certain pokemon, like Lugia being the guardian of the sea or Deoxys arriving from a meteor, but they always end anticlimactically. You go to meet the pokemon, they ask why you're there and challenge you to a fight, you defeat them, maybe recruit them, and the dungeon ends with no additional dialogue. Some story threads, like the TM Thief following the stories of Latias and Latios, or Gengar's resolve do really good jobs of continuing the story, but I wouldn't blame anyone for completely missing them because of how buried they are in the postgame content. It's really unfortunate because I would aboslutely love to sit here and gush about how much I absolutely love this game, but at the end of the day, I really think I can mostly just praise the main story and parts of the postgame.

I really wish evolution was available earlier in the game as it would alllow me to use a much wider variety of pokemon in the part of the game that I actually enjoy. By the time you reach the postgame, exploring the story dungeons is mostly pointless. Even missions from those dungeons aren't really worthwhile.

So overall, I do really enjoy this game and I'm excited looking forward to future Mystery Dungeon games, but i"m also a bit nervous about what their postgames will entail. I guess only time will tell. But for now, we'll finally be saying goodbye to Pokemon Mystery Dungeon and moving on to the final game before leaping head-first into the official beginning of Generation IV! See you then with Pokemon Ranger!

[Aura]

Pokemon Ranger

Released on March 23, 2006 in Japan, this game captures the world of Pokemon in yet another unique way. Where the main series focuses on how Pokemon aid in the lives of humans, and Mystery Dungeon focuses on the lives of Pokemon without trainers, Pokemon Ranger focuses on how humans can benefit pokemon and work together to take care of the environment and its many ecosystems! The game intorduces the concept of a Pokemon Ranger, not to be confused with the Pokemon Ranger trainer class. Pokemon Rangers parallel Pokemon Trainers, but instead of capturing pokemon with pokeballs with the purpose of training them up, Rangers temporarily catch pokemon with the use of a Capture Styler to aid in their missions.

I'll be playing this game on the Wii U virtual console mainly because I'd still really like to steer away from relying on RetroArc on my phone. It worked for Pokemon Dash but it was very tiring very quickly and not a very fun experience overall. I also want to stick to official sources as much as possible. That unfortunately means I won't be able to take my own screenshots of my gameplay, but hopefully I won't need to? The gameplay seems pretty simple overall. The biggest thing I'm worried about is missing story details.

This is a spinoff that I didn't actually have as a kid, so it'll be a completely new experience for me. I recall playing a demo kiosk back in Wal-mart when this game was new, but I didn't have a DS of my own at the time so playing it myself was a bit of a pipe dream. Since I never got into the first game, I never bothered trying to get into any of its sequels so this is another spinoff that'll turn out to be entirely new for me! Here's hoping I enjoy it!

===============

The game opens up with a reading of a letter about someone requesting to meet us. Apparently we've been really excited about the idea of being a Pokemon Ranger and have sent many letters to the leader of the rangers who has developed an interest in our resolve. He decides he wants to meet us and invites us to a place called Fall City.

 

[I'm going to be using an apparent workaround for Bulbapedia's images at the moment for now. Here's hoping it works! But the above images might be broken]

We get our choice between a boy or a girl. I generally prefer to go with female characters, and I do like the design of the girl here more, so I'll have to go with that option, I think. The boy's name is Lunick and the girl's is Solana, but you'll get to name them whatever you want.

After choosing your gender, you arrive in Fall City by boat. You don't get to explore much of the city at all, just the harbor area, but you do get to wander around and speak with the locals to find that this game certainly has its own brand of meta humor which I can only hop eremainhs consistent because it's pretty funny exploring this side of things.

   

As you explore around this small contained area, you can find some pokemon: Wingull and Krabby. We can't interact with these guys much, but we can tap on them with the stylus to view limited information on them. Instead, we'll need to turn our attention toward a crate in the back that seems to be shaking.

If we tap on the crate, we'll find a Plusle jump out from behind it!

If I understand correctly, this will actually be a Minun if you're playing as a boy.

The Plusle will run off and the person who invited us will soon arrive: Spenser! Spenser is the leader of the Ringtown Ranger Base and he's the one who sent our letter and the Ranger Uniform he used to identify us. Shortly after meeting with Spenser, we hear a commotion from the direction Plusle ran off in!

We find that Plusle seems to have run into trouble with a Houndoom! Spenser suggests it probably tried a harmless prank that didn't go over well, so we decide it's necessary to step in and stop the commotion before somebody gets hurt! To do this, he entrusts us with our own Capture Styler! This is only temporarily lent to us for this emergency situation. Normally, you have to receive a certification before you can use a Capture Styler. Regardless, he shows us how it's done by capturing the Houndoom.

Capturing a pokemon with a Capture Styler is fairly straightforward and easy to understand, but I wouldn't call it very easy. You continuously draw a bunch of circles around the pokemon until the blue number above its head disappears and then release. The big catch is that you have to draw several circles around the pokemon in a single stroke, and they like to move around a lot. If the pokemon crosses over your line, you'll be forced to lift the stylus and start over. More dangerously, if the pokemon attacks the line you've drawn, it will cause damage to your styler! So you'll definitely need to be wary there!

After watching Spenser capture Houndoom, he asks for you to capture Plusle and this is where you start to get a feel for what capturing with a styler is like and I can personally attest to the fact that... it really is not as easy as it looked! You actually have to draw pretty tight circles around the pokemon or the beginning of your line will disappear. But you'll also need to make sure the circle is large enough to accomodate for the pokemon's movement. Naturally, the faster you move, the more awkward your circles will be as well. While this Plusle is mostly pretty well-behaved, I can definitely see this becoming incredibly difficult in later stages of the game.

Anyway, shortly after successfully capturing the two pokemon, the two pokemon settle down and we release them both. Spenser explains that Rangers have to release their pokemon after capture because they're not allowed to take them out of the ecosystems they came from. The fact that this ecological concern is even present in the world of Pokemon kind of raises some ethical concerns about the main series, but I suppose Pokemon has always kind of looked the other way on that detail. Anyway, Spenser praises us on our ability to handle the matchup well and allows us to keep our styler and even decides to provide a certification. All we have to do is sign the ranger's pledge! This is where the game prompts you to enter your name for the first time. After we sign, he decides it's time to take us to the Ringtown Ranger Base for our official training!

He calls his partner Fearow and together we fly off!

But just as we begin to leave, Plusle will leap onto us as well and be hoisted into the sky!

===============

We soon arrive in a place called Ringtown. Plusle runs off as soon as we land, startled by the new environment. Spenser suggests we don't worry too much. We can bring it back where it came from soon. He brings us into the Ranger Base where we meet a few other trainers: Namely Lunick (or Solana if you're playing as a boy I assume), and Murph. It isn't long before a man named Larry arrives on the scene asking for help getting his pokemon that ran away. Spenser gets the idea to use this situation as an excellent first mission for the new Rookie, so he sends us off to look for Larry's missing pokemon in Lyra Forest!

Before we jump into the mission, however, we can talk around to get a feel for what the general atmosphere is like. We can get some advice on capturing by speaking to other Rangers, some talk about what it's like being a ranger, and others offer tutorials such as healing at the counter, saving the game, or navigating the menu. If we speak with the townsfolk, we'll get some insight into what life is like in the Fiore region. People hold Pokemon Rangers here in high regard and the region doesn't have any pokemon trainers.

Once we're ready, we can head out north into Lyra Forest to see what's up.

Once again, we're restricted to a small area of the map. Larry and the other rangers are here, but Larry isn't too much of a help in figuring out which pokemon was his, leaving us to bring whatever pokemon we find to him. Everybody else warns us not to put too much stock in his descriptions of the pokemon which tells me he's known for being quite misleading or even completely off the mark.

 

As we explore the area, we'll find Chikorita and Zigzagoon wandering around the open field. We'll need to run into them to capture them with the styler! Chikorita was pretty easy, but Zigzagoon likes to run around a lot so he's a bit of a hassle to capture.

Once we've gathered a handful of pokemon, we can return to Larry to find out none of the pokemon we've found are his!

Eventually, we'll find a Taillow that turns out to be the correct pokemon! Taillow is fairly tough to capture, though, so you'll have to be really quick about drawing those circles!

Shortly after returning Taillow to Larry, Lunick will tell us his first mission was to find Larry's pokemon, too. Spenser also reveals that he knew exactly which pokemon was Larry's the whole time, but wanted to see how we would handle the task with minimal information and he was quite pleased with the results!

Soon, somebody calls for help because of a fire spreading across the trees! Spenser immediately springs to action and we follow suit!

He runs off to capture a Mudkip to put the fire out with a Field Skill and asks us to do the same. By capturing a Pokemon and then tapping on them and dragging the stylus to an object in the environment, they can use their field skill! Mudkip has a water icon, so he can put out the fire!

After snuffing out the forest fire, a nearby kid confesses that he's the reason the fire started because he was pretending to be a Pokemon Ranger and accidentally startled a pokemon, causing it to breathe fire. He promises to be more considerate of Pokemon's feelings going forward, but it seems that thanks to our presence, no serious damage was caused! So Spenser acknowledges the child's bravery in confessing and tells him to remember his words before we all make our way back to the base.

=================

So, that's the end of our first chapter. I'm not really sure what to think of this game yet. I definitely think it's going to have a bit of a learning curve for me because I don't think I quite have the hang of this capture mechanic yet. Maybe it'll become easier for me over time or maybe this game will simply be a lot more challenging than I expected. Either way, I intend to explore it to the best of my abilities. Next time, we'll see what other challenges await us in our journey as a Pokemon Ranger!

[Aura]

Ring Town

After reuniting Larry with his Taillow, we return to the Ranger Base in search of our next mission. Since there's nothing else to do at the moment, Spenser sends us off on a patrol around Ringtown with Lunick. We explore the area and speak with the locals and, soon, we hear another commotion!

 

It seems that Plusle is at it again! He's caused some problems with Taillow, so Lunick and Solana work together to capture the pokemon and get them to calm down again. Afterwards, Lunick suggests that this Plusle seems to be causing commotion because it's lonely, but it seems to have taken a liking to us after saving it twice. He suggests that we allow it to be our partner pokemon, similar to Lunick and his Minun, or Spenser and his Fearow. Doing so, Plusle will be able to help us with our ranger work! And so, we make Plusle our official partner pokemon!

Lunick takes the opportunity to show you how Plusle can help out. By using Plusle's Discharge Poke Assist, Plusle jumps into the capture screen and unleashes a pulse of electricity that paralyzes Taillow in its place, allowing us to capture it much more easily than before. Of course, we can't just do this willy-nilly. We'll have to build up an Assist Gauge by capturing pokemon without Plusle's help. So we'll want to make sure to only use this on especially tough captures.

When we return to Spenser to report the results of our patrol, he can already tell by the look in our eyes what had happened and congratulates us on having our new pokemon! He then sends Lunick out to patrol Lyra Forest. Soon, a man named Mr. Hastings enters and begins to speak with Spenser about an "idea" that he seems to want to keep between the two of them for now. Spenser asks us to go check on his Fearow, clearly just trying to get us out of the room. We'll respect his privacy and go check on Fearow!

Spenser's Fearow on the second floor is looking a little tired after having carried us both, but the other rangers assure us that it'll be fine and that nothing will stop this Fearow from helping however it can. Seeing as there's nothing to worry about with Fearow, we return downstairs. Prof. Hastings needs to get back to Fall City, but since Fearow's still tired, he'll need to be escorted on foot! Fall City isn't too terribly far from Ringtown, and with our Capture Styler, we should be able to make our way through with the help of the local fauna! This is a task entrusted to us.

================

Lyra Forest

Mission 1: Escort the Professor

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

This first mission is more or less an extended tutorial going in more depth about the various ways we can make capturing pokemon easier! That's actually really appreciated right now.

Our first tutorial pops up when we find a Bellsprout! We can use Plusle's Discharge to capture the Bellsprout or capture it by normal means.

Prof. Hastings takes this opportunity to teach us about how other pokemon we capture can assist us with PokeAssist. Different pokemon will assist us in different ways, mostly depending on type. Bellsprout here, for example, can offer a "grass" assist which upgrades our Capture Line causing tall grass to sprout underneath it. This grass will slow down any pokemon trying to break out of the line.

After using a Poke Assist with any pokemon besides Plusle, that pokemon will be released immediately after. So you'll need to be sure to keep your best assists for when you really need them if they're not easily accessible!

   

The Pokemon we could find before are all here still! Zigzagoon seems strangely useless right now. Maybe we'll find a purpose for him later, but at the moment, it doesn't have a Field Skill or a Poke Assist. Chikorita's assist is predictably the same as Bellsprout's, and Mudkip has a generic Water Poke Assist that allows you to create bubbles with your Styler that can trap pokemon and make them easier to capture. The longer you hold the stylus on the screen, the larger the bubble will grow. But while the bubble is growing, it will pop if it touches a Pokemon. Once you're ready to trap a pokemon in it, you'll need to lift the stylus. You can even flick the Stylus in any direction in order to send that bubble flying directly toward the pokemon you're after.

As you catch these guys, you'll gain Exp which will eventually add up to a level-up! As you level up, your Styler will get more HP and your Capture Line will get longer allowing you to draw circles more easily.

A little bit deeper into the forest, we'll find a Torchic whose Poke Assist allows our Capture Line to leave a trail of flames that the pokemon can't cross, restricting their mobility as we capture them. Torchic here are also incredibly important because we'll need its help to burn down some hay bales that are blocking our way with its field skill!

We soon find a Pichu who we'll quickly find to be incredibly useful pokemon to befriend! Its Electric-type Field Skill allows it to recharge our Styler, recovering any damage it's sustained from Pokemon attacks.

Throughout these parts of the forest, we'll find a lot of bushes that can be cut, but we don't have any pokemon with such a field skill so we'll have to leave them behind for now.

As we continue down the path, we'll eventually find a fallen log blocking our way that's too large for even Torchic to burn down!

After retracing our steps, we'll find a Combusken with two Fire icons instead of one! Its stronger Blaze Kicks will make quick work of that log! With the log out of the way, we're one step closer to Fall City!

==================

Krokka Tunnel

Continuing further down the path, we'll soon find ourselves inside a place called Krokka Tunnel. We'll need to pass through here in order to reach Fall City, but we're getting close!

There isn't anything too special we'll find in here so far, but if we push a little deeper...

A Dugtrio will appear! Prof. Hastings notes this to be an incredibly rare sight, but as soon as it appears, it disappears and the cave begins to rumble! Giant rocks fall from the ceiling separating us from Prof. Hastings. None of our pokemon are capable of smashing these boulders, so we'll have to keep looking around. The easier way forward seems to be a gate, but we'll need a pokemon capable of Cutting to break our way through there!

Thankfully, we just watched a Paras fall from the ceiling with those boulders! Paras can use the Grass-type assist, but more importantly, its Field Skill is Cut! With this, we can cut down that gate and see if we can find another way around to reunite with Prof. Hastings. I'd like to go back and cut those bushes from Lyra Forest, but if we try to, we'll find that the entrance to the cave is blocked off by a fallen boulder as well. It looks like we'll need to find a way to clear these boulders out before we can go back to Ringtown.

On the other side of the gate, we can find Magnemite! Just like Pichu, Magnemite can be used to charge our Styler.

A little further in and we'll find a small underground lake with Poliwag! These guys are just like Mudkip with their bubble assists which, so far, I've definitely found to be the most useful kind of Poke Assist.

This path will soon loop back around to the other side of the fallen boulders where we can reunite with Prof. Hastings! As we arrive on this side, two strange guys walk by and begin to harass Prof. Hastings, introducing themselves as the Go-Rock Squad who love to, for one reason or another, like to interfere with Pokemon Rangers' duties.

The Go-Rock Squad steals the package Prof. Hastings was off to deliver: A "Super-Styler." They try to make their getaway. Prof. Hastings explains that we have to get that Super-Styler back because it's his life's work! So, we give chase the direction they ran off and find them... standing around a few feet away.

They stop to taunt us, calling us... "gullible ninnies" (not a very intimidating insult, laughably so!) for believing the rock fall from before was natural. They pull out a remote and mock us as they prepare to trap us in the cave by pressing a button to release boulders blocking our way! The boulders end up dropping... behind us. The two goons immediately notice their blunder and start bickering with each other before fleeing. We'll need to continue giving chase!

We soon make our way out of the cave and back into the sunlight where we see more boulders and...

Rhydon! This Rhydon doesn't seem too happy, though. He's on a rampage smashing boulders. While that skill could be useful, it can't be safe letting him dash around like this. We'll need to capture it with our Styler to calm it down!

Rhydon is actually pretty scary. His attacks can do a lot of damage. Remember that Magnemite and Pichu can heal you during a capture as well! It might save your life! Plusle's Discharge didn't seem to affect him. Maybe because he's a Ground-type? I ultimately had to resort to Poliwag's bubble assist in order to trap him in place long enough to capture him.

Rhydon does come with three Rock Smash icons, but... he has to be released as soon as he's captured for some odd reason. I really wanted to go back and break some boulders from the cave, but I suppose that's just not in the cards for now. I guess we have no choice but to continue onward! Fall City is just around the corner, and so is a Save Point which is where we'll cut this story for now. I'm not sure if there might be a cleaner stopping point, but this is a new series I've never played before so it's gonna take a bit for me to get my barrings as to what a good way to divide these sessions. I don't want to set any precedent like "Complete a chapter per post" in case the chapters are longer than I give them credit for.

Next time, we'll explore Fall City and see if we can do anything about that miscreant Go-Rock Squad!

[Aura]

Fall City

Now that we've arrived in Fall City, finishing our first chapter is as simple as walking into Fall City's Ranger Base. Even though Prof. Hastings was mugged and his Super Styler has been stolen, he assures us that it wasn't our fault and calls to attention that our mission was just to escort him safely to Fall City, which we've done! So, it's a bit bittersweet, but that's the conclusion of the first mission!

When we arrive at the base, we're met by the leader of the rangers in this city, Joel, who rides in on the back of a Dodrio! Apparently, Joel was a fierce rival of Spenser's, but now the two are famous allies, their Fearow and Dodrio being revered among Rangers.

As we enter the base, Joel commends us for our abilities and officially promotes us to Ranger Rank 2 which grants us the ability to use Fighting-type Poke Assists! We'll see what that means soon enough. After Prof. Hastings tells Joel about the Super Styler, he immediately calls all of his rangers to place them on high alert, announcing that the recovery of the Super Styler is the top priority mission. The last thing they want is for the Go-Rock Squad to use the styler for evil.

Among the rangers here, we're met by a rather snooty ranger by the name of Aria. She's certainly a piece of work.

With that, all of the Fall City rangers are sent out on a mission to investigate the stolen styler. Since we're still a rookie, this job isn't entrusted to us and, instead, we're tasked with patrolling Fall City in the absence of its own rangers.

================

Mission 2: Fall City Case Log

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

      

As we explore Fall City, we'll find a variety of pokemon wandering around. These include Snubbull, Makuhita, Pichu, Meowth, Ludicolo, Krabby, and Wingull.

Snubbull has a single Tackle icon, allowing it to knock into small objects, such as trash cans, to knock things out of them. Makuhita has two Tackle icons allowing it to move heavier objects. Meowth has a cut icon, allowing it to break down gates, Ludicolo is actually really tough to capture because of its constant singing that can damage your styler. It doesn't seem all that worthwhile outside of experience, though, as it only offers a standard water assist. Wingull is very similar in that it loves to fly around a lot making it difficult to capture and, again, isn't really worth it since it just offers a water assist. Krabby, on the other hand, offers both a single Water Field icon and a Water Assist to help capture pokemon. It's also a lot easier to catch itself!

Of course, the elephant in the room here is Makuhita who brings with it a new type of poke-assist! The Fighting Assist powers up your Capture Line causing it to capture pokemon twice as fast as a regular line! But it otherwise doesn't help restrict the movement of the target pokemon, so it's good for use in conjunction with Plusle's Discharge!

I also came to find out while exploring the city that you do need to be careful about how you approach pokemon. I actually wound up breaking my Styler at one point because I came face-to-face with two Ludicolo as my first experience with them! While advice was given to run from an encounter if my styler is weak, for some reason, you can't actually flee an encounter until you've started to circle them. It's honestly a little tricky and I usually find myself just wanting to try and capture them at that point... Maybe running when the time is right is a skill I need to practice? 

On that note, I've found capturing pokemon to be getting exceedingly frustrating. It's not uncommon for me to break my capture line by accidentally drawing a circle too tight around the pokemon. It's not frustrating to the point of hindering my enjoyment of the game too much, but it is a little obnoxious when I'm trying to take advantage of my poke-Assist and the pokemon does that weird glow and hops in place, wasting a few seconds while I can't seem to do anything. I'm also really not sure what the appropriate way is that you're supposed to capture  a pokemon that requires a lot of loops and still attacks frequently. Remember, you have to loop them enough in one continuous stroke. If you lift your stylus you have to start over and it can cause an entire Poke Assist to be wasted. I have come to realize, however, that type matchups do indeed seem to have an effect on the effectiveness of a PokeAssist. For example, the Water Assist doesn't work very well on Water-types like Ludicolo, but Plusle's Discharge works great!

Anyway, with all that out of the way, we can finally explore the rest of Fall City. It's actually a really large area split into several sections. There's a factory to the East, a Clocktower to the north, and of course the harbor from the beginning of the game to the south. There's a variety of pokemon all over the place and most of them actually are pretty challenging to capture. I'm definitely gonna have to get better at doing this stuff...

As for our actual mission, as we cross into the central square of Fall City, we'll be met by a girl who's having trouble with her apartment. We follow her there and find that there's a heavy crate in front of her door!

With the help of a Makuhita, we can easy push the crate to the side granting her access to her apartment.

Inside the apartment is an uninvited Venonat! The girl seems to be scared by the Venonat and asks us to get it out. Looks like the work of a capture styler! Venonat is actually a bit obnoxious to capture. It floods the screen with a poisonous mist that seems to make the capture line impossible to draw. I can't seem to find any solution to this besides just waiting until the mist clears before you can draw your circles. It's a good time to use a Water assist or Discharge, I suppose! Make sure you don't miss this opportunity!

After releasing the Venonat, the girl is thankful to finally be able to start her new life in Fall City!

Returning back to the central square, our help is enlisted again by a woman named Teresa who's seeking out her missing Skitty!

As she's speaking to you, one of her Skitty runs up to her, but she reveals that there are five more that must be somewhere around the city, so it's time for us to get looking! Of course, when you find them, you'll need to capture them, but they're pretty easy captures relative to the other local pokemon so you should be able to get them no problem. Just remember to save frequently! You never know when a pokemon will be surprisingly tough!

One of these Skitty are immediately south, next to the nearby fountain.

Another Skitty is on top of the roof of the Apartment Building where we helped the first girl.

 

Another is inside a garbage can, which we'll need to enlist the help of a Snubbull or Makuhita to get to. 

You'll find another hidden among a little girl's Poke Dolls inside one of the homes.

 

And the last one you'll find behind a gate you'll need to use Cut to break down, so go enlist the help of a Meowth! When you break the gate down, it'll actually scare the Skitty away, so you'll need to give chase a bit.

As you chase the Skitty, you'll find it in the corner of the next area where you'll find a shady guy ridiculing his Machoke. If you try to call him out on it, he'll tell you to mind your own business. Not exactly a pleasant one, huh? I'm sure this won't have any repercussions.

Anyway, we'll run in and grab our Skitty.

    

With each Skitty you collect, you'll want to bring them back to Teresa to drop them off. You don't need a bunch of useless Skitty clogging up your team when you could be using Poke Assists or Field Skills!

Of course, Teresa will be overjoyed to be reunited with her "Skitty-witties," so that's another job done! But, our mission still isn't over. Next, a researcher from Prof. Haskin's lab approaches us and requests our help at the lab. She unlocks the door to his lab and tells us she needs to find something in the basement, but it's pitch-dark inside so she can't see... I guess they don't have a light switch? Anyway, she mentions a pokemon in the basement of the lightouse on the harbor that could be of assistance, so we make our way to the harbor!

As we return, we'll find that the Snorlax that was sleeping on the harbor before has now moved, revealing a ladder where he was sleeping that allows us to climb down into the sewer.

From here, we aren't too far away from a particularly aggressive Staryu. You might want to use an Assist to paralyze this Staryu. Since it's a Water-type, it'll be especially vulnerable. After that, feel free to loop around it as much as you can. If you continue to loop beyond the last one, you'll actually rack up extra exp as well, so maybe you can try to push your luck for some faster levels?

Staryu brings with it a Water Poke Assist, but more importantly, it has the Field Skill Flash that will illuminate dark areas! So, we bring Staryu to the basement of Prof. Hasting's lab and have it use its skill to light up the room and help the researcher search her files!

As you leave the lab, Aria will show up and tell you there's a commotion going on to the north.

As we follow her up north, we'll find that Machoke from before going ballistic on the city's clocktower for some reason! The game urges yout o try and capture this thing right away but, honestly, I think you're going to want to step back and go save first. This thing is actually really menacing and difficult to capture. I broke my Styler twice! However, I think this was an important difficulty to experience because I think I finally have a better understanding of how to deal with these guys. I need to be a bit more careful with drawing my circles and leave plenty of room. It doesn't matter how long it takes me to draw the circle, all that matters is that it closes. If Machoke is about to attack in a particular direction, I can wait a bit for it to attack. Alternatively, if it's about to hit my line, I can either release the line and start again, or I can try to complete the loop real quick to make that part of the line disappear. Obersavtion seems to be key here. It's just unfortunate that I have the reaction speed of a dead squirrel.

Regardless, I've also come to understand that failing to complete a capture in a single attempt isn't a waste of time. It will refill your assist gauge allowing you to use multiple Discharge assists in a single capture attempt! I think this will be critical for pokemon like Machoke here as he won't stay paralyzed for long.

After capturing Machoke, he'll chill out a bit and we can release him back to the wild! Aria seems to acknowledge our skill in being able to capture the Machoke but brushes it off in the typical tsundere way before you both walk off.

The shady guy from before makes another appearance and remarks about how you were the same person who was "snooping around" before... I definitely get the feeling that this might be related to those Go-Rock guys from before...

Anyway, the game offers a save checkpoint here, and this seems to be a consistent thing. So, unless it becomes problematic at any point, I think I am just going to be playing through a chapter per post.

[Aura]

Fall City

Upon returning to the ranger base after stopping the rampaging Machoke, we're rewarded with another promotion to Ranger Rank 3! With this promotion, we now have a few additonal authorizations. First, we now have access to Poison- and Psychic-type Poke-Assists. Secondly, Joel reveals that our Styler actually has the capability of utilizing up to 5 Partner Gauges at once. However, we're only authorized to use one from the start in order to keep our partner from getting overwhelmed too quickly. With this rank up, we've reached a new milestone that grants us access to a second Partner gauge, meaning we can now use Plusle's Discharge a lot more frequently!

A worker soon arrives at the base to alert the rangers of a problem in the city's water supply: Grimer are overrunning the waterways and putting the water at severe risk of contamination! Their stench is also incredibly overwhelming. With how many Grimer are down there, only a Pokemon Ranger can get them out. Of course, we're quickly faced with the grim reality that only we can be faced with this task since all the other rangers are on the mission to investigate the Go-Rock Squad.

So, we head outside and follow the worker to a ladder that was previously blocked off.

===============

Mission 3: Grimer Outbreak!

Underground Waterways

As soon as we arrive underground, we're given another briefing of what we can expect going forward and our next mission officially begins! We'll need to explore the underground waterways of Fall City and clear out all the Grimer that are putting the water supply at risk by capturing them! To aid us in this task, another Pokemon Ranger has been assigned to come and collect any Grimer we capture so that we don't have to lug them around anywhere ourselves. Unfortunately, this ally can't seem to stand the stench of the Grimer so he has to hold his breath down here and won't be able to help us capture them.

The first pokemon we'll run into is Totodile who provides a basic Water assist and a Water field skill. These guys are mostly going to be useful for their Poke-Assists, but down here, you'll likely find a certain other Poke-Assist a lot more useful. So ultimately, the Water-types are just going to be filling in some space.

You're not gonna get very far in before you find a pile of gross green sludge on the ground. And as you walk through it...

A Grimer will fall from the ceiling! You'll need to capture it with your Styler! It's not too bad to capture on its own, but it does like to move around a bit and the trail of sludge it leaves behind can damage your styler, so try to draw large loops around it! It helps a lot to use Poke-Assists like Totodile's or Plusle's to keep them from getting too messy. Once you capture it, your partner on this mission will come to collect the grimer, all while complaining about the stench, of course.

A bit further ahead and you'll be able to find Corphish! These are another new pokemon. In terms of assistance, they're functionally identical to Totodile, but in terms of capture, they're far more aggressive! They'll shoot bubbles periodically, so be sure to know when to slow down and when to lift your stylus! They're vulnerable to Discharge, so you may want to utilize that in order to avoid damage.

A little bit of exploration of this area will bring you to a metal fence which requires Cut to break through. We don't have any pokemon that can Cut down here, so we'll have to put that off for now. I think you might be able to bring a Meowth from outside? Don't quote me on that, though. You can't go back outside once you come down here and start the mission.

Any damage you sustain can be healed off by Magnemite, which you're not too far away from.

 

A little further ahead, you'll find another pile of sludge. Crossing that will put you in an ambush with two Grimer at once! You've probably been in this type of scenario before, but this is the first time you're actually required to deal with it. You might find that you also can't run from these Grimer encounters. While it's possible to capture both Grimer at once, especially with the help of Plusle, you'll probably find it easier to capture one at a time. Though capturing both at the same time seems to grant you a bonus in Exp yield if you're interested in pushing yourself! Be wary that both Pokemon are capable of breaking your line, so try to capture them while they're apart from each other if you're not trying to capture them both at the same time.

Soon after this encounter, you'll stumble across a Drowzee! This is our first Psychic-type and he's not too difficult to capture, either. Just watch for its periodic psychic attacks. If you recall, Psyhcic was one of the new Poke-Assists we've gained access to! With the Psychic poke-assist, all pokemon will be levitated off the ground. It's functionally similar to Plusle's discharge, but being a psychic-type assist means it works on different pokemon! Down here, it's especially useful since it's more effective on Poison-types like Grimer!

A nearby enginner will call your attention to a Raticate across the water. He complains about their tendency to gnaw on the metal fences. Unfortunately for this guy, that sounds like it's our next goal! We'll need to find a way to that Raticate so we can get past those metal fences from before. We can't get there from here, so we'll just have to move onward!

The next room is filled with slippery sludge and Koffing! As you walk on the sludge, you'll slip around so you'll have to be careful while navigating this room. The Koffing themselves can be a bit difficult to capture. Every time you draw a loop around them, they'll grow larger making them harder to draw loops around. Even though this isn't the first Poison-type pokemon we've captured since gaining access to the Poison-type Poke-Assists, this is the first time we've been able to actually keep one in order to try out this new effect. The Poison-type assist upgrades your Styler to release poisonous gas that repulses pokemon and prevents them from crossing your capture line, similar to the Fire-type assist. Again, it may be a similar effect, but it's effective against different types; Namely Water and Fire-types!

In this first Koffing room, if you move around too carelessly, you might slip into one of the pits. This will drop you into a small pit filled with Koffing and nothing else. You can climb out of it from a nearby ladder which will return you to the room you fell from. From here, you'll need to carefully cross the sludge to a ladder on the other side of the room. This will take you back up to the side of the water with that Raticate we saw from earlier!

Raticate is a little challenging to capture since it likes to move around and bite at your line. Its attacks are pretty heavily telegraphed though, so with a bit of patience, you can capture it no problem. It has two Cut icons which makes it perfect for cutting through those metal fences from before! So, we'll make our way back there next.

After using Raticate's fangs to gnaw through the fence, we can pass through to the other side.

Soon, a Croconaw will surprise you by jumping out of the water! It's a lot more aggressive than Totodile, capable of creating puddles on the ground that will damage your styler, and isn't really much more helpful. But hey, it's more Exp and it's pretty easy to capture with Plusle's help! If you take any damage trying to capture this thing, you can heal off with the nearby Magnemite.

 

We aren't too far away from another pile of sludge with yet two more Grimer! That Drowzee we captured earlier will come in great use here! At this point, our partner is starting to question how we can handle the stench and is even wondering if we can somehow... enjoy it? Kind of a gross assertion there...

Further along, you'll find two pipelines pouring water. These pipelines can be entered, but the water flowing through them will push you, making you walk slower when walking against the current and faster while walking with it.

Taking the one that's further away leads you to a small isolated platform with a Drowzee to replenish the one I used on the two Grimer.

When you enter the one that's closer, you'll find Aria inside! She, of course, makes fun of us for having to work on a mission like this one. But she's not in much of a better situation. Somehow, her investigation into the Go-Rock Squad must have led her down here to the waterworks as well! She goes on ahead, leaving us to our... literal dirty work.

A little further ahead, after crossing another Koffing pit, we'll find a strange pole on the other side of a pit of water. We can't quite interact with this just yet, but we'll soon find out what the deal is with them!

  

Soon after that, we'll find a pile of sludge with three Grimer! A third one doesn't change things too much, just try to pick them off wherever you can. It will be harder to capture them individually, though. Again, Drowzee is really good for this! Just don't try to get cocky. It can be really difficult to draw loops around all three at a time and the last thing you want to do is waste an assist on them. But, if you need more than Drowzee, the water assists and Discharge are also available to you!

Soon again, we'll find a cracked wall that requires another Field Skill to break through. Looks like another area we'll need to return to later.

Moving onward, we'll once again find Aria. This time on the other side of a waterway next to one of those poles from before. She gives you some hints as to how we can get across the waterways by calling our attention to the pole on her side as well as a pokemon called Tangela on our side. I don't know if this level of hand-holding is totally necessary, but alright.

It doesn't take too long to find the aforementioned Tangela. Tangela can be captured pretty easily, though its vine whips can be a little obnoxious. Make sure it doesn't break your line! Tangela can offer a grass assist. But, of course, its main use is its Vine Whip field skill which lets you grapple to those poles! With this, we can cross over to where Aria was standing.

Up the stairs north of here, we'll find a Meditite which is somewhat aggressive but not too tough to capture. It comes with a Rock Smash field skill as well as a Fighting-type assist--both of which will prove useful for us soon enough. If we drop down the nearby ledge, we can return to the other side where we can use Meditite's field skill to break through that cracked wall.

 

Behind that wall is a secret underground garden with some grass! Inside, we can find an Oddish and, more importantly, a Magneton. Magneton will shoot some obnoxious ThunderBolts across the screen, and it also likes to move around a lot, so it's pretty challenging to capture compared to Magnemite. Not only that, but Oddish here will be throwing Razor Leaf at you from across the screen as well. I recommend trying to capture Oddish first to make Magneton easier to capture.

Oddish provides a Cut field skill and a Grass-type assist while Magneton offers a more powerful charging skill that becomes much more important for our styler's higher durability. Magnemite's charge isn't as close to a full heal anymore. Magneton can help out a lot in a pinch.

...Unfortunately, during my session this time I never actually went back to that pole I mentioned before, so I'll need to make it a point to come back at some point during my next session and see what's over there.

We'll need to capture another Tangela to proceed forward again. Continuing forward this time, we'll find another pipeline that takes us to a new room with another metal fence. We need two Cut icons to break the fence, so unfortunately Oddish won't cut it with just one icon. Instead, you'll need to take the nearby pipeline and head straight south to find an isolated platform with a Raticate. Just a heads up, you'll want to be prepared for what's to come if you go back to break through the fence. I recommend going a bit further ahead to find a save point you can rest up at.

If we go back to use Raticate to break through that Metal Fence, we'll be met by a terrifying force to be reckoned with: Crawdaunt! Crawdaunt is highly aggressive and takes a ton of loops to capture. It deals a ton of damage to your Styler, too, so you'll probably want Magneton to heal off any damage. It's not too threatening for its movement, so I don't think Oddish will help much with its Grass support. I strongly recommend pairing Plusle's Discharge to paralyze it with Meditite's Fighting-type assist. This pair of assists will keep Crawdaunt from attacking and allow you to loop him enough times for capture before the paralysis runs out.

Your reward? Well, mostly just Exp. Crawdaunt himself just offers you the same standard Water assist and a Cut field skill with three icons. It really doesn't seem all that worthwhile since you'll only get one use out of him and nothing down here seems to require more than two icons. So far, this is seeming to be a fairly consistent complaint I have about this game: A lot of these pokemon are really tough to capture and offer little reward besides a large boost of Exp. The Exp boost is nice, but you could theoretically match it just by capturing a bunch of much easier pokemon, too. I really wish tougher pokemon like these would stick around for longer, but they usually just end up taking up party space because I only want to use this thing on an obstacle that requires three Cut icons. But if I can't find any, he's just gonna be deadweight. Since I have no way of knowing what's ahead, I certainly don't want to just waste this guy on a Metal Fence I can break with any ol' Raticate. It seems like even more of a waste just to use this thing as a standard Water assist as well. Maybe stronger pokemon have stronger varients of Poke-Assists? I'm really not sure. I suppose the real reward here is just to have this thing registered in my Ranger Browser.

  

Anyway, secret miniboss aside, we can return to the main path to find yet more sludge masking three more grimer! Once we capture these and make our way forward, we'll hear someone cry out in distress at the presence of a Muk! The engineer who came to ask for the Ranger's help tells us there was a Muk as well as the Grimer. And as we approach, we'll get a message from Joel amending our mission to include the capture of Muk. Even though it isn't rampaging, its presence is endangers the water supply. This is looking like our next boss!

  

This Muk you'll capture alongside two other Grimer, and this capture can be incredibly annoying. I recommend bringing a Drowzee to at least help with capturing the Grimer. The Muk itself is incredibly dangerous and it has a tendency to follow your styler around, making it difficult to draw loops around the Grimer. This is on top of the same trail of sludge and its ability to throw piles of sludge around as well as its sheer size. Muk takes up a lot of real-estate on its own. Poke Assists are a must. Worst case scenario, you can try to build up some energy on your Plusle to use Discharge in order to capture them one at a time.

After capturing Muk, our mission is complete! Aria rejoins with us and advises that we return to the base to report the mission status. As we leave, the camera once again pans to a Go-Rock Squad member scoffing at us from afar...

[Aura]

Fall City

After completing the Grimer Outbreak mission, you return to the Fall City ranger base where Joel will of complain about the horrific stench you carry with you, but shortly after thank you for your hard work! We're then promoted to Ranger Rank 4! Of course, a new rank brings new permissions! We can now use Bug- and Ground-type Poke Assists. We'll get to those in due time. More importantly, another limitation on our Styler is lightened: A fifth slot for our party! Similarly to extra Partner gauges, Capture Stylers are capable of handling up to seven pokemon at once in addition to a partner pokemon, but since Rangers aren't capable of controlling that many early on, rookies begin with only four slots available. That fifth slot means a bit less picking and choosing and more flexibility with our use of more generic assists!

In addition to our promotion, we receive a message from Spenser on our Styler informing us that apparently there's news of the Go-Rock Squad stirring up trouble in a place called Summerland. We're gonna need to go check it out. Unfortunately, Joel tells us we aren't high enough rank to use the Dragonite Bus just yet and the ferry to Summerland hasn't been operable recently. He suggests we try and speak to a man with a Lapras at the harbor. We saw him in the beginning of the game and maybe even while hunting down those Skitty earlier as well. If we can get him to lend us his Lapras, we'll be able to make it to Summerland!

Underground Waterway

Before we get too carried away with progress, though, I wanted to revisit the Underground Walkway. As mentioned last time, there was an area we could reach now.

Upon revisiting this area, you might find that the pokemon are rearranged a bit! Pokemon like Meditite are now more prominent. Maybe they're able to come out more since it doesn't stink to high heaven?

A new face will begin to appear as well: Rattata! Rattata is an easy capture that just offers a Tackle field skill and nothing else. But, that's another entry for our Ranger Browser!

We can still find Tangela in the same spot as before, and we can make our way back to vine whip ourselves over to the other side where we'll find a path of grating over the water. There actually doesn't seem to be much over here. At least, not yet. We can find a pile of Scrap Metal which we'll need two fire icons to melt. As far as I can tell, we can't get any Fire down here just yet since we can't bring Combusken out of the forest, so we'll have to leave that there for now I suppose.

Coming here isn't a total waste, though, because we can find Squirtle! Squirtle is functionally identical to Totodile, just a generic water assist, but a new pokemon is a new Browser entry!

There isn't much else to see here besides a bunch of Rattata and the like. We can drop down onto the main path from the walkway to the north.

Once we're back above ground, we make our way to the harbor. As we approach the Lapras Guy, we hear a cry for help!

 

As we approach, we find the Lapras is in danger because of two Krabby attacking it! The guy explains he accidentally stepps on a Krabby's leg and it and its buddy started getting angry and attacking his Lapras! We spring into action, of course, and capture the two Krabby with our Styler! The guy is overjoyed that we helped him and happily agrees to let us take his Lapras to Summerland. This registers Lapras in our browser and we can ride off!

Summerland

Now, today we're not going to actually explore much of Summerland. There happens to be a save point right at the dock here. More interestingly, speaking to the nearby NPC reveals the first of what I assume to be many capture challenges! The man introduces himself as MC Fisher and tells us about the Marine Capture Challenge in which we'll need to ride on Lapras' back and capture as many pokemon as we can within 3 minutes. The catch is that Poke Assists aren't allowed, so we'll need to just trust our ability to draw a lot of circles! I probably don't need to say it again, but that's a lot harder than it sounds, at least for me! The current record is 3500 set by Cameron, the leader of the local rangers. What an introduction, huh? Do you think he's gonna be mad if we reveal we've been trying to beat his record instead of reporting for duty? ...Nah, he'll be fine. Let's go!

Marine Capture Challenge

       

There are a bunch of different pokemon you can potentially encounter during this challenge. From what I could gather, there's actually a lot more depth to this than I expected as well. Magikarp, Goldeen, Remoraid, Octillery, and Mantine all stay underwater so you'll need to tell them apart by the size of their shadows. When you're in capture mode against these fish, you'll need to wait for them to leap out of the water and quickly circle them before they drop back down. Magikarp will flop around uselessly for a little bit, making him easier to capture. We've captured a Staryu before, just be careful of its Rapid Spin. Mantine is a lot tougher to capture than the other underwater pokemon mainly because of its tendency to move around. It's worth a whopping 1500 points, though, so it's definitely worth it to go after! Carvanha will swim around and try to bite at your line, so try to draw large circles around him. Sharpedo is a tougher, more aggressive version that's incredibly difficult to capture and not really worth while since he's only worth 400 points. But, maybe there's a trick to capturing him that I'm just not aware of. All of these pokemon are immediately released so there's no real point in covering their abilities just yet. But they will be registered in your Ranger Browser! 

There are likely more pokemon available here, these are just the ones I happened to stumble across. I spoke with a Fisherman during one of my attempts at this challenge and he explained a system where catching the same pokemon over and over can cause rarer pokemon to become more likely to appear. The example he gave was catching Goldeen to make Seaking appear, and catching Seaking to make Wailmer appear. This is actually sound advice because it makes it clear you'll want to stick in one area for a while.

My goal for today was to complete this challenge by beating Cameron's score. This, however, proved to take a few tries. The area seems roughly split into three areas: There's the sea where you'll find Magikarp and Goldeen, presumably after capturing enough Goldeen you'll start to find Seaking, and after enough Seaking you'll find Wailmer. I wouldn't be shocked if you could find Gyarados by capturing enough Magikarp as well. Then there's the Deep Sea where you can find your Remoraid, Octillery, and Mantine. I suspect these three have a relationship similar to Goldeen, Seaking, and Wailmer, but I'm pretty sure I encountered Octillery pretty early during one of my attempts. Finally, there's the foggy sea which seems to be home to Carvanha and Sharpedo only. 

My strategy is to hang around the deep water as I found the Remoraid and Octillery to be pretty easy to capture quickly and they were more consistently worth more points than Magikarp and Goldeen. Worth noting, if your time limit runs out while you're trying to capture a pokemon, you'll still be able to finish your last capture attempt, so keep capturing to the last second and beyond and if you're out of time, feel free to take your time and don't panic! The trick to capturing pokemon in this game seems to be remaining calm and carefully drawing circles. Also important to know, if your styler breaks at any point during the challenge, you'll lose all of your points, even if you had a record! So be extra careful!

Eventually, I was able to complete the challenge with the help of Mantine and some Octillery! We've now beaten Cameron's high score! Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any reward for doing this besides... bragging rights? All you get is a little confetti celebrating the new record. The main draw to this challenge are the browser entries for the pokemon we capture. I'm unsure if any of these pokemon are exclusive to this minigame, though, so I'm gonna hold out before trying to track down every single pokemon available here. I imagine when we reach the end of the game I'll probably cover all of the pokemon we've missed in a future post.

I will, however go over the point values of the pokemon we captured! It's important for beating the record after all!

Magikarp is worth only 100 points, Goldeen is 300, Staryu is 200, Remoraid is 200, Octillery is 500, Mantine is 1500, Carvanha is 200, and Sharpedo is 400. Needless to say, of the pokemon I found, Mantine is by far the most useful to capture! But if you struggle to capture the harder pokemon, you might want to look more for Octillery. You only need to capture 7 of them in order to reach 3500 points. You'll also find some Remoraid, Goldeen, or Magikarp along the way probably.

With that in mind, next time, we should probably... actually report for work? Oops...

[Aura]

Summerland

Now that we're done with the Marine Capture Challenge, at least for now, it's time to get going on our request from Spenser and start looking around Summerland!

This place seems to be a tropical resort of some kind, best known for the jungle and ancient relic nearby. Curiously, there don't seem to be any wild pokemon around town like in Fall City. They all exist in the jungle. The town itself is resting on top of rafters over the water and many people are here on vacation for beachgoing. We can't go past the beach and into the jungle as a local authority stops us, telling us it's too dangerous in the jungle. We'll need permission from the local rangers to go further. That's fine because we really should be checking in with the Ranger Base in the first place.

We enter the base with the intention to meet with Cameron. Instead, we're met by two rangers named Leilani and Percy with his Politoed, who tell us that Cameron is out doing the Marine Capture Challenge. Apparently nothing bad ever really happens here in Summerland, so the Rangers are incredibly lax. We'll need to spend some time wandering around. If you speak with Percy, he'll head off with Politoed searching for Cameron for you.

As we explore, we can find Cameron's partner pokemon upstairs just like the other two's. This one is a Pelipper with a big appetite to match its master's. On our way out, Cameron will finally arrive. Before we can get down to business, Percy returns in a panic, claiming his Politoed was stolen by a group of weird-looking rangers which immediately alerts Cameron to the threat of the Go-Rock Squad we were trying to bring up. Cameron gives us permission to follow the thieves into the jungle. Since his rangers are generally laid back, he has no doubt we're the best suited for the job. He takes the time to send an E-mail to Spenser about making the recovery of Percy's Politoed an official mission. By the time we step out of the base, the word reaches him and he sends you a message confirming your official assignment to rescue Politoed from the Go-Rock Squad.

Heading up north, with our new permissions, we can now enter the jungle!

=================

Mission 4: Where's Polited!?

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

Olive Jungle

Right at the entrance, we can find a couple of Treecko. These guys like to move around a bit and, as Grass-types, are resiliant to paralysis. They can be a little tricky to capture but aren't too terribly tough. They provide the expected Grass-type assist and come with a Cut Field Skill. There's a few trees nearby that we need a Tackle field skill to interact with. We don't have one just yet so instead we'll need to climb the vines on the cliff ahead which will take us up to the next area.

We're soon stopped in our tracks by a group who introduces themselves as a band called the Go-Rock Quads: Garret, Tiffany, Clyde, and Billy! This is the first time we get some insight to the Go-Rock Squad's intentions. They intend to create the ultimate Capture Styler that is capable of capturing Legendary Pokemon so that they can render the Pokemon Rangers powerless and do whatever they want. After doing a little ditty, the Go-Rock Quads break and head out.

 

As we explore, we'll find some suspicious weeds that are... quite obviously camoflauged Oddish. But, it looks like we need a Gust field skill in order to interact with these bushes. As far as I can tell, there's no way to capture these Oddish just yet, but we've got Oddish from the secret garden in the Underground Waterway, so we're not missing out on much.

As we try to follow after the Go-Rock Quads, we'll be stopped by another Go-Rock Grunt who will try to stop us with a trio of Wurmple he's just captured with his Styler!

  

These Wurmple are incredibly easy to capture due to their small size and slow movement. As far as I can tell, they don't even attack. This is a good chance to try and capture three pokemon at once! Once we capture and release his three Wurmple, he panicks and runs off ahead.

 

In the next area, we'll find Electrike who's capable of healing your Styler as well as some Phanpy. These guys are pretty easy to capture. Their biggest threat is their Rollout which will lunge them forward and potentially damage your Styler. Just leave some space and try to capture them quickly. If you really feel the need to, you can use Treecko's Grass Assist to make them a bit easier. Phanpy provides a Tackle Field Skill and Ground-type Assist. Now that we're ranger rank 4, we can utilize the Ground-type assist as well! It churns the earth and makes the terrain impossible for pokemon to cross, again, similar to Poison, Fire, and Grass.

The most important assist Phanpy can provide is the ability to tackle those trees all over the place in order to knock Pokemon out of them!

 

It's quite possible other pokemon can potentially be found this way, but I was only able to find Silcoon and Slakoth in this way. Silcoon is easy to capture if you act right away, but it's capable of using Harden to defend against your Styler, making your loops effectless. You'll need to circle it quickly before it can harden or you'll have to wait. Silcoon provides a Bug-type Poke-Assist. This is the other type we recently gained access to. It allows us to throw sticky globs of web at pokemon similarly to the Water-type assist. This is great because, up until now, I think the Water- and Psychic-type assists have been by far the most useful assists in the game due to their abilities to completely disarm the pokemon and render them helpless to capture. The web will similarly stick the Pokemon in place and keep them restrained from moving.

Slakoth is much less useful. It just provides a standard Cut field skill identical to Treecko's and nothing else. But, it's a lot easier to capture! If you find Treecko difficult, you can always use Phanpy to look for Slakoth instead.

In the next area, we'll find Spinarak dropping in from above! These guys are also easy to capture and provide basic Bug-type assists. This short path will lead to a swampy area on the other side.

Inside the water, there are some Lotus Plants. But, if you watch carefully from a distance, the lotus plants will move revealing themselves to be Lotad! If you sneak up to them from behind, similarly to the Remoraid in the Catching contest, you'll be able to encounter them before they hide underwater. Lotad provide Water assists and a Water Field skill.

A little bit further along, we'll hear a Go-Rock Grunt calling out to the Politoed he stole, demanding it to obey him. The Politoed has jumped to the other side of a river and refuses to obey his commands. He's embarrassed about the disobedience and begins contemplating how he could cross the river before coming to the conclusion that he should use the Styler to capture a pokemon and knock a nearby tree down. While it'd be great to leave this guy to his misery, we have to get to that Politoed, too. So, we'll need to look for a way to knock the tree down ourselves! The tree needs three Rock Smash icons to knock over.

 

As we explore around the swampy area a bit more, we'll find some vines. Up here, we can find a Ludicolo and a Heracross! We've found Ludicolo before, but if you don't remember, he provides three Water icons and a Water assist. Heracross, on the other hand, is where our attention is set. He's tough, but with the help of Ludicolo's Water assist, he's really easy to take out. Ludicolo can be captured easily with either Plusle's Discharge or Silcoon's Bug Assist. Heracross brings a Fighting-type Assist and the three Rock Smash tokens we need to knock down that tree! As we do, the Go-Rock Grunt will run on ahead. He's not gonna get very far.

Before we pursue him, we'll head up north on the other side of the now-fallen log to find a vine sprout. With a little bit of water from a Lotad, we can cause the vine to grow!

Climbing up this vine will lead us to a Grovyle! Grovyle is a lot more agile than Treecko and you'll probably find yourself needing a Bug-type like Silcoon to capture it. Grovyle provides a Grass-type assist as well as two cut icons compared to Treecko's one. There's also a shrub that can be cut down. I recommend using Treecko for this job rather than Grovyle, though.

 

Behind the shrub, you'll find a hidden spring where we can find two Lombre! That's a little disappointing, but these guys provide Water-Assists just like their little brothers as well as two Water icons. I complained last time about evolved pokemon being seemingly not much better than their previous forms, but I do actually think their Poke-Assists are a little bit stronger. I haven't taken a scientific approach to verify this and it could very well just be confirmation bias, but it would certainly make sense if it's true. Some pokemon have been especially resilient to Poke-Assists even when they don't resist the type. Maybe assists from stronger pokemon would affect them better?

  

As we press forward again, we'll find two Mankey and a Primeape. None of them look very happy. We soon see the Go-Rock Grunt running away from them in a panic, saying he'll leave this task to you. Of course, we'll need to capture these pokemon to calm them down for our own protection! Mankey and Primeape hop around a lot, so Plusle might be needed here. The Mankey and Primeape all provide Fighting-type assists. Mankey provides a single Rock-Smash Icon while Primeape provides two. You'll actually be able to keep these guys instead of automatically releasing them.

The Grunt ran off the way we came, so let's go back! We'll need to pursue him up the vines and past the Ludicolo and Heracross into the next area beyond! But as we approach, we'll find the grunt erecting a metal fence to block our way!

If you recall, these Metal Fences require two cut icons to cut through, so we'll need to get that Grovyle from the other side of the tree trunk if you don't have it.

  

As we enter the next area, we'll find a grunt standing in front of a tall vine-covered cliff. This grunt will reveal that he's not the one who stole Politoed, but he'll try to slow us down by attacking us with the pokemon he captured: A Beautifly and two Paras! The Paras are simple enough to take care of, but the Beautifly is a pain and a half. It spreads Stun Spores which will damage your styler as it crosses your line. This is a bit different to other types of attacks we've dealt with so far as he spores linger around for quite a while. I strongly recommend using Plusle to capture this thing easily.

After capturing and releasing these pokemon, the grunt will warn the other not to screw up! But we'll need to climb our way to the top of the cliff.

 

On the way up the cliff, you'll be pestered by wild Gligar! These guys are really just annoying. They fly around a lot and are fairly aggressive as well. They're easy to capture with a Water assist, but I recommend just capturing the one for the Browser and running away from them. They're not worth the trouble, only providing a single cut icon similarly to Treecko and a Ground-type assist that's really not all that useful here.

At the top of the cliff, you can find another Electrike, a Grovyle, and a Phanpy.

 

You'll also find two suspiciously gloom-like plants, but we don't have the gust icons to interact with them so we'll need to leave them be for now.

Most prominently up here is the ancient relic that has been spoken about this whole time.

In the Jungle Relic, we'll find the Grunt we've been chasing this whole time with the Politoed that still refuses to listen to him. He tells you this is his Politoed now that he's captured it with his Styler and asserts that, because you've made an enemy out of him, you've made an enemy out of Politoed as well! With that, we have to capture Politoed with our own Styler!

Politoed is difficult to capture because of its tendency to hop around a lot. I've noticed it not getting paralyzed by Plusle's Discharge a few times. I'm not really sure why that is, but I still suggest using Plusle to capture him. Once you get him paralyzed, you can activate Primeape's Fighting assist to double the power of your styler and capture Politoed while it's still helpless.

After rescuing Politoed, he's released and returns to his partner, Percy. The grunt runs off, now totally defenseless and insisting that his Styler must be broken. As we walk out, we're met by Billy of the Go-Quads who questions why Politoed knew where to go after being freed from capture. He laughs to himself as the idea that rangers form a personal bond with pokemon as they're captured crosses his mind. He then walks off. As we walk further down, Percy shows up with his Politoed! He tells us that Politoed leaped into his arms as soon as they crossed paths and they were overjoyed to be reunited! With that, our mission is completed and we can return to the base.

[Aura]

Summerland

After reporting back to Cameron on our completion our mission, we're promoted to Ranger Rank 5! This brings with it access to the Rock-type Poke Assist as well as a third Partner gauge! Cameron tells us that he, Joel, and Spenser used to be part of the same squad when they were rookies. He has confidence that Joel and Spenser will go on to become a part of the Ranger Union one day but he doesn't have the same level of confidence for himself due to his laid back personality. But, with the presence of the Go-Rock Squad, he admits he can't afford to be so lax anymore and promises to become more alert going forward.

With our mission complete, we head out to patrol a bit before we get a message from Spenser asking us to report back to Fall City immediately. There doesn't seem to be much else to do around here for now, so let's make our way back to Fall City!

You can get back to Fall City the same way you got here: Hopping aboard Lapras!

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

Fall City

Back at Fall City, we make our way to the base to meet with Spenser, Joel, and Dr. Hastings who are discussing the report from Cameron. Dr. Hastings seems to agree with our suspicions: It seems the Go-Rock Squad are trying to replicate his Super Styler. The Super Styler, he elaborates, is a tool that's intended to help responsible rangers by capturing pokemon instantly without the need of the skillful hand of a Ranger as well as gaining full control of that pokemon's actions. It sounds like the Styler equivalent to a Master Ball, to me. However, as noted by Joel and Spenser, Go-Rock's attempts at replicating the Super Styler, at least for now, seem to have minimal success. They may be able to capture pokemon, but we're able to capture those pokemon right back. It sounds like this might not always be the case, so recovering the Super Styler is still a high priority for us.

Dr. Hastings and Joel soon clear out and Spenser informs us of our next mission. Recalling that Krokka Tunnel was blocked off by large boulders thanks to Go-Rock's prior antics, our mission is to clear those boulders because they're blocking a highly important traffic connection between Ring Town and Fall City. He admits this will be a difficult mission even for us, so he tells us another Ranger has already been sent ahead and that we'll need to join them. Let me guess... Aria? With our new mission, we make our way back toward Krokka Tunnel.

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

Krokka Tunnel

As we make our way to the tunnel, we'll find that, indeed, it looks like another ranger has been hard at work clearing the boulders out of the way. The boulders that were around outdoors are gone now.

  

Alongside the same pokemon we could find in here before, we can now find Diglett tunneling around in here! Diglett provides no field skill and just a standard Ground assist. Pretty standard stuff, really.

A little further ahead, we'll find Aria using a Hariyama to break a boulder. As soon as we catch up, she immediately suggests that clearing these rocks is a job more fitting for someone like you and that she's still got her hands full with the Go-Rock investigation case. She says we'll be alright to finish the rest. There are only three boulders remaining, after all. Before we can say no, she trudges off on her own leaving us to finish the job.

Now, it's clear that Aria is intended to come off as stuck-up, but if I'm being totally honest, it almost feels like she has more faith in us than Spenser and Joel do. She knows we can handle this task ourselves while they seem to think we still need to be babysat by other rangers. Unfortunately, Aria didn't give us any pointers as to where we can find Hariyama, so we're on our own in that department, it seems. It's time to head off and search for more Hariyama!

It won't be long in your search before the presence of the Go-Rock Squad becomes apparent once again. We quickly come across the Go-Rock Quads who tell us there are rumors of a Legendary Pokemon hidden within these caves and that the Go-Rock Squad is here to search for it! They also reveal that they've got brand new stylers which they boast are far more powerful than the ones they used before, but Tiffany lets slip that the new stylers are just prototypes and aren't exactly guaranteed to work properly. The quads split off soon, leaving you to your measly task of clearing rocks while they continue searching for that legendary pokemon. As we explore Krokka Tunnel, these guys are going to become a frequent pest.

   

It's kind of hard to paint a linear path through this mission because there's a lot of running around. Ultimately, this dungeon comes off more like a fetch quest to subtly tutorialize you on type match-ups. As you explore the tunnels, both new and old areas are available to you and you'll find new pokemon in both. Machop provides a single Rock-Smash Icon and a Fighting-type assist while Geodude provides a Rock-Smash icon and a Rock-type assist. Geodude likes to disguise itself as rocks if it sees you coming. You can use a Water assist like Poliwag's to force it to come out of hiding or simply get to it before it goes into hiding.

Geodude providing a Rock Assist gives us a chance to talk about what that one does! It's just another barrier, really. The Rock Assist whips up a sandstorm wherever your Styler crosses, functioning similar to the poison gas and restricting pokemon movement.

If you head north from where you find the Go-Rock Quads, you'll find a Magneton. These guys are powerful healers so I recommend you bring one with you. Two charge icons means it charges your Styler by 15 units!

  

  

 

As mentioned before, you'll also encounter several Go-Rock Grunts throughout the caves. They'll try to fight you off with various squads of pokemon: Three Zubat, three Geodude, and the toughest one uses a Crawdaunt and Krabby. Remember how tough that Crawdaunt was in the Underground Waterway? Well, come prepared! I recommend using Discharge in conjunction with Machop's Fighting Assist. The Zubat can be a little obnoxious with their ability to fly around and shoot SuperSonic. That's nothing Discharge won't fix, though. Don't be afraid to use assists on these guys! Some of these encounters can be a little annoying!

In the area behind the grunt with three Geodude, you'll find an area with a cracked wall that requires two Rock-Smash icons. Geodude and Machop aren't enough for this one. We need something bigger!

But just outside this area, you can find Graveler! If you can get to them quick enough, then they should be easy enough to capture with a little Water assist. If you can't get to them, though, they'll hide as Boulders and you'll need two Water icons to wake them up.

The next area, however, will provide you the pokemon with those two water icons: Poliwhirl! Poliwhirl provides a Water assist and two Water icons. Just like Poliwag, though, these guys make a bee-line for the water when they see you, so try to be quick! 

  

That's a little easier said than done, though. This room is also filled with Zubat! They'll not only pester you in your encounters with Poliwhirl, but they also shoot supersonic at you from the overworld. Under the effects of Supersonic, your controls will be reversed! The Zubat themselves are pretty useless, just providing poison assists. 

Inside this area, you'll find a room with a sign out front that labels it "Hariyama Dojo." Around this area are some Paras and supsiciously Parasect-looking mushrooms. We need Gust icons to interact with these mushrooms, though, so we'll leave these be for now.

Inside the Hariyama Dojo, we'll find a single Hariyama and stairs leading deeper inside. If you're skilled enough, you might be able to capture this Hariyama with whatever you happen to have, but odds are, you'll probably be a bit discouraged trying to capture this thing right away. That's by design, I think. You'll want to seek out the pokemon throughout this dungeon to help with this task.

 

If you're brave enough to make it to the stairs in the room, you'll find two more Hariyama instead of just one! These guys are just as difficult to capture, though, and together, they're even more formiddable! But if you're really skilled, then you can capture all three Hariyama in one trip and break all three boulders in one go-around. Now that's the dream! But there's really no need to push yourself for something like that unless you're really looking for a challenge. You can just capture the lone Hariyama three times and be just fine.

If you find Hariyama too difficult to capture, you can make it incredibly easy by enlisting the help of an additional pokemon: Kirlia!

Kirlia can be found behind that cracked wall a few rooms back. You'll need the help of either a Hariyama or a Graveler to break through the wall. Kirlia is a pretty easy capture on her own, but she does have a strange attack that I guess is supposed to be... Flash? Confuse Ray? It's not really clear what it is, but it's a large effect that covers a significant portion of the screen for a little bit before fading away. I'm not really sure what that's about. Kirlia's description in the Browser also says it's capable of teleporting which I don't doubt, but I haven't seen it in action during my playthrough so far. I've usually been able to capture it pretty quick without the need of an Assist.

With Kirlia's assistance, Hariyama is really easy to capture. Just use Levitate and you don't even need to pair it with another pokemon to capture Hariyama! Just be careful not to break your line or you'll have to start over with a new Kirlia! Hariyama comes with the three Rock Smash icons needed to break the large boulders as well as a Fighting-type assist.

After capturing your first Hariyama, I recommend going back to break one of the two boulders blocking the shortcut between both sides of the cave.

    

Doing so will reveal a whole swarm of Spinarak. As a whole squad, these guys are annoying to capture. But if you can lure one or two away from the squad, you can pick them off easily. With these guys, you can capture Kirlia even more easily!

Now, if you're feeling especially ballsy, you can save some time by going to the basement of the Hariyama Dojo and capturing the two Hariyama down there at the same time, but like I said, I'm content with just capturing the one over and over. A little backtracking'll never hurt nobody.

Once we've got the three boulders cleared, we'll get a message from Spenser who's received word of Go-Rock's presence in Krokka Tunnel. He'll request that you meet him next to the Dugtrio statue. If we go there, however, someone will show up before Spenser... it's Tiffany of the Go-Rock Quads! She brings forward her secret weapon: A powerful pokemon she's recruited with the help of her special prototype super styler!

As Tiffany strums her violin, a Camerupt comes marching in. She reveals that Camerupt responds to the music of her violin because her violin actually is her styler! Presumably, this implies that the other Quad's instruments are also stylers and they, too, will have powerful pokemon associated with them.

Anyway, Tiffany is actually nice enough to let you get as prepared as you'd like for this capture attempt which is incredibly helpful because it gives you the chance to save and gather up any pokemon you might need. Really, all you'll probably need are a few Poliwhirl. A Magneton or two wouldn't hurt either. You'll only need one Poliwhirl but Camerupt's large size and slightly awkward shape might cause you to break your line a time or two. It did for me, anyway. Without the assists, Camerupt is incredibly annoying as he likes to use Eruption, spewing volcanic rock all over the screen. He'll erupt 1-3 times every time but there seems to be no very little cooldown on this attack, so he can erupt three times and then seemingly immediately start erupting again. Poliwhirl's Water Assist makes quick work of him. You can also use Machop or Hariyama to reduce the amount of loops you need. Just note that, as a Ground-type, Camerupt is resistant to Discharge. Eventually, Camerupt is captured and freed, leaving Tiffany dumbfounded.

After capturing Tiffany's Camerupt, one of the grunts comes running in to warn Tiffany about the super-strong Pokemon Ranger that's coming this way: Sounds like Spenser! Spenser reunites with us form here as suggested and acknowledges our mission as complete! Together, we can make our way back toward Ringtown.

On our way out, we bump into Lunick and Minun who ask if they can accompany us back to Ringtown. Next time, I suppose we'll see where this leads. I assume another promotion, but it seems like the plot is starting to thicken now. A lot has changed in the short time we've been a ranger, so I'm curious what our next mission will be and where it'll take us...

[Aura]

Ringtown

We're finally back home in Ringtown! Of course, after our successful mission in Krokka Tunnel, we're promoted once again! This time to Rank 6! With this promotion, we now have access to Flying-type Poke Assists!

Things are quiet for now, but Spenser suggests that with the threat of the Go-Rock Squad looming, we shouldn't get too careless. He asks us to go out for patrol while there's nothing going on but instructs us not to leave town.

During our patrol, we'll find that the Grassland Capture Challenge is now open for business! MC Fielder here has actually been around from the beginning of the game, but the actual challenge wasn't ready yet. This Capture Challenge will see us on the back of a Doduo but is more or less the same thing as the Marine Capture Challenge back in Summerland. 3 minutes, no poke-assists allowed, and you're disqualified if your styler breaks. Our goal this time around is to achieve 5,000 points and beat the record left by none other than Joel!

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

Grassland Capture Challenge

       

There are lots of different standard pokemon I ran into while attempting this challenge: Bulbasaur and Tangela for 200 points, Torchic and Kirlia for 300 points, Spearow and Spoink for 400 points, Donphan for 800, and a whole herd of Tauros will appear to the south for 500 points each. You may want to lure one or two away from the herd to make them easier to catch, but you can save some dead time by capturing multiple at once! (Keep in mind, in the time between you finish drawing loops and the time the pokemon actually gets captured, the clock is still ticking!)

Bulbasaur and Tangela aren't worth many points, but they're easy to capture so I'd say they're good for capture. If you fail to capture them, though, they'll become startled so make sure to let them calm down before you try again. This is consistent advice for most pokemon that move around a lot. Torchic is in a similar boat but it moves around a bit more than the others. Kirlia I've found to be the easiest pokemon to capture among these standard encounters and the quickest road to victory. Spearow is a bit more aggressive but can be captured quickly, especially if you're patient enough to let it land first. Spoink, on the other hand, I'm not sure is worth it. He jumps around a bit too sporadically. Sometimes you can capture it really quick for an easy 400 points, other times, it's a bit of a mess. Donphan is also a pokemon I unfortunately really don't think is worth it. I did manage to get one to stay calm long enough for me to capture it at a relaxed pace, but any other time I tried to go slow, Donphan would get angry and attack my line anyway. I swear there has to be some hidden mechanic affecting the pokemon's aggression but I have no clue what it is. If you can consistently capture Donphan in one try, then the 800 points are totally worth it. But most of the times I tried, he'd just roll around and waste a whole bunch of my time. The 800 points just aren't worth it. The Tauros, though, are a lot easier to capture, especially if you can get them alone. I'm not really sure if the time investment into luring them away is worth the 500 points, but they like to stand still for a few seconds while they prepare to charge, giving you just enough time to capture them before they can break your line!

    

Just like the Marine challenge, the real points are earned from the rare pokemon that only appear once certain conditions are met during your challenge. Once again, this is not an exhaustive list, these are just the pokemon I encountered during my attempts. We'll cover whatever I missed in a future post.

Gardevoir appears after captruing two Kirlia, making it really easy to find. It's significantly harder to capture than Kirlia, however, and you'll often find it alongside Kirlia, too. Gardevoir can teleport to escape your loops as well as fire Psybeams that linger for a while and use Double Team to split into multiple illosory clones that will disappear after drawing a single loop around them. Gardevoir can be a little annoying, but if you're quick, you can capture them fairly easily before they start to get annoying. If they teleport away, fret not! As long as they don't teleport onto your capture line, you can still drag your stylus around their new location to continue drawing loops without starting over! However, Gardevoir does flee fairly quickly so you might find it difficult once you get to this point. Gardevoir are only worth 500 points so if you don't capture it right away and it starts to get annoying, you're probably better off just fleeing.

Abra only begins to appear a minute into the challenge. They appear in tall grass and teleport around. As expected, they like to teleport a lot more frequently than Gardevoir does. Remember not to lift your stylus unless your line actually breaks! You can continue drawing loops if Abra teleports outside of your loop without breaking your line! Abra is worth 1000 points and can be a pretty quick capture, so keep your eyes peeled!

Kecleon appears under the same conditions as Abra. As opposed to teleporting around, Kecleon remains entirely invisible! You can locate it by watching for its Psybeams or scribbling around with your Styler until it breaks. As you can imagine, it's tricky to capture a pokemon that's invisible! Kecleon are also worth 1000 points if you can manage to capture it.

Rapidash begin to appear after cpaturing 2 Spoink and are your main source of points if that's the direction you took your challenge. They like to charge forward leaving a sparks of fire behind them and can cause some ugly amounts of damage, but they're worth a whopping 1600 points so they're well worth the time!

Doduo appear after capturing two Gardevoir and are worth far more at 1800! I don't know if I got super lucky, but the Doduo I captured was really easy. I suppose it's your reward for being dedicated to those fiarly difficult and seemingly not-worth-it Gardevoir.

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

Of course, just like the Marine Capture Challenge, there's no real reward for beating Joel's record outside of bragging rights. At least, not that we can see immediately... more on that later.

=================

Ringtown

As we return to the Ranger Base, Lunick will emerge and tell us he's been assigned to a mission and suggests that, if our mission takes us to the same place, that we should try to patrol together again. It sounds fun! Spenser tells us that he now has a new mission for us: A senior citizen seems to be lost in the depths of Lyra Forest and we need to go escort him back to Ringtown.

I'm gonna be cutting this session here, though! We already had our action with the Capture Challenge, so next time we'll be going through Chapter 7!

[Aura]

Mission 6: The Wayward Wanderer

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

Lyra Forest

As we enter Lyra Forest to begin the mission we were assigned in the previous session, we meet with Lunick who waited around to walk with us on his way to Summerland.

In addition to the pokemon we could find here before, we can now find Marshtomp along the river! It has two Water icons and a Water-type assist.

As we march on ahead, we'll run into a man who's looking for his daughter. He was supposed to meet her around this safe part of the woods, but he fears she's gone missing and asks us for our help in finding her. Lunick agrees to help here and decides to continue with us a little longer.

Up ahead, we reach a fork in the path where a ranger would once stand to warn us not to go in that direction which leads into the Lyra Forest Labyrinth, a place known for being rather confusing to navigate. Now that our mission has us searching the forest, though, we need to go deeper. If someone got lost in the woods, it's likely because the ranger wasn't here to warn them. The ranger had to leave to help with the Go-Rock investigation, of course. So, let's get looking!

===============

Lyra Forest Labyrinth

As we pass toward the labyrinth, we'll bump into a little girl and her Jigglypuff. This must be the daughter of that man from before! She's crying over a lost Jigglypuff, explaining that she had two with her, but a rude old man yelled at it and scared it into the darker part of the forest where it got lost! That old man must also be the one we're after for our mission! Lunick decides to stay with the little girl while we go off to look for the Jigglypuff. It'll probably give us a lead as to where the old man is as well. Unfortuantely, he doesn't really seem like a very pleasant character, does he?

   

As we start to search for Jigglypuff, we'll be able to find Phanpy, Cyndaquil, Ivysaur, and Pichu hanging around. Cyndaquil comes with a Fire Icon and a Fire Asssist as expected. Be careful of its Flame Wheel as you're trying to capture it! But it's a pretty easy capture. Ivysaur provides a Vine Whip field skill as well as a Grass assist. Just like other Vine Whip users, you'll need to watch out for its Vine Whip while trying to capture it. Phanpy, of course, offers a Tackle field skill which we can use to interact with the trees in the area. And Pichu can be found throughout the forest to help you heal off any damage you take from the more aggressive pokemon.

 

Using Phanpy to tackle the trees, you'll startle Beedrill or Ninjask out of it! Both of these guys are new faces! Beedrill offer a Rock Smash icon, starangely enough, as well as a Poison-type assist. Ninjask provides a Flying-type assist but no Field Skill. Ninjask are incredibly difficult to capture, though. Not only do they run around really fast in the overworld, but they just will not stop moving in capture mode. You'l definitely want to use Plusle to paralyze them and capture them easily.

This is our first chance to use our newly unlocked Flying-type assist! This is a pretty powerful assist that will cause your capture line to shoot whirlwinds as it's drawn, lifting pokemon into the air for a temporary amount of time, similar to the Psychic assist. This assist seems most useful for crowds of Pokemon as the gusts tend to go outside of your capture circle, but it can also be used for capturing individual pokemon as well.

The most important detail here is Beedrill's Rock Smash icon. We can use this to smash a rock by the river near the entrance to the river.

Behind this rock, a Wartortle will leap out of the river! It's functionally identical to Marshtomp, providing two water icons and a water assist. But it's a new Browser entry!

After wandering around a little bit, you'll find the girl's missing Jigglypuff. It likes to hop around so you might need to wait for it to land before you can try to capture it. This Jigglypuff doesn't provide any field skills or assists, but we'll need to make room for it on our party to bring it back to the little girl who's missing it. Upon doing this, Lunick will escort the little girl out to see her father while we return to our main mission to seek out the old man in the forest.

As you move deeper into the forest, you'll pass a shrine that resembles the one from Johto's Ilex Forest complete with a message praising the guardian of the forest. It seems there might be some foreshadowing going on here... As we try to move forward, we'll receive a message from Spenser warning us that the Weepinbell inside the forest labrynth tend to suck intruders up and spit them out of their territory. In other words, we'll need to be especially careful around any Weepinbell we happen to pass.

The first pokemon we'll find in this deeper part of the forest is Taillow, who provides a Gust icon and a Flying assist.

You'll also have Spinarak trying to drop on your head throughout these parts, so stay on your guard about them!

Our first Weepinbell is nearby. As Spenser warned, if you're not careful around them, they'll suck you into their mouths and spit you out, sending you flying back to the entrance of the area. You'll want to get the drop on them and capture them first! If you do, they'll bloat up a bit before spitting acid and covering a part of the ground. If you act quickly, you can capture them before they spit their acid to avoid any potential damage. Weepinbell doesn't provide any field skill and just offers a Poison-type assist.

Another pokemon you'll bump into nearby is Swellow! Swellow flies around a lot, but it'll periodically stop moving long enough for you to capture it. Just be patient and try to capture it whenever it stops moving, but if you don't capture it fast enough, it might hit you with a Gust before it starts moving again! If you want to play it safe, use Plusle! Swellow provides two Gust icons as well as a Flying-type assist.

Pikachu can be found in here as well. It'll shoot small Thundershocks as opposed to Magneton's more intimidating ThunderBolt. It provides two charge icons allowing it to restore 15 HP as opposed to Pichu's 5.

If you explore enough, you'll find a shrub that requires a Cut icon to cut through. We unfortunately don't have any pokemon capable of cutting just yet, just like in the other part of the Forest, so we'll still need to pass on this and just keep it in mind.

Once you're done exploring this area, you'll head deeper into the woods where you'll have to drop down a ledge in order to find the old man we're after. As we approach, we hear him mumbling to himself about a legendary pokemon and blaming Dr. Hastings for something... He's started by our presence and introduces himself as Gordor and demands to know your name as well. But he seems to take every opportunity he can to insult you and the Rangers Union and just overall comes off with an incredibly rude air about him. Like an entitled, disgruntled fast food customer. What a fun guy to be stuck with. Well, a mission's a mission, so we'll just have to put up with him a little longer. He demands we lead him out of the forest.

There's a Quilava we can capture nearby that provides two Fire icons and a Fire-type assist. Quilava is just like Cyndaquil but larger and with more endurance. Overall, it's more of the same.

The way out of this area is blocked by a log with a Murkrow standing atop it. Gordor gets incredibly angry at this Murkrow for seemingly mocking him and begins to call it all sorts of names before it finally get scared off. He seems proud of himself for accomplishing this feat... okay. Well, the log the Murkow was standing on is still in our way and we'll need two fire icons to burn it down, so you know what to do!

As you go to capture Quilava, Gordor seems incredibly interested in your Styler and comments about the sense of justice required by a Ranger, asking if someone young like yourself could even have a true understanding of what "justice" even means? How could we possibly know that our justice isn't going to be outdated by tomorrow? It's an odd philosophy, but it definitely seems like the words of a bitter old man who seems to have some grievance with the rangers union... Well, we need to carry on!

    

There's only one way forward and it's through a swarm of Beedrill! You could capture them all or just push through and run from them all as the nearby sign advises. We can always come back if we need a Beedrill!

   

Just beyond the Beedrill is a beautiful meadow filled with flowers! In here we'll find some Hoppip and a Beautifly! Both of these provide no field skill. Hoppip has a Grass assist while Beautifly offers a Flying assist.

In the next area, the Murkrow Gordor insulted earlier appears before us again. Gordor comments, amused by the fact that it must be holding quite the grudge before it flitters off. We continue trying to make our way out but by heading up, we find ourselves looping back around to where we just were! Gordor gets frustrated by this and demands you lead him out of the forest immediately, berating you for not being able to do your job properly. For the next few areas, you'll need to guess the correct path to go. The wrong way will loop you back to the save point.

 

In the second area, you'll find two Nincada which provide Bug assists as well as Cut Field Skills! With this, we would be able to cut that shrub from before if we could make it back there! Of course, we'll need to complete our mission first because Gordor seems to have a thing for complaining about waisted time. Capturing Nincada can be a little annoying because they burrow underground like Diglet. You'll need to capture them very quickly before they burrow back underground. Water or Flying-type assists can help here!

 

A Taillow and Swellow can be found in the next area.

It's not long before we find Murkrow again. This time, the area is shrowded in a black haze. It'll hide inside a tree, so we'll need to capture a nearby Phanpy to knock it out. Murkrow will block the way to the exit once it's knocked down, so we'll need to capture it to get it out of the way.

   

As we move to approach it, four more Spinarak drop down around it, so we'll have to capture Murkrow alongside these guys! The flying assist of the Swellow from before. Holding the other Spinarak helplessly in place makes it much easier to capture the individuals one at a time. If needed, you can also use Plusle to paralyze Murkrow, too. This capture can be a little annoying without assists because of Murkrow's Haze which covers a lot of the screen's real estate and lingers for quite a while. The sheer numbers also make it difficult to capture individual pokemon.

   

Once you've captured the five pokemon, Gordor will demand you release them immediately because he's sick of looking at the pests. So, you release them. Passing through the exit here will bring us back to the entrance of the labyrinth! We'll find a Go-Rock Grunt here who gets startled and immediately runs away. Gordor comments about the reputation of the Go-Rock Squad and suggests the possibility that they might just be misunderstood... yeah, it doesn't surprise me that somebody like this guy would find agreement with them. The ones who literally call themselves "the bad guys." Of course, this is all played up with the game's sense of humor. It's pretty obvious that this man is probably the leader of the Go-Rock Squad and they aren't subtle about his villainy at all from his rude behavior to his tendency to straight-up laugh like a villain over trivial things... even though he's an obnoxious person, I do love his writing!

Gordor mentions that he recognizes the area and that he can make his way out from here before walking off. The ranger Murph arrives on the scene and bumps into him as he's leaving. Gordor just stops to let out another laugh before taking his leave, leaving us rather confused about it. Murph approaches us and tells us he's been working with Aria on the Go-Rock investigation. He wants to tell us about it on the way back to Ringtown...

and that's it for today! Next time we'll see what our promotion brings us and where we'll be headed for our next mission!

[Aura]

Ringtown

Upon returning from our mission, we're promoted to Ranger Rank 7! With this promotion comes a load of new permissions! We're able to use Dark- and Ghost-type Poke Assists. In addition, we're granted a fourth Partner gauge as well as a sixth party slot, too!

Up until now, I've been misunderstanding these extra partner gauges to mean you get more frequent uses of Plusle's abilities. However, I've noticed that Plusle seemed to drain all of the energy at once. In the back of my mind, I've since been wondering what the point of these extra gauges were. But now, with my fourth one, I've finally come to realize what their actual purpose is: Each gauge adds another layer of power to Plusle's Discharge, increasing its capabilities with each gauge. You'll always drain your entire gauge, but depending on how many meters are full, the targets will be affected more by the assist. This doesn't mean you get more uses out of it, it means it gets stronger and is more effective against pokemon that may have been pretty resilient to it before. That's a very important distinction!

Anyway, we soon get a message from Cameron of Summerland asking us to come meet with him if we're not doing anything busy because he has a gift for us! Of course, that might mean we'll have to cross all the way to Fall City and ride that Lapras again, or... Spenser suggests that, since we just ranked up, that we're ready for authorization for the Dragonite Bus! He leads us up to the second floor of the ranger base.

It's up here that we find the Dragonite in question. But it's not so simple as just asking for a lift with Spenser's blessing. Dragonite himself has to recognize us as a worthy trainer. You know what that means, capturing of course!

Dragonite will fly around and launch Twister attacks, making it difficult to capture him. But, he's a Flying-type, so he's vulnerable to Plusle's Discharge! Another bit of misinformation I'm a bit late to realizing here is that each Pokemon in this game, in terms of Poke-Assist resistance, is only a single type. Dragonite, for example, is normally a Dragon/Flying type in the main series. But in this game, he's treated as a Flying-type pokemon and not a Dragon-type pokemon. So, he's not only weak to Electricity, but he also doesn't resist Fire or Water. Most dual-typed pokemon use the typing they're most known for. With a few exceptions you might find surprising such as Marshtomp being a Ground-type or Crawdaunt being Dark-type. You can tell what type a pokemon is by the "group" cateogry in their browser entry.

Anyway, after capturing Dragonite with the help of Plusle, it acknowledges us as worthy and decides to take us on a ride to Summerland!

================

Summerland

As soon as we arrive, we find Cameron and Leilani. Cameron tells us to come inside the base and Leilani explains that Cameron has a tendency to pass off gifts that nobody really wants. And the fact that he has no ill intent almost makes it worse. She apologizes in advance before we enter to find Cameron's "gift" is... an old, completely rusted over machine. Cameron asks a local mechanic to explain to you what the item is. Apparently, it's some sort of submarine! But it's missing parts needed to function which the mechanic doesn't have access to. So, it's more or less just a pile of junk. Cameron is offended by the term... maybe we should find an opportunity to slip away from this awkward scenario?

As if right on cue, Lunick arrives at the base and is surprised to see us here! Seeing us together, Cameron suggests that we both go try out the trials in the Jungle Relic while he tries to look into fixing the machine up. This challenge is one that Spenser and Joel took when they were younger. He explains that there's a hidden switch inside the Jungle Relic that leads to four trials, but warns us that legend says a calamity will occur once the fourth trial is completed, so he warns us only to complete three and to leave the fourth untouched. Lunick is interested by the challenge and urges us to go with him. But... honestly, this whole operation sounds like a pretty terrible idea. But I suppose if Cameron is suggesting we do it, and Joel and Spenser did it in their youth, what could it hurt? Off we go to the Jungle Relic!

You will need to cross through Olive Jungle to get there, of course, but there's nothing new in the way so there's no sense in covering all that.

As you march through the Jungle, Lunick will draw attention to the Snorlax that's blocking off a path. He'll express concern over whether or not the Snorlax is in the way. He explains that if they receive any complaints, we can deal with the Snorlax then. If there are no complaints, then it must not be bothering anybody. Plusle and Minun soon run ahead and begin bouncing on Snorlax's belly! Lunick scolds the two pokemon for such rude behavior and then recognizes that they might've done it because they thought Snorlax was causing trouble. Lunick then reassures the two pokemon that everything is okay and instead suggests the two use that level of independent problem solving to help us if we're in danger instead. This seems to satisfy the two pokemon and we continue onward!

====================

Jungle Relic

As we enter the relic, Lunick begins to examine the statue and, sure enough, finds the hidden switch! The statue opens up to reveal a passageway deeper inside! We can't bring any pokemon from outside beyond that point, so we'll need to release them.

=================

Three Challenges? And...

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

Inside, there's a large cavern with passages and a statue of Entei in the center with four sets of torches leading up to it. If you enter any of the available passages, you'll find a chamber with instructions for one of the three trials ahead. The fourth chamber is blocked by a pair of... "researchers" who won't allow us past because they're busy doing... science and stuff. They bear an awful lot of resemblance to the Go-Rock Grunts, but, hey, they're wearing Lab Coats instead of the Go-Rock uniform, so I guess they must be legit. We leave them to their thing. We only need to complete three trials anyway. So, we head back to the entrance and begin doing the trials one by one!

================

Challenge of Water

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

   

This challenge has you marching along a narrow path, avoiding projectiles fired by Gyarados on either side of you. If you just take it slow, you should easily be able to stop and adjust your position so that you're standing in their blind spots. With a little patience, you can get to the other side with ease.

If you do get knocked off the path, you'll fall into a small chamber below and have to climb up a set of stairs that will take you back to the challenge's entrance, forcing you to start over.

At the end of the challenge, you'll reach a passageway that leads to a room with a strange blue stone.

 

As you approach the stone, you'll be ambushed by two Kingdra from either side. You'll need to capture them! Plusle can be a huge boon here since Kingdra are treated as Water-types. These guys will dive underwater a lot anyways, so may as well make it easier on yourself.

Upon capturing the two Kingdra, a mysterious energy will fill your stylus, charging it up all the way, and the blue stone will disappear from the chamber. As you step out into the central cavern, you'll notice a Blue torch light in front of the Entei statue.

===============

Challenge of Destruction

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

This challenge tests your ability to work alongside pokemon. You'll be using Poke-Assists and Field Moves together to navigate this challenge. There are various stones blocking your path which you'll need various Field Moves to destroy. The first one has a Citrus and Marine Stone which you'll need Tackle or Cut respectively. In the center of the room is a button.

 

Pressing the button will cause a Bagon and Gligar to fall from the ceiling! You'll be ambushed by them both and have to capture them together. This is the central gimmick of this challenge: Each room will have stones that need to be broken with specific field moves, and a button which will cause a pokemon you need to appear alongside another. Bagon is a Dragon-type with a Tackle icon and no Assist.

If you use Gligar's Cut to cut down the Marine Orb, you'll find another button and another Marine Orb.

 

This button will drop a Wurmple and a Meowth. You can use the Meowth to break the Marine Orb and, since Wurmple doesn't have any Field Skills, you can feel free to use it to make captures easier if you feel the need. Don't feel like you need to save it for anything because you can't take any of these pokemon outside of this room.

 

The button in the next area is a dead end with two Magnemite which you can use to recover any damage you may have taken.

Going back to that first fork, you can instead use Bagon to break the Citrus Stone, revealing a Rose Stone that requires Rock Smash to break.

 

The button here will reveal a Geodude who can break said Rose Stone.

 

The next room contians another Citrus Stone and a Rose Stone. The button drops a Phanpy and Machop. Phanpy can break the Citrus Stone with Tackle and Machop can break the Rose Stone with Rock Smash.

 

Behind the Citrus Stone is two more Magnemite, simple enough.

 

Behind the Rose Stone is a Citrus Stone and a button that drops a Seedot and Wurmple. Seedot provides a Grass assist and Tackle Field Skill which can be used to break the Citrus Stone. Alternatively, you can skip this button entirely by bringing the phanpy from the previous area.

 

The next area holds another Citrus Stone and a Marine Stone. The button will drop a Wurmple and Treecko. This button can also be skipped if you held onto that Gligar from the first area. However, this Citrus Stone is a bit harder to break than the others. It requires two Tackle icons! Phanpy and Seedot aren't sufficient. We'll need to see what's behind that Marine Stone instead.

This one is a dead end with a single button that drops a Shelgon; Another Dragon-type with two tackle icons and no field skill. Shelgon likes to roll around a lot, so he's somewhat tough to capture. You can temporarily force him to slow down by using any of the assists you've saved up, just note that Treecko and Seedot won't help much thanks to Shelgon's Dragon typing. I recommend you heal off any excess damage before using Shelgon to destroy the last Citrus Stone.

If you fail the challenge by letting go of the wrong pokemon or using the wrong poke-assist, don't fret, you can just leave the trial and come back in to reset it.

Once you're prepared and fully healed, break down the last statue. Any pokemon you've captured throughout the maze will automatically be released and, I cannot stress this enough, you want to run back and save now. This part of the trial is cleared now and you won't have to complete the maze again. But you're about to get into what is easily the most challenging capture in the game so far in which you can easily break your styler. If your styler breaks, you'll have to load your last save and if you don't save here, you'll have to do the entire challenge again. This will become incredibly tedious if you fail multiple times. Save now. 

As you head forward, you'll find another chamber with a purple stone inside. Lunick will tell you to watch out as you approach the seal and, if you keep walking forward...

A Salamence will drop down from the ceiling! Just like the Kingdra, you'll have to capture this Pokemon in order to complete the challenge. But that's a lot easier said than done. Salamence is a Dragon-type meaning he resists Plusle's Discharge, so that's going to be completely useless here. Salamence is quite large and flies around, so it's difficult to draw loops around him multiple times. He'll periodically slam down onto the ground and release four waves of Outrage. Outrage will cover the entire screen so you'll have to let go of your line when he uses it, sacrificing any progress you've made toward his capture. While Salamence is grounded, he'll periodically fire Hyper Beams before eventually taking off into the sky again. The real kicker to all of this? This bastard requires 22 loops to capture. It's really tough to get 10 loops around this guy, let alone 22! And without the help of Poke Assists, you're SoL with anything that could possibly make this capture easier. This capture is purely a test of skill with drawing lots of loops in a row without breaking the line once and it's a tough one.

The hardest part about this capture is that any advice I can provide can only help you so much. It's all skill and it isn't easy. But, there are some things to note that can make this capture a little easier. First of all, you might try to capture Salamence while it's grounded because it doesn't move around as much. Big mistake. You'll never capture Salamence while he's grounded. He fires Hyper Beam too frequently and takes too many loops. Instead, draw a single loop around Salamence and let go. This will anger Salamence and force him to use another Outrage. As soon as the last wave of Outrage is unleashed, begin circling him because he'll take off and begin flying again after this. Give yourself as much time as you possibly can if it helps with preventing you from psyching yourself out. Salamence is most vulnerable while he's flying since he only fires Hyper Beam while grounded. Just watch out for when he suddenly crashes down for another Outrage!

The next bit of advice is drawing loops. Don't try to anticipate which direction Salamence is moving. He moves in random directions. Instead, practice drawing circles as large and perfect as possible to give yourself as much space as possible in any direction. Draw as slow as you need to at first to get the muscle memory down, and watch the shape of your loops as you draw them. Once you start to get comfortable, speed up. Be very patient with this process, you do have plenty of time. But your time isn't unlimited before he drops down and unleashes another Outrage, so make sure you're putting in an effort to improve your speed as you move. You just don't have to loop him at a lightning fast pace.

It took me several tries and several broken stylers and lots of research online to figure out if there was anything I was missing, but eventually, I did capture Salamence and I was so relieved! Not an easy capture at all!

After capturing Salamence, the trial is completed and the purple stone seal disappears, causing a purple flame to appear at the altar of the Entei statue in the main chamber. Let's complete our next trial!

===============

Challenge of Wind

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

This one is a walk in the park compared to the Challenge of Destruction, almost literally! There's just a maze of paths that you have to walk through. There's wind throughout the maze that will try to blow you off, but the effect of the wind is actually barely perceptible. I honestly thought there had to be more to the challenge like having to get to the end within a time limit or something... nope, you just have to navigate the maze in spite of the barely-present wind gimmick.

At the end of the maze, you'll find another chamber with a green stone inside guarded by the pokemon Flygon! Flygon is incredibly fasst but will stop to fire Gusts of wind in three shots. Flygon only takes 11 loops so it's significantly easier. The catch, of course, is that Flygon moves around a lot more. There really isn't a safe time to capture it. It's either flying all over the screen really fast or it's attacking. Your best bet to capture this guy is to draw quick loops in between its individual attacks while it's stopped. You'll want to draw your loops quickly because, of course, if Flygon his your line, it'll break. Be quick, but don't be greedy!

Upon capturing Flygon, the green stone seal will disappear, lighting a green flame at the altar. All that's left is the last challenge which Lunick reminds us we've been warned not to complete. Still, he wants to go in and check out the last trial and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't curious myself.

=============

Chal.........Fire

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

The instructions for this challenge are defaced, making it really difficult to read the instructions. Lunick suggests it might be to prevent the challenge from being completed and causing this calamity, but I also have my suspicions that a certain group of people might be up to something here...

As we step inside, we'll find the area to be a large volcanic cavern. As we cross around to the other side...

We'll find a Charizard surrounded by the Go-Rock Quads! And he seems to be in a lot of pain! The Quads suggest that we'd better capture the Charizard to help it out. They must be up to something, but we really don't have a choice. Not only is Charizard in pain, but if this thing starts to rampage, who knows what kind of havoc it could cause if it leaves the ruins? It's a formidable pokemon, after all! So, we start to chase Charizard down through volcanic vents which spew pillars of flame! We'll need to carefully navigate through the vents in order to reach Charizard who flies from point to point along the triangular path. Once we catch up to him, we'll need to capture him!

Unlike the previous two pokemon, Charizard is vulnerable to electricity and we're going to want to take advantage of that right away! Your partner gauge should be fully charged thanks to the two boss fights we've just been through, so let's unleash all that energy here!

Charizard opens up the fight by spitting Flamethrower into the sky, scattering flames all over the arena making it difficult to capture him as he walks around. Even if you use Discharge right away, the flames will still linger, there's just no getting around that hazard. If you bump into the fire with your line, it will damage you but the fire will go away. In all honesty, my best suggestion is to just tank the damage. The flames will go away giving you an easier time of capturing Charizard. But they will leave quite a tax on your HP. Charizard himself only takes 11 loops, so just take full advantage of the paralysis and capture him quickly! I suggest tanking the damage because, once he gets a second layer of fire onto the ground, the flames take so long to dissipate on their own that you'll probably have an easier time capturing him just by getting a game over and trying again from the top.

Upon capturing Charizard, he'll fly off leaving you with the Go-Rock Quads who reveal they've just fooled you into completing the final trial! The Challenge of Fire, as it turns out, was to capture Charizard! With this, the Go-Rock Quads can now blame us for causing the calamity that will soon occur! They run off mocking us. Of course, if we left them be, it was only natural that they would eventually figure out how to capture these pokemon and who knows what kind of trouble they could stir up with them. Perhaps it was for the best the challenges were completed by our hand... For now, we have to leave and assess the damage that was done.

Back in the main chamber, we'll find that a red flame has been lit at the altar. As we approach, we'll find the Entei statue begins to disappear! This is a bit alarming, but not exactly what you could describe a "calamity." But, as we leave the relic, a dangerous earthquake begins to emerge from underneath the ruin and we receive a message from Cameron asking about it. Cameron observes that the earthquake seems to be originating from the volcano and requests that we investigate the earthquake, but places a strict order for us to prioritize our safety above all else as the earthquake is seeming incredibly dangerous. He's also dispatching Aria to help investigate with us. With that, we turn around to head back inside the relic to see if anything's happening. 

And we'll leave things on that cliffhanger for now! It seems the story's starting to get going! I'm actually curious what exactly this calamity means for the world of Fiore...

[Aura]

Jungle Relic [Calamity]

As we re-enter the Jungle Relic to investigate the effects of completing the fourth trial, we'll find the main chamber has been almost completely flooded with lava! Aria comes rushing in, saying she was about to leave Summerland after completing a mission when she felt the earthquakes. She immediately recognized these earthquakes weren't normal and came to the ruins to investigate. She was frustrated when Lunick revealed that we completed the fourth trial and didn't bother giving us a chance to explain the situation. At the moment, dealing with the eruption was the top priority.

Aria is shocked when she looks over in the direction of the Entei Statue to find that a real Entei has taken its place! Entei then jumps off. It's said that a new Entei is born every time a volcano emerges. It seems that completing the four trials has transformed the Jungle Relic into a volcano! Aria runs off ahead and, of course, this is our mess so we'll need to help clean up the mess however we can!

================

Save the Jungle Relic!

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

 

As we march forward, we'll find Numel and Electrike. Numel offers a Fire-type assist and 1 Fire icon. They're basically baby versions of that Camerupt from Krokka Tunnel, but very easy to capture.

Now, our first trip throughout the various challenges of the relic, there were several obstacles in this main chamber that couldn't be cleared: Boulders that needed smashing, Fences that need cutting... well, this is where they'll come into play! But we can't deal with them just yet. You'll also find that the doors to all four of the challenges are now sealed off, so we can't enter those anymore.

Up ahead is a fork in the path: One passing in front of where Entei stood earlier and another leading deeper into the relic. We'll want to cross the bridge first.

Over this way is, I do believe, our first encounter with a female Go-Rock Grunt! She's dressed in white and has a Rapidash at her side. You'll need to capture the Rapidash to release it and force her to retreat, granting yourself passage to the west part of the relic.

It's over here that you can find a Graveler! Remember that it'll disguise itself as a large rock if it notices you, so try to sneak up on it to capture it. Graveler's Rock Smash is strong enough to break those boulders earlier, but we'll hold off on that for a bit longer and push deeper in.

 

Up ahead this way, we'll find a Magmar and, shortly after, a Manectric. Magmar is a fairly simple capture, just watch out for its periodic Flamethrower attack. It can last an uncomfortable amount of time. It provides two Fire icons and a Fire-type assist. Manectric runs around a lot more than Electrike and can fire Thunder Waves to disrupt your line by blocking off certain areas. But, it's worthwhile to capture Manectric with a Poke-Assist because he can provide two charge icons to charge your styler by 15 units!

Near these two is a staircase that leads into what was previously an empty room that resembled the lower areas of the challenges.

 

Now, you can find a couple of Beldum down here! They'll float around and occasionally charge at your line with a Take Down, but you should be able to capture them without any real problems. They provide a Tackle icon and a Psychic-type assist. They're mainly just notable here because they're rare! Register them in your browser!

Now that we have a Graveler, we can return to the East side of the cavern and break that boulder!

 

This will lead us to a secret garden containing a Sceptile and Tangela. This should be an easy enough capture due to the abundance of Numel and Magmar that can be used to recruit Sceptile. The most annoying part is Sceptile's tendency to leap around the screen. But once you trap him in fire, it should be easy pickings. Sceptile provides three Cut icons and a Grass-type assist.

With Sceptile, we can return once again to the west side and use Sceptile's Cut to break through the wooden fence here!

 

This fence conceals a secret lake with Poliwhirl inside! These Poliwhirl can be immensely useful for capturing the many Fire- and Ground-type pokemon throughout the dungeon!

Once we've finished with that little diversion, it's time to push onward!

 

Taking the path to the north at that fork leading into the bridge will lead us to a grunt with a Magcargo and a Slugma! Both of these guys are a little annoying, leaving trails of lava behind similar to Grimer, but they're manageable. You can use Poliwhirl, Graveler, or even Plusle or Beldum to stun them and capture them with ease.

  

Beyond this grunt is another with three Slugma! The same strategies apply here. Capture these three and you'll be able to push through.

On the other side, you'll finally find your first usable Slugma who provides just a single Fire icon and a Fire-type assist, making it not really worthwhile over Numel.

If we try to continue further, we'll be stopped in our tracks by a giant bounder crashing down from above! This one requires an attack even stronger than Graveler's Rock Smash to break, so it looks like we'll just have to come back here later.

 

If we retrace our steps, we can continue along the path to find another grunt with a Meowth and Sneasel! Sneasel is effectivley a much harder Meowth. It runs around a lot and is very aggressive with its Slash attack. You'll probably need Plusle's help to capture it.

This grunt is blocking our way to a Rhydon! Rhydon was a boss pokemon near the beginning of the game, but with our longer line now, it's almost a total joke! It's easy to capture Rhydon without any assists now. This is also the first Rhydon we can actually use! It comes with a ground-type assist but, as demonstrated in the beginning of the game, it has three Rock-Smash icons allowing it to break massive boulders from Rock Slides! That's great for our mission! With this, we can crash through that boulder from before and continue deeper into the relic!

Doing this will lead us to a Houndoom! It's pretty difficult to evade an encounter with a Houndoom because they'll jump on you right when they see you, and they'll chase you down with a lot of speed and ferocity! Capturing them isn't too hard since their fireballs are small and heavily telegraphed. Just be persistent! Houndoom are well worth the patience because not only do they provide two fire icons like Magmar, but this is our first Dark-type assist!

The Dark-type assist is probably the coolest and most unique assist yet! It comes with the downside of requiring a small tax: It'll damage your styler a bit. But in exchange, your styler will temporarily double in length! This allows you to draw much larger circles making it easier to do things like evade attacks or loop multiple pokemon at once. Just don't get too reckless, the tax on your HP might be more significant than you expect in a dangerous capture!

Stepping further ahead, we'll find Aria emerging from the next doorway, warning you about the Go-Rock member up ahead. She reveals that he's got an incredibly strong pokemon and that her styler was actually broken in the encounter. She's a little distraught over having been defeated so easily, but without her styler, there's nothing more she can do...

Before we enter that door, I suppose it's for the best to explore ahead and see if we can find anything that could potentially be useful for us?

 

The only thing new up ahead that we can find are a couple Charmander in a room with a lava pool that requires three water icons (more than Poliwhirl can provide) to clear. The Charmander will spit Ember at your line but are otherwise pretty easy captures. They'll provide Fire-type assists and a single Fire icon.

Now, it's time to return and see what this powerful pokemon was that was too much for Aria...

Behind the doorway, we'll run into Clyde of the Go-Rock Quads. With his experimental Drum Styler, he'll call forward his own pokemon!

Slaking will leap down from above ready for combat! Slaking takes a lot of loops, and is pretty aggressive. You'll need to circle him quickly and precisely while avoiding the boulders he crashes into the ground. This might be a good time to take that new-fangled Dark-type assist for a spin! While it'll make you a bit more vulnerable to Slaking's powerful attacks, it can also help you avoid them! With these large circles, you shouldn't have much of an issue at all in capturing Slaking. Just take your time drawing your circle so he can't just break them immediately by walking over them. This capture isn't too bad, but it's easy to see how, if underprepared, you could reasonably get wiped out.

After capturing and releasing Slaking, Clyde is a little bummed he won't be getting a bonus from his boss, but he isn't down in the dumps just yet because their experiment down here was a success, as evidenced by another tremor! He tells us his boss is just ahead in the next room and that we'd better go and see if we can stop him, but warns that it's probably already too late.

I can't really say it's too much of a surprise, but entering the next room, you'll find not only Entei under the control of the boss of the Go-Rock Squad, but that this boss is none other than... Gordor! The old man we escorted in Lyra Forest! He explains to us everything the Go-Rock Squad has done in this relic: By tricking us into completing the fourth trial, he was able to unleash the calamity, causing the Legendary Pokemon Entei to appear. And with his experimental Styler, he was able to capture Entei! He then goes on to tell you that, if Entei isn't calmed, the volcano will erupt, destroying the local ecosystem and ruining the lives of the people of Fiore. He mocks us by giving us our "final" assignment: Do whatever we want because he doesn't care. In his eyes, the Go-Rock Squad has surpassed the Ranger Union and become the new Pokemon Rangers. Of course, we have to capture Entei and stop the eruption. So, let's do it!

==================

Vs. Entei

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

 

Right away, Entei will roar, bringing to its side two Magmar! These Magmar will be especially difficult to capture due to the giant Entei dashing around the screen. With a bit of patience, though, you should be able to wait for them to get in a good position for a quick capture. Of course, Poliwhirl's Poke Assist can come in handy here! Just be wary of not only Magmar's Flamethrower, but Entei's much larger Flamethrower. If you need it, Rhydon's Ground-type assist can be used to stop Entei from charging around so much while you try to capture these guys.

Once the Magmar are taken care of, we can focus our efforts on Entei. As mentioned before, he runs around a lot so it's difficult to capture him, but not impossible. In fact, quite strangely, he requires much fewer loops to capture than Salamence! Coupled with the fact that we're allowed to use Assists here and he doesn't even resist Plusle... this is actually a total joke! Capturing Entei is as simple as using Plusle's Discharge and circling him a bunch! Alternatively, Poliwhirl or Rhydon's assists can also probably help a lot as Entei is weak to both!

==============

Once Entei is captured and released, even Gordor must admit he was taken by surprise by your ability to do so! But, he remarks that the experiment was still a success. Even though he's yet to gain full control over a captured pokemon as he's envisioned, he feels he's not far from achieving such a feat. With that, he bids us adieu and leaves.

It seems we've averted a major crisis! As we go to leave, we'll run into Aria again who is amazed that we were able to capture Entei and stop the eruption. We finally get the chance to explain to her what happened and she comes to understand that none of this was our fault.

The Charizard we captured before flies through the chamber, and even Aria can see that he's thankful for what we did. We had no choice and we did the right thing. It seems she's finally starting to see us for the professional we really are!

With that, we return to the ranger base to report the story to Cameron and decide what our next move should be. Indeed, the story is certainly ramping up now and stakes are starting to rise! We're not just doing boy scout missions anymore. We're in the big leagues and we've got some serious national threats on our hands! It's time to start participating in the Go-Rock investigation directly! ...hopefully, anyway.

[Aura]

Summerland

After stopping the volcanic eruption at the Jungle Relic by capturing Entei and calming it down, we return to the ranger base to report everything that happened to Cameron. Cameron decides to take full responsibility for everything that transpired since he was the one who told us about the jungle relic challenges to begin with. Lunick mentions that he'll be staying around Summerland for a little longer while Aria returns to Fall City to continue her investigation.

As we go to leave ourselves, we receive a message from Prof. Hastings! He requests an audience with us at the Ranger Base in Fall City. Cameron tells us Prof. Hastings can be rather impatient, so he recommends we take the Dragonite Bus to Fall City, not that we really have an alternative.

So, we take the Dragonite Bus back to Fall City!

================

Fall City

When we arrive at Fall City, we find Prof. Hastings right outside the Ranger Base. He wastes no time in telling us about how the Go-Rock Squad has been replicating his Super Styler for their own nefarious purposes, and that the nearby Dusk Factory is being used to mass produce them. He provides us with a new mission: Investigate the Dusk Factory and shut down production of those foul styler knockoffs!

A bit of confusion is expressed here at Prof. Hastings assigning us a mission even though he's not a ranger leader, but he assures us that, as chief of technology, his requests for rangers are automatically given the same weight as an official mission. Essentially, he outranks even the ranger leaders! Regardless, we're really starting to feel the effects of climbing up the ranks now!

Dusk Factory is to the east of Fall City. It's the area we came across before while tracking down the Skitty throughout Fall City. It's also the place where the Go-Rock Squad member was treating that Machoke poorly before. So let's make our way there!

===================

Mission 7: Investigate the Factory!

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

Outside the perimeter of Dusk Factory, there's a gate that requires a password. As it turns out, the keypad only requires a 2-digit pin number, which Prof. Hastings, with his superior intellect, is able to deduce is 60 because it looks like the word "Go". Sure enough, after punching in the password, the nearby gate opens up, permitting passage inside!

In the front, there are some doors. One of them won't budge and if we go inside the other one, we'll find a wooden gate we need a Cut icon to break through, so we won't get very far in this direction either. Instead, we'll need to go around behind the factory.

    

Back here, we'll find a whole minefield of Voltorb! These guys will SelfDestruct if you get near them! Getting caught in the explosion will send you flying away! In capture mode, they'll SelfDestruct right away, causing them to go still for a bit while the explosion clears up. This is your opportunity to capture them! While the SelfDestruct is a little intimidating, they're actually a really easy capture since they leave themselves so vulnerable afterward. As you'd probably expect, these guys can be used to charge your Styler for 5 units each. But there's a lot out here! You may as well catch a bunch to heal up later on. You might actually need it!

In addition to the Voltorb, you'll find a little Alley Cat Meowth back here as well! This guy will be needed to break that wooden fence from before with Cut.

If we press a little further on, we'll find a Makuhita!

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

Dusk Factory

Inside the factory, we'll need to use Meowth's Cut to cut down the wooden gate in the way so that we can proceed deeper into the factory.

 

Up the stairs, we'll find a Go-Rock Grunt with two Voltorb! A very simple round, just be careful with their SelfDestruct attack and you should be good to go!

But before you move on, there's a crate in this room that you can use Makuhita's Tackle to push over, revealing a pitfall!

If you drop down, you'll fall onto a ledge in the lower floor with a Growlithe on it! Growlithe is an easy capture. He doesn't provide any Field Skills, but he does offer a Fire-type assist. This is an assist that will prove very useful, so I recommend holding onto this guy to the very end of the dungeon. Trust me, you won't regret it.

Once you've captured your Growlithe, you can drop down the ledge and continue up the stairs. This time, we can pass through the doorway where the grunt was before. This will take us to an overhang between the two main buildings of the factory. As we cross the bridge, we'll hear some racket from below. It seems the Go-Rock Quads are rehearsing their signature introduction sequence! They don't seem aware we're here yet, so we can press on without any impediment just yet. It isn't long before the Quads head off to the Go-Rock hideout, leaving Garret behind to watch over the factory.

As we infiltrate the next room over, we'll find a Magnemite that can be used to heal without having to backtrack all the way outside to use those Voltorb.

Behind the next door we'll find a Pikachu trapped inhumanely in a cage! The cage is hooked up to some sort of generator that's draining Pikachu's electricity and essentially using it as a living battery! Hastings requests that we rescue the Pikachu ASAP! Unfortunately, we'll need two Cut Icons to break through those iron bars, so we'll just have to press onward in search of a pokemon that can help us.

The next room brings with it a new terror: Mr. Mime. These guys actually aren't so bad if you know what to expect. But they're really intimidating at first. As you probably expect, they use Barrier to create invisible walls that will damage your styler if you bump into them! Thankfully, you can usually capture them pretty easily if you start circling right away. But leave a Mr. Mime around for too long and those barriers might become too overbearing! You might want to use some Poke-Assists to help if that ends up happening. Mr. Mime provides a Psychic-type assist but no field skill.

This room seems to be some sort of assembly line for Go-Rock's mass-produced stylers. It really goes to show just how massive of a scale this problem is becoming, watching these stylers being produced by the hundreds like this...

 

As we work our way through a handful of Mr. Mime throughout the factory floor, we'll eventually reach a door that leads into another Go-Rock Grunt with two Mr. Mimes! Being forced to capture them together like this makes it a little tricky, but you do have Poke-Assists to help!

    

The next room over is a wide-open room filled with Hypno! These guys will fire Confuse Ray at you to reverse your controls. In capture mode, they're a little annoying between their projectiles and wandering around, but I don't find myself getting damaged much by them. There's also a Magneton here which can be a lot of help for healing up.

In the northeast corner is an alcove with a few stairways. The one going down is blocked off by scrap metal that needs two Fire icons to melt while the other goes up to the roof!

  

Up here, you can find some Wingull and a Pinsir! Pinsir provides a Bug-type assist and two Cut icons! With this, we can free that Pikachu! So, we go to do just that!

There's also a Go-Rock Grun tup here slaking off with a Slakoth. Isn't that cute? Approach him and he'll sic his Slakoth on you, or you could just leave him be. 

With a bit of backtracking, we make it back to the generator and use Pinsir's Cut to break through the iron bars, releasing Pikachu from its prison! This causes the electricity in this part of the factory to shut down. Prof. Hastings deduces that, with a factory of this size, there must be more generators scattered throughout. If we want to shut down the assembly line, we'll need to destroy all of the generators throughout the factory! Of course, with the power out, the room gets a lot darker, and with darkness comes...

   

The ghosts of the night! That's right, Gastly begin to appear in place of Mr. Mime and Hypno from earlier! These guys are actually a little scary. They're capable of abducting your friend pokemon if they sneak up on you! You'll want to try to capture them if you see them licking one of your captured pokemon. Capturing Gastly is a little easier said than done, though. It likes to fade away and reappear elsewhere, similar to Abra. It'll also periodically fire Shadow Ball which takes up a lot of real-estate on the screen. With a little patience, these guys aren't too hard to capture.

And if you do capture one, this'll be your first chance to try out the Ghost-type assist! Whenever you complete a loop with the ghost effect, even if there aren't any pokemon inside the loop, a ghostly apparition will appear and begin floating around the screen. The apparition will trap any pokemon that it touches, making them vulnerablre to capture.

  

After making your way through two rooms of Gastly, you'll want to head to the south where you'll find a grunt with a Muk and two Beldum -- what a nightmarish combination! I know I said to save Growlithe to the end, but you can go back and capture another one, I still recommend doing that. But I also recommend using Growlithe's Fire Assist here. These Beldum can be a real pain in conjunction with Muk! Once the Beldum are out of the way, you can easily capture Muk with a Psychic assist from Hypno or Mr. MIme.

 

The room this grunt is guarding holds a Houndoom and a Pichu! Houndoom has the fire icons needed to melt the scrap iron from before, allowing us to go down to the first floor of the main building!

  

Taking the stairs down, we'll be jumped by a grunt with two Machop and a Machoke! A Psychic assist can do wonders here!

  

 

  

A little further ahead and you'll find a grunt surrounded with a ring of 8 rattata! The sheer numbers might sound intimidating, but they're all captured with a single loop so it's really as simple as just looping each of them once and grouping together as many as possible.

The next room is the main entrance to the factory. Prof. Hastings won't allow you to leave out the door just yet until all of the generators are destroyed. So, off we go looking for the remainder of those! On the east side of the hall, you'll find a door leading into a room filled with Rocket Hideout-style travel platforms! Step on them and you'll be moved in the direction they point. With a little finagling, you can make your way to the Pinsir or Magneton if you need them, but you can also get them elsewhere in the dungeon. You'll need a Pinsir, obviously, in order to break the bars on the generator, but the one from the rooftop will do if you went to capture another one already. Otherwise, you'll need to solve the arrow panel puzzle to make your way over to the Pinsir here!

As you make your way to the very back, you'll find the second generator! By enlisting Pinsir's help again, we can bust the bars on its cage and set it free!

Strangely, though I definitely expected to see some Gastly and maybe even a Haunter, there were no such pokemon that appeared in the darkness this time.

  

The other door nearby leads to another open warehouse-looking part of the factory filled with Machoke. This is our first chance to actually use a Machoke we capture! They come with two Rock Smash icons and a Fighting-type assist.

Crossing this room will take you to a staircase that leads up to another narrow hallway! Part way through here, you'll find a door with a panel next to it. Prof. Hastings once again makes a brilliant deduction: The red button next to the door must be the way to open the door! So, he presses it, but... oops! The button was actually an alarm! This will cause a Go-Rock grunt to come running out the door reporting for duty only to be surprised to see us instead of any sort of higher up.

 

The grunt comes at us with two very speedy pokemon. With the help of a Psychic assist or even Plusle, they shouldn't be too tough to capture. Ariados spits Spider Web around the screen to create spots your line can't cross while Crobat shoots SuperSonic.

  

With the grunt defeated, we can make our way into the room he came from and find quite a few pokemon! Ludicolo and Scyther! Scyther is a new one! It jumps around a lot which can be a little annoying, but you know what I'm about to say will help, I'm sure. Plusle's a really useful little guy, isn't he? Anyway, Scyther provides three Cut icons instead of Pinsir's two as well as a Bug-type assist.

As we return to the narrow hallway and continue down, we'll eventually find a room with the final generator: A large one with a Raichu inside! The Raichu is inside a large cage that requires three Cut icons to break through rather than two! So, that Scyther's already getting some use! Once we free Raichu from its cage, the power goes out again and, again, I'm surprised not to run into any Gastly! I was honestly expecting this to be a recurring gimmick throughout the factory: Shut out the lights and Ghosts appear, starting with Gastly, then Haunter, and then Garret would fight you in the dark with a Gengar or something, but apparently I'm off the mark completely. Anyway, with the last generator destroyed, we can make our way out of the factory!

Only, as we pass through the warehouse, we're stopped by Garret. He of course knows we're the ones who have been shutting down the machines, but he taunts us with the fact that they've already made a whole bunch of stylers so you haven't really accomplished much by shutting the factory down. Still, he's not about to just let you leave scott free.

In comes Scizor which Garret calls to attention with his Bass Styler! Here's our next boss!

Vs. Scizor

This is exactly why I strongly recommended saving that Growlithe to the end of the dungeon. Scizor was a huge pain for me to capture. Since Scizor is a Steel-type, he resists just about every type of assist you have access to. Lovely. He's just like Scyther in that he bounces around a lot, but he requires a lot of lines. He's also more aggressive than Scyther, constantly snapping at your line with his claws. Growlithe can help cut back on his mobility and restrict his movement. Plusle's Discharge is a huge boon without Growlithe, though. Coupled with a Machoke's strength boost, assuming you don't completely botch it like I did, you should be able to capture Scizor fairly easily. But if you do screw up, building up your Partner Gauge enough to capture Scizor is rough. He moves around a lot.

Once you successfully capture Scizor, however you manage it, Garret will be genuinely impressed by your skill and will proceed to explain to you exactly what's going on. He explains that the factory is being used to manufacture Stylers referred to as "Power Stylers," following that the one Gordor used in the Jungle Relic to capture Entei is a prototype of this styler and is amused as he tells us to imagine just what the finished product will be capable of if the prototype caused us so much trouble.

Prof. Hastings is unintimidated by Garret's words and thanks us for our assistance in shutting the factory down. With that, our mission is clear! Who really knows what our next step will be? I suppose it won't be long before we receive news of more dirty deeds by the Go-Rock Squad. We'll just have to wait and see next time!

[Aura]

Fall City

Upon clearing the Go-Rock Squad out of Dusk Factory, we return to Fall City's base with Prof. Hastings. Hastings uses his authority to promote us to Rank 8 after our impressive performance at the factory! With this promotion, we're now able to use Ice-type poke assists! Joel arrives shortly after to report to Prof. Hastings. Apparently Spenser's and his investigation have taken them to a place called Wintown where Go-Rock's hideout resides. Sepnser has remained there to continue gathering intel while Joel has returned to analyze what they've found already. Prof. Hastings suggests the idea of sending Spenser some assistance in the form of a ranger and they both agree to send us! The only complication is that we've never been to Wintown, so we'll need to make our way there. They mention an underwater tunnel in the Saffra Sea that will take us to a place near Wintown, but we'll need to ask Cameron of Summerland for more info, so off we go!

===============

Summerland

As always, the leaders are one-step ahead of us. By the time we arrive at Summerland by Dragonite Bus, Cameron has alread received word from Joel. He explains the underwater passage in more detail but regrets having to inform you that swimming through it is entirely impossible. But, he recalls the gift he gave you before, the submersible Aquamole! If they can get that up and working, we should be able to take the underwater passage to Wintown! His mechanic has been hammering away at the Aquamole this whole time, but as we speak, the mechanic runs up to Cameron to inform him that there are some parts missing because the Taillow he sent to carry them back started racing and dropped them in the western part of the jungle! Of course, we'll offer to help the engineer retrieve the missing parts.

The sailor just outside Olive Jungle tells us that he saw the Snorlax that was blocking the path down by the harbor, gazing north 

====================

Find the Aquamole's Parts!

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

Olive Jungle

As we enter the Jungle, the mechanic tags along with us to help us look for the missing part.

The only problem, as we'll soon see, is that he's deathly afraid of bugs! So, for this next section, we'll need to avoid any Bug-type pokemon. You can't even so much as capture one or he'll run back to the entrance to the jungle.

We'll make our way a little deeper into the jungle to the west where we'll find that, indeed, that Snorlax has moved!

 

The Phanpy in this area have been replaced with a Treecko and Manectric, perhaps to discourage you from using Tackle on the trees and making things more difficult for you as you as more Bug-types appear.

With him out of the way, we can access a new part of the jungle! This area is a bit of a maze, but we'll just have to keep heading north to find the missing parts. The most important thing is that this area is absolutely stuffed with bugs!

   

You'll need to worm your way through Beautifly, Venonat, Silcoon, and Ariados in order to make it to the end. Ariados and Beautifly are perhaps the most threatening of these as Ariados is fast and persistent while Beautifly can fly over the walls. Your best bet is to just avoid being seen by these guys wherever possible.

Eventually, we'll come across some vines that lead to a small plateau with more vines that go further ahead. If we ignore those vines and go to the right, first...

We'll find our way to a Bayleef that was visible before! Bayleef is a little annoying to capture, but not too tough as long as you're careful. It'll periodically shoot Razor Leaf (remember, they boomerang back if they don't go off screen!) Just like Flygon and others, you'll want to draw loops slowly around Bayleef and wait for the right timing to actually complete the loop in front of Bayleef. You won't have the time to circle it enough between attacks and this mechanic won't let you bring any Bug-type assists into this capture as long as he's with you. But you'll probably want this Grass assist since it lasts longer than Treecko's.

Returning back to the main path, we can climb the second set of vines which leads to a small isolated pond with a Magikarp in front of the missing Aquamole parts! The mechanic runs ahead to retrieve the parts, but accidentally kicks the Magikarp into the pond.

   

The Magikarp is angered by this and three more join it. The mechanic is humble about his mistake and offers to fix the issue on his own, but then...

A Gyarados emerges between them! Suddenly, his ability to handle the situation is a total impossibility so we'll have to step in! The Magikarp just flop around uselessly and aren't threatening at all. They're really just there to get in the way of your capture attempts on Gyarados. Gyarados is a huge target, even larger than Salamence, so it's difficult to capture him without assists. He'll also periodically stop and fire Hydro Pump, so you'll need to find openings between his attacks to complete your loops similarly to Bayleef. As you can probably imagine, this is where Bayleef and Treecko come into play! Gyarados is treated as a Water-pokemon so he is vulnerable to Grass assists as well as Plusle's Discharge. I recommend using Plusle's Discharge to paralyze the pokemon so that you can capture the Magikarp wasily and get them out of the way, then you can turn your attention toward that Gyarados and capture it with the assistance of Bayleef. Just be careful, Gyarados is a huge target and can easily break your line as simply as by turning around so try to leave extra space on both sides and draw as perfect a circle as you can!

After capturing Gyarados, you and the mechanic return to the base. This is actually it for this session! It was a very short-lived chapter, but we're one step closer to reaching the Go-Rock Hideout in Wintown, so next time we'll see what we can do about that old Aquamole!

[Aura]

Summerland

Returning to the Ranger Base after retrieving the parts from the western jungle, it doesn't take long at all for the Aquamole to be finished up! Consequently, Cameron assigns us our next mission: To take the Aquamole and make our way to Wintown where we'll be united with the leader of the rangers in the town: Elita.

The mechanic points us to the Aquamole which has been freshly polished up! We can find it at the southernmost dock of Summerland. Using this, we can get started on our mission!

=================

Mission 8: Aquamole to the North!

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

Upon taking the Aquamole, we'll dive underwater and follow the undersea passage northward where we'll emerge from a small lake! We receive a message from the mechanic upon arriving where he explains that he accidentally only filled it up with enough fuel for a one-way trip... well that's... dangerous... but at least we were able to make it here! But we're not quite at Wintown yet. We'll need to press forward. It's not long at all before we're met by a soft-spoken man named Chris. He speaks very curtly and requests that we follow him. We've got no other direction to go, anyway, so we'll follow him down some wooden scaffolding into some sort of ravine.

Panula Cave

When you first arrive in the next cave, you'll find a sign advertising that Jynx can be found dancing on their own private stages throughout the cave. Pressing a little further ahead, we'll start to see what they mean by that. This first area is filled with steppes that you'll need to climb above and drop down onto in order to see everything there is to see here. Some of these isolated steppes have Jynx on them that will use Sweet Kiss to confuse you and invert your controls, so be careful that you don't run into any pokemon you don't want to capture!

     

There are a handful of different types of pokemon we'll find in this starting area. These include: Pikachu, Raichu, Golbat, Snorunt, Whismur, and, of course, the aforementioned Jynx.

Raichu is our first pokemon to provide three charge icons as opposed to two. As far as I can tell, this seems to fully charge your styler. At the very least, it can charge your Styler by 36 units so it's a hefty charge either way!

Golbat is a bit less useful here. It provides a Poison assist and two Gust icons. It's more or less just an annoyance when trying to capture other pokemon. It flies around a lot and fires off gusts of wind as it moves. With a little patience, it isn't too tough to catch on its own.

Snorunt is our first Ice-type! Once again, it's easy to capture on its own, but with other pokemon to distract you, its Icy Wind can become an annoyance. Try to capture it quickly! Snorunt provides a Rock Smash icon and an Ice Assist! The Ice Assist leaves Icy Spikes on the ground that will freeze any pokemon that touches it! Unfortunately, even though Ice is normally super-effective against Flying-type pokemon, by nature of being a ground-based assist, these spikes won't affect Flying-type pokemon. It's a bizarre limitation but I suppose that's why they were very intentional about pairing these guys with Golbat to make sure you found that out early on. Still, the Ice Assist seems very powerful! It's essentially an extra Discharge and it'll work on Ground-type pokemon!

Whismur seems to only be useful for its Browser entry and nothing more. It doesn't have any icons or even an assist. I'm really still trying to figure out what the practical purpose of these pokemon are... Whismur will use Uproar whenever you make contact with it and periodically on your own, so try and give it some space!

Jynx is treated as a Psychic type and provides a Psychic assist. They aren't really worth-while to capture, so I recommend just capturing one for the Browser and ignoring the others unless they're in your way. They'll disrupt your capture attempts by blowing Sweet Kiss, so your best bet is probably to slowly and carefully capture them with one loop at a time.

At the top of the steppes, we'll find a passageway from which Chris will step out and, again, request we continue following him.

The next room introduces Medicham who is a Psychic-type that provides a Fighting assist. It offers two Rock Smash icons. It will periodically use Mega Kick to launch shockwaves and disrupt your capture attempts, so try to capture it quickly!

The next room in will bring you to Chris who will tell you there's a sleeping Steelix in the way.

Sure enough, in the next room we'll see exactly that: A Steelix blocking our way! It seems we'll need three Water icons to interact with it. We'll need to find another direction to go for now.

The next room over features a Solrock! These pokemon will use Flash whenever you make contact with it. Flash will linger over a huge portion of the screen and damage your styler if it's caught in the flash of light. It lasts for a little while, so it's best to avoid contact with Solrock while trying to capture it. Solrock is treated as a Rock-type with a Psychic assist. 

  

Nearby, there's a small lake with a Poliwrath around it. As you approach it, Poliwhirl will jump out of the lake to its aid, so you may want to utilize Plusle to capture them more easily. Poliwrath is just like what you'd expect. He fires larger Hydro Pumps and takes more loops to capture. Where Poliwhirl provided two Water icons, Poliwrath provides three.

But before we move on, we can see a Wobbuffet in this room as well! It's blocked off behind a giant rock that requires to Rock Smash icons to break! Thanks to Medicham, we can break the rock to make our way to Wobbuffet!

Wobbuffet is a Psychic-type who provides a Psychic assist. As you try to capture it, it'll instantly inflate to a really large size making it a bit annoying to capture. Thankfully, it doesn't seem very aggressive, really earning its title as the "Patient Pokemon." Once again, it's not really worth the effort of capturing outside of just for its ranger browser entry.

As we make our way back to the Steelix, we can use Poliwrath's water icons to startle the Steelix awake and cause it to retreat into its burrow. Chris thanks us for our contribution and continues to lead us deeper into the cavern.

Down the stairs inside the Steelix's den and around the corner, we'll run into Dusclops! While Dusclops is a bit of an intimidating pokemon, it's a shockingly easy capture. Dusclops moves around very slowly and the only major threat it provides are the large Shadow Balls it will fire. The Shadow Balls move very slowly, though, and just take up real-estate on the screen. But with how slow Dusclops moves, it's unlikely he'll cause any problems if you just take your time with the capture. Dusclops is a Ghost-type that provides a Ghost-type assist, of course.

Further ahead, Chris will lead us to a woman who introduces herself as Elita: Leader of the Wintown Rangers. It seems that "Silent Chris," as she calls him, is one of those Wintown Rangers.

   

Elita explains that we're not far from the exit to Wintown, but that the exit is blocked by a litter of Piloswine. She explains they've been separated from a baby swinub due to recent tremors caused by a rampaging Steelix. Elita is here investigating the cause of the Steelix's rampage, but if any of us want to get past those PIloswine, we'll need to seek out that missing Swinub!

Along this room is an icy floor that we'll slip around on. Remember your navigational skills from mission 3!

 

Among the pokemon down here, you can find Glalie, the evolved form of Snorunt, and Sneasel! Glalie is an Ice-type with an Ice-type assist and no Field Skill,, ironically enough. Just like Snorunt, Glalie will move around and attack to break your capture attempts. Glalie, however, will attack with Aurora Beam and takes more loops to capture. Meanwhile, Sneasel is treated as a Dark-type who provides a Dark-type assist and two Cut icons. It's very quick so you may want to use Plusle to capture it. Alternatively, you can capture it just by keeping your stylus on the screen and making quick loops one at a time before retreating while keeping the stylus touching the screen.

If you head to the Northwest corner, you'll see the Swinub we're after drop down onto a higher plateau. It looks like we'll need to find a way up there. In the nearby cavern, you'll find a Dusclops and a Golbat which I recommend capturing both and bringing them with just to keep them from respawning in this hallway. But behind these two is the real kicker: A hole that will plummet you onto an icy slide! As soon as you land, you'll slip and slide down a long corridor. If you hit any of the many pitfalls along the way, you'll fall uselessly back to the main part of the icy floor room. If you want to land on the two plateaus, you'll need to make it to the end of this slide--Don't ask me how falling down onto a slide, and then sliding further down causes us to land on top of a ledge we couldn't climb, I couldn't tell ya! Anyway, there are actually two ledges you can end up on depending on whether you take the path to the east or west. It may take you a few tries to reach these exits because you move pretty fast down this slide!

Taking the south-eastern exit will lead you to a ledge with Loudred on it! Pretty self explanatory. Harder to capture than Whismur, also has no icons or assist, total waste of time outside of the Ranger Browser.

The south-western exit to the slide will bring us to the ledge with Swinub on it! We'll need to capture Swinub and bring him back to his family to proceed! Swinub is actually deceptively scary. It only takes three loops but it'll charge directly at your styler as soon as it sees it! Be prepared to lift your stylus and circle him really fast! Swinub is a ground-type pokemon that provides a Tackle field skill and Ice assist.

Once you capture the Swinub, you'll need to make room in your party for it and then bring it over to its family waiting for it in the north-eastern corner.

    

The Swinub and Piloswine seem quite appreciative of our help and all leave together in peace. It's actually rather sweet that they were so worried about this one little Swinub! What a heartwarming scene!

A little further ahead and we can start to find PIloswine of our own to capture! Again, these are tougher versions of Swinub. Ground-type pokemon, Ice-type Assists, but three Tackle icons instead of one!

 

Taking the stairs will lead you to another area with Golem! Golem don't seem to disguise themselves as boulders like Geodude and Graveler, thankfully. They take a lot of loops to capture though and will frequently use Rock Throw to break your line. Nothing a Fighting assist can't help to alleviate! They aren't too hard to capture, though. They're Ground-type Pokemon that offer Rock-type assists and three Rock Smash icons!

A little exploring around this area will lead you to a passage that's blocked off by a chunk of ice which requries three Fire icons to melt. There's another chunk of ice near the Golem from the previous room as well. We don't have any Fire pokemon just yet, so we'll leave these behind for now. Instead, we'll continue onward where we'll find a winding path.

As you go through this winding path, you'll find a Sneasel. I normally don't mention repeat pokemon, but this is a special case. I strongly recommend that you capture this Sneasel if you don't still have one from earlier in the dungeon. This will make the upcoming encounter that much more bearable.

As we move deeper in the winding passage, our path will be impeded by the rampaging Steelix Elita was talking about earlier! It must be under the control of the Go-Rock Squad! We'll need to capture it to calm it down! But that's easier said than done...

===============

Vs. Steelix

Steelix is a Steel-type pokemon, so it resists just about any and all Poke-Assists available throughout the dungeon. It is vulnerable to Plusle's Discharge, but it moves off screen so frequently that it's likely to evade Discharge as well! It's weak to Medicham's Fighting assist, but good luck with that one. This thing is so huge that you're gonna have a hard time circling it even twice in a row! What makes this even more stressful is that, unlike most pokemon, Steelix will actually damage your Styler if it so much as makes contact with your capture line!

However, we do have an assist that's useful even against pokemon that normally resist it. In the same way that the Ice Assist was useless against Flying-types, Dark assists, too, don't really rely too much on the matchups of their type from the main series. Having the extra line length is just universally useful!

While this thing is near impossible to capture with your standard capture line length, you can capture it much more easily with the help of that Sneasel I stressed you should capture! WIth this double line length, you can complete a loop around more or less the entire screen! With this and a little bit of care and patience, Steelix can be captured with minimal headache.

==============

After capturing Steelix, a Go-Rock Grunt will expectedly turn up, complaining that you've ruined their plans to use the Steelix to block off the path to Wintown. Elita will chase the grunt out of the cave, but the rest of the trip form here should be pretty straight-forward!

North Road

As we emerge from the cave on the other side, we'll find ourselves at a place called North Road! Our path to Wintown has no further obstacles! But the music sure is an exiting build to the adventure we must be coming up on!

=================

Wintown

When we finally arrive in Wintown, our mission is officially completed! Elita will tell us the Grunt ran off ahead toward Sekra Range where, with the help of Joel and Spenser, the Rangers have been able to pinpoint the location of the Go-Rock hideout. Elita then stresses that we're about to go on perhaps the most important mission of our career and that we'd better be fully committed and willing to put everything on the line because things are about to get serious. I'm not gonna lie, I'm kinda excited to see where things are going from here!

With that, we get our signature fade-to-black that tells us it's time for a next time! We'll have to see what kind of challenges await us next as we start to look into this Go-Rock hideout! No doubt we'll be dealing with Billy of the Go-Rock Quads there... I wonder what kind of pokemon he'll use to try and take us down?

[Aura]

Wintown

Having finally arrived at Wintown, we reach the Ranger base to regroup with Elita! She commends us for our triumphs in Panula Cave and officially promotes us to Ranger Rank 9! With this promotion, we now have access to every partner gauge our styler can provide! That's 5! Plusle's Discharge can reach new unprecedented strengths!

After our promotion, Elita provides our next mission, and it's our most dangerous yet: We are to act as a decoy! Spenser has infiltrated the Go-Rock Squad hideout and is trying to recover the Super Styler that was stolen. We'll need to act as a diversion in order to distract the Go-Rock Squad so that Spenser can make his move. It's sounding pretty serious, so there's no time to waste!

Another ranger, Freddie, is assigned to be acting as a decoy outside of the Go-Rock Squad's base, so it seems we won't be alone! Elita sends Freddie off to meet with Chris and tell sus the location of the secret base. It's on the mountain overlooking Sekra Range. 

If we go upstairs in the Wintown Ranger Base, we'll be able to see Elita's partner pokemon: Skarmory! Skarmory sounds to be incredibly observant with sharp eyes that never miss a thing.

We can hang around town and talk to the townsfolk, but we can't gather very much interesting information from them, save for a man near the exit to the north who will give you a heads up about a cabin about half-way to the mountain. There's supposedly a couple who are incredibly friendly toward rangers in particular, so it sounds like it'll be a good place to stop by on our way up!

=================

Sekra Range

================

Mission 9: Hideout Infiltration!

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

This mission is a bit of a doozy. We'll need to pull out all the stops as we march onward!

As we start moving forward, the Charizard from the Jungle Relic will fly overhead! Apparently it's still pained over its experience with the Go-Rock Squad before. Aria arrives and tells us this as well as the fact that she tried to capture it but failed. She believes Charizard will only listen to us and requests that we go and help it! We agree, of course, and continue moving forward with our new goal in mind!

      

In this first area, there's a whole bunch of pokemon available right away! It's honestly a little overwhelming! We've got Quilava, Nuzleaf, Poliwhirl, and even Arbok! Nuzleaf are newbies! They are treated as Dark-types but provide Grass-type assists and a Gust field Skill. A bit of an identity crisis, I'd say! It's fairly easy and quick to capture though, thankfully. Arbok is a much greater nuisance. It's a headache since it likes to dart around the screen and spit puddles of acid to break your line. You may wan to use an assist to help with this capture.

The Arbok is near a cracked wall that requires three Rock Smash icons to break through. Once agian, we'll have to keep this in mind for later.

  

  

As we march forward, we'll be stopped by a Go-Rock Grunt with six Seedot ready to stall us! While the abundance of Seedot might appear overwhelming, they all get captured really quickly so this encounter turns out to be a bit of a joke. Just draw a single loop real quick around each one and you should be good. Since Seedot only needs a single loop, it's very easy to get multiple at once.

Pressing onward, we'll find a PIkachu we can use to recharge our Styler!

Further along is a fork in the path.

If we try to continue north, our path will be blocked by, you guessed it, a Snorlax. We'll need to go around.

  

      

  

As we do, we'll be stopped by the same grunt from before. This time, he has two additional Seedot! It's the same story as before, just capture them all for a quick win!

  

     

  

Further ahead, and he'll stop us yet again. This time with one that is genuinely a bit more challenging. The addition of a Nuzleaf means we can't simply capture everything in a single quick loop. Still, it's not exactly hard to pick them off!

 

Up ahead, we've got some Piloswine! If you need to go back to Wintown or the beginning of the area, you can take a shortcut by heading south here and jumping down the ledge. Otherwise, you'll want to press on into the deeper woods.

If you read the sign in the next area, it'll tell you that the tree behind it is Shiftry's Tree, or "Shiftree" for short. And if you get too close, you'll see exactly why it has that name.

    

A whole bunch of Shiftry will jump out of that tiny tree! It's actually quite impressive! Shiftry is still pretty simple to capture on it sown, but in a large group like this, they're far more challenging as you'd probably come to expect. Not only do they move around more than Nuzleaf, but they'll also fire whirlwinds that branch off in several directions. You'll probably want to use an assist here. Shiftry are treated as Dark-types, so they aren't weak to Quilava's assist, but the fire assist can still help keep them from moving around so much and make 'em a lot easier to capture. Shiftry provide Grass-type assists and two Gust icons.

You can find a Sneasel if you follow the path to the east. This will lead to a dead-end. Sneasel was incredibly useful in capturing Steelix, so it's definitely earned a spot in my heart!

Just a bit further ahead, we'll find the cabin we were told about back in Wintown. If we speak to the Hiker inside, he'll recharge our styler for us! His wife will tell us that the area is often covered in fog and that this fog is apparently created by a certain type of pokemon... sounds like foreshadowing to me!

Nearby, along the river bank, we'll find a Raichu to the north of the cabin! A wonderful find!

There's a bridge over the river that we'll need to cross to move on. On the other side, we'll find a Go-rock grunt trying to show off for a female grunt.

He tries to capture an Altaria for her to show off his capture style, but botches the capture! This bothers the Altaria who creates a dense fog over the area. This fog will not only make it difficult to see anything down here, but it'll make the mountain too dangerous to climb as well. Aria suggests we'll need to capture that Altaria and get it to thin the fog before we can progress. And so, we'll need to hunt this guy down in this foggy plain.

Throughout the plain, there are several smaller Swablu who will distract you from your goal. The Swablu are pretty easy to capture, mind you. They're Flying-types (meaning vulnerable to Paralysis). They offer a Flying Assist and a Gust icon!

While wandering around through the fog, you'll soon stumble across Altaria! Altaria is a Dragon-type which means it's not affected by Paralysis. You may want to resort to a different assist to capture it if you need to. It'll cover the screen with a thick fog that makes it difficult to track the pokemon's movements as you loop it. Try to wait for it to slow down and draw loops around it while it's moving slow. You may have to anticipate its movements yourself while the fog is up. It's actually a lot easier than I've probably made it sound.

Upon capturing Altaria, the fog will lift! As we continue up the mountain, the two grunts run up to us and, rather than get in our way, actually... thank us? Not even in a taunting way, they would've gotten in a lot of trouble for causing that fog to appear and making it more difficult to reach the hideout, so we've helped them out a bit! They don't try to get in our way here and instead rush on ahead to their hideout. Let's follow after them!

In the next area, there's a creek you'll need to cross by knocking over a log. It requires three Tackle icons to do so. If you don't have one of the Piloswine from before, there's one a bit further north of here that can be used to knock the tree down.

As we continue to the other side of the creek, we'll find the plentiful trees are starting to be replaced by charred remains. Aria calls attention to this: Was there a forest fire, or did a Pokemon do this? Well, we're about to get our answer.

Charizard appears at the base of the stairs ahead. This guy must be the source of the forest fire! We'll need to capture Charizard again in order to ease its pain.

This capture is a little bit different than the Challenge of Fire. Charizard will fly around spitting fire this time rather than waltzing around in a constant field of embers. (He will still use that attack though!). This is a good place to use those Poliwhirl assists!

After capturing Charizard, he seems much more at ease once again, which is also pleasing for Aria. We can now focus on our mission!

Before we get to climbing the mountain, though, I'll point out that there's a cave entrance nearby that seems to be completely empty for now while a path to the south will connect back to the other side of that Snrolax from before. With our bearings made, let's get to climbing that mountain!

As we begin to climb, Golem will fall down from above! If they land on you, they'll knock you around and even off the ledges causing you to lose some progress. Be careful not to get hit!

You'll also find Tangela nearby! This guy isn't too important to go out of your way for, but this is one mission where that Vine Whip skill actually will be useful. But, there are Tangela much closer to the pole we need to use it for. Though, you may feel free to use these guys to have an easier time capturing Golem!

We'll soon meet up with Freddie who mentions that the Go-Rock Grunts seem to be appearing from up above. He says it's odd, though, because the only building up there is the Fiore Temple which is sealed so nobody can get in.

If we continue on ahead, we can see a grunt to the West and another area to the East. We can find some suspicious VIleplume-like Rafflesia over on this side which require three Gust icons to interact with where we unfortunately only have two. More importantly, though, there's a boulder which we can break with the help of Golem's Rock Smash! Breaking it will reveal a sprout that we can water with Poliwhirl in order to make grow into a vine that we can climb to another cracked wall. With another Golem's help, we can break through this cracked wall to reveal... an... empty chamber with an ice block in the way that requires three fire icons to melt? Fun times.

 

Blocking the path to Fiore Temple is a grunt with a Shelgon and Aerodactyl! We've dealt with Shelgon before, but Aerodactyl is more or less a mini salamence. Emphasis on the mini, though, because he only takes a few loops to capture making him infinitely easier. But similar to Salamence, Aerodactyll will fly around and occasionally slow down to fire Hyper Beams. Between these two, Shelgon is surprisingly the bigger threat.

Of course, even after defeating the grunt, the gates to the Fiore Temple are still closed making it impossible to go further beyond. I suppose for now we'll just have to look elsewhere for the Go-Rock Squad's hideout. As we walk past the temple, we'll find our way to a waterfall that was mentioned by Freddie.

If you take the stairs to the lower entrance, you'll find yourself at a bridge that crosses to a dead end with a Raichu. As you cross the bridge, a Magikarp will leap out of the waterfall and onto the bridge. Magikarp provides no field skill.

 

More importantly, remember how I said you can find Tangela closer to where he's actually needed? Well this is it, there's a Tangela here on the lower path that you'll want to capture. In addition, there's another on the higher path you'll also need. This is because the higher path will require not one, but two Vine Whips to cross the waterfall to the other side in order to progress higher up the moutnain! If you get stuck, fret not, you can simply jump down from the middle platform and land on the bridge from the lower path. You might even get a Magikarp out of the deal! Not that that's much of a consolation prize, but it's the thought that counts, right?

 

We've got some Rock Climbing in the next area! Dodge through the two Gligar that are there to impede your progress.

As we reach the top, we'll find a Go-Rock Grunt slacking off and revealing the location of the secret entrance! We watch as he returns to the base, using a secret elevator concealed beneath a definitely inconspicuous perfectly-spherical boulder with a very natural-looking square button on the outside.... definitely... well-hidden...

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

Go-Rock Squad Base

When you first arrive inside the base, you'll meet up with Chris who will warn you about the hazards in the upcoming room. There will be red panels on the ground that we have to avoid or we'll be taken back to this entrance area.

Chris will also add that he isn't actually "silent" like Elita suggested, he's just very awkward around her. Honestly didn't expect that at all, got a laugh out of me!

The next room is a long cooridor with the occasional panels that will occasionally glow red. If you step on these panels while they're red, an alarm will sound and a Go-Rock Grunt will come to force you out of the building. We don't have any pokemon in here, so unfortunately we can't exactly fight them off. So, you'll have to stop at each set of panels and wait for them to deactivate before you can progress.

In the next room, you'll find a winding corridor with multiple panels connected that light up in more complex patterns. You'll want to slow down and watch the pattern at each set. The path you expect to take might not necessarily be correct! They pull a lot of clever tricks so take your time and pay close attention!

Another corridor lies in the next room. This one is filled with panels that light up in a circular pattern. It's much easier to get through this path, though.

As you take the stairs and head deeper into the basement, a metal door will close behind you, trapping you inside!

In front of you in this room are two green warp panels. It wouldn't be an evil team base in Pokemon without these things! Things are very non-linear in this area, so I'll do my best to piece together a coherent path for you, but honestly most of my playthrough was a lot of redundant backtracking purely out of my own lack of observational skills, bad memory, or just poor faith in the level design. It might be a little difficult to paint without screenshots, so I hope this section won't be too confusing. If it's any consolation, it's pretty confusing in gameplay, too.

  

Behind the warp panel on the left, you'll find a Mankey, Magneton, and Ralts. Mankey is a Fighting-type who provides a Fighting-type assist and a Rock Smash icon. Ralts is a Psychic-type who provides a Psychic assist. Ralts tends to teleport around a lot, so it can be a little annoying to encounter. It'll also teleport around a lot while you're trying to capture it, but if you use the same strats you'd use to capture Abra in the capture challenge, you should be good to go.

Taking the next warp tile in this direction will lead you to a storage area with a lone Go-Rock Grunt. He may not seem very threatening on his own, but approaching him will cause him to bring out the real threat:

  

A Makuhita, Mr. MIme, and Ludicolo jump out from each of the warp tiles in the room! These guys aren't so bad when capturing alone, but togetheer they're a bit of a nightmare. Ludicolo will flood the screen with song, Mr. Mime with barriers, and Makuhita will punch at your line if you try to take things slow. These play off of each other so obnoxiously well. You can't capture Mr. Mime quickly because you'll hit Ludicolo's notes, but you'll have a hard time capturing Ludicolo because of Mr. Mime's barriers. A Discharge from Plusle is definitely the way to go! Don't even entertain this obnoxious challenge.

You can find Swampert down in this room. He'll blast Hydro Pump to break your line. You might want to use Assists to deal with him. Swampert is a Ground-type pokemon with a Water assist and three Water icons.

If you take the warp panel near Swampert, it'll lead you to a room with another warp panel which will lead you to another that has a Blaziken inside of it! Blaziken is a tough capture, he'll dash around the screen and aggressively kick at your line, too. You might want to use assists like Plusle's or Swampert's to slow him down. He provides a Fire-type assist and three Fire icons.

Taking the next warp panel will lead you to a corridor with three warps next to each other.

  

Taking the first warp panel in this room will lead you right next to a Go-Rock Grunt who will attack you with two Mankey and a Golem!

In this room, you'll find Electabuzz. Electabuzz will use Flash frequently, so you'll want to capture him between attacks. Electabuzz will offer three Charge icons for a full heal!

The warp panel in the south-east corner will take you back to the room with Swampert. If you used Swampert's assist to capture Blaziken, then you can feel free to capture another here!

 

Behind the warp panel to the south-west is a room set up exclusively for an ambush. Thankfully, the grunt in here just boasts about the strong pokemon the grunts in here have been entrusted with before ironically jumping you with... two Slakoth. They're easy to capture so this ambush isn't too scary.

Taking the north-western warp panel will instead lead you to a forked path with a Go-Rock Grunt to the West or South.

  

The one to the South will attack you with Pinsir, Heracross, and Scyther. Again, assists are a life-saver! Scyther can be a pain on its own, let alone with Heracross constantly dashing into your line. We did just find Blaziken, you know!

   

The grunt to the West seems unguarded, but he'll surprise you with four Zubat and a Swalot! Swalot will roam around the screen and hurl sludge to block your line as you try to capture the mobile Zubat. I recommend using Ralts for this one to keep them all levitated so that Swalot won't get in your way. Once the Zubat are out of the way, Swalot won't be too tough to capture since he doesn't move much.

  

Both of these grunts are guarding a warp panel in the south-west corner that will lead you to a room with a Ralts, Magneton, and Wurmple. Wurmple's sole purpose seems to just be to make capturing Ralts easier if you're not good at dealing with their teleport.

The warp in this room will take you full circle all the way back to the entrance! From here, navigating to the end is pretty simple, actually. Just find your way back to the room with the Electabuzz, past the Swampert and take the warp panel next to the grunt at the desk. This will bring you back to that corridor with three panels. We've been throught he first two, so heading to the left will take you to the end of the maze! There's just one more fork with two warp panels.

  

The warp to the west will take you to a grunt who will attack you with a Metang and two Beldum. You'll want some Poke-Assists because these guys are incredibly obnoxious. Metang especially. He's incredibly aggressive and will charge at your line constantly, even more frequently than Beldum.

The warp to the east will lead you to a room with a metal fence. We'll need to find a cutter! We've yet to find one, so we'll have to head south in search of one.

 

Down here, we'll find a Croconaw and Graveler. Croconaw can be used to wake up the Graveler if it disguises itself as a boulder.

As we step further south, we'll find ourselves at an outdoor cliffside where Lunick will meet with us! He tags along with us, saying that he was assigned to aid you by Elita. Even if he wasn't, he'd come to help you on this dangerous mission, anyway!

 

Anyway, out here we'll find a Taillow and Sneasel to capture. Sneasel will provide the Cut icons needed to break that metal fence and proceed onward!

Behind this fence is a hallway without an Electabuzz and a Mankey a bit deeper in, both of which will prove incredibly useful soon. Ahead are various colored doors. Putting two and two together, I think you can tell what's about to happen. If it's not obvious by now, entering the first room will show you exactly what I mean.

 

In here, you'll find Tiffany of the Go-Rock Quads who will attack you with not one, but two Camerupt using her Violin Styler!

===============

 

Vs. Tiffany

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

Tiffany's two camerupt are far more annoying than just the one. The Swampert from brefore will be a great boon here since it can be used to stun these guys for longer. Even if we have Swampert's assist, though, these guys are still really tough. Try to get them trapped on opposite sides of the screen so that one doesn't interrupt you with an eruption while you're focused on capturing the other. Thankfully, since Camerupt is treated as a Fire-type instead of a Ground-type, we can use Plusle to stun them if we're depserate as well. 

==============

Upon her defeat, Tiffany laments being doomed to only being a "cute, refreshing, beautiful, stylish, smart, rich, exquisite, stylish, and boring woman." She then runs off to her older brother in the other room. I think you can see where this is going if you couldn't before. That's right, we've got a boss rush of sorts with each of the Go-Rock Quads all in harder states than before. And if you remember, we've yet to actually face off against Billy. So there's no telling what kind of monstrosity he could have.

In preparation, you'll probably want to go capture some pokemon from the previous areas. The nearby Electabuzz can also help keep you refreshed. Sneasel is also almost universally useful.

  

Following Tiffany into the next room will reveal Clyde with a Slakoth and Vigoroth alongside his signature Slaking. He'll use his Drum Styler to have them attack as well!

================

  

Vs. Clyde

Clyde's Slaking is just as scary as it always is, and Slakoth will make things even more difficult due to its odd projectile cut attack. Sneasel can help you capture these two, but it's not foolproof! Try to stay vigilant! Oddly, Vigoroth seems to be the easiest to capture because Slakoth seems to love to hang around Slaking's ankles the whole time. Vigoroth on the other hand will run around on his own, causing him to stray from the pack, making it an easy target if you can paralyze it at the right time. The Mankey coupled with paralysis can help you capture Slaking with minimal resistance as well.

===============

Upon defeating Clyde, he'll reveal his motivations for supporting the Go-Rock Squad: It's purely a money making scheme. He wants to strike gold using the power of Pokemon. When questioned about the Go-Rock Squad's motivations by Lunick, Clyde reveals he has no idea about the reason for the Go-Rock Squad's creation. H eonly knows his own motivation and that's good enough for him. Curious...

Clyde and Tiffany will both retreat and move on to the next room. We know how this will go. Time to recoup and gather up new pokemon again before going on to the battle with the next member!

  

As we follow Tiffany and Clyde to the next room, we'll find Garret and his Scizor along with two Scyther (yikes!) With his Bass Styler, we've got another fight on our hands!

=================

  

Vs. Garret

Blaziken and Plusle can be a big help here! Plusle can make quick work of the Scythers, but Scizor is another story. Mankey's Fighting Assist will be especially effective against Scizor, so it might be worth it to try and use that in conjunction with Plusle, and focus on the Scythers with Blaziken.

================

Upon defeat, Garret reveals that the Power Styler has already been completed, but that only the boss has the final product. Perhaps he's interested in keeping the power to himself? That's certainly concerning...

Garret, Clyde, and Tiffany all retreat down a set of stairs through which we can follow.

Heading down here, we can find some Metang who provide Psychic-type assists and two Tackle icons.

 

 

 

 

As you march forward into the next room, you'll find a large number of statues that resemble Machamp. Among these statues are real Machamp that will chase after you as you approach! You may want to capture one or two with the help of Metang. Each one will provide a Fighting assist as well as three Rock Smash icons.

At the end, you'll find a rather psychedelic-looking door. This one must be Billy's. Going inside, we'll be met by Billy and the rest of the Go-Rock Quads who will go through their schpeal once again. Lunick demands the return of the Super Styler, which Billy happily refuses. Lunick also asks about where Gordor is hiding to which Billy insists he isn't hiding at all. He even tells us his location: The Fiore Temple where he's conducting a very important experiment. I certainly don't like the sound of that! But now, Billy isn't going to let this opportunity for payback slip! With his Guitar styler, he calls for his pokemon to attack!

===============

 

Vs. Billy

We've got some really rad boss music here! Billy's pokemon aren't anything to shake at, either. Tyrannitar, Larvitar, and Pupitar! Tyranitar is like a more aggressive counterpart to Salamence, frequently using Earthquake to send shockwaves across the entire screen and firing Hyper Beam to blast away your line. Larvitar will frequently dart around and aggressively chomp at your line whenever you get close, so it's hard to capture him as well! Pupitar will also stir up a lot of trouble by using Rock Slide to rain rocks from above to stop your line.

Tyranitar is treated as a Rock type rather than a Dark-type, to my surprise. So, it's vulnerable to the Psychic assist from Metang and weak against Machamp's Fighting Assist. It's also vulnerable to Plusle's Discharge, but Larvitar and Pupitar are both Gorund-types, so be wary of their immunity. Use your assists wisely and try to capture any stragglers that are separated from the main pack. Swampert's Water assist is especially helpful since it lasts a long time and is effective against all three foes. With some persistence, you can easily capture Larvitar and Pupitar, leaving Tyrannitar for the kill. Pair Discharge from Plusle with a Fighting assist from Machamp and you should be good to go!

================

After defeating Billy, he'll be surprised by your skill at handling the Styler. He even decides to surrender the Super Styler to you, but he also has one more thing to show you: The self-destruct switch for the secret base!

He presses it, leaving you at a crossroads. Let's not forget that Spenser is still in here! He admits that it's rather lame to take such desperate measures to defeat you, but he's willing to swallow his pride just to prevent you from interfering with his father's plans... that's right, it's now been revealed that Gordor is the father to the Go-Rock Quads! Not that it's too terribly interesting of a twist. I guess villainy just runs in the family!

The Quads retreat through a secret pitfall, but swear that they'll find a new start after acknowledging that their father won't be happy about them blowing up the base. Now we're left to worry about the Self-Destruct sequence and the Super Styler! We can't let it get destroyed! Thankfully, Spenser arrives to congratulate us on a job well done and reveals that he's recovered the Super Styler! He then commands us to escape to save our own lives. His mission isn't complete yet until he's rescued all of the pokemon inside the base. We don't have any time to argue, so we dive through the pitfall and arrive in a small cave.

 

This cave leads out to another cliffside where Elita and Cameron are waiting to pick us up. Lunick pleads with them to go and help Spenser, but Elita brings up that they're on a mission to rescue us and insists that we should trust Spenser's ability to complete his mission. And so, we must retreat to Wintown.

I've gotta say, even though I really don't expect this game to have the balls to kill off a character like Spenser, the stakes here are surprisingly heavy! Here's hoping everything turns out okay!

[Aura]

Wintown

As we return to the Wintown, Elita congratulates us on a resounding success and officially promotes us to the highest Ranger Rank. We are now Ranger Rank 10! With this promotion, we now unlock our final party slot, granting us the ability to bring 7 pokemon with us in addition to our partner Plusle! That's a lot of different assists! And that's gonna be important because we're about to head into the final chapter of the main story and we're going to want every bit of help we can get!

Lunick of course expresses concern over Spenser, but Cameron and Elita assure us that he's certainly succeeded in his mission. Though they have no hard evidence, Spenser is known to appear when the situation is most dire and disappear when the job is done. More importantly, Elita directs our attention to our most urgent mission yet: We are to march up to Fiore Temple, where Gordor is barricaded, and stop him from whatever he's planning to do with his Power Styler.

And so, we're off for our next mission!

Sekra Range

     

As we explore the Sekra Range, you'll notice the pokemon spawn locations have shifted a little bit. It's not too terribly different, but pokemon like Arbok are a bit more common.

More importantly, the Snorlax that was blocking the shortcut to the mountain is no longer there, so we can easily make our way back to the Fiore Temple without taking that roundabout path from before.

    

Of course, if you want to take the long way around, you can, and gain access to some of the pokemon from over there as well. Both paths will rejoin at the burned forest where you captured Charizard before.

You can now find Ralts here! Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe Ralts could be found here before, only in the Go-Rock Hideout.

Anyway, tucked away in the northeastern corner, there's a cave entrance that leads to what used to be an empty cave.

If we go inside, we'll find that this seems to be the final resting place of Snorlax! Wow, I guess calling it that makes it sound a bit grim, huh? Well, there's still nothing we can do to wake him up just yet, so it's gonna be longer still before we can actually do anything with this guy. But as long as he's inside this cave, he's not bothering anybody!

Pressing on up the mountain, we can find Golem. This actually leads me to a small mistake I made my previous session. I left these guys behind thinking they wouldn't be very useful, but I forgot that they actually have three Rock Smash icons which makes them capable of destroying some of the obstacles in the nearby area! I've just grown so used to seeing obstacles we couldn't clear yet that I didn't even think twice about it. So, I decided to take this time to go and break through those barriers we couldn't get through before!

Going back to the area at the very entrance to Sekra Range from Wintown, there was a cracked wall on the across the lake just north-east of the stairs. Using Golem here will reveal a secret cave where we can find Kangaskhan! Kangaskhan is actually not nearly as threatening as you might expect. It was a pretty simple capture all things considered. I can't even recall what its attacks were. Unfortunately, this isn't a very good trade for the Golem you need to get in. Kangaskhan offers the same field skill: Three Rock Smash icons, but no Poke-Assist being a Normal-type. This makes it objectively inferior to Golem. But, it is a very rare pokemon, so this is more of a discovery for the Ranger Browser.

   

Of course, climbing the mountain higher will reveal the pokemon you could capture here before. I don't recall being able to find Larvitar before, I found him by dropping off of a cliff. He provides a Rock-type assist and a Single Cut icon.

More importantly, just next to the entrance to Fiore Temple, there's a large boulder which Kangaskhan and/or Golem is capable of breaking! Destroying the boulder will reveal a sapling that needs water to grow. Bring Poliwhirl in from the beginning of Sekra Range. You may want to grab another Kangaskhan or a Golem on the way because, after watering that plant, you'll find another cracked wall that requires Rock Smash to break through!

Inside, you'll find a cave littered with Gastly who will try to abduct your pokemon if you aren't prepared! Soldier your way through to find a block of ice in your way... yup, all of that work and you're still short of your reward. Looks like we'll have to come back here when we can find a strong Fire-type...

Cutting our losses, we'll need to step out of this cave and return to the task at hand: Climbing up the stairs to Fiore Temple!

===================

Fiore Temple

==================

Mission 10: The Fiore Temple

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

This place has a very serene atmosphere about it from the moment you arrive. However, it won't be long before you're interrupted by a Go-Runt Grunt ready to block your way with a large Firey Door which requires three Fire icons to break through it. Lunick suggests we'll need to find a Fire-type to break through the door, but there's none in sight...

That is, until Charizard arrives on the scene! Out of gratitude for us once again, Charizard comes to our rescue and uses his Flamethrower to unlock the Fiery Gate, granting us passage to the temple grounds!

     

As you explore the grounds here, you'll find the area to be loosely symmetrical. Lots of the pokemon you can find on one side can be found on the other. This is also our first chance to actually utilize Aerodactyl, who provides no Field Skill and only a Flying-type assist. The other pokemon you can find here include Golem, Donphan, Aerodactyl, Ariados, Raichu, and Grovyle. There are a few others, but I think it's important to cover the main puzzle of this area before we get to them.

As you make your way to the back of the area by navigating through a maze of one-way cliffs, you'll eventually make your way to a sealed gate. In front of the gate is a stone tablet that describes how the gate must be opened, and upon approaching it, three pedestals emerge from the ground before you. The Stone Tablet reads the hint to this puzzle: You will need to gather three pokemon on the pedestals. As we check each pedestal, we'll find that each one has an incredibly subtle hint toward the type of pokemon that needs to stand atop it: A blue pokemon on four legs with the power of water, a yellow pokemon on four legs cloaked in Electricity, and a red pokemon on four legs cloaked in flames. If it isn't obvious already, we'll need to seek out the three standard Eeveelutions.

Vaporeon can be found on the west side. It fires off Aurora Beams quite aggressively and is very quick to flee, so you're probably going to need some help from Plusle to capture this one. Vaporeon offers a Water assist and two Water icons. More importantly, it's one of the key pokemon we'll need to open to edoor, so let's bring it to its pedestal! With Vaporeon in our party, we simply have to tap on the pedestal to have it take its place.

Jolteon can be found on the eastern side. He dashes around a lot, so Donphan may be wanted to help capture him. Easy! Jolteon offers three Charge icons but, again, is more important for its use as a key here! We'll plant Jolteon down on its pedestal!

Flareon is perhaps the most well-hidden of the three of these pokemon. Just south of the stone tablet, there's a small entrance that goes underneath this area we've been exploring.

     

There's lots of different pokemon that can be found down here: Swalot, Medicham, Gengar, Glalie, and even Espeon and Umbreon!

Swalot we've captured before, but this is our first chance to use it! It just offers a Poison assist, though, so we haven't really missed out on much. Gengar also provides no field skill and mostly just serves as an annoyance in the overworld due to its tendency to abduct pokemon. But, it does offer the ever-useful Ghost assist, so you may want to bring him along even if just to shut him up.

Espeon and Umbreon offer Psychic and Dark assists respectively. No surprises there.

At the very end here, you'll find the Flareon you're after. It moves around a bit too much to comfortably capture slowly but its Flamethrower fires just frequently enough to make capturing it quickly difficult as well. It might do you well to toss a Golem at this one. On your way back to the pedestals, watch out for the Gengar! They could very well abduct your Flareon and force you to go back! But, if you just make a beeline for the exit, you should be fine even if they grab Flareon. It takes a while for the pokemon to actually be taken away.

  

With Vaporeon, Jolteon, and Flareon all taking their place at the pedestals, the gate will open and the pokemon will scatter! We're marching ever closer to the final battle! And I recommend you take a bit of time to stock up on your favorite assists. There's lots of good ones avilable to you and we're about to get into some fairly tough battles, so be warned and come prepared!

Just ahead, we'll find a giant pyramid-shaped temple which we'll need to climb to the top of! Of course, we won't be met without resistance as there are Elite Grunts along the way!

  

The first of these grunts comes at us with three Linoone! These guys are annoying but not particularly dangerous. They'll dash around almost constantly and stop briefly before changing direction. While they're stopped is your chance to capture them! If you're feeling patient, you can always keep trying to capture them during this tiny window, but you're probably just going to want to use the help of assists to aid you.

  

The next grunt comes at you with the middle-form Johto Starters! These guys aren't particularly tough on their own, but together, they're a huge pain! They seem to compliment each other's weaknesses really well! Get rid of Croconaw first since he doesn't move around much and his water makes it difficult to capture Bayleef. Bayleef's projectiles make it difficult to ignore, though, and so does Quilava's constant running around. A well-timed Discharge from Plusle can help with that, though.

Once Croconaw is captured, you might want to turn your attention to Bayleef. It'll take some time, but eventually with some patience, you should be able to capture Bayleef which will in turn make Quilava significantly easier to capture since he's alone now.

 

The next one comes at you with a Blaziken and Blastoise! A very intimidating duo, but admittedly a bit more managable than their predecessors. Plusle's Discharge can help you capture them both. Blastoise will fire rapid Hydro Pumps.

Now then, before marching forward, I highly recommend you not only go back to save the game, but restock on assists, too. You want to be not only fully healed, but you also probably want to bring a Raichu or two forward as well. You'll also want pokemon to help with capture. Specifically, Umbreon, Espeon, Vaporeon, and Gengar are incredibly helpful.

  

As we reach the peak of the pyramid, we'll find Gordor with his Power Styler which has been designed to look like a hybrid between an organ and a high-tech keyboard! In hindsight, I probably should've predicted that the Power Styler would be an organ considering Gordor's main theme and the instrument-based stylers of the Go-Rock Quads.

Gordor will finally reveal the full extent of his plans up here. He is more than happy to share his plans with us now that they're so far along. Not that it's very in-depth. In fact, it's got a lot of very apparent flaws. Gordor's goal here is to use the Power Styler to control the three Legendary Beasts and force them to unleash chaos on the land of Fiore. With raging wildfires, terrible thunderstorms, and destructive winds, the Rangers will be completely powerless to stop such a calamity. But Gordor, with the power of his Power Styler, will be able to qwell the rage of the monsters and release them into the wild. The idea here obviously being that the Legendary Beasts would be blamed for the destruction and the Go-Rock Squad would be hailed as heroes for saving the world! All the while the Ranger Union would be completely humiliated. The Go-Rock Squad would be seen as the true rangers and, finally, Gordor would be seen for his self-proclaimed superior intellect over his long-time rival Prof. Hastings!

Of course, we're not going to let him get away with such a heinous plan, so he chooses to demonstrate his power by sicing the legendary beasts on us one after another in an endurance challenge!

=================

Vs. Raikou

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

Raikou opens up by calling forth powerful Thunder attacks from the sky. This will linger for a long time, making him incredibly difficult to capture. Since the lightning lingers for so long, it's nearly impossible to capture him with your own skill. I recommend using Gengar's Ghost assist to halt him in his tracks and keep him trapped until a clearing in the Thunder so that you can quickly start circling him.

=================

Of course, Gordor will once again be impressed by your ability to capture a Legendary Pokemon, but laughs at you because of how pointless your efforts are. It doesn't matter how much skill you have with capturing them because you're bound to get tired and run out of resources eventually. He just has to keep using his Power Styler to bring them back! And with that, he sends the next one after you!

=================

Vs. Suicune

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

Where Raikou challenged your ability to capture a pokemon quickly in a tight window, Suicune challenges your ability to capture several pokemon at once. It will open up by using Double Team to split into several clones of itself. The clones will all disappear with just one loop while the true one will need to be looped several times, of course. Each clone is capable of attacking with Aurora Beam just as well as Suicune himself, so be wary! Naturally, as a Water-type, Suicune is vulnerable to Plusle's Discharge, so the solution to this one is pretty standard. It's incredibly unfortunate, however, when things go south. It's very easy for one of the clones to be off screen when you use Discharge. If this happens, they'll still be running around as you try to capture Suicune. If this happens to you, you may find use out of Espeon's Psychic assist to get a second chance to stop them, or Umbreon's Dark Assist to make looping multiple at the same time easier (to quickly get rid of those pesky clones). Gengar can also be a huge boon here if you used something else for Raikou.

================

Once again, Gordor mocks us at our persistance. He considers using his Power Styler to capture Plusle and Minun, but decides it's just a waste of time to capture weak pokemon like them when he can just have the legendary pokemon instead. This insult really struck a chord with the two pokemon, however, who immediately jump onto Gordor's styler and begin to destroy it! Gordor tries his best to stop them, but he can't get to the styler with the two pokemon there so he has no choice but to watch helplessly as these two "useless" pokemon destroy his life's work!

With the Styler destroyed, Entei is freed from its control and immediately starts stepping toward Gordor with clear intentions... and if I'm being honest, I would totally be okay with just letting this happen. I mean, honestly, he kinda has it coming. But, Lunick tells us we need to save Gordor because it's a ranger's job to help people and pokemon in danger. So, we'll need to capture Entei in order to calm his rage and save Gordor from its wrath.

===============

Vs. Entei

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

What regal music!

Anyway, Entei here is significantly more challenging to capture than he was at the Jungle Relic. To start with, Entei is shrowded in several flames. These flames will go away as you draw loops around him, but until they're gone, they'll damage your Styler if you touch him. In addition, there are also pillars of fire sprouting up at various points throughout the fight. If you haven't used it yet, you'll probably want to heal up with Raichu because damage is very easy to take here. I strongly recommend focusing on removing Entei's flames first. He doesn't seem to rejuvinate them, so once they're gone, they're gone for good. From there, you'll want to use Golem or Vaporeon to stop his movements. That's pretty crucial because if he's moving around, he'll lead your line into the fiery pillars along the edges of the arena.

This fight isn't so bad if you're prepared, but coming off of the heels of Raikou and Suicune, it's very likely you'll probably get a game over your first try here. And that's incredibly unfortunate because dying at any point during these three captures means you have to load your last save and watch the entire cutscene again.

Once you have Entei captured, though, Gordor finally has to accept defeat. Spenser finally arrives, revealing that he's safe thanks to Joel arriving just in time so that the two could work together just like old times and get out with the Super Styler and rescued the pokemon from within. So now, Gordor's knock-off Power Styler is no more and the Super Styler is finally in the right hands! It seems all is good!

Sorry for the poor quality video, this was the only video I could find of the credits!

And with that, the game's ending goes on. We follow a reunion between Gordor and Hastings where Gordor's bitterness continues to shine even after Hastings offers him a position to work with him just like old times.

And after a brief reflection on everything that just happened, our mission is complete and we head out to the thunderous applause of all the people of Fiore! And this is the fundamental flaw I can't help but notice in Gordor's plan... his plan was to cause this great calamity so that he could stop it and be heiled as a hero? But... all of the people of Fiore already seem to be well aware of what was going on and are overjoyed by our victory... did Gordor really think he would come out on top in the end? Especially considering the negative reputation the Go-Rock Squad had forged for itself? Yeah....

Anyway, the credits roll after this! As always, there's still more to the game even after the credits roll, but what a fun story it was! There weren't any particularly crazy plot twists or anything like that, but the game wasn't afraid to be silly and just have fun with itself. And this game was definitely a lot more about the gameplay which, as much as I've found myself griping about the challenge while playing, the game was a lot of fun overall and I'm not dreading continuing to play beyond the credits! I'll try to hold my thoughts on the gameplay off until we're done playing and just focus on the story. As far as I can tell, there's no more story content aside from some side stories that we'll definitely be covering. Unfrotunately, there's not really much to talk about the story. I found the characters to be really fun, I laughed a lot at the game's sense of humor, and I just found myself loving playing through this game! There were some points that got me frustrated, but it was overall a pleasant experience! But we're not done!

Upon completing the credits, you'll unlock a new mode: Ranger Net along with a special mission! We'll check that out eventually, but first, I'd like to revisit the main story and explore what's new in the postgame! If you pay attention during the credits, you'll notice it seems to highlight a lot of familiar areas with secrets we've yet to explore... something tells me the world is about to open up a lot more... I'd like to look into that some more.

[Aura]

Ringtown

So now that we've beaten the game, we've unlocked a lot of new content to cover--our playthrough's not quite finished just yet! But we're still going to set the Ranger Net stuff to the side for now and focus on the main story. After destroying Gordor's Power Styler and saving Fiore from calamity, the world is about to open up a lot more than before!

Upon loading up your completed save file, you'll be in the Ringtown Ranger Base where you'll be granted the authority to bring pokemon outside of their own homes. A ranger of our caliber needs simply to wish for the pokemon to return to their homes upon release and they'll make it back just fine! In other words, the world is our oyster and we can now go out and explore freely, bringing pokemon from any area to any area! As you can imagine, this means a lot of areas that were previously difficult to explore are now available for exploration!

Now, the world is actually quite big and covering everything we haven't been able to deal with the first time around is a bit of an overwhelming task. However, as of right now, I don't really want to rely on guides to ensure that I cover every little corner. I'd like to cover my experiences just retracing my steps to visit whatever new areas I'm able to find on my own without relying on a guide to do so. Once I'm done with this second-over across the whole world, I'll go back and use a guide to find whatever rare pokemon I'm still missing. I do think I'd like to complete the Ranger Browser before moving on from this game, but I don't want to just make a beeline for every single one. I feel like this sense of exploration and discovery is a big part of the game, even if it does introduce a bit of tedium here and there. And, oh boy, is tedious the right word to describe some of the things this post-game easter egg hunt will turn into.

On a side note, before you're set free to explore on your own, Prof. Hastings will arrive and ask you to try out a new upgrade to your Styler! It sounds exciting, but all he does is add a Statistics screen to your pause menu. I'm not really sure why they decided this needed to be a postgame feature but here we are. You can now see stats like the total distance you've walked, loops drawn, pokemon captured, etc. So... horray? I suppose it is sometimes nice to reflect on how far you've come from the beginning of the game.

Anyway, we're finally set off into the world to keep our skills sharp by capturing and releasing as many pokemon as we can!

I'm not really sure what the best approach to covering this part is. I want to thoroughly cover each area, but I found that might lead to some rather boring posts, so instead I'm just gonna play it by ear for a bit before I try and find some consistent pattern of stopping points. In this case, I think I've found one of those!

===============

Lyra Forest

Lyra Forest is our first stop! This is where our journey began and where it will begin anew!

       

You may notice fairly quickly that the pokemon we can find are slightly different now. A lot of the pokemon the Go-Rock Squad used to attack us with can be found out in the wild now! Including Linoone here in Lyra Forest who offers two Tackle icons! Zigzagoon, Chikorita, Bellsprout, Mudkip, Torchic, and Marshtomp can all still be found here. If you recall, however, there were also two bushes that could be cut here. Let's go deeper into the forst to get some pokemon who can cut them down! There are some trees that Linoone can tackle, but as far as I can tell, nothing seems to fall out of them.

I've gotta say, being able to carry pokemon with you wherever you go rather than having to start from scratch every time you enter a new area feels so nice! It gives you a lot more freedom to solve puzzles how you like and, personally, I find that it makes the game a lot more relaxing. Especially with the knowledge that I'm moving forward at my own pace without being forced to deal with Go-Rock Grunts and the like along the way.

    

Going into the next area, you can now find Swampert out in the open! That's a little intimidating! Scyther can be found here as well. Other than that, Bulbasaur, Cyndaquil, and Phanpy can be found here same as always.

 

Using the local Phanpy, or Linoone to flex our newfound priviledge, we can tackle the trees here in search of Beedrill and Ninjask!

And with Beedrill's Rock Smash, you can break the rock just around the corner from the entrance to the area and walk along the riverbank where you'll be met by a Wartortle!

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

Lyra Forest Labyrinth

      

Going into the deeper forest, we'll start to find Taillow, Spinarak, Ivysaur, Weepinbell, Pikachu, and Swellow alongside our new guest: Scizor! Scizor offers three cut icons just like Scyther as well as a Bug assist.

 

Around where we first met Gordor, we'll find Victreebel alongside a Quilava. Victreebel is a new pokemon we've never encountered before! In the overworld, it behaves much like Weepinbell, it will suck you up and spit you out to the entrance of the area, so you'll need to make sure to carefully approach it from behind instead of charging head-first into it. In capture, it'll behave as you expect as well. Spitting puddles of acid more aggressively than Weepinbell and taking more loops to capture successfully. Just take your time and be careful capturing it. Patience is everything with pokemon like these! Don't get greedy with the amount of loops you try to draw at a time! It's a grass-type, so Quilava, Spinarak, Swellow, and even Weepinbell can help you capture it more easily!

Victreebel offers no field skill but a Poison-type assist.

  

In the meadow up ahead, we can find Hoppip and Beautifly. And further ahead still, we can find Ninjask who provides a Cut icon. But, this guy's so far out of your way that I'd really just recommend using Scyther for all of your cutting needs in the immediate area.

In the area where we encountered Murkrow before, we can now find Shedinja teleporting around. Shedinja is a Bug-type pokemon who teleports around a lot like Ralts or Abra. It's a farily easy capture, though, and will reward you with a Ghost-type assist.

I didn't actually verify this, but I'm pretty confident that using the Phanpy on the tree on this screen will result in a Murkrow just like before.

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

Lyra Forest

Making our way back on track, we've now found ourselves some Cutters! So, let's bring these guys forward back to the edge of Lyra Forest where we can use them to cut the bushes and see what's behind them!

 

The first of these bushes, right next to the "Middle Tree", houses two Combusken! These guys are much less out-of-the-way than the Quilava in the depths of Lyra Forest.

The other bush, going south of a patch of grass near the entrance to Krokka Tunnel, leads to a Bulbasaur. These may seem like fairly disappointing reward, but their proximity to Krokka Tunnel is very significant as you'll soon see!

=================

Krokka Tunnel

In Krokka Tunnel is where the impact of the entire world opening up this much really starts to hit.

               

To start with, all of the pokemon we could find here across our multiple visits can be found! We've got our Bellsprout, Pichu, Paras, Magnemite, Poliwag, Diglett, Machop, and Diglett from our initial trip, Pikachu, Raichu, Kirlia, Poliwhirl, Zubat, Graveler, Hariyama, and Magneton from our second visit when trying to clear the boulders, and now, there are a few new additions, too.

For one, Machamp now appears alongside the Hariyama on the first floor of Hariyama Dojo. I personally find Machamp easier to capture than Hariyama, but both really just require some patience. Of course, Kirlia is always an option to help you capture them. These guys are going to prove incredibly important for the new content as well.

In addition, with the ability to bring pokemon here from outside, some new pokemon are available to us.

If you bring a pokemon with two Gust icons, like Swellow from Lyra Forest, you can wake up the Parasect around the outside of Hariyama Dojo. This guys are a little underwhelming, though. It'll attack during capture by spreading spores. I expected this thing to have two cut icons since it evolved from Paras who has one, but nope, no field skill. This thing just provides a Grass-type assist. A bit of a waste, I'd say. It would be significantly more useful if it had two cut icons because...

Just nearby is a peg on the other side of a creek we couldn't reach before because we didn't have a vine-whip user. Remember that Bulbasaur from the grotto outside? This is where he's most useful! But be wary, you're probably gonna wanna come fully prepared for what's to come because otherwise you're going to be backtracking a lot.

You can carry 7 pokemon with you. I recommend bringing a pokemon with two cut icons, and five pokemon with at least two Rock Smash icons. At least one of them has to have three icons. Alternatively, you could forgo that three Smash Pokemon for now with the intention to return later in favor of a second vine-whip user. Either way, you won't have enough party slots to do everything in one trip so I recommend spending your first trip clearing all the obstacles.

       

You can bring the Bulbasaur from outside to cross the creek with Vine Whip. Since Parasect doesn't offer the two cut icons that it totally should, you'll need to get Scyther from Lyra Forest for Cut. As for your Rock Smash users, the Hariyama and Machamp from the Hariyama Dojo are a good place to start. The two Graveler are also enough if you want an easier capture.

Once you have your squad together, use Bulbasaur to cross the creek. You'll find a Magneton over here and two obstacles: A Metal Fence and a giant boulder. You can use Scyther to cut the metal fence to the north. This will reveal a cave entrance that will lead to a deeper part of the cavern. In here, you'll find a bunch of smaller boulders that require two Rock Smash icons to break. Don't just try to smash them all, there's no point! Just forge a path through the mess to get to the other side. You only need four Rock Smash users to break through to the other side. At the end of this path, you'll find a post on the opposite side of a ravine which you'll need another Vine-whip user to cross. I didn't bring one, so instead I'll head back and turn my attention to the other obstacle over here: The giant boulder.

Behind this boulder are a bunch of Diglett and a Dugtrio! Dugtrio is fairly simple to capture as long as you remember to keep your stylus on the screen. He pops up for much shorter amounts of time than Diglett, so you'll have to be quick with your loops, but the odds of it breaking your line at any point are pretty slim. Just take your time to capture this guy.

With the path cleared, we can now make our way into the depths of Krokka Tunnel on the other side of the ravine. We'll want to be prepared, though. I took some time to regroup and gather some of the pokemon I thought would be more useful:

      

You'll need to make sure to bring two Vine-Whip users with you. Other than that, we can bring whatever pokemon we want! I went with Combusken, Swampert, Swellow, Hariyama, and Parasect. I tried to stick to local pokemon expecting they'd probably be more useful for whatever boss I'd be facing back here. I was expecting some sort of Legendary or rare pokemon. Given the cave setting, I also figured there were a few others that could be useful. Swampert and Swellow I figured might be a help if I was dealing with some sort of Ground-type or to help against mobile pokemon, Swampert being especially helpful against a Rock- or Ground-type. Hariyama is just universally helpful thanks to the Fighting Assist, and Parasect I brought figuring this might be its purpose considering how out of the way you had to go to get it.

In addition to these guys, I grabbed a Magneton on the other side after using Vine Whip to cross over. With our squad together, it's time to march forward to whatever we're dealing with next!

On the other side of the ravine, you'll find a Tangela that can be used to make your way back across and an entrance to a deeper part of the cave.

In here, you'll be faced with the Legendary Pokemon that's been buried this deep all this time: Registeel!

=================

Vs. Registeel

Registeel is a slow-moving who likes to attack periodically, so you'll want to capture him with some applied patience. He'll attack by lifting his hands and using magnetism to call iron balls to fall from the ceiling! You'll really just need to keep your line in a tiny dot and pray the balls don't roll in your diection and force you to release your line. To reduce the amount of luck necessary, the Fighting assist can really help! Since Registeel is a Steel type, he's especially vulnerable to this effect. Unfortunately, being a Steel type means he's resistant to a lot of different effects.

Get the most out of your fighting assist but don't be greedy! If your line breaks it's all for naught. Taking your time makes this capture a lot easier. The iron balls are intimidating, but not nearly as much of a threat as they seem. Just focus on keeping your line small and drawing one or two loops at a time. Don't keep looping while his arms are raised because the electricity he fires from his hands to call the iron balls down will damage your styler and break your line.

Registeel offers no Poke Assist and three Rock Smash icons. More importantly, it's a rare browser entry!

After capturing Registeel, we can make our way back to the main area of Krokka Tunnel and continue onward toward Fall City.

There is one additional change on our way to Fall City: Blaziken can be found just outside Fall City where we captured Rhydon in the beginning of the game.

And as we arrive in Fall City, I think this is a safe place to end the session. Next time, we'll start exploring the areas around Fall City and maybe reach out to Summerland as well.

[Aura]

Lyra Forest Labyrinth

Before moving on to Fall City, I wanted to retread the deep woods of Lyra Forest because I was really confident that there were bushes I hadn't cut in the labyrinth itself. And, sure enough, it didn't take me too long to find them! I was a bit careless in searching the areas because, quite frankly, this is a bit of an annoying area to navigate.

First of all, in the meadow just beyond where you met with Gordor, there's a bush to the north that can be cut. The Nincada nearby are enough to cut through it, or you can use Scyther or Scizor, too.

Behind this bush you'll find a Venusaur in a secret grotto! Venusaur is a fairly easy capture so long as you move slowly and carefully. He doesn't move around a whole lot but his main threat is its Frenzy Vine attack where he'll launch a large seed from his flower that will sprout into a massive vine. He can create around three of these at a time and they linger for quite a while, but since he doesn't move much on his own, it's very easy to carefully draw lines around these vines and wait patiently for them to go away if you need space. Just remember, don't get greedy even if you think you see an opening to finish the capture! As I've learned over the course of this game, that will cause you to regret your choices more often than not!

Anyway, Venusaur is a disappointingly useless pokemon. It doesn't even provide a Vine Whip field skill like both of its pre-evolutions, just a grass assist.

The second bush I was missing was because I had a false memory of it. I could've sworn I recalled approaching it from the left, but it seems to be in the southwestern corner of the maze. It's a little frustrating to navigate this place because of all the spinarak falling on your head alongside the Weepinbell sending you packing. This area in particular is difficult to reach due to a Weepinbell standing guard, but you can either sneak past or capture the Weepinbell to get it out of your way so that you can make your way to the bush and cut it!

Behind this grotto is a Typhlosion! For this one, you might benefit well from using Plusle or Swampert to capture, but he's not unmanageable without an assist. As usual, he's just a tougher version of his previous forms. Just draw one or two loops at a time whenever he's still and clear away whenever he unleashes his Flame Wheel.

Typhlosion offers three Fire icons and a Fire-type assist.

With that, I do believe we've found everything in Lyrna Forest so let's get back on track with Fall City!

==================

Fall City

    

On the surface, Fall City doesn't change too much from what we saw originally. Skitty and Jigglypuff can now be found in the wild here, I'm not certain if they could be found before, though they're both required for capture over the course of the main story anyway, so it's not a big deal. You can also find Snubbull, Makuhita, and Meowth here.

The main draw to Fall City, of course, are the dungeons that are nearby. I think the best approach to exploring this place is to start from the north and move southbound. This will bring us to the underground waterways next!

================

Underground Waterways

            

The pokemon down here haven't changed since we last visited. We can still find Totodile, Drowzee, Medicham, Magnemite, Corphish, Rattata, Croconaw, Koffing, Raticate, Magneton, Tangela, Crawdaunt, and Squirtle down here  like before. But, unlike before, we can now push a little deeper in. We'll use Vine Whip to cross over to the scaffolding over the water where we found Squirtle before and we can now bring a pokemon with at least two Fire icons to melt the scrap metal here, such as the Blaziken we ran into just outside Fall City, allowing us to move a bit further in!

In here, we'll find Feraligatr who is really simple to capture with Plusle's Discharge. He'll wander around the screen and spit Hydro Pump. Strangely, Feraligatr provides three Rock Smash icons instead of Water icons. He does provide a water assist, though. I do believe that's all we can find down here, so let's make our way back out to see what else we can find around Fall City!

================

Fall City

If we use Cut to make our way back to the edge of Dusk Factory, where we found a Skitty in the beginning of the game, we'll find the area seemingly empty. But, a keen eye will notice a pokemon is actually here. Using the map will allow you to track the movements of this pokemon and encountering it will reveal that it's a Kecleon! Kecleon is completely invisible, making it somewhat annoying to capture. It'll occasionally fire Psybeams as well and, to make things even more annoying, it doesn't provide any assist or field skill at all! What a waste!

 

If we back out and go around to the front of Dusk Factory where we can enter, we'll find the Machoke that used to be working in the basement have moved outside! It looks a lot more fun out here, for sure! We can also bring a Fire pokemon to melt the scrap metal outside here to create a shortcut to the back area where all those Voltorb are in addition to a Makuhita and Meowth.

================

Dusk Factory

Now that it's been shut down, Dusk Factory is filled with a very ominous feel to it, but it's important to come through here if you're looking to 100% the game because there are a few new pokemon to see in here! So, let's get going!

      

As always, you can still find the pokemon that were here before, including Growlithe, Magnemite, Hypno, Gastly, Mr. Mime, Magneton, and PInsir. Gastly seems a lot more prominent now that more of the factory is shut down and the lights are off all over the place. Mr. Mime and Hypno are also now wandering the halls more prominently.

If you make your way toward the depths of the dungeon, you'll eventually find the pokemon Haunter! It's the evolution of Gastly and behaves just as you'd expect. Slightly trickier to capture, but still manageable. It provides a Ghost assist just like Gastly.

In the room with the arrow tiles, you'll find another invisible pokemon just like Kecleon! This time, it's Porygon who's hiding with the power of Conversion! Capturing Porgyon is very similar to Kecleon, though instead of Psybeam, Porygon will fire a Tri Attack. Just draw large circles and try to follow the blue number over its head to follow where it is! Or just use Poke-Assists. Just like Kecleon, Porygon offers no field skills or poke assists, so it's likely just a quick catch and release for the browser entry.

That's all there is to see here in Dusk Factory, so back we go into the light!

===============

Fall City

As we head south from Fall City, we arrive at the harbor where our game originally began!

  

Along the way, we'll of course find Ludicolo, Wingull, and Krabby.

And if we take the ladder down to the basement of the lighthouse, where we found Staryu to light up the basement in Prof. Hasting's lab, we'll now find no Staryu in sight. The area seems to be completely empty. But, if you approach the water...

Blastoise will jump out with a surprise attack! Once again, patience is a virtue with this capture. Wait for Blastoise to stop firing his Hydro Cannons and then draw a quick loop or two before he starts to fire the next one. Repeat the process until he's captured! Easy! Blastoise offers three Water icons and a Water assist. Personally, I feel like Blastoise should be the one with the Rock Smash field skill rather than Feraligatr, but I guess the devs didn't agree with that assertion.

=================

Once we're done with Fall City, we can hitch a ride on Lapras or take the Dragonite Bus to travel to Summerland!

===================

Summerland

Since we didn't really do a whole lot in Fall City, I figured I'd go ahead and continue onward to covering Summerland as well! There's also not too much to cover here, but it is still important for Browser completion, so let's get covering!

There's not much to cover here in Summerland, but before we progress into Olive Jungle, I'll go ahead and suggest that you probably want to revisit Ringtown with the Dragonite Bus and go grab a Taillow and a Swellow from Lyra Forest. Trust me, it'll save you a round trip.

===================

Olive Jungle

 

In the first area, we can find Treecko and Wurmple. Not very interesting yet.

More importantly, there are odd bushes nearby that, when hit with Taillow's Gust field skill, will be startled, revealing themselves to be Oddish, and begin walking around! This is our first chance to capture these guys! They're Grass-types with Grass assists and a cut field skill.

 

And if you use Tackle on the trees, you should still be able to find Silcoon and Slakoth. Moving on...

        

The pokemon in the next area are unchanged from before, even behind the Snorlax. You'll find Electrike, Phanpy, Manectric, Silcoon, Beautifly, Venonat, Spinarak, and Ariados. Though you can't find any Magikarp or Gyarados in the lake at the end of the path filled with bugs where we found the machine part for the Aquamole. More importantly, though, down this way...

I wanna say this is our first chance to actually utilize Venonat! It's a Bug pokemon that offers a Poison assist.

We can find Meganium! You know the drill, draw your lines carefully and avoid the Solar Beams. Meganium takes a while to capture but with some patience, it's nothing dangerous. Meganium offers three Rock Smash icons and a Grass assist.

Bayleef can also be found at the end of the path here, just before climbing the second set of vines that lead to the lake, you'll have to turn right to find it.

Returning to the main area and heading north, we'll find Vigoroth! He provides no Poke Assist but does offer two Cut icons!

  

The next area up features Lotad, Ludicolo, and Heracross. Heracross' three Tackle Icons can be used to knock over the dead tree opening up the next area where you can water a sprout with Lotad to make grow.

Up here, you can find Grovyle which can be used to cut the bush behind it.

This will reveal some Lombre in a secret spring!

 

Going past that vine and continuing in this direction will lead you to the dead-end where we chased that Go-Rock Grunt before and he disturbed all the Mankey and Primeape of the area.

Finally, heading further up north will lead us to some Gligar who will try and knock us off the wall we'll need to climb.

Up at the top of this cliff, you might be shocked to find Slaking roaming around outside the Jungle Relic! But that's not quite what I'm here for. Instead, you can make your way around on the right side and find some rather smelly flowers that require two Gust icons to interact with. Swellow's finally coming into play!

With this, we can wake Gloom up and get to work capturing it! Gloom provides a Cut icon and Grass assist.

=================

Jungle Relic

         

As we return to the Jungle Relic, we'll find it hasn't quite changed since the four trials were completed. It's still overrun with lava! That's all well and good, though, because that just means the fiery pokemon are still here! These include Numel, Electrike, Graveler, Slugma, Beldum, Manectric, Magcargo, Houndoom, Magmar, and Rhydon.

Using three Rock Smash icons, which I had no shortage of, but if you're looking for a local solution, Rhydon's your best bet, we can bust down the giant boulders in this area.

 

One of these will reveal a Tangela and Sceptile!

And Sceptile's three Cut icons can be used to cut down the wooden fence on the other side of the central chamber. Alternatively, you could simply bring Slakoth or Vigoroth in from outside.

In here, you'll find that the Poliwhirl from before have been replaced with Poliwrath! This is convenient if you don't have a pokemon with three Water icons for reasons you'll find out soon enough. Hint, hint, you're gonna want one.

If you make your way to the chamber where you had your encounter with Gordor and the Entei he'd captured with his experimental styler, you'll find Arcanine in Entei's place! How fitting to replace a Legendary Pokemon with the "legendary" pokemon! Arcanine is a little too agressive with his tendency to run around really fast and his Flamethrowers last so long they can be a pretty big nuisance. I stronfly recommend relying on Plusle or a Water, Rock, or Ground-type assist to slow him down. Arcanine offers three Fire icons and a Fire-type assist.

Before we make our way out of the relic, we'll want to continue a bit further down the path, past the doorway that led toward this chamber.

We'll find another chamber with some Charmander in it which we saw before but couldn't do anything about because of a pool of lava that blocked our way! But now that we have a pokemon with three Water icons, we can cool the lava and make it traversable again!

Dowsing that lava pool will reveal some Charmeleon. Charmelon is slightly more aggressive than Charmander, but an easy capture. It offers two Fire icons. Pushing further still, you'll find an odd landmass shaped like Charizard, but... no luck with finding an actual Charizard.

On your way back out, however, you may notice a small hole in the ground. Falling through this will take you to an isolated area on the lower floor.

This path will lead you to a Camerupt who will offer three Fire icons and a Fire assist. And as we continue, we'll find ourselves at a door with a strange marking on it... we can't access this door just yet, but if we continue onward we'll re-emerge in the strange chamber where Beldum appear. This strange relic also shares the same marking as the sealed door we saw before. I was curious if this meant capturing the Beldum here could provide any help in unlocking that door, but it didn't seem to do anything. Huh, a mystery for another day I suppose.

=================

Anyway, with that, I think we're just about finished with this corner of the world. We'll emerge back into the sunlight, make our way back to Summerland, and take the Aquamole to Panula Cave where we'll pick up next time!

[Aura]

Panulla Cave

We continue our journey around the world and we're nearing the end! This time we're making our way from Summerland to Wintown by passing through Panulla Cave and seeing what's new here in the postgame! In order to get here, you can take the Dragonite Bus to Wintown and enter from the northern side, or you can do as I did and enter from the south by taking the Aquamole from Summerland!

    

Just like before, the entrance area has Pikachu, Golbat, Jynx, Snorunt, and Whismur

A bit further in and we can find Medicham who will prove to be a consistently useful pokemon in our exploration of this dungeon.

We can take a side path here where we'll find a Solrock.

 

Continuing down that side path, we can find a Poliwhirl and Poliwrath from a small pond!

There's also a Wobbuffet behind a boulder which you'll need two rock smash icons to break. Medicham can help with that limitation!

A little bit further ahead, in the area where we first encountered Steelix, we can now find Exploud! This is a new one! He'll use Uproar to cloud the area around him with sound and he'll do it more frequently than his siblings. Just take your time with the capture, you know the drill by now. Exploud isn't really worth keeping after the first capture, though. No field skill and no assist. Just capture and release.

You'll come across Dusclops next.

  

In the next room, there's an ice pit with a variety of pokemon including Swinub, Sneasel, and Glalie.

Just like before, you can get to the Loudred on the cliff by taking the slide and reaching the exit on the right side. Other than that, there doesn't seem to be anything new on the slide, so we move on to the next area.

 

It's here that we can find a Piloswine and Raichu!

The next floor down, we'll find Golem and, finally, some obstacles we couldn't break before. Quite frankly, it would probably be easier to get here form the northern side, but we were gonna give the whole cave a quick once-over anyway. There's not one, but two blocks of ice in our way down here. One to the south of this room and another blocking the hallway in the northern exit. We need three Fire icons to melt this ice. The Blaziken from outside Krokka Tunnel can help with that!

We'll start with the one to the north.

Melting the ice here will reveal a room filled with Crobat. I beleive we've captured one of these before from a Go-Rock Grunt, but this I believe is our first time dealing with them in the overworld. Their SuperSonic attack takes up a lot of space so they can actually be a little annoying to deal with. Thankfully, they're easy captures. Unfortunately, they don't provide much in the way of help. They only offer a poison Poke-Assist and no field skills at all. 

Heading further south, there's two more exits: A northern one and a southern one.

The exit to the south leads to a cliffside with Absol! Absol is a little annoying to capture, so I recommend using Plusle to make quick work of it. It'll use Double Team to duplicate itself and also leap around the screen and slash at your line. Trying to capture Absol without an assist is just asking for a bad time. As an ally, though, Absol is more than helpful offering three Cut icons and a Dark assist, making it an objective upgrade from Sneasel.

If you want, you can return to the main path by dropping down the cliff here, or you can simply go back th eway you came.

As for the other exit, it'll take you to...

================

Krokka Tunnel

...Krokka Tunnel! Yes, these two caves are actually interconnected!

It's up here that you'll find the Fire-type Torkoal! He's a very simple capture, occasionally spewing flames from its back. It only provides two Fire icons so you'll need more than it to melt the ice in Panulla Cave.

But a part of why the connection between Panulla Cave and Krokka Tunnel is that, the area with this Torkoal? It's just above the secret room with Magneton! In fact, you can drop off a cliff and end up right there! Especially bizarre is the fact that there's a vine you can even climb up to get back! Has this always been there? I'm pretty confident it hasn't because it seemed too obvious to miss. At the same time, though, maybe this vine really has been hidden here this whole time and I've simply never noticed or forgotten? Either way, Torkoal is here now!

More importantly, because we can make our way back to Panulla Cave from Krokka Tunnel now, we can head out and grab ourselves the pokemon we'll need for our next deep expedition into uncharted territory!

 

We can grab a Bulbasaur from Lyra Forest and a Blaziken from the outskirts of Fall City and return to Panulla through the vine in the Magneton room!

You'll want to capture at least one Golem here. For further prep, you might also want to grab a second Golem and a Medicham. Maybe hold onto that Torkoal as well. It's probably not exactly subtle what pokemon we'll be headed to.

If we melt the block of ice just south of the Golem, we'll be able to enter. a secret area with a few boulders strewn about. It's not nearly as much of a mess as what blocked Registeel in, but it's still a bit annoying. This room is filled with holes and three of them are blocked by boulders. Golem will help with this job! Shatter the lower-right boulder and fall through the newly exposed hole This will ultimately lead you to a door similar to the one Registeel was locked away behind. You probably already know where I've been going with this.

In the next room, you'll find the legendary Pokemon Regice! Approach it to initiate the capture!

=================

Vs. Regice

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

Much like Registeel, Regice is surprisingly simple to capture despite its intimidating attacks. Regice will wander around the screen and occasionally crash into the ground to cause pillars of ice to shoot up from the ground covering the left or right sides of the screen. Because this only affects the left or right side in fairly consistent patterns, your capture line is generally safe if you start it from the bottom of the screen and keep the line short whenever you're not drawing loops. Once you've got that figured out, the rest of the capture is super simple, just time-consuming. Just wait for Regice to emerge from his own ice pillars and then circle him slowly and carefully. Return to the origin of your line without lifting your stylus if Regice gets too close to the ice pillars. You can never be too safe!

Capturing Regice will reward you with an Ice Assist and nothing else. Once again, a little underwhelming, but I think an Ice Assist is definitely more exciting than Registeel's lame Rock Smash. Regardless, there's not much else new here in Krokka Tunnel or North Road immediately outside of here. So, we've now made our way to Wintown! Next time, we'll climb Sekra Range in search of more pokemon to capture! See you there!

[Aura]

Sekra Range

Just North of Wintown is Sekra Range! This is the final stretch of our regional patrol!

          

We've already pretty thoroughly explored this area fairly recently, so not much has changed since then. But, there are some slight changes! Of course, the pokemon that were here before still remain: Quilava, Nuzleaf, Poliwhirl, Arbok, Seedot, Pikachu, Piloswine, Shiftry, Sneasel, and Raichu. Let's not forget the Kangaskhan you can find by breaking the wall in the first area!

 

You can also find Swablu where you could before in addition to Altaria who makes its return! I recommend capturing a Swablu and bringing it with you later on. This is our first time being able to use Altaria, so I'll mention its Flying assist and three Gust icons. It's possible Altaria appeared here before, too, but I never noticed it then. I'm pretty confident it only appears here now.

 

In the burned forest nearing the mountain, we'll find Gardevoir alongside Ralts! Gardevoir merely offers a stronger Psychic assist. According to Serebii, we can find Kirlia here as well, but I didn't notice any, myself. I won't say it's not there, though. These pokemon teleport a lot so it's quite likely I simply missed it.

If we enter the cave in this area, we'll find that Snorlax still hasn't budged from its spot in here. It's still a bit out of the way. We still don't have any way to wake him up so, once again, we'll need to just leave him be for another day.

  

Making your way up the mountain, you can find Golem, Tangela, and Larvitar.

We could go toward the Fiore Temple, but instead, I want to make my way toward the remains of the Go-Rock Base. Seems like a good place to investigate, doesn't it?

Along the way to the Go-Rock Hideout, we'll find Gligar!

===============

Go-Rock Squad Base [Destroyed]

The Go-Rock Base is completely destroyed thanks to the Self-Destruct button pressed by Billy of the Go-Rock Quads. Spenser and Joel were able to rescue the pokemon from the facility just in time, but now that things have died down a bit, some pokemon may have found their way back here.

  

And that is certainly the case! We'll find Beldum, Electabuzz, and Metang littering the hallways here.

We'll also find Tyrannitar! Tyrannitar offers a Dark Assist and three Rock Smash icons.

At the depths of the hideout, at least as far as we can go in the rubble, we'll find a Metagross alongside two Beldum. This Metagross is almost like a secret boss. It requires a lot of loops, so you may want to bring a Fighting-type like Medicham from Panulla Cave. However, Metagross is actually incredibly simple to capture unlike his airborne counterpart, Salamence. The tricky part about capturing Metagross is dealing with the nearby Beldum. You can try to get them separately, but it's pretty difficult to. Try to capture the individual Beldums first before even bothering attempting to capture Metagross.

Metagross himself will randomly stop and begin charging up a Hyper Beam which also has a brief cooldown period. These are perfect windows to get some easy loops in! Metagross doesn't really do much else, so just keep your line short when waiting for him to stop, get a modest amount of loops in, then keep your line small again until your next opportunity. A very simple process. Metagross offers three Rock Smash icons as well as a Psychic-type assist.

Once you have your Metagross, there's nothing else for you here, so it's time to cut ties and make your way out!

======================

Sekra Range

Back outside, we can return to the main path by dropping off of the cliff.

This will land us right next to a Pupitar who will offer a Rock assist if we're in need of one. We're not so we'll leave him be.

And crossing the bridge to the other side will bring you to a Magikarp.

At the top of the mountain, just outside of the gate leading toward Fiore Temple, there was that series of obstacles we couldn't clear before. Well, now I think you can take a guess as to what we'll be finding here. Unfortunately, the obstacles we've cleared before seem to have returned. So, we'll need to take some time to clear them out again. We can go ahead and unleash Tyrannitar's Rock Smash to break the boulder up here and free up some space. If you recall from our previous ventures, we'll need one Water Icon, anther Rock Smasher, and three Fire icons to melt the ice inside as well. So, we can use Poliwhirl to grow the vine, Metagross to shatter the wall, and we'll need to revisit Krokko Tunnel through Panulla Cave in order to capture Blaziken and return with a Fire-type to melt the ice inside!

Before we get to destroying obstacles, though, remember that Altaria I suggested you capture? Well, you can use its three Gust icons here to reveal the Raflesia flowers to be Vileplume! Vileplume offers nothing more than a Grass-type assist but its capture is very simple: It'll spew toxic gas and otherwise seems to just casually stroll around, minding its own business,. 

Turning our focus toward the secrets of the cave, you'll have to capture your way through a horde of Gastly which could potentailly abduct your pokemon if you aren't careful. Stay on your toes and move swiftly deeper inside where you'll be met with a door just like the ones that led to Registeel and Regice.

Inside lies the legendary pokemon: Regirock!

================

Vs. Regirock

Regirock is perhaps the easiest of the three Regis to get. Not only is he perhaps the least convoluted to encounter. It'll open up by hitting the ground and causing rocks to fall from the ceiling in a rock slide! Just be patient and you should be good to go. If it helps, you can always rely on Medicham to soften him up a bit. Otherwise, just keep your line short, hope my health.

Once Regirock is captured, we'll find that, disappointingly enough, he, too, only offers a Poke-Assist. In this case, the Rock assist. Anyway, with that, we've captured Regirock, Regice and Registeel! For now, we'll press a little further onward as we're very near to the end!

================

Fiore Temple

    

The pokemon found in the courtyard of Fiore Temple are mostly the same as they were before: Golem, Donphan, Aerodactyl, Raichu, and Grovyle. Curiously, you may notice the Eeveelutions are gone from their original spots. Don't worry, we'll find them soon enough.

     

The Pokemon in the basement area are also mostly unchanged, with the exception that Flareon is gone at the end and replaced with Ariados! The Pokemon you can find here include Swalot, Medicham, Gengar, Espeon, and Umbreon as well as the new Ariados. As always, keep an eye on those Gengar because you never know when they'll try to steal one of your pokemon. Usually, though, you'll have plenty of time to make it to the exit to be rid of a Gengar haunting.

  

Outside of the temple proper, we'll find the Jolteon, Flareon, and Vaporeon that were missing from the previous areas.

 

And if we go just a little bit further ahead, we'll find a man who calls himself the Drowzee man. The Drowzee Man will, with your consent, have his Drowzee hypnotize you into reliving a climactic event from the story. The caveat to this is that you can only bring in three friend pokemon, so you'll need to release some pokemon if you have more than three.

  

Agreeing to the Drowzee Man's offer will essentially allow you to replay the ending of the game with a slightly higher difficulty due to the limitation of being limited to just three pokemon assists. Still, Raikou is still the most challenging of the three to capture by far.

I'm not too worried about this just yet. As far as I can tell, it's just a means to relive the game's ending and revisit the credits. If I'm wrong, I'll come back here and complete this challenge proper, but I don't see any need to from here.

And with that, our initial patrol is complete! Next time, we'll start looking into some of those areas we somehow still couldn't get past.