All the Pokemens

[Aura]

Veilstone City

After defeating Maylene and exiting the gym, Dawn meets you at the entrance of the gym to ask for your help. Apparently she dropped her Pokedex and it was picked up by a Galactic Grunt! She needs our help to get the Pokedex back, so we follow her to the warehouse and prepare for another Multi Battle!

                                          

                                          

Vs. Galactic Grunt & Galactic Grunt

This is our second multi-battle against Galactic Grunts!

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Dustox Lv. 25 & Beautifly Lv. 25

                                          

                                          

It looks like Dawn's team is actually growing now, too! She's starting with a Clefairy this time rather than just her starter.

Unfortunately, I had a rather piss-poor start to this battle. Flame Wheel didn't net me the KO I was hoping for on Dustox and both Beautifly and Dustox ganged up on Senshi with Gust and Psybeam. This lead to a KO on Senshi's part. Meanwhile, Clefairy used the move Gravity which is a new gimmick move introduced in Gen IV. It lasts for five turns and affects the arena rather than specific pokemon. It amplifies gravity, grounding any Flying-type or Levitating pokemon, making them vulnerable to ground attacks. It also increases the accuracy of all attacks (which is an effect I didn't know until looking it up for this post! Interesting.) Moves that require vertical movement such as Fly and Hi-Jump Kick are impossible to use.

                                          

                                          

I brought Ibutsu out next to finish off Dustox with Extrasensory. Dawn's Clefairy got the next hit, however, and took Dustox out with a Metronome Wing Attack.

                                                              

                                          

Upon Dustox's defeat, Beautifly was the only target for Extrasensory. And this is where I note a change that, while probably more balanced, unfortunately dramatically slows down double battles starting with Gen IV. You may have noticed this as far back as Eterna Forest. In Gen III, when you KO a pokemon in a double battle, the opponent would immediately send another pokemon out. This could cause that new pokemon to take an additional hit if the other pokemon was targeting the pokemon they took the place of. This was incredibly useful for Double Battle Battle Frontier and the like because you could do things like pair Earthquake with Double-Edge to take out three pokemon in one turn on a good day.

However, in Gen IV, double battles are rebalanced so that the next pokemon isn't sent out until the end of the turn. This prevents those fast party wipes. This is probably better for the competitive scene because you can't just get a cheap easy KO on an incoming pokemon the opponent is forced to send out, but I don't like that it dramatically slows down these battles. If your intended target goes down, you'll automatically target the other opponent. This can potentially lead to some really bad situations like where you, say, accidentally attack a Wobbuffet and get countered.

Thankfully, it doesn't matter too much here. I just get some additional damage on Beautifly.

Croagunk, Lv. 25

                                          

                                          

At the end of the turn, Croagunk joins the fray! Croagunk is a new Gen IV Pokemon and it's a Poison/Fighting type. So, it's incredibly vulnerable to Extrasensory! Meanwhile, Clefairy goes for Metronome and attacks with a Headbutt.

                                                              

                                          

Croagunk is down along with the first grunt. All that's left is the one with the Beautifly! It was easy to finish off, unfortunately, it was able to get a Stun Spore off on Ibutsu.

                                                              

                                          

If a targeted pokemon is KO'd and there's no opponent to redirect an attack to, the attack will simply be cancelled because there is no target.

                                                              

                                          

Stunky was next. As a Dark-type, there wasn't much Ibutsu could do to it at all. I went for Confuse Ray on Stunky to potentially cover for a switch, but paralysis held it back. Fortunately, Clefairy hit it with Sing, though, so I still had a switch covered.

                                                              

                                          

Denki came out next for a Spark for some additional damage while Clefairy went for Wake-up Slap for the KO.

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With that, the two grunts were defeated!

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

The grunts return Dawn's Pokedex and suggest that their loss doesn't matter too much because everything important from the Warehouse has been shipped to Pastoria City. That's... an odd thing to say considering we were just here to recover Dawn's dropped pokedex... is there something bigger they thought we were trying to tamper with?

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Galactic Warehouse

IF we check inside the Galactic Warehouse, we can find that, indeed, there is nothing of particular note regarding Team Galactic specifically. But, there is an item to be had!

It's HM02: Fly! I decided to go ahead and teach it to Kuro. I know I usually regret doing this because there's almost always awkward situations where I'd really prefer having the fast damage from Aerial Ace or something. But I figured Kuro will have a Dark attack to cover that as well.

Now that we have Fly, though, we'll be able to do our berry runs a bit more efficiently without having to cross back and forth through Mt. Coronet.

Aside from the HM, there's nothing else of interest here. So, we'll just need to leave him be for now.

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Jubilife City

The Fly HM came at a really convenient time, because we can now Fly back to Jubilife City and revisit the Poketch Compnay. If you recall, the President was developing a new app and said he'd be done when we get our third badge. So, let's check in and see how he's doing!

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App 13: Marking Map

This map is somewhat similar to the Berry Searcher, but it displays a blank map with some markers in the bottom right corner. You can drag the markers around to mark specific points of interest on the map. I, personally, like to use these markers to keep track of which honey trees I've spread honey on. If I have any suspected Munchlax Trees, I'd like to mark them with the sparkly-shaped one at the end there. The last one I spread honey on for the day, I mark with the square to signify that it likely won't change from the previous day, so Group A encounters or Group B encounters won't provide any information on deducing the location of a special tree.

And on that note, about that tree underneath Cycling Road, I just don't think that's the special tree I thought it was. I did find two Aipom in a row, but that seems to have set off a false alarm for me. It seems like it was just a freak coincidence which, as I've stressed, can certainly happen and it's a big part of why Munchlax is so difficult to track down.

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Route 218

Before we move on, I think now's a good time to address that Good Rod we've been neglecting since we got it. I'll be honest, I guess I underestimated just how much variety of pokemon we could catch with this thing already so I never bothered going back to fish with it. But there actually is some variety to it!

  

Finneon can be caught with the Good Rod in a variety of locations in the western seas of Sinnoh. I named it Hane

 

Finneon is another pokemon with a gender difference. The bottom part of the wing on a female is larger than a male's.

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Eterna City

  

Any water in the mountainous middle-region of Sinnoh is where you can find Barboach. I named this one Dono.

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Route 214

And now we finally move onward beyond Veilstone City to Route 214! This route is split between two paths: A mountainous path and a more straight-forward path filled with trainers. The latter is the one I tend to be drawn to first since I like to clear all the trainers my first time through a route.

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All of the new pokemon available here can be found more commonly a bit further ahead, but that didn't stop me from encountering them all along the way!

  

First off, we have Graveler, the evolution of Geodude! These guys like to explode, so they can be tricky to capture. You can wait until you have a Pokemon with the Damp ability if you want, or you can get creative and use Hypnosis! I named mine Bakuhatsu.

  

Girafarig is the next pokemon of interest! I named it Jiga!

 

Girafarig brings with it a gender difference as well! Males have larger black segments than females do.

If you're playing Pearl version, you can also find Sudowoodo here. In Diamond version, you'll just find Stunky in its place. A bit less exciting.

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This path is home to a new trainer class. A man who likes to take risks and is always willing to bet it all on their luck! The... PI... or Private Investigator. Yes, the Private Investigator loves to leave things up to luck. They certainly aren't related to gambling at all. Not at all, they just like to talk about gambling and... yeah, okay, if it's not spelled out by now, these guys were Gamblers in the Japanese version. Gamblers are a trainer class with an infamous past of censorship. They were renamed Gamers in FireRed and LeafGreen, and renamed again to PI's here in Diamond and Pearl.

I'm just gonna refer to these guys as Gamblers because it's gets the idea of their strategy across better: Gamblers have a heavy reliance on pokemon with OHKO attacks, such as Goldeen and Horn Drill. Watch out for these dangerous attacks because they can KO you even if you resist them! Take each of their pokemon out as quickly as possible or find ways to otherwise keep them from attacking. If you have bad luck, these guys can actually be a pretty big pain.

   

There's a berry patch near the entrance with a Cheri, Sitrus, Chesto, and Pomeg Berry.

You can get an X Sp. Defense immediately south of here.

And using the Dowsing Machine on the other side of the fence will reveal a Honey!

There's a roundabout of tall grass in the fences a bit further ahead. You probably don't need the dowsing machine to find the Heart Scale hidden in the bald spot in the grass here.

It takes some maneuvering, but working your way around the fence to the patch of grass on the other side with an item in it will reward you with a Big Root! This is a new held item introduced in Gen IV. Its description is a bit misleading. It sounds like it increases the power of HP-Draining moves, but it actually just increases the amount of HP you heal off of them. It's still a pretty good item, though, and I decided to let Hana hold onto it!

I also took the opportunity to refactor my team again, giving the First Plate to Senshi, and the Amulet Coin to Uki.

In the grassy patch near the end, you can find a Max Potion near another honey tree! This tree is pretty annoyingly placed. It's tempting to try and approach it from the west but you can only interact with it from the south which will cost you some extra steps in the tall grass.

Working our way back up the other side, there's not much to see here except for a hidden TinyMushroom in a bald spot in the tall grass with the collector inside it.

Other than that, the only thing of interest on this side of the route is a cave entrance...

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Maniac Tunnel

If you haven't followed my steps exactly, Maniac Tunnel will probably be a very small, cramped cave.

All you'll find in here is TM28: Dig.

There's a Ruin Maniac in here who loves to dig. He challenges you to a race to see who will finish faster: Him finishing the tunnel, or you catching all the different forms of Unown. Spoiler alert: It's impossible to win this race.

Maniac Tunnel [10 Unown]

Maniac Tunnel [26 Unown]

As you catch more forms of Unown, the tunnel will get deeper and deeper. Eventually, the maniac will end up digging into something on the other side!

  

You can find Hippopotas along the way to the other side! Hippopotas is available here no matter how long the tunnel is, but the further along it is, the more common HIppopotas gets. It's a 20% rarity in the end! This thing is a bulky Ground-type that's probably best known for its Sand Stream ability. Being more defensive than the more aggressive Tyrannitar, as well as more common and easier to get ahold of, definitely makes Hippopotas an appealing pokemon for anyone looking to build a Sandstorm team in this gen. I named mine Kaba.

 

Hippopotas probably has the most obvious gender difference in the game. Females invert the dark and light parts of their skin.

The main reason you'll want to catch all 26 Unown to fill this path all the way to the end, however, is the cave the maniac discovers at the edge.

This leads to a rather familiar-looking chamber... if we inspect the engravings here, we see a very simple message written in Unown...

Quote

?!

As the message makes clear...

 

Unown '?' and '!' can be found in here!

If we step outside from here, we'll come out on that ledge overlooking the front entrance to Solaceon Ruins. Unfortunately, there's no way to get down from here. So if you want to get the seals from these Unown you might want to Fly back to Solaceon Town.

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Valor Lakefront

Valor Lakefront contains part of a resort area outside the lake that extends south into Route 213.

The grass at the start of this area is that area I mentioned before where I recommend hunting for Girafarig. It's available here at 30% as opposed to the 10% before.

The path to Lake Valor is blocked off by two scientists who are doing research at the lake, so there's no visiting the lake just yet.

With the dowsing machine against the northwest corner of the grass, you can find a Max Ether! There's actually quite a few hidden items around the area.

There's a paralyze heal along the path to the south.

Hotel Grand Lake

This whole area is divided between the Valor Lakefront and Route 213. It's an odd division as it's split literally right down the middle, not even at the reception area where I would think the cut-off should be. Maybe there were map size constraints they ran into?

Outside the first building you'll pass here is a lady who's locked herself out of her suite. She's distressed about having lost her key, so we'll want to check out the rest of the resort to see if we can find it. She suggests that she had it when she left the reception area, so she must've dropped it somewhere along the way to her suite. Let's keep an eye out with our Dowsing Machine!

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Seven Stars Restaurant

This restaurant is a gathering place for trainers. You can find pairs of trainers at the tables that you can take on in double battles. Every day, the opponents will shuffle, so you may want to come back a few times to battle them all. The restaurant opens at 9am and closes at 11pm, so be sure to get your battles in between then!

There are quite a few new trainer classes you can potentially encounter here, so let's go over them!

 

First is a Rich Boy and Lady, both are male and female counterparts of each other. These two trainer classes are known for using expensive items on their pokemon such as Full Restores. They also pay out large sums of money upon defeat, so they're good to battle if you need some cash!

 

Another pair of new trainer classes is a Gentleman and Socialite. The Gentleman is a recurring trainer class while the Socialite is a new female counterpart. Gentleman specialize in pokemon that make for good pets, leaning more toward birds in the Sinnoh region. They share a similar appearance to their gen III counterparts. Socialites prefer more galmorous pokemon, but also seem to lean toward the pet motif a bit as well, just with more refined ones based on pets like cats.

 

The next one of interest is a Veteran and Lass. Obviously, the Lass isn't new. The Veteran is a new trainer class. It is essentially a more mature counterpart to the Ace Trainer, using tougher pokemon than other trainers around them. Though this is kind of a bad introduction compared to the ace trainers we battled earlier...

 

While battling the trainers in here, Denki evolved into his final stage: Luxray! This is our second fully evolved pokemon! Only four more to go!

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The last building up here is a suite owned by the Game Director himself: Junichi Masuda. This is where you'll bring your completed national dex to get your certificate at the end of the game!

There is a PP-Up just south of the Director's suite, past the small pool.

And hidden under the parasol at that pool, you can find a Hyper Potion with the dowsing machine!

The Suite Key that lady was missing before can be found just north of the reception area with the dowsing machine.

Deliver the key to her and you'll be rewarded with a Lava Cookie from the Hoenn region! You'll also be able to enter the suite, but there's nothing of interest inside.

Then, there's a clown in the building just northwest of the reception area who will give you TM92: Trick Room. A very useful move that inverts the usual turn order so that slower pokemon move first! It does not actually affect the speed difference, though, so it's very useful in conjunction with Gyro Ball which gets stronger the slower you are. It's a lot easier to get a slow pokemon than a fast one, just be warned that it'll probably take a pokemon that can take a hit or two to set this move up and it only lasts for five turns!

In the reception area itself, you can speak to the man at the desk. He'll tell you they're completely booked, but he'll allow you to rest up there in the lobby to heal your pokemon. This reception area doubles as a gateway to the main part of Route 213!

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Route 213

Route 213 consists of the second half of the resort area, mainly comprised of a large beach just south of the hotel.

There is a Red Shard right near the exit to the hotel.

   

There are some treasures you can find using the dowsing machine around the beach including a Great Ball, Super Potion, Calcium, and Pearl.

 

There's a new trainer class we can find here: Tubers! They're little kids who love to go tubing on the water. They return from Generation III with a tan! These kids must spend a lot more time in the sun! They generally seem to specialize in pokemon that are capable of walking on land and swimming in water.

And speaking of the water...

  

Using the Fishing Rod here can net you a Remoraid! I named mine Juu.

The building on the west side of town is home to Dr. Footstep who will be able to read what your pokemon thinks of you as its trainer by checking its footprint. If you bring your pokemon to him and let it walk before him, he'll be able to recite exactly what that pokemon thinks of you. Humorously, he can even do this with pokemon that don't leave footprints, and it leads to special dialogue at that!

If a pokemon likes you enough, Dr. Footsteps will award it the Footprint Ribbon. It's a really easy ribbon to get, you just have to max out your friendship with the pokemon and bring it to Dr. Footstep!

Using Rock Smash on the boulder near Dr. Footstep's house will open the way to a honey tree as well as a hidden Awakening you can find with the Dowsing Machine.

And behind the smashable rock on the other side, you can find TM40: Aerial Ace.

   

There's another Berry Patch to the north with an Aguav and Iapapa Berry tree with two Rawst trees.

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None of the pokemon available in this tall grass are at their most common here, but I still found some of them!

  

I found Wingull here. It's at a 20% encounter rate during the day and early morning.

Floatzel can also be found here at 10%, but he's much more common elsewhere.

  

One more pokemon of interest is... Shellos? Yes, Shellos actually has a special gimmick to it! What you're looking at here isn't a gender difference or anything. It's an evolutionary difference! There is an in-universe theory that, when Mt. Coronet was formed, it split the Sinnoh region in two halves, causing Shellos to become isolated from each other. Shellos of Western Sinnoh evolved into the modern-day pink form we've been seeing up until now. This blue Shellos is the appearance taken on by the East Sea Shellos.

So, what did Shellos look like before they were isolated like this? Well, while there's no official demonstration, there is a small hint left in the data of Diamond and Pearl...

This comes in the form of an unused back sprite for SHellos that seems to be a hybrid of both forms with the color and head shape of the West Sea Shellos as well as the frills of the East Sea form. There is no front sprite to this unused sprite though, so perhaps it was never finished. I can't help but wonder if this was a scrapped early design for Shellos, or if they intended to keep a third form of Shellos to be found in the depths of Mt. Coronet where their original forms would've been preserved? Could've been a really cool lore tidbit.

Anyway, the only unfortunate thing about this East and West Sea Shellos thing is that there's no way you're ever going to find an East Sea Shellos first. Your first time through the game, you're probably not going to know it exists at all and it doesn't appear until quite a ways into the game. If you're interested in using the pokemon, then by the time you find this thing, you've probably been raising your own Shellos since Valley Windworks. The two forms are functionally identical, it's purely an aesthetic difference. I kind of do wish they would give us the original version of Shellos at some point just to have it shown off, but this whole evolution thing almost feels like a forgotten tidbit of lore at this point.

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Pastoria City

And on the other side of the gatehouse, we've finally arrived at Pastoria City! This is our next gym city but there's quite a bit to do here before we take on the gym. In fact, there's a very big area we're going to start exploring next time that we'll probably be revisiting again and again... Until then!

[Aura]

Pastoria City

Last time, we arrived in Pastoria City! This place is a marshland and the town even has a mascot: Croagunk! The locals seem to be really affectionate toward the pokemon, there's even a statue of it in the pokemart! It seems a little bit ominous, honestly, but I suppose that's just an outsider's perspective. The winding path through the city can be a little bit disorienting on the small DS screen thanks to the thick seas of trees that can fool you into thinking you're against a border. It might take a little bit to find your way around your first time here if you're trying to find a specific building.

This place is home to a gym, but beyond that, it's also a popular spot for tourists because of the Great Marsh where visitors can participate in the Safari Game! And yes, that's the main focus of today, but first, I want to cover the miscellaneous stuff around town.

  

First of all, this is the place where you'll receive the last of the starter mask accessories! You'll receive it from a parasol lady in front of the entrance to the Great Marsh. The mask you'll receive is the one your starter is weak against. In other words, the starter your rival chose. She finds it funny that you remind her of an "impatient boy" who ran right through and gives this accessory to you for making her smile.

   

The berry patch here contains two Persim and Nanab Berry trees.

Using the dowsing machine in the large puddle in the far south-western corner of the city will reward you with a Full Heal.

    

The Scarf Guy lives in the house closest to the entrance. If your pokemon has a high condition in one of the five contest stats thanks to eating lots of good poffins, you'll receive one of five scarves that will increase its performance in the contests it specializes in.

  

A boy in the house closest to the Poke Mart will ask if you have all three forms of Burmy. This is actually a little bit obnoxious as it involves catching more Burmy than you'll need to complete the pokedex. In order to change Burmy's form, you'll need to have it battle in the respective areas. Any outdoor area will result in the grass cloak, any cave will result in the sand cloak, and any indoor area, such as a gym, will result in the trash cloak. The grass and sand cloaks are easy to get, but toward the end of the game, you might be a bit puzzled to figure out where to get the Trash Cloak. Well, some good places to look include Jubilife TV and the Seven Stars Restaurant at Valor Lakefront. These places have trainers that renew every day so you won't be locked out of indoor battles after completing the game's content.

I may be wrong in this, but I believe in order for Burmy's cloak to change, it needs to be damaged in the battle. Otherwise, it won't lose its cloak during the battle. If you're going to do this, I recommend showing him three female Burmy, because the type of Burmy will actually affect the type of Wormadam it evolves into permanently.

In retrospect, I'm actually not sure if you have to have all three in your party at once or if you need to show them one at a time, but it won't hurt to have the three for my sense of completion anyway.

Across from the boy who wants to see the Burmy forms, there is the Move Maniac! He prefers the title "Move Tutor," but I find Move Tutor to be a bit misleading compared to other Move Tutors who actually teach your pokemon new moves it doesn't naturally learn. Bring him a Heart Scale and he can teach your pokemon some of the moves it could've learned, or has but since forgotten, at a lower level. Some pokemon, like Floatzel, have special moves that can only be learned this way. I used a Heart Scale to teach Uki the move Ice Fang: A physical Ice-type attack that has a chance of freezing or flinching the target.

After you have shown the boy all three forms of Burmy, he'll thank you by giving you the Macho Brace to help with EV training.

Quick Balls can be purchased at the Poke Mart here. These things can be a life saver for tricky pokemon like Abra, Kadabra, and Graveler. They are pokeballs that have huge multipliers if used on the first turn of an encounter to compensate for the fact that, obviously, that pokemon is still going to have full HP. It might sound useless from the fact that you can't weaken the pokemon first, but it helps you dramatically in situations where attacking the pokemon is risky.

               

The house at the southern edge of town is home to what I'd say is the true Berry Master of the Sinnoh region. While the Berry Master gives you a random berry every day which can include some rare ones, this lady will also give you a random berry every day. These berries are far rarer and are some of the most useful berries in the entire game!

These include the Occa, Passho, Wakan, Rindo, Yache, Chople, Kebia, Shuca, Coba, Payapa, Tanga, Charti, Kasib, Haban, Colbur, Babiri, and Chilan Berry. There is one of these berries for every type in the game and each one reduces the damage of a super-effective attack of the corresponding type. They're great for pokemon with quad-weaknesses and can not only save a life, but catch an opponent off guard in a competitive battle. As berries, these are of course single-use, but that's often more than enough to reclaim lost ground. With the excepiton of the Chilan Berry, all of these require the attcack to be Super-effective. The Chilan Berry simply works on all Normal-type attacks since Normal isn't super-effective against anything. With that in mind, you can have some fun with extremes by putting one on a pokemon like Shieldon who already quad-resists normal attacks. It optimal at all, but it's fun to drive those numbers up! Or down, I suppose.

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Now, before we move on, this is a bit unusual but I do recommend poking your head out into Route 212 just west of here. There's an NPC nearby, but he's not actually a trainer. Walking past him, there's another patch of berries with no obstacles along the way, it's basically a part of Pastoria City.

   

Here, there's a Pecha Berry Tree and three Pinap Berry trees.

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Great Marsh

Lying just north of Pastoria City is the Great Marsh which is home to Sinnoh's Safari Game! As of the time I'm writing this, Sinnoh is the final new region to contain a Safari Zone. This isn't the last we'll be seeing of the Safari Zone, mind you, but ever since Unova, none of the new regions have had one and even remakes have started to fizzle out the Safari Game itself with the exception of one particular remake which I'll be voicing my grievances with when we get to it.

Anyway, if you know me, you know that I'm not a big fan of the Safari Game and this is by far my least favorite adaptation yet because it's next to impossible to get every pokemon you need out of it in one go. Thankfully, there are other ways in the gen to get these rare pokemon for the most part, but in Diamond and Pearl, they are incredibly difficult to catch.

This Safari Game does come with a bit of a blessing, though. Or, rather, the absence of a curse. None of the pokemon that are only obtainable in-game are available at rarities less than 10%.

If you check upstairs, you'll find three binoculars that can be used to peer into random parts of the swamp and reveal a pokemon that can be found there. We'll see the importance of this soon enough, but if you see a rare pokemon, be sure the take note of the surrounding terrain, the arrangements of ponds, mud puddles, grass, rocks, trees, etc. A lot of areas of the Great Marsh look very similar, so it can be difficult to track down the exact location. But once you do, you'll know for sure you can find that pokemon in that area.

 x 30

When you start the Safari Game, you'll be given 30 Safari Balls, which are functionally identical to Great Balls, and a time limit of 500 steps. You can use your Poketch Step Counter to keep track of the amount of steps you take during your safari game. The game follows standard Gen 1-style Safari Rules. You can bring your pokemon into the safari zone, but battling is prohibited. Instead, when you encounter a wild pokemon, you can throw Mud, Bait, or a Safari Ball. Mud will make the pokemon angry and more likely to flee, but increases their catch rate. Bait does the opposite. While the pokemon is eating, it will be less likely to flee but more difficult to catch. I always find it much more painless to forego these two options because, any time it seems to matter, the pokemon ends up fleeing before I get a chance to throw a Safari Ball anyway. You may as well just throw the Safari Ball outright and get the chance right away.

As for the use of the pokemon you bring in, well, any items or abilities that affect encounter rates will work here. You can Surf once you get the ability to.

One major help I recommend is bringing in a pokemon with the move Sweet Scent. This is actually a field move that has the same effect as a jar of honey, but it can be used infinitely. This move is fantastic here in the Great Marsh because it helps you encounter wild pokemon without wasting steps.

As you wade through the mud in the Great Marsh, you'll occasionally fall into a deep puddle. You'll need to wiggle around to get out. If this happens, try to find another way around! You'll waste time if you keep sinking into the mud!

Now, let's talk wild pokemon.

Just like previous Safari Zones, the Great Marsh is divided into smaller individual areas. The transition between these areas is a bit more seamless than the others, so they tend to blend together. This image above from Bulbapedia shows how the areas are divided. You can take the Speed Tram in the middle to instantly transport yourself between the areas, which is a nice convenience if you already know exactly where you want to be.

Though, yes, I've always been bothered by the fact that the two areas are labeled 5 and 6 rather than 1 and 2. Maybe an earlier build wanted the Great Marsh to be entered from the North?

Across all of these areas, the water has the same pokemon inside of it.

  

With the Good Rod, you can find Barboach at 40%, Magikarp at 55%, and Gyarados at a mere 5%. I don't recommend searching for Gyarados here, though. At least not with the Good Rod.

The standard set of pokemon in each area is easy enough to follow. It's actually mostly identical from area to area, only the rarities fluctuate for the most part.

Psyduck can be found at 8% in any area except for Area 5.

Hoothoot can be found here at night, most commonly in Areas 3-6 at 20%.

  

Hoothoot's evolution, Noctowl, cuts into 10% of Hoothoot's encounter rate at nighttime in Areas 1 and 2. I managed to catch one and named it Yoru.

Starly takes 10% of Hoothoot's encounter rate during the early morning and day.

Budew replaces the other 10%.

Bidoof can be found most commonly at 5% in area 5. Though you'd be pretty insane to be tracking one of these guys down here of all places.

Its evolution, Bibarel, is much more common at 20% across the board.

  

Marill can be found at a constant 15% accross the board, though that number is more accurately 10% due to the functionality of a mechanic I'll be covering in a bit. This is where Marill is most common in the game and it's a bit of a headache to find in the only other area. It's rare for me to recommend seeking a pokemon out in the Safari Zone over anywhere outside of the Safari Zone, but in this case, I actually do. You'll probably find a bunch of Marill while seeking out rarer pokemon, anyway. I named mine Bui.

  

Azurill is a shockingly rare little guy here. They're mostly a 1% rarity across the board, but in Area 5, they're boosted to a 5% rarity. They're really not worth it to hunt down since you can just breed one from Marill with a Sea Incense, but handle it how you see fit! I just happened to get super lucky with encountering one of these guys and successfully catching it.

  

You'll probably find Wooper more than any other pokemon here. It's a flat 20% across the board, though it's more common by surfing. You're most definitely going to catch one of these guys just by wandering around the marsh. But, if you somehow don't get one, they're also pretty common outside of the Great Marsh as well. I named it Ahoroutoru.

 

Wooper has a gender difference in the number of branches on its whiskers. Males branch off into five points on each side of its head while females only branch off into three.

  

Quagsire is also a flat 15% across the board. It can also be found outside the Great Marsh. I named mine Sekken. Just like Marill, this 15% is actually reduced to 10% due to a mechanic I'll be covering in a bit.

 

Quagsire has a gender difference in its fins. Males have larger fins than females.

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

And that's it! ...but wait, that can't be right. This is the Safari Zone! Where are all the rare pokemon that can only be found here? Well, we now get into the main reason I'm not a fan of this safari zone: Rotating pokemon.

     

Golduck, Roselia, Staravia, Skorupi, Croagunk, and Carnivine are all pokemon that are tied to this rotating pokemon mechanic.

     

At this point in the game, Bidoof, Bibarrel, Azurill, Marill, Wooper, and Quagsire can also be included in this mechanic. If you're interested in catching a wild Azurill, I recommend trying to do it before the postgame because all of these pokmeon will be removed from the list then.

Every day, each area randomly selects one of the rotating pokemon and inserts them into the encoutner table for the area. For the pokemon that are already available, it simply increases the encounter rate by an additional 10%. This 10% will cut into 5% of Quagsire's basic encounter rate as well as Marill's, which is why I said earlier it's more accurate to claim they have 10% encounter rates. If Marill or Quagsire is inserted to an area, then they'll have a net gain of 5%, putting them at a 20% encounter rate.

This is what the use of the Binoculars is! If you check the binoculars a few times a day, you can get an idea of what pokemon will appear in each area without having to step into the marsh at all. For the rarer pokemon like Skorupi, Croagunk, and Carnivine, this is a great way to pinpoint their locations. Just keep in mind that the binoculars don't show only the rotating pokemon, so you won't necessarily see them all.

The pokemon will rotate as soon as the date changes, so I don't recommend doing this late at night. If you don't find the pokemon you're looking for, it might not have been selected for that day. Check again another day!

  

One of my rotating pokemon turned out to be Staravia, who I named Sora.

  

And Skorupi was another I found. I named it Sasori.

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

Aside from Pokemon, there are also some items! In the interest of time, I'm not going to cover every item you can find in here, but there are some nice goodies to pick up along the way.

It's hidden in a fairly odd location, but HM05: Defog can be found here by speaking with the Ace Trainer near the entrance.

Using the Dowsing Machine in the Northeastern corner, you can find a Toxic Plate that boosts the power of Poison-type attacks.

"The powers of Plates are shared among Pokemon"

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

And that's it for the great Marsh! For now, anyway. We'll be revisiting this area a few times to snatch up some of the remaining pokemon we're still missing. We do still need Carnivine and Croagunk. We'll also need to rvisit at some point during the postgame where we'll have access to some neww pokemon here as well.

But for now, we'll be moving on to the Pastoria Gym!

[Aura]

Great Marsh

Before getting into today's progress, I wanted to brush up on some of the in-between progress I've made. Between berry trips, I also checked up on the rotating pokemon in the Great Marsh. At first, the pokemon from the binoculars looked unassuming, just a Golduck. But after a few more checks, I saw Croagunk! So...

  

So, I rushed in to nab that Croagunk! I named it Nakigoe.

 

There's a gender dfiference with Croagunk. Its white stripes which resemble sports wrap are higher up on a female, covering its chest more than its belly.

  

While here, I also caught that Golduck I saw! His name is Zuutsu.

After catching Zuutsu, I still had some leftover time, so I decided to check the remaining areas in case any other rotating pokemon may have appeared...

  

The biggest surprise to me was Carnivine! I didn't see him in the binoculars, so you can imagine my surprise when the last area to check turned up this guy!

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

Pastoria City Gym

The Pastoria City Gym is a water-type gym designed as a maze that utilizes water and floating platforms to block and unblock different paths. Throughout the gym, there are Green, Yellow, and Blue buttons. Yellow buttons will completely drain the water, blue switches will flood the room, and green switches will return the water level to the default, middle level. As the water rises and falls, the floating platforms may connect paths that weren't traversable at other water levels, but the water may block your way down the stairs.

     

The gym trainers include a male and female tuber, two fishermen, and two sailors.

Sailors are a trainer class returning from previous gens. They haven't changed much at all since their debut in Gen I, though Sinnohan Sailors do look notably fatter than in previous gens.

Solving the puzzle involves working your way around the maze. It mostly consists of pressing the next button and looking around for any new paths that open up with the new water level.

Once you reach the end of the maze, you'll find yourself face-to-face with the Pastoria Gym Leader: Crasher Wake!

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

 

My Team:

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

 Senshi (Monferno M); Lv. 30

 

Item: Fist Plate 

Ability: Blaze | Moves: Mach Punch, Leer, Flame Wheel, Taunt

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

 Denki (Luxray M); Lv. 31

 

Item: Shell Bell 

Ability: Intimidate | Moves: Spark, Roar, Swagger, Bite

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

 Hana (Roselia F); Lv. 31

 

Item: Big Root 

Ability: Poison Point | Moves: Giga Drain, Toxic Spikes, Worry Seed, Stun Spore

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

 Uki (Floatzel F); Lv. 30

 

Item: Amulet Coin 

Ability: Swift Swim | Moves: Swift, Crunch, Aqua Jet, Ice Fang

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

 Kuro (Murkrow F); Lv. 31

 

Item: Dread Plate 

Ability: Super Luck | Moves: Wing Attack, Night Shade, Assurance, Haze

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

 Ibutsu (Bronzor); Lv. 30

 

Item: Quick Claw 

Ability: Levitate | Moves: Extrasensory, Hypnosis, Stealth Rock, Trick Room

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

Vs. Pastoria Gym Leader Wake

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

Gyarados, Lv. 27

                                        

                                         

This was a rather unfortunate starting matchup. I led with Hana thinking her Giga Drain could get a good sweep on Wake's early pokemon, but his lead just happened to be part Flying type. Still, I knew Gyarados doesn't know any Flying attacks, so I decided to stay in and set up Toxic Spikes instead. Gyarados hit Hana with Dragon Rage, however, dealing a lot of extra damage. My HP was still above 40, so I could safely go for another attack. I went for another layer of Toxic Spikes. Gyarados hit me with a Bite, bringing my health down low. Now was a good time to retreat.

                                        

                                         

The obvious switch here was into Denki whose Intimidate would reduce Gyarados' attack. Denki was switched in on a Brine attack, but I could immediately counterplay it with a Spark. Thanks to Gyarados' typing, that's a 4x weakness to exploit!

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

Quagsire, Lv. 27

                                        

                                         

Thanks to the Toxic Spikes set up before, Quagsire came in badly poisoned!

                                        

                                         

I brought Ibutsu in expecting a Ground-type attack to hit Denki for super-effective damage. I wanted to switch into Ibutsu to evade damage thanks to Levitate. Instead, Quagsire took the turn to set up... Mud Sport. I don't understand why this thing knows Mud Sport at all considering it gives him no benefit and won't linger once he switches. That move is only useful for double battles!

Regardless, Quagsire had no answer to Ibutsu since he was immune to Ground attacks, so all Quagsire could really do was spam Slam against me. I took this opportunity to set up Stealth Rock and then started laying on thick with Extrasensory while Quagsire continued trying to chip away at my health. Eventually, Quagsire succumbed to its poison and went down.

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

Floatzel, Lv. 30

                                        

                                         

Floatzel was my next opponent! Thanks to the Poison and the Stones, Floatzel was hit pretty hard on switch-in.

                                                            

                                         

"Hey! That there! That was a good move!"

Ibutsu was hit by an Aqua Jet, then a Pursuit. Expecting another Pursuit and not having any way to do enough damage to make up for the rate I was losing HP at, I chose to take the risk and go for a switch expecting another Pursuit. Ibutsu would take the hit, but I figured he could take it.

                                        

                                         

I chose to bring Hana out! Unfortunately, this was hard read. Not only did he opt not to go for Pursuit, but he also went for Ice Fang of all attacks! Yikes! Hana's not living through that one!

                                        

                                         

I switched Denki back in to hit Floatzel with an intimidate.

                                                            

                                          

"This is where it gets exciting!"

Floatzel took some more damage from Poison but the next turn healed it off with a Super Potion. That's fine, though, because he's almost done for anyway. One more Spark was able to bring Floatzel down to the point where he would succumb to his poison.

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

 

And with that, Crasher Wake has been defeated and we're awarded with Pastoria City's Fen Badge! This is our fourth badge! The Fen Badge allows us to use the move Defog outside of battle.

In addition to the Fen Badge, we're also given TM55: Brine. A 65-power Water-type attack that doubles in power when the target is at less than half health. It's great for guaranteeing KO's, though I think increasing in power when the target's HP is already low seems a little bit redundant, I'm sure it has its uses.

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

MVP: Denki

I don't think I could give MVP to anyone but Denki this time around. I was consistently able to rely on him whenever my other pokemon weren't enough.

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

And with that, Pastoria Gym is finished! Next time we'll see what's changed now that we've cleared our next gym!

[Aura]

Pastoria City

With the Fen Badge in hand, we can now use the HM move Defog in the overworld! The only problem is, that doesn't really make our way forward obvious just yet. We haven't actually found a place we can use Defog. Yeah, I imagine this is the point in the game a lot of kids probably got lost and confused. I know I definitely got stuck here my first time. If you haven't been paying much attention to the dialogue, or you haven't played in a while, where do you go form here? You might think to Fly back to Hearthome City to take on the gym there, but you'll be puzzled to find out that the gym still isn't open yet. Up until now, anytime you've cleared a gym, you've just moved on to the next route, but if you follow the next route here, you'll just end up back in Hearthome. The gym still won't be open.

This is one of those points where you can't just mindlessly hop from gym to gym and actually have to pay attention to the dialogue of the NPC's you speak to. If you recall, the grunts in Veilstone City mentioned shipping a package to Pastoria.

When we first arrived here, there was a grunt standing outside the Great Marsh waiting for the package to be delivered. Well, it seems the package arrived while we were in the gym. Perhaps it was a package that needed to be handled carefully? Well, if we speak to this grunt now, we'll overhear him proclaiming to have finally obtained the package, but he'll clam up as soon as he catches us listening in on him. Instead of battling us to get us away, he actually does the smart thing and retreats! He runs back in the direction of Veilstone City.

If we try to chase after him, we'll find that he's stopped at the gatehouse. He doesn't seem to have a whole lot of stamina, does he? Well, we speak to him again and he continues to insist that he would battle you, but he's in a hurry!

Just as he runs away, Pace arrives as a convenient distraction for the grunt. He actually manages to avoid bumping into us this time. Character development! But he's still kinda holding us back when there seems to be important stuff going on... But of course, it's Pace, so his impatience means we have to battle right here, right now.

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

 

My Team:

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

 Senshi (Monferno M); Lv. 30

 

Item: Fist Plate 

Ability: Blaze | Moves: Mach Punch, Leer, Flame Wheel, Taunt

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

 Denki (Luxray M); Lv. 31

 

Item: Shell Bell 

Ability: Intimidate | Moves: Spark, Roar, Swagger, Bite

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

 Hana (Roselia F); Lv. 31

 

Item: Big Root 

Ability: Poison Point | Moves: Giga Drain, Toxic Spikes, Worry Seed, Stun Spore

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

 Uki (Floatzel F); Lv. 30

 

Item: Amulet Coin 

Ability: Swift Swim | Moves: Swift, Crunch, Aqua Jet, Ice Fang

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

 Kuro (Murkrow F); Lv. 31

 

Item: Dread Plate 

Ability: Super Luck | Moves: Wing Attack, Night Shade, Assurance, Haze

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

 Ibutsu (Bronzor); Lv. 30

 

Item: Quick Claw 

Ability: Levitate | Moves: Extrasensory, Hypnosis, Stealth Rock, Trick Room

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

Vs. Rival #3

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

Starly, Lv. 26

Somehow, this boy is still coming at me with an unevolved Starly.

                                        

                                          

Senshi was at the front of my party this time. With a Flame Wheel, I was able to get an easy KO. Because it was just a Starly.

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

Prinplup, Lv. 28

                                        

                                          

Prinplup was my next foe. Obviously, he was going ot go for a Water attack, so I switched appropriately.

                                        

                                          

In came Hana. With a couple of Giga Drains, Prinplup went down and Hana healed off any damage Prinplup's Bubblebeams were able to deal. Not sure why he went for a second Bubblebeam when he had Peck. Maybe it wouldn't have done as much damage even with the super-effective boost, or maybe he was being cautious about Poison Point. Either way, it didn't pay off for him in the end.

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

Ponyta, Lv. 25

                                        

                                          

Ponyta was next and, once again, I'd be a fool to leave Hana in on this matchup.

                                        

                                          

I switched Uki in, expecting an Ember. Pace read the switch, though and wound up using Stomp instead, to my surprise. Still, it didn't do too much damage and an Aqua Jet took it out with ease the following turn.

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

Roselia, Lv. 25

                                                             

                                          

"Yeah, I can tell you raised your Pokemon to be tough!"

He thought he had a leg up on me, but an Ice Fang was all it took to take Roselia out with ease.

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

And that's a wrap! With that, Pace was beaten once again.

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

After his defeat, Pace asks about the grunt and tell sus he's suspicious for running like that and that we need to chase after him! Well, obviously.

We don't know where exactly the grunt was headed, so we probably shouldn't fly away. Instead, we'll need to chase him on foot.

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

Route 213

We chase the grunt down Route 213 and find him taking a rest halfway to the Hotel Grand Lake. We once again catch him monologuing to himself about the machine inside the package. Of course, we don't overhear much before he spots us, comments on our persistence, and runs off once again toward his destination.

Valor Lakefront

We chase the grunt all the way to the Valor Lakefront where he finally decides he can't run away anymore and battles us.

 

All we're met with is a single Glameow. Very simple KO!

After defeat, the grunt is disappointed but still refuses to give up the package. He says he'll just need to deliver it to the commander and runs off again.

As we head north again, we bump into Cynthia. She was here because she wanted to visit Lake Valor to investigate the folklore surrounding the supposed mythical pokemon of the lake. But unfortunately, the scientists doing research there have the lake closed off, so it isn't open to the public right now. On an unrelated note, she brings up the Psyduck blocking the path on Route 210.

Cynthia gives us a SecretPotion to deliver to the Psyduck to help cure their headache. Perhaps she cares about their well-being but is too busy to help? We've got nothing else to do right now now that we've lost that Galactic Grunt. So it looks like we've got our heading!

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

Pastoria City

Weeelll, except there actually is something small I want to do first. If we need to make our way north from Pastoria, we may as well take the aforementioned route just west of it that leads up to Hearthome City!

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

Route 212

Route 212 is the next area of interest! It's actually more like two routes in one as the southern section has different wild pokemon than the northern section. It's also raining down here! So try to take advantage of the water and keep your fire-types in the back!

I've already covered the berry trees on this route near the entrance, but to the north there's a large opening of mud with a few items with the dowsing machine. At this point, I'm kind of over talking about every single item you can get, but I'll cover new items and items that are particularly valuable.

 

This route introduces you to Pokemon Rangers! Not to be confused with the ones from the Fiore region, these rangers are environmentalists out here to ensure the safety of wild pokemon and people in the wild alike. They use a variety of pokemon in order to take best advantage of the environments they find themselves in. This class was introduced in Hoenn and Sinnohan Rangers resemble their Gen III counterparts strongly, thought he girls have poofier hair and the boys have bangs.

There are also Parasol Ladies here, too. Parasol Ladies in Sinnoh have more pink in their outfits than their Hoenn counterparts. They also have lighter-colored hair. These ladies generally use weather-based strategies and are often found on routes like this with permanent weather effects to capitalize.

There's no particular pokemon of interest in the grass down here. You can find Wooper if you don't want to bother catching it in the Great Marsh, but odds are you've probably caught one on your first visit there.

Beyond the grass, there's a swampy area where you can fall into certain parts of the mud. You'll need to wiggle your way out of it if you fall in. There's a honey tree across the swamp that you might want to spread some honey on.

There are many plateaus throughout the southern part of this route which have narrow bridges running between them. You can use your bike to ride along these bridges and reach otherwise inaccessible elevated areas.

By doing this, you can access a backroute through some Cut trees that bypasses the swampy area entirely.

Taking this path will lead you to a Zinc. 

At the other side of the swamp is a house that is home to the shard collector.

   

If you bring this woman 10 Red, Blue, Yellow, or Green shards, she'll exchange them for TM11: Sunny Day, TM18: Rain Dance, TM27: Sandstorm, or TM07: Hail respectively. This NPC in conjunction with the ability to dig up shards in the Underground makes these TMs renewable, but getting 10 shards of a specific color can take a while.

Using the dowsing machine around this house will call to attention a nearby Heart Scale! It's always nice to amount a surplus of these things.

 

While exploring this route, you can find TM06: Toxic and TM62: Silver Wind

There are some parts of this route that we can't reach because they require Surf, but you can cover a decent chunk of it right now.

Toward the end of the southern section of the route, and more prominently the closer you get to Hearthome, you'll start to run into Policemen. Originally called the Officer class, this trainer class is returning from Gen II! Policemen are a sort of counterpart to Joggers in that they only battle you if you're out at odd hours. Joggers battle you during their morning jogs while Policemen battle you during their nightly patrols. They look nearly identical to their Johto counterparts, though as a kid, I always interpreted the flash of their flashlight as them firing a gun! I... guess that interpretation hasn't aged very well, has it? Yikes... Anyway, Policemen typically specialize in Nocturnal pokemon, specifically the Hoothoot line, as well as Fighting-types to subdue tough criminals.

 

As you reach the northern end, a lot more items that require Surf will become apparent. But, there's still some things you can reach, including a berry patch with an Aspear and Sitrus Berry!

Using Cut, you can get access to TM11: Sunny Day! ...Wait a minute!

Yeah, so these weather TMs aren't exclusive to the shard collector, thankfully, but you'll still need to gather up shards if you want multiple copies.

Of course, the main attraction here is the Pokemon Mansion which bears a suspicious resemblance to the Old Chateau...

There isn't too much we can do here.

One of the maids in the rooms on the left wing will give you a Soothe Bell. If you're still trying to evolve a pokemon that requires happiness, let them hold onto this! Take them to lots of massages and use them in battle a lot. They'll evolve before you know it!

In the other wing, you can find the office of the Mansion's owner, who also owns Amity Square north of Hearthome City: The Inexplicably wealthy Mr. Backlot! He doesn't have much to offer right now, he just welcomes you to his home. It's through his specific instructions that his prized Trophy Garden is open to anyone, even Pokemon Trainers who can help themselves to any pokemon they find there.

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

The Trophy Garden might seem unassuming. It's basically just a big platform of tall grass with some flowers here and there. But it's the pokemon you're after, here.

Now, this place is going to be tremendously important for pokedex completion in the postgame, but for now, there's only a couple pokemon of interest.

For starters, if you haven't found Staravia yet, this I believe is where it's most common in the game. During the day, it has a 40% rarity. It's only 20%, though, during the night and early morning.

  

After searching for a little bit, you'll eventually find your main purpose for coming here when you bump into a Pichu! It's only available at 10% during the day and night, but during the early morning, it's available at 30%! Try to catch it then! I named mine Tomodachi.

  

You can find Pikachu, also, at 10% rarity. I named mine Aibou.

 

You may have noticed it before, but Pikachu has one of the more obvious gender differences mainly because it affects its iconic silhouette. Female Pikachu's tails have a heart shape at the end rather than a flat tip. I'm not too big of a fan of the on-the-nose "It's a girl because it has a heart!" motif, but it's a bit more subtle than others, and it's nice to be able to have a Pikachu that has a distinction from Ash's famous Pikachu in the anime.

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

And as you pass through the gatehouse to the north of Route 212, you'll find it to be the one that was blocked off by interviewers before! The path is clear now, so we can make our way to Hearthome City!

From here, we should be able to get back to Route 210 with ease. So next time, I think it'll be time for us to bring the SecretPotion to the Psyduck and see if we can make our way further on in that direction!

[Aura]

Route 210

Now that we've explored the rest of southern Sinnoh and circled back into Hearthome City, we can Fly back to Solaceon Town and head north to Route 210 where we can finally put that SecretPotion to use.

I didn't actually notice until looking at it today, but the description of the SecretPotion actually confirms that it is indeed intended to be the very same type of medicine used on Amphy in Gold and Silver. It even mentions being made in Cianwood City! I thought that detail was actually really cool.

       

          

 

If we return to where we saw the Psyduck before, we'll find that they're still there and still suffering from their chronic headaches. If we interact with them now that we have the SecretPotion, we can make them all feel better. The Psyduck move away from the chokepoint, opening the way forward to the northern part of Route210.

As soon as the Psyduck take their leave, Cynthia arrives and thanks you for helping her deal with them. She then asks you for another request. She requests that you visit her grandmother in Celestic Town and deliver an Old Charm to her. There are supposedly some rare pokemon along the way, so she says it'll be well worth your time to visit there. The real truth is, the way forward in the game's narrative won't be revealed until we go. We agree and head up north.

Before progressing beyond this point, I recommend bringing a pokemon with the HM move Defog with you. If you never got Defog, you can get it from an Ace Trainer near the entrance inside of the Great Marsh. Defog isn't required per se, but it does provide notable help.

For my Defog user, I decided to go with Akushuu the Stunky. It is a diamond exclusive, but Stunky is capable of learning Defog alongside the two HM moves that Fusei Kogo currently knows: Rock Smash and Cut, meaning I don't have to double down on HM users in order to have access to all three moves.

If you're playing Pearl version, you'll need to resort to another pokemon instead. A lot of Flying-type pokemon learn Defog, so if you have an HM-user for Fly, it can probably use Defog as well. Alternatively, Finneon can make a good choice for Defog since it can also learn Surf and Waterfall later on. You might want an HM user for one or both of these moves, though there is a much better one overall in Bibarrel who can learn any HM except Fly or Defog.

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

As we transition to the northern part of Route 210, we'll have to wade thorough some long grass. If look closely as you walk, you'll notice some tiles of grass that are out of place. That's because there are Ninja Boys hiding within those tiles.

You can find some items lying around here, but the pokemon are the same as what we saw in the southern part.

As we continue headed forward, a thick fog will begin to roll in. This fog makes it a little hard to see, but it isn't too bad to navigate even if you ignore it. It's not nearly as intrusive as darkness. However, in battle, Fog actually turns out to be a genuine weather condition! It's odd that it's programmed in as a weather condition, but there's no actual move that causes fog to appear in-battle like Rain or Sandstorms.

While Fog is covering the arena, the main effect is that the accuracy of all moves is significantly reduced. Beyond that, the Fog blocks out the sky, making the moves Solar Beam, Moonlight, Synthesis, and Morning Sun weaker. It also doubles the power of the move Weather Ball, but doesn't change its, or Castform's, type.

The fog can be lifted as simply as using the HM Defog. This will make exploring the route that much more bearable.

The pokemon up here in the foggy area are different compared to the pokemon on southern Route210, but there's nothing of particular note up here save for Machoke who will be more common later in the game, so it's not really worth hunting one down here.

There's a honey tree nearby, however, which means another potential chance for Munchlax!

As for trainer classes, there aren't any particularly new ones, but this is our first time seeing a Double Team, that's two Ace Trainers, a man and a woman, paired up as a tag-team. Not to be confused with the two independent Ace Trainers we fought before who were optionally battled in a double battle. Some of the battles on this route can actually be a little tough, so Defog is definitely appreciated.

Most of the items on this route are hidden behind HMs we can't use yet, but there are a few nice ones we can get right now.

TM30: Shadow Ball can be obtained by using the Bike to cross the two narrow bridges along the mountainside. You'll need Rock Smash to reach it. Shadow Ball is an especially significant move in Gen IV now that it's qualified as a Special move rather than a Physical move.

You can also get a Smoke Ball which is guarded by a Ninja Boy. It's just down the stairs into the valley and to the right.

   

Up the stairs near the end of the route is a berry patch with a Sitrus, Chesto, Wiki, and Aguav Berry tree.

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

Celestic Town

I do believe Celestic Town is the town that's geographically closest to Mt. Coronet, the second-closest being Eterna City on the other side. Just like Eterna City, this town seems to be heavily in tune with the origins of Sinnoh, being home to a shrine and what appears to be a mural depicting the Legendary Pokemon Dialga and Palkia, expressing the importance of both time and space in the grand scheme of life. Due to the town's low population and apparent importance of tradition, it seems it's not very populous. It's mostly just the elderly and the occasional child.

While there is no PokeMart in town, the building in the northeastern corner is a shop run by the locals. It operates similarly to a mart. The lady on the left sells Timer Balls alongside Quick Balls and Dusk Balls. Timer Balls are the opposite of Quick Balls. They're more effective the more turns that have passed. After 5 turns, they perform better than Great Balls; after 10 turns, they're better than an Ultra Ball; after 25 turns, they're better than a Dusk Ball at night; and they cap out at 30 turns where they're twice as good as an Ultra Ball, which is as good as a Quick Ball on the first turn. As you can imagine, these poke balls are fantastic for catching legendary pokemon!

There's a man inside of the shop who will give you a different item depending on the time of day.

During the early morning, he'll give you Choice Specs. This is a new counterpart to the Choice Band from Gen III! Instead of boosting your physical attack, the Choice Specs increases your Special Attack by 1.5x. Just like the Choice Band, this can be a devastating boost to raw offensive power. The caveat, of course, is that you're locked into using the same move over and over and will have to switch if you want to use a different move. This is a great item for powerhouse special attackers who just want to mow through everything they see.

During the middle of the day, he'll give you BlackGlasses, an item that's functionally identical to the Dread Plate.

And during the night, he'll give you Wise Glasses which are a less powerful counterpart to the Choice Specs without the downside of being locked into attacks. They boost the power of Special attacks by 10% which... really isn't all that significant when you think about it. A 95 power move only becomes a 104 power move. I suppose it's best used on pokemon that have to commit super hard to a powerful attack like Hyper Beam, but at that point, I'm not sure I'd say it's worth it.

And in the house western house across from the pokemon center, you'll find a Black Belt who will give you a new Poketch app!

App 12: Analogue Clock

I can't imagine who in their right mind ever decided that this was worth a slot on the poketch. This useless app is functionally identical to the Digital Clock app, only it displays time in an analogue format. Which offers significantly less precision than the Digital Clock that comes with the Poketch. The only purpose for this app's inclusion, I can imagine, is a joke about old people preferring analogue clocks in the digital age. If you tap on the screen, just like the Digital Clock, the clock will light up.

The large building in the north of town is home to the village elder. The elder herself is standing at the south end of town, eyeing a rude galactic grunt who's standing in front of the Celestic Ruins and complaining about how useless the town is and how he wants to blow it up with a bomb. Woah!

We approach the grunt and battle him and scare him off.

As he retreats, that strange man from Mt. Coronet emerges from the ruins! He begins to talk about how an insignificant struggle was made here and insists that everyone should take a step back and see the bigger picture from a universal perspective. He introduces himself as Cyrus and explains that he's seeking the power to create a new world. He requests that we inform him if we come across any power derived from the legends of Sinnoh before leaving.

This guy sounds like a total nutjob, and he's clearly in charge of Team Galactic at this point. It seems we now understand their motivations, and the way he talks about it seems to imply some dangerous disregard for the world we currently inhabit... I don't know if I like where this is going.

After Cyrus leaves, the old lady approaches to thank us for teaching that grunt a lesson. She then recognizes the Old Charm and tells us that Cynthia is her granddaughter. So, we give it to her as requested by Cynthia.

I suppose this means that this is probably the place Cynthia grew up in, or at least visited frequently. It explains her immense interest in the mythos of the Sinnoh Region.

To thank us both for the delivery as well as fighting off that Galactic Grunt, she rewards us with HM03: Surf! Surf was actually updated in this game from Generation III. It now behaves more akin to Earthquake in a Double Battle rather than moves like Razor Leaf and Swift. This means that it now damages your ally alongside your opponents, so you can't use it as carelessly in double battles. On the flip side, it also means the damage it deals is no longer halved against your opponents! Of course, this HM is also going to unlock a lot of movement potential, but we can't use it outside of battle just yet. We'll need the gym badge from Hearthome City.

Before we leave, Cynthia's Grandmother suggests that we take a moment to step inside the ruins and take a look at what's inside.

If we step inside, we'll find this place to be a small chamber with a strange mural at the far end. It seems to depict three pokemon surrounding a strange red dot in the center. The elder steps in to tell us a bit about the mythos of the legendary pokemon said to reside in the lakes of Sinnoh. If you recall from the plates we've gathered, there are three beings who were born to bind time and space... perhaps these three are those? Perhaps there are powers at play here that mankind shouldn't be attempting to interfere with...

After explaining the myths, the elder tells us that we should head to Hearthome and take on the gym there. I suppose now we're arbitrarily strong enough to take it on?

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

Route 211

Just west of Celestic Town, you can find the Eastern side of Route 211!

   

There's another honey tree here as well as a berry patch contianing a Pecha, Aspear, Iapapa, and Grepa Tree.

There is absolutely nothing of interest in the grass here, either. It'ss eeming like Cynthia's claim that there were rare pokemon along the way to Celestic Town was a flat-out lie! Once again, the most interesting thing here is the Machoke which is slightly more common here during the morning and day, but still not as common as it can be found elsewhere.

The main thing to get here is TM77: Psych Up from the Ace Trainer overlooking the cliff on the nothern path across the route. He seems to be trying to psych himself up into being a stronger trainer and overcoming his insecurities. Good for him!

Northern Mt. Cornet [1F]

You can try to explore Mt. Coronet from the entrance here, but you can't get very far at all before you're blocked by Strength Boulders. We may have completed a handful of gyms since we last arrived here, but those badges only let us use the HMs Fly and Defog. We still don't have any way to use our Strength HM!

Since we're blocked by these boulders, there's not much to find at all here. We can't even make our way across to Eterna City on the other side, so we'll just have to back out and continue relying on Fly to get around.

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

With fly, we can return to Hearthome City. And next time, it's looking like it's finally time to take on the gym here that's been taunting us for so long! Let's see if it lives up to the hype!

[Aura]

Hearthome Gym

After delivering the Old Charm to Cynthia's Grandmother in Celestic Town, the elevator in Hearthome Gym finally lowers, showing that we're ready to challenge the gym leader Fantina!

This is a ghost gym filled with lots of wide, empty rooms. Taking the elevator will lead you to a sign with a... math equation? I guess they really wanted to get some mileage out of that poketch. You can use the calculator app on your poketch if you don't want to do the math yourself. What a strange puzzle for a ghost gym...

Anyway, the three doors before you correlate to a possible answer to the question. Choosing the correct one will lead you to the elevator to the next question. Choosing the wrong one will force you into a trainer battle. Of course, I like to clear the gym of its trainers before taking on the leader, so I'll be intentionally getting all the answers wrong! Humorously, many of the trainers here comment on the possibility of people doing just that. They all respond in different ways. It never fails to get a chuckle out of me!

       

Due to the nature of the gym's puzzle, there are lots of trainers to battle here! They get progressively tougher the higher up you go. There's a youngster and lass on the first floor, a camper and picnicker on the second, two school kids on the third, and two Ace Trainers on the fourth.

Even though the math puzzle is weird, I kinda like how this gym feels a bit like something you'd find at the Battle Frontier.

  

While battling the trainers early in the gym, Ibutsu finally reached Level 33 and evolved into Bronzong! This behemoth is about to be a lot tankier! All it needs now is a physical attack... Anyway, we now only have two pokemon that aren't fully evolved!

Answering the final question by correctly recalling the answer to the first, you'll be met not by an elevator leading to the next question, but by the gym leader Fantina herself!

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

 

My Team:

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

 Senshi (Monferno M); Lv. 33

 

Item: Fist Plate 

Ability: Blaze | Moves: Mach Punch, Leer, Flame Wheel, Taunt

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

 Denki (Luxray M); Lv. 34

 

Item: Shell Bell 

Ability: Intimidate | Moves: Spark, Roar, Swagger, Bite

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

 Hana (Roselia F); Lv. 33

 

Item: Big Root 

Ability: Poison Point | Moves: Giga Drain, Toxic Spikes, Worry Seed, Stun Spore

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

 Uki (Floatzel F); Lv. 34

 

Item: Amulet Coin 

Ability: Swift Swim | Moves: Surf, Crunch, Aqua Jet, Ice Fang

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

 Kuro (Murkrow F); Lv. 34

 

Item: BlackGlasses 

Ability: Super Luck | Moves: Wing Attack, Night Shade, Assurance, Haze

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

 Ibutsu (Bronzor); Lv. 34

 

Item: Quick Claw 

Ability: Levitate | Moves: Extrasensory, Hypnosis, Stealth Rock, Trick Room

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

Vs. Hearthome Gym Leader Fantina

It's time to see what all the hype is about. Time to take on the Contest Expert herself!

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

Drifblim, Lv. 32

Her first pokemon was Drifblim! Drifblim is a little annoying because of its Aftermath ability. I often wind up taking more damage trying to make sure I finish it off without making physical contact. It's probably a better idea to just bite the bullet.

                                        

                                        

Since this Drifblim was a higher level than the ones throughout the gym, I figured it would be okay to soften it up with an Assurance before going for the finishing blow with Night Shade. However, it seems Kuro's Super Luck kicked in and got me a crit! It's a rather unfortunate time for this to happen, but I'll take a free OHKO!

To add to my luck here, this KO was even enough to level Kuro up to Lv. 35 so that she could learn Faint Attack! Faint Attack is slightly stronger than assurance's base 50. Though it isn't stronger if Assurance's power is doubled by having taken damage first, I don't see that happening very often with this guy. I'd much rather have a quicker, faster, and more consistent Dark attack, especially since I'm relying on Fly for a Flying attack.

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

Gengar, Lv. 34

                                        

                                        

Gengar is next! But, you might not believe me when I tell you that... I was ablet o OHKO this thing thanks to yet another crit with Faint Attack. She was able to get a Shadow Claw off on me, though. I resisted it, of course, but it was a good effort!

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

Mismagius, Lv. 36

 

                                        

                                        

Mismagius is her final pokemon. It hit me with a Magical Leaf, resisted again, before I finished it off with another Faint Attack. This one wasn't a crit, Mismagius just didn't have the physical defense to take the hit. (I'm telling you, the physical/special split makes Murkow a far more appealing pokemon than ever before!)

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

 

And with that, we've defeated Fantina and earned the Hearthome Gym's own Relic Badge! With this, we can now use the move Surf outside of battle!

We also get TM65: Shadow Claw which is a ghost-type counterpart to Slash. It's a really appealing move as it's fairly widely learned, covers for some annoying Psychic and Ghost-types, and the high crit chance is nothing to shake a fist at, either!

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

MVP: Kuro

I didn't come in here expecting to sweep with Kuro, but those crits just kept coming! I distinctly recall Fantina being really annoying due to her early pokemon Drifblim loves to use Minimize while Gengar's Confuse Ray can mess with you, too. If you don't get those OHKOs that I was lucky enough to have, they can be a hassle thanks to RNG. Her Mismagius is also really high level for this point in the game! So, these OHKO's mattered a lot more than it might seem.

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

I would be a little upset about the rather 'unfair' way I won this battle, but I don't really find it unfair to benefit from crits if I'm using a Scope Lens or, in this case, the Super Luck ability. Plus, we'll be battling Fantina at least two more times throughout this gen, so this isn't the last we've seen of her, that's for sure.

Next time, we'll take a look around the world and see what we can find now that a significant chunk of the game's world has been opened up to us with our ability to Surf across water!

[Aura]

Hearthome City

Last time, we completed the Hearthome Gym and obtained the Relic Badge with grants us the ability to use Surf outside of battle! This opens up a huge chunk of notable locations in areas we've already explored. So, in today's update, we're not going to be pressing onward with the story but instead doubling back over everywhere we've gone so far and seeing what Surf can do for us!

When you first emerge from Hearthome Gym, you'll be met by Cynthia who has received word from her grandmother about what happened in Celestic Town. She's surprised to hear about just how dangerous Team Galactic are beginning to sound. For now, however, she recommends that we go and visit the library in Canalave City if we found the mural in the Celestic Ruins interesting.

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

Route 212

Before we begin, we'll want to start with Route 212. There isn't much of note to be found in the northern section. The first pond looks like an it's blocking an area that should have a hidden item, but there's absolutely nothing over there! How weird.

Rose Incense can be found by surfing to get around the hedges blocking it off next to the second pond. This item functions identically to a Miracle Seed but is also the incense required for a Roselia Egg to be laid as a Budew egg instead.

 

A berry patch holding a Lum and Tamato Berry can be found by surfing across the third pond.

If you haven't gotten one yet, these small ponds contain Psyduck at 90% which I do believe to be the most common these guys appear, so now's a good time to nab one!

You can also find Golduck here if you're not fond of hunting for it in the Great Marsh. It's available at 10% here but will be more common in a future area.

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

 

The southern part of the route is the only place where you can find Wooper and Quagsire outside of the Great Marsh. While surfing, Wooper has a 90% encounter rate while Quagsire has 10%.

Surfing across the westmost body of water from the east side will bring you to a small peninsula that holds TM84: Poison Jab. This is an 80 Power Poison-type move that has a 30% chance of poisoning the target.

There's a hidden Protien if you surf around the corner along the southern border near the fishing area.

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

Pastoria City

Surfing across the water in Pastoria City will reveal a secret area where you can find a Mystic Water! I gave this to Uki to power up her Surf since her special attack isn't as high as physical. I've actually failed to mention this yet, but these held items are actually stronger in Gen IV than they were in Gen III. Their effect has been doubled to where they now increase the move's power by 20% rather than 10% like before. You might notice a larger effect from these items.

As for wild pokemon, the wild pokemon you can find here are pretty standard across most open sea waters. The open sea water on Route 212 is an exception to this, presumably due to its proximity to the Great Marsh.

  

The most common pokemon to find here, coming as no surprise, is Tentacool, available at 60%. I caught one here and named it Ika.

You can also find Tentacruel here at an exceedingly rare 5%. It'll be more common in a future area so no need to hunt for it here. You also always have the option of just evolving a Tentacool.

In a similar boat, you can also find Pelipper while Surfing! This one is also a 5% rarity that will become much more common in the future.

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

Great Marsh

While there's nothing of particular interest Surf provides for you in the Great Marsh, all the items can be reached without use of Surf, I thought I should note that all the water in the Great Marsh has the same encounters.

 

This is the way to find Wooper and Marill at their most common: 60% and 30% respectively. You probably won't have any shortage of these guys while looking for the rarer catches, but in case you're lucky enough to have these two be the stragglers, this is where you're best to look for them.

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

Route 213

This is the first route that's notably expanded from what we've been able to explore before! It's also the first time where the Surf music is probably going to sink in. The Surf music is slower paced than previous Surfing themes which were already pretty slow paced. There's nothing wrong with that in particular, but this is also where the game's slowness really starts to become noticeable. The music is slow, your surfing speed is slow (about your standard walking speed), the random encounters are slow to start and slow to end. And then you have the trainers and wide-open spaces to explore. The water routes aren't as wide in this game as they were in Ruby and Sapphire, but in my opinion, they're a lot more unbearable here.

Thankfully, this particular area isn't as bad as they come.

 

We've got some new trainer classes here in the form of Male and Female Swimmers! These are generic Water-type experts that are most known for populating these water routes due to their ability to swim through the water. Male Swimmers still bear their classic appearance with a swim cap and swimming trunks. Female Swimmers now have brunette hair tied up. Their blue bikini is similar to the ones worn by the Swimmers from Hoenn.

Surfing along the southern border, you'll find an isolated island with an item on it. It looks like it's completely blocked off by rocks. If this were gen III, I'd probably assume I needed Dive to reach it. It takes some doing to figure out how to get inside, but once again the game is playing with perspective here. There's a one-tile-wide gap at the far east edge of this isolated area that you can squeeze through to get to the island which has a Max Revive to reward your troubles!

You can find a Water Stone at the far end of this water section. While this stone is important to evolve a lot of different pokemon, it's rather useless for the pokemon that are actually catchable here in the main story. But, it'll still be useful later on for Pokedex completion!

Route 214

Our next destination is the pond at the north end of Route 210, just south of Veilstone City.

You can get a Rare Candy across the water here... Well, it's not much, but it's a rare item and it's right on the path of your berry run, so you may as well grab it!

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

Route 210

Even though there's water we can surf on in the northern section of Route 210, we can't actually do much of anything here without Waterfall, so we'll have to leave that be for now. Instead, we'll head down south to make our way back toward Hearthome.

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

Route 209

Water was a pretty prominent obstacle on Route 209. Though there wasn't much actually blocked off by it, there is a secret passage past the X-Attack across from the PokeKid. You can reach the water on the other side of the rock here which leads you down a narrow path to the east which curves around to an item.

This turns out to be TM19: Giga Drain!

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

Route 208

There isn't much of interest on Route 208, just a Fisher that you can battle.

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

Southern Mt. Coronet

Across the pond atop the southern plateau, you can finally grab the item on the other side which turns out to be a Dawn Stone! This item is required to evolve a couple of pokemon we've yet to meet. We'll just stash that away for now.

There's also a protein across the northern lake.

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

Oreburgh Gate [1F]

The next location of interest is Oreburgh Gate.

Oreburgh Gate [B1F]

On the basement floor of Oreburgh Gate, there's a massive pond of water. There's really no reason for this pond to be so huge. The only thing it leads to is the small sliver of land on its west edge. Unfortuantely, all that's over here is a Veteran to battle. There's a Strength Boulder this way which we still can't interact with, so I suppose there's no real reason to come down here after all.

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

Route 204

Our next destination is Route 204, just north of Jubilife City.

There's a Sea Incense across the pond immediately west of the entrance. You'll need to cross it from the north. This Incense is functionally identical to the Mystic Water and is required to breed for Azurill if you don't want to catch one in the Great Marsh due to its rarity.

There's also an HP Up across the large pond to the northwest.

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

Ravaged Path

If you recall, Ravaged Path also had a large body of water that the enemy to our progress.

 

You can find a Luck Incense and the end of the path filled with Rock Smash Boulders. The Luck Incense is the incense required to breed for Happiny. It offers an identical effect to the Amulet Coin when held in battle. At the far end, you can also find TM03: Water Pulse

  

It was surfing in here where I encountered Golbat! It was quite resilient to capture, but I wanted to catch it in a Great Ball, dammit! I don't know if you noticed, or if I've mentioned it yet, but I like to match the Poke Ball type aesthetically to the pokemon I catch with them. It doesn't always work out that way, for example, I really wanted to catch Kuro in the Dusk Ball. But not everything is meant to work out so cleanly, I suppose.

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

Route 205

Route 205 is home to a large river that empties out on two sides to a new area on either side.

  

It was along this river that I was lucky enough to encounter a wild Tentacruel which I no longer have to be concerned with. Its name is Kurage.

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

Valley Windworks

Of course, the east side passes through Valley Windworks.

Obscured by the building, there's a piece of land just north of it that holds TM24: ThunderBolt, a fantastic Electric attack for special attackers!

There's also a Max Elixir hidden on the north side of the fence here.

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

Fuego Ironworks

The west side is the more interesting path, as it will lead us toward a new area: Fuego Ironworks. This place is an incredibly bizarre location in Diamond and Pearl as it's very distinctly designed and yet bears no significance to the game's story, holds no particularly interesting pokemon, and there are no particularly substantial items you can get here, either outside of the berries out front and a Honey Tree which is just as likely as any other to be a normal common tree.

Anyway, this place is where iron mined from Mt. Coronet is forged and processed into mechanical parts.

   

The berry trees are Sitrus, Wepear, and Kelpsy Trees.

This is the only place where you can find wild Luxio. Just be wary that they come equipped with Roar, so be sure to Taunt them in order to prevent them from fleeing!

Gastrodon can also be found here, though it's more common on another route.

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

Fuego Ironworks

If we enter the irornworks, we can find that the devs just couldn't resust using these arrow platforms! Yes, this is yet another one of these puzzles we're all too familiar with. As always, the puzzle is simple enough to navigate. Just look ahead to where each tile will land you and pick the one that leads to the area you want to go. If you've been playing along with these games, you should be more than familiar with these puzzles at this point.

The interior has no wild pokemon but there are some workers hanging around for you to battle.

  

Throughout the maze, you can find some items to pick up. These include a Fire Stone, Rock Incense, and TM35: Flamethrower alongside some other miscellaneous items. Use your Dowsing Machine to find even more! There's actually a lot of items to be found here.

The Rock Incense is probably the most important item to get here. It functions like a Hard Stone in battle and is the required incense to breed for Bonsly.

The Fire Stone, like the Water Stone, isn't very useful for the main story, but it will be useful for pokedex completion in the postgame!

And speaking of the Fire Stone, you'll get an additional one if you speak to Mr. Fuego, the owner of the place, in the center of the maze. He also makes a joke about how the spinning arrow tiles were a new renovation and haven't gone over well with his workers because it makes them dizzy (ha!)

Anyway, there's not much else to do here. Like I said, this is a bizarre location because there's definitely a lot that could've been done here and, if you've played Platinum, you might be shocked to realize just how little there actually is here, as this area is a lot more significant there. In this case, you could probably go the entire game without ever setting foot inside this building and never even know you missed anything. Remember, Flamethrower TMs can be gotten from the Department Store and Fire Stones can be found Underground.

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

image from Platinum, so aesthetics vary slightly

Floaroma Meadow

Heading south of Fuego Ironworks, you'll find it connects directly to Floaroma Meadow! This is how you reach the large field of flowers north of the area you buy Honey from.

 

There's a bit of a "maze" in the arrangement of flowers for you to walk along. You can check your Dowsing Machine along the path to find that a lot of the dead ends have items hidden in them. Among the items that can be found here, you can get a Miracle Seed to power up grass attacks and a Leaf Stone! If you leap down the ledge here, you're back to Floaroma Town.

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

Eterna City

Eterna City is home to a couple of ponds. Only the northern one has anything of interest, though.

That would be a PP Up! Strangely, there's nothing at all on the other side of the southern pond.

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

And with that, we've circled all the way around Sinnoh. There's just one more area we'll want to take a peek at before we really start to move on toward Canlave City. We'll want to fly back to Sandgem Town to get there.

Route 219

We can now explore beyond Route 219! There's not much at all here besides the two Tubers, but continuing further...

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

Route 220

Oooh boy, yes, this route is just as obnoxious to explore as it looks. Let's try to break it down.

First off, if you head straight south, you'll find a Splash Plate on the first island.

The rightful bearer of a Plate draws from the Plate it holds.

This Plate powers up water-type attacks.

The route itself is divided into three long narrow paths filled with Swimmers.

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

Route 221

As you cross into Route 221, the purpose for this division is made clear. The southern path is a total dead end while the center and northern paths both spill out back onto the mainland.

 

While battling my way through Route 220 and 221, Senshi reached level 36 and finally evolved into his final form: Infernape!

You can nab a Protein right here on the coast.

This whole area is a maze of tall grass.

  

There is one pokemon of interest all the way down here: Skuntank! Skuntank is the evolution of Stunky and is only available in Diamond Version, of course. Its available at 15%. I named it Onara.

In Pearl, you'll just find Sudowoodo here instead.

  

While I was hunting for Skuntank, I happened to stumble across a Gastrodon and caught it here! Its name is Petapeta. It's still more common elsewhere, so I wouldn't recommend actively searching for it here.

There's a Pure Incense that can be grabbed from a dead-end in the grass. The Pure Incense has an effect similar to the Cleanse Tag when held by a pokemon. It's also used to get Chingling eggs in place of Chimecho eggs.

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

There's a house isolated in the woods that belongs to a man who gives you a lucky number every day and requests you bring him a pokemon of that level.

  

If you fulfill his request, he'll give you one of three items: A Black Belt, which powers up Fighting attacks, an Expert Belt which increases the power of super-effective attacks, and a Focus Sash which is a consumable held item that causes a pokemon to hang on with 1HP if it takes a hit at full HP. This item is fundamental for a lot of competitive strategies in Gen IV. You can look at it as an upgraded version of the Focus Band which only had a 10% chance of keeping you from fainting, but it could potentially work repeatedly.

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

   

The Berry Patch here has a Leppa, Pecha, Magost, and Hondew Tree.

The clearing just beyond the berries here contains TM81: X-Scizzor, a powerful 80-power, 100% accurate Bug-type attack! Something the Bug type has been hurting for for a while!

And there's a carbos hidden in the southeastern patch of grass.

On the path just north of the berries, you can find a honey tree. This one is so far out of the way I can't imagine ever wanting to use this one at all.

As you battle the trainers here, they're all talking about a place called Pal Park, but when you arrive at the building on the far end, you'll find that Pal Park is still under construction and yet to open. It's described as "a place of new beginnings." I wonder what that means...?

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

So, that's it for today. Next time, we finally start exploring in the direction of Canalave City, west of Jubilife!

[Aura]

Route 218

Route 218 is just west of Jubilife City, just beyond the gatehouse where we got the Old Rod. This is where we fished for our first Magikarp! But now that we have Surf, we can explore the rest of what this route has to offer!

There's a Rare Candy you can grab if you sail to the northeastern corner.

   

The berry patch is home to a Rawst, Persim, Figy, and Pinap tree and is right next to a Honey Tree.

  

Mr Mime can be found in the grass here, naturally, in Diamond version only. It's the evolution of Mime Jr.! In order to evolve Mime Jr. into Mr. Mime, you'll need to level it up while it knows the move Mimic. It's a very strange evolution requirement, but one that's not too uncommon with a few other pokemon introduced in Sinnoh.

I named my Mr. Mime Shizuka.

In Pearl version, this is where you'll find the Pearl Counterpart to Stunky: Glameow! Even though these two are version exclusive counterparts, they don't usually appear in each other's place. At points, it actually seems more like Sudowoodo and Stunky are counterparts while Mr. Mime and Glameow are counterparts as well. But I think it's more fitting to call Glameow and Stunky counterparts since they're both wholly original Gen IV Pokemon while Sudowoodo and Mr. Mime are counterparts due to both having new baby forms introduced in this gen and they evolve in similar ways.

In addition, this is the place where I'd recommend hunting down Gastrodon if you still need one. The West Sea form is available here at 20% which is more common than anywhere else in the game.

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

Canalave City

Just beyond Route 218, a very short route I must add, we arrive at our next gym city: Canalave City! As per usual, though, we're not going to rush ahead to the gym just yet. Let's poke around!

TM48: Skill Swap can be obtained from an NPC in the first house.

The Mart just north of this building sells Repeat Balls which are a special type of pokeball that are especially effective at catching a pokemon if you already have a pokemon of that species registered as "caught" in your pokedex. It's alright for catching duplicate pokemon for your living dex, or for obtaining a pokemon with better nature or ability.

Just north of the Mart is a building that's home to the Move Deleter! Come here if you want to delete any HM Moves that are getting in the way of better moves you'd like to use!

At the northernmost edge of town is a strange building called the Harbor Inn. The sign up front is worn out and the door won't budge.

And as we cross the bridge to the other side of Canalave...

...Ugh, I wasn't at all prepared to deal with Pace, I still had a bunch of HM-Users in my party to help with a berry run, but here he is again!

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

 

My Team:

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

 Senshi (Infernape M); Lv. 36

 

Item: Fist Plate 

Ability: Blaze | Moves: Mach Punch, Leer, Flame Wheel, Taunt

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

 Denki (Luxray M); Lv. 37

 

Item: Shell Bell 

Ability: Intimidate | Moves: Spark, Roar, Swagger, Crunch

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

 Hana (Roselia F); Lv. 36

 

Item: Big Root 

Ability: Poison Point | Moves: Giga Drain, Toxic Spikes, Worry Seed, Stun Spore

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

 Uki (Floatzel F); Lv. 36

 

Item: Mystic Water 

Ability: Swift Swim | Moves: Surf, Crunch, Aqua Jet, Ice Fang

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

 Kuro (Murkrow F); Lv. 37

 

Item: BlackGlasses 

Ability: Super Luck | Moves: Wing Attack, Night Shade, Assurance, Haze

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

 Ibutsu (Bronzong); Lv. 36

 

Item: Quick Claw 

Ability: Levitate | Moves: Extrasensory, Hypnosis, Stealth Rock, Trick Room

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

Vs. Rival #4

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

Staravia, Lv. 31

Pace finally remembered not to press the B-Button!

                                        

                                        

Unfortunately for his middle-stage Staravia, I happen to be using my final stage starter. A couple of Flame Wheels did the job.

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

Prinplup, Lv. 35

                                        

                                        

This battle is seeming pretty familiar...

                                        

                                        

I switched Hana in on a Bubblebeam again. With a couple of Giga Drains, I finished Prinplup off and, with the help of my Big Root, healed off all the damage he could manage with Metal Claw.

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

Ponyta, Lv. 32

                                        

                                        

Again, things are still looking mighty familiar...

                                        

                                        

I switched in with Uki on an Ember and took out Ponyta with an Aqua Jet.

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

 

Roselia, Lv. 32

                                        

                                        

And an Ice Beam was it for Roselia. Again, super familiar.

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

Heracross, Lv. 30

But, Pace comes with a bit of a surprise this time! A Heracross!

                                                             

                                        

"We've gotten out of tighter spots than this plenty of times before!"

I go for Surf to avoid any devastating Counter attacks, I was able to bring his health down low while he just hit me with a Horn Attack.

                                                             

                                        

"We're not done yet! Neither me nor my pokemon have given up!"

But there's no chance of his return. An Aqua Jet finished the job.

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

And with that, Pace was defeated. Even in defeat, though, Pace continues to insist that he's going to become the Pokemon League Champion. We'll just have to see about that. He tells us to take on the gym here so that we don't fall too far behind before running off.

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

Now that Pace is out of the way, we can continue exploring the rest of town.

Canalave Library

This is the place Cynthia suggested we check out, so I suppose we should take a look around.

While there isn't much of interest here on the first two floors, the third floor is jam-packed with resources on Sinnoh's history and mythology... there's actually some really interesting world-building information here! Let's go over some of the stuff you'll find here!

 

Sinnoh Myth

"Betray not your anger, lest ??? will come.

Weep not with sorrow, or ??? will draw near.

When joy and enjoyment come natural as the very air, that is happiness.

Let such be blessed by the hand of Master ???.

Those words were spoken often as customary."

This books seems to cite some sort of ancient scripture worshipping a deity of some sort. The name of this deity seems to be redacted.

 

Sinnoh Region's Mythology

"Long ago, when Sinnoh had just been made, Pokémon and humans led separate lives.

That is not to say they did not help each other. No, indeed they did.

They supplied each other with goods, and supported each other.

A Pokémon proposed to the others to always be ready to help humans.

It asked that Pokémon be ready to appear before humans always.

Thus, to this day, Pokémon appear to us if we venture into tall grass."

This story seems to offer an explanation as to why wild pokemon are encountered in the tall grass. Odd, though, that it implies pokemon in the tall grass as appearing to help humans when you're always warned that it's dangerous to go into the tall grass without a pokemon to defend you... maybe times have changed?

 

Sinnoh's Myth

"Three Pokémon there were.

Into the lakes they dove.

Deep, deep, drawing no breath.

Deeper, deeper they dove.

Into suffocating depths they dove.

Deeper, then deepest they alight.

From the lake floor they rise.

Bearing with them the power to make vast lands, they rise again."

Throughout the game, we've been hearing a lot of allusions to the two pokemon that represent time and space as well as the three pokemon that bound them together. This myth seems to refer to the latter three pokemon. The ones said to be spirits of Sinnoh's three lakes. The same pokemon depicted on the mural in Celestic Town surrounding that strange red dot...

 

Veilstone's Myth

"A young man, callow and foolish in innocence, came to own a sword.

With it, he smote Pokémon, which gave sustenance, with carefree abandon.

Those not taken as food, he discarded, with no afterthought.

The following year, no Pokémon appeared. Larders grew bare.

The young man, seeking the missing Pokémon, journeyed afar.

Long did he search. And far and wide, too, until one he did find.

Asked he, "Why do you hide?" To which the Pokémon replied...

"If you bear your sword to bring harm upon us, with claws and fangs, we will exact a toll."

"From your kind we will take our toll, for it must be done."

"Done it must be to guard ourselves and for it, I apologize."

To the skies, the young man shouted his dismay.

"In having found the sword, I have lost so much."

"Gorged with power, I grew blind to Pokémon being alive."

"I will never fall savage again. This sword I denounce and forsake."

"I plead for forgiveness, for I was but a fool."

So saying, the young man hurled the sword to the ground, snapping it.

Seeing this, the Pokémon disappeared to a place beyond seeing..."

Perhaps this story is a continuation of pokemon appearing before people? The young man with the sword attacked Pokemon carelessly. Perhaps this is an explanation why, now, Pokemon attack people in the grass rather than present themselves to help? I like to think they have the ability to sense the player's intentions.

 

The Original Story

"In the beginning, there was only a churning turmoil of chaos.

At the heart of chaos, where all things became one, appeared an Egg.

Having tumbled from the vortex, the Egg gave rise to the Original One.

From itself, two beings the Original One did make.

Time started to spin. Space began to expand.

From itself again, three living things the Original One did make.

The two beings wished, and from them, matter came to be.

The three living things wished, and from them, spirit came to be.

The world created, the Original One took to unyielding sleep..."

This one seems to be an origin story for the world of pokemon. This "Original One" emerged from an egg. It proceeded to create the two pokemon that proceeded to create Time and Space and the three pokemon that would create the spirit of people and pokemon. Once the world was created, the original one began to rest...

Cyrus condemned the human spirit, claiming it to be the cause of all things wrong with the world. Perhaps... Perhaps his intentions are to use the pokemon of Time and Space to create a new world devoid of spirit? Just what could come of this?

 

A Horrific Myth

Look not into the Pokémon's eyes.

In but an instant, you'll have no recollection of who you are.

Return home, but how? When there is nothing to remember?

Dare not touch the Pokémon's body.

In but three short days, all emotions will drain away.

Above all, above all, harm not the Pokémon.

In a scant five days, the offender will grow immobile in entirety.

A rather chilling warning about three pokemon. One will erase your memories if you look into its eyes, one will drain your emotions if you touch it, and one will cause you to cease movement if you harm it. The story doesn't explicitly claim it's talking about three different pokemon, but if you think about the effects, it seems clear this is warning about the Pokemon of Knowledge, Emotion, and Willpower.

 

Sinnoh Folk Story 1

"Pick clean the bones of Pokémon caught in the sea or stream.

Thank them for the meals they provide, and pick their bones clean.

When the bones are as clean as can be, set them free in the water from which they came.

The Pokémon will return, fully fleshed, and it begins anew."

Instructions on how to respectfully get food from the bodies of Pokemon and the importance of being thankful for their abundance as well as not being wasteful of their offerings.

 

Sinnoh Folk Story 2

"There lived a Pokémon in a forest.

In the forest, the Pokémon shed its hide to sleep as a human.

Awakened, the human dons the Pokémon hide to roam villages."

I'm not entirely sure what Pokemon this story could be referring to. The only idea that comes to mind is a particular Pokemon from Gen V, but it's a bit too early to be alluding to something like that, isn't it? Perhaps time will tell what pokemon this story is referring to... or, perhaps being Folk Tale, it's simply not true at all?

 

Sinnoh Folk Story 3

"There once were Pokémon that became very close to humans.

There once were humans and Pokémon that ate together at the same table.

It was a time when there existed no differences to distinguish the two."

This story is a fan favorite one that you've probably seen quoted before. Well, more specifically the Japanese version which goes as far as to claim that humans and Pokemon used to be able to marry! It's commonly discussed as canon lore, but, again, it's listed as a Folk Tale, so it's not really clear how much truth there is to this story. Still, the idea of a society where Pokemon are treated like citizens and equals to people is an interesting concept that captures the imagination nonetheless...

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

So, it seems Cynthia was right! This was definitely the right place to come if you were interested in the mythology of the Sinnoh Region! This is probably the most direct lore dump the series has ever seen. While it still isn't a total explanation for why the world is the way it is, it's the biggest clue to the answers for a lot of major questions going on in people's minds to this day!

We'll probably be revisiting this lore later in the game, but I thought it would be nice to cover it now while we were here so that we could refer back to it later when the plot starts to get serious.

Well, with the library out of the way, let's get back to exploring Canalave.

By Surfing south of the dock, you can reach a small stretch of land that leads to TM89: U-Turn. This is a Bug-type attack that damages the opponent before switching out. A great tool for fast pokemon in a bad matchup.

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

Now, since we haven't actually done much of anything tangible today, I would normally take this time to go ahead and take on the gym in this town. There wasn't much on the way here. But, this gym is a bit special in terms of the game's narrative. I'm just saying, a lot of shit is going to hit the fan after we get our next badge. So instead, I wanna focus on getting something we can go ahead and cover out of the way.

Instead, we're going to visit the sailor at the dock who asks us if we want to depart to a place called Iron Island... why not? Let's check it out!

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

Iron Island

There isn't much going on on the outside of Iron Island, there's just a single, empty house along a large stairway that leads up toward the entrance to a cave. I should urge you, before you enter this dungeon, make sure you have an empty slot in your party. If you catch any pokemon that fill up that empty slot, go ahead and leave the area and come back with a free slot again. You'll thank me for this warning later.

It's worth noting that there's no HMs necessary to explore this dungeon, so perhaps box your HM-User if you've been using one!

Iron Island [1F]

The entrance here has two staircases on either side that go deeper into the mine.

Iron Island [B1F, Left]

If you don't have it yet, B1F in this dungeon is where you'll find Graveler at its most common. Just be wary of that SelfDestruct!

Golbat can also be found at its most common at any point below 1F.

The Iron Ball can be found in this room. It's a strange held item that grounds Flying pokemon and halves their speed. It's another held item that seems kind of useless on the surface level. It does have its niche uses in relation to the move Trick, but I really can't speak on the validity of such a convoluted strategy. You're probably just better off trying to paralyze the target or use other means of attacking them.

Iron Island [B1F, Right]

There isn't much of particular note here. At the end of the path, though, there's an elevator that leads deeper inside. Once again, there are two staircases that lead even deeper!

Iron Island [B2F, Right]

At any point below B1F, you'll start to find Onix at its most common! You'll find it here at 30%, completely dwarfing that 10% at Oreburgh Mine.

Among the items down here, you'll find TM23: Iron Tail

Iron Island [B2F, Left]

As you step down onto the left side, you'll be met by a man named Riley. Riley mentions that the wild pokemon in the area have been restless recently and offers to team up.

 

That's right, Riley's our next partner! He's pokemon is a Lucario which is a Fighting/Steel type pokemon introduced here in Gen IV. He's a fan favorite, but his Steel type is incredibly unfortunate for this particular area. While he can hold up well to Graveler's SelfDestruct which is nice, he's extremely vulnerable to Magnitude. In addition, all of the opposing pokemon here are very defensive, so Lucario's focus on physical attack doesn't really do him any favors, either. But, I suppose that's exactly why he's here to train with pokemon, huh?

Anyway, Lucario's Force Palm may not do much in the way of damage, but it has a chance of paralyzing his targets which is a status that's difficult to get on Ground-types here! Metal Claw can occasionally further increase his attack if he survives long enough to be able to use it. His main damage dealer, though, is Bone Rush.

As you speak to him throughout the dungeon, one of the things he'll mention is that he was actually asked by Byron, the Canalave Gym Leader, to become a Gym Leader himself. But it was him who recommended Roark to become the Oreburgh Gym leader. How interesting to consider that, perhaps we could've had a Fighting Gym in Oreburgh? Or perhaps he would've taken over the Fighting Gym in Veilstone instead of Maylene, and somebody else would've become the Oreburgh gym leader? I always think the process of deciding gym leaders is interesting whenever it's brought up. I really wanna know more about how it all works!

  

The last pokemon of interest here at Iron Island is Steelix! Yes, you see that right, Steelix! It is completely unprecedented until now to find an item-evolution pokemon like Steelix out in the wild, yet here it is! And it's not even particularly rare, either, being available at 10%! Believe it or not, this isn't the rarest you'll find it, either. I'll note that location when we get there, but you're fairly likely to encounter at least one of these guys while exploring this area with Riley. When one gets weak enough to catch, I actually recommend KO-ing Riley's Lucario to keep him from taking it out because these things can actually take quite a few tries to catch.

 

Steelix has another gender difference. Male Steelix have an extra thoothy spike on each side of their face. Female Steelix only have one.

Following the path to the west of the starting area and all the way south to the bottom border of the area to its conclusion, you'll find an HP Up just north of the exit to the area, on the other side of some boulders that block your way. You'll need to go back around in order to actually progress, unfortunately.

The item near the Blackbelt and Battle Girl is a Magnet which can be used to power up your Electric Attacks!

There's an Iron Plate hidden in the pit south of here. Unfortunately, now that we've picked up eight of the plates, the inscriptions on the plate will be repeating themselves from the beginning again. So it seems we've gleamed all that we can get out of these plates. Still, I'll continue to mention them because they do actually have prominence with a certain pokemon. You can probably piece together exactly who that is by all the lore we've covered so far, but if not, it'll become apparent sooner or later.

 

As you arrive at the end of the area, you'll find Team Galactic Grunts. Riley finally connects the dots and identifies them as the reason the wild pokemon are so restless. He wants to kick them out of the mine with a battle!

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

                                         

                                         

Vs. Galactic Grunt & Galactic Grunt

And so, we have another Multi-Battle. This time with Riley by our side!

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

 

Glameow Lv. 32 & Zubat Lv. 31

                                         

                                         

While exploring this dungeon, Ibutsu actually leveled enough to learn Gyro Ball. I taught it to Ibutsu over Extrasensory thinking that it would do more damage due to his higher physical attack and slow speed. However, I forgot to take into account that I'll probably be higher level than most of the pokemon he's battling, so Gyro Ball will usually have pretty low base power and often ends up doing less damage than Extrasensory otherwise would've.

Anyway, I decided to focus on the second Grunt's Zubat while leaving the first's Glameow to Riley. Gyro Ball did decent damage to the Zubat but Lucario chose to go for Metal Claw against Zubat to knock it out. Okay then. It looks like Glameow will be sticking around for a little while longer.

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

Zubat, Lv. 31

                                         

                                         

I repeated the same command this time, and once again, Lucario went for Metal Claw to take the Zubat out.

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

Golbat, Lv. 34

                                         

                                         

Pretty high-level threats here! We went against Golbat with our attacks again. It was able to use Confuse Ray to confuse Lucario and turn its attacks against itself. Anther turn and we were both able to get some good damage on it, but it still wasn't enough. It finally went down after my last Gyro Ball and now Lucario starts attacking that Glameow.

                 

                                         

WIth the foe down to just one pokemon, and myself out of my only harming attack, I figured I should probably go ahead and retreat for a bit.

                 

                                         

I decided to switch in Denki while Lucario went for the kill on Glameow.

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

Croagunk Lv. 32

                 

                                         

Croagunk was a bit dangerous. I went for Spark. Lucario failed to hit it due to confusion and wound up getting Revenged to death, leaving me alone to finish the job.

                                        

                                        

Another Spark and Croagunk was good as gone.

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

Stunky, Lv. 32

                                        

                                        

And our last foe, Stunky, was easily vanquished with a Spark as well.

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

 

And thus, the two grunts are defeated. They reveal that they don't even understand their boss's plans themselves, meaning their motivation for being here is a bit of a mystery... perhaps they're just supposed to serve as a distraction...? Regardless, we've driven them out now.

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

Riley is thankful for our help and, as thanks, he offers us an egg contianing a rare pokemon! Just what kind of pokemon will it hatch into? We'll just need to wait and see! But this is why I strongly recommended exploring this dungeon with an empty slot on your team. If you don't have one, you won't be able to accept this egg and you'll have to come all the way back down here after returning to Canalave and dropping a pokemon off at the PC... Geeze, I really hate when these games do this. It's like Mt. Mortar all over again!

Iron Island [B3F]

Now then, you might be thinking we're done. We just about are, but there's one more important thing to note on the way out, just past the grunts. We'll take this elevator in this final room back up to the surface. The item here is of critical importance!

This is where you'll find a Shiny Stone! This is an evolution stone required to evolve a couple of pokemon. There's one in particular that stands out among these. I think you know where I'm going with this!

 

With this, I can finally evolve Hana into her final stage: Roserade!

 

Roserade is another pokemon with a gender difference. Males have a shorter cape than females.

With this in place, we have but one more pokemon on our team who's yet to reach their final stage of evolution!

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

Taking the exit in this room will lead us back out to the exterior, where we're just a few ledge hops away from the boat back to Canalave City! Next time, we'll be taking on the Canalave Gym!

[Aura]

Before starting today's session, I did a quick berry run during which the egg I received from Riley hatched!

  

It hatches into a Riolu, the baby form of Lucario! In order to evolve it, you'll need to level it up with high friendship during the day! I named it Ora!

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

Canalave Gym [1F - 4F]

If you haven't pieced it together yet from the nearby Iron Island, the Canalave Gym happens to be a Steel-type gym! The puzzle is fairly simple here. There are several lifts that will take you up or down between floors. Lifts with yellow marks will take you up or down between two floors or across gaps while red lifts will bring you all the way to the highest or lowest floor.

This is actually a pretty cool gym design because, as you climb to higher floors, you can still see the layouts of the lower floors beneath you. I always love it whenever these games play with the capabilities of their new hardware!

     

Among the trainers you'll be battling here, you'll be faced with two Black Belts, three Workers, and two Ace Trainers. You'll be seeing a lot of Steelix and, though it's not actually a Steel-type itself, Onix as well. This is our first case of a gym that starts to branch outside of its own type and focus more on a variety of pokemon that are capable of using moves of the type. You'll see moves like Iron Head and Iron Tail from these non-steel types to justify their presence here. It ensures you can't just overly prepare with pokemon that are strong against specifically Steel-types. Going forward, this is something you can expect from the gyms.

Only two of the trainers in this gym are optional, both of them Workers. The rest are blocking the way to the leader, so you'll need to push your way through them!

And at the very end of the maze of lifts, you'll find the Man with the Steel Body, Byron!

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

 

My Team:

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

 Senshi (Infernape M); Lv. 40

 

Item: Fist Plate 

Ability: Blaze | Moves: Mach Punch, Close Combat, Flame Wheel, Taunt

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

 Denki (Luxray M); Lv. 40

 

Item: Shell Bell 

Ability: Intimidate | Moves: Spark, Roar, Swagger, Crunch

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

 Hana (Roserade F); Lv. 39

 

Item: Big Root 

Ability: Poison Point | Moves: Giga Drain, Toxic Spikes, Worry Seed, Stun Spore

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

 Uki (Floatzel F); Lv. 39

 

Item: Mystic Water 

Ability: Swift Swim | Moves: Surf, Crunch, Aqua Jet, Ice Fang

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

 Kuro (Murkrow F); Lv. 39

 

Item: BlackGlasses 

Ability: Super Luck | Moves: Wing Attack, Night Shade, Faint Attack, Haze

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

 Ibutsu (Bronzong); Lv. 39

 

Item: Quick Claw 

Ability: Levitate | Moves: Gyro Ball, Hypnosis, Stealth Rock, Trick Room

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

Canalave Gym Leader Byron

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

Bronzor, L.v 36

                                        

                                        

I decided to lead off with Senshi who was the best equipped to fight Steel-types, and no kidding! There was a chance this thing could have Heatproof to protect against Fire attacks. If that were the case, it could take two hits to KO this thing. Knowing it would probably try to confuse or put me to sleep first, I opened up with a Taunt to jam that possibility. The following turn, I took it out with a Flame Wheel! Pretty confident it had Levitate instead of Heatproof.

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

Steelix, Lv. 36

                                        

                                        

The smart move might've been to retreat into a pokemon that could better handle Steelix, but I thought I'd get a bit greedy and go for Close Combat! It's a powerful Fighting-type attack at the cost of dropping your defenses. If you don't KO with it, it's not uncommon to get KO'd in your opponent's place. It's a powerful tool for sweepers! Thankfully, my level advantage plus the strength of Close Combat gave me the power needed to sweep right through Steelix's infamous defences.

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

Bastiodon, Lv. 39

Byron's last pokemon is Bastiodon, the evolution of the fossil Pokemon available in Pearl version. Like Steelix, it's quite infamous for being able to take a lot of hits and it's a Rock/Steel type making it doubly-resistent to a lot of the really powerful Normal-type attacks... Unfortunately introducing the obvious weakness.

                                        

                                        

And this weakness was about to be taken full advantage of. I went for Close Combat once again and just tore right through Bastiodon's immense defense. He didn't stand a chance.

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

 

I always find it a little upsetting whenever I sweep a gym leader's team so cleanly, it always feels like it should've been a bit more challenging. Maybe this one would've been if I hadn't gone through Iron Island first, but I really felt like I needed to for plot convenience. You'll see what I mean next time.

Anyway, Byron awards you with the Mine Badge which allows you to use the HM Strength outside of battle!

Alongside the badge, you also receive TM91: Flash Cannon! This is a Special Steel-type attack with 80 power and 100 accuracy capable of reducing the target's accuracy. It's really nice to have a modest Steel-type attack like this! Before Gen IV, Steel-type attacks were all really powerful but low accuracy attacks, presumably to play off of their defensive capabilities by allowing them to take several turns before they can land a hit. But in practice, these moves are typically a bit too unreliable to comfortably use.

 

One thing I want to comment about Byron before we finish up for today, I absolutely love the fact that he's related to another gym leader that you battle earlier. It's a great subtle way to show how you've grown as a trainer over the course of the story, especially as, like I've foreshadowed many times, the story is about to get a lot more serious.

   

   

To drive this point home, comparing Byron and Roark's teams show that they're thematically very similar! You have the generic pokemon of the type across the region: Geodude and Bronzor, then you have Onix and its evolution Steelix, and then a fossil pokemon, with Bastiodon being an evolution while Cranidos is a first form. In a lot of ways, the Steel-type can be seen as an upgraded Rock-type, having a lot of resistances where Rock had weaknesses. I just think this is a really cool touch in the structure of these teams. To add to the parallels, Roark and Byron both run mines, Roark runs the Coal Mine in Oreburgh while Byron runs the Iron Mine on Iron Island.

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

Well, that's it for the Canalave Gym. Next time, we'll see what's going on outside!

[Aura]

Canalave City

Immediately upon exiting the Canalave Gym, we're met by Pace who tells us Prof. Rowan wanted to meet with us in the Canalave Library. So, we should go ahead and head straight there.

 

When we arrive on the third floor of the library, we're met by Prof. Rowan and Dawn. Rowan tells us he wanted to see the three of us because of a request he had. He reminds us that he researches the topic of Pokemon Evolution, asking the question of what makes pokemon that evolve different from pokemon who don't. He explains that he still doesn't have an answer to this question but that he believes he has a lead in the three pokemon of the lakes of Sinnoh. The pokemon that, according to the creation myth, brought spirit to the world. Perhaps that spirit is the source of pokemon evolution? He's come to the conclusion that if he can get data on these pokemon using the pokedex, he may be able to make progress on his research. So, since there are three lakes and he has three assistants, he asks the three of us to visit the three lakes and try to get data on the legendary pokemon that reside there. Pace is sent to Lake Aquity, which is the lake in northern Sinnoh which we've yet to pass. Dawn is sent to Lake Verity, the lake just outside Twinleaf Town, and we're sent to Lake Valor, the lake just outside the Seven Stars Hotel between Veilstone and Pastoria.

But just before adjourning our meeting, a major earthquake suddenly strikes, alarming everyone in the city! Rowan ensures that everyone is okay before we go outside to see what was happening.

Outside, a Sailor approaches and informs us that there was a huge explosion at Lake Valor! This gives everyone a bad feeling. Rowan and Dawn both warn us to be careful and not to do anything reckless, but it's clear Team Galactic is up to something that we can't let them get away with. So, we all split up, this time on a mission that's a bit more important than simply finding these pokemon for Rowan's research. These very pokemon might be in danger!

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

Valor Lakefront

When we arrive at Valor Lakefront, it's actually faster to reach it from Pastoria than from Veilstone and we can even heal up at the reception counter if we need it, we can find that the scientists standing guard over the lake are gone now, allowing us to get inside.

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

Lake Valor

We arrive to an absolutely horrible scene. Team Galactic has set of a Galactic Bomb to drain the lake and reach the sunken island at its bed where the legendary pokemon is said to reside. Apparently the two scientists outside were fooled into believing they were doing a genuine scientific study and tricked into keeping people out while they were preparing. The Galactic Bomb is also apparently what this package was that was delivered by the grunt we chased out of Pastoria.

I do believe this is the first time we've ever seen so much wanton destruction in a Pokemon game! The closest we've had is the intense weather from Groudon and Kyogre in Gen 3 which was moreso a scary threat of destruction rather than actual destruction like this... and this is only partway through! Seeing all these magikarp flopping about at the base of the lake for the first time as a kid was genuinely shocking. It was a memory that stuck with me for quite a while.

 

There's a handful of Galactic Grunts to battle your way through this area.

More importantly, there's actually a completely missable HP Up hidden in the Northwest of the lake, near where the Magikarp are being hoarded. Use your Dowsing Machine to find it!

As you make your way to the center of the crater, you'll find the sunken island resting at the bottom of the lake with an entrance to a small cavern inside...

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

Lake Valor Cavern

As we step inside the cave, we hear some really dramatic music. This music is building up to something big. However, the legendary pokemon seems to be nowhere to be found...

As we approach, we find yet another Galactic Commander: Commander Saturn.

Saturn recognizes you as the one who stormed the Galactic Building in Eterna City. He mocks Jupiter for having lost to a mere child like yourself before taking to the battle as well. He will not tolerate your opposition and decides he's going to crush you here and now, for all things are for everyone and the good of Team Galactic.

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

 

My Team:

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

 Senshi (Infernape M); Lv. 40

 

Item: Fist Plate 

Ability: Blaze | Moves: Mach Punch, Close Combat, Flame Wheel, Taunt

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

 Denki (Luxray M); Lv. 40*

 

Item: Shell Bell 

Ability: Intimidate | Moves: Spark, Roar, Swagger, Crunch

*Luxray was in the PC in favor of Akushuu who was actually unnecessary.

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

 Hana (Roserade F); Lv. 40

 

Item: Big Root 

Ability: Poison Point | Moves: Giga Drain, Toxic Spikes, Worry Seed, Stun Spore

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

 Uki (Floatzel F); Lv. 39

 

Item: Mystic Water 

Ability: Swift Swim | Moves: Surf, Crunch, Aqua Jet, Ice Fang

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

 Kuro (Murkrow F); Lv. 40

 

Item: BlackGlasses 

Ability: Super Luck | Moves: Wing Attack, Night Shade, Faint Attack, Haze

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

 Ibutsu (Bronzong); Lv. 39

 

Item: Quick Claw 

Ability: Levitate | Moves: Gyro Ball, Hypnosis, Stealth Rock, Trick Room

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

Vs. Commander Saturn

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

Kadabra, Lv. 35

                                        

                                        

This initial matchup couldn't have been simpler. I went for Crunch for a quick KO.

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

Bronzor, Lv. 35

                                        

                                        

Bronzor was next. I led with a Crunch and followed up with a Surf. Bronzor missed with its first Rock Tomb but landed the second. The third turn, the decreased speed didn't matter because I took Bronzor out with an Aqua Jet!

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

Toxicroak, Lv. 37

                                        

                                        

Toxicroak was up next. There was a likely possibility this thing had Dry Skin in which case Water attacks would only heal it. So, I went for Ice Fang instead. Toxicroak hit me with Poison Jab, bringing my health low and requiring a switch if I didn't want Uki to go down.

                                        

                                        

I switched Ibutsu in on another Poison Jab, which he was immune to. This was another case of me somewhat regretting replacing Extrasensory with Gyro Ball. Having Extrasensory would make this matchup much cleaner. Instead, I just had to rely on the tools I had available to me. Thankfully, Toxicroak already had some damage built up. I went for Hypnosis to put Toxicroak to sleep. Since there was no real point to setting up Trick Room since this was Saturn's last pokemon, I went ahead and just started slamming him with Gyro Ball. He ate his Sitrus Berry at one point and began hitting me with Faint Attack after waking up, but eventually, Ibutsu overcame Toxicroak and took him out.

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

And with that, Commander Saturn was defeated. But it's too early to celebrate. As far as he's concerned, the primary goal of his mission has already been completed. In case you haven't noticed, the legendary pokemon is nowhere to be seen. That's because it's been transported away already. He was merely here to punish you for resisting Team Galactic, which was just a personal vendetta and not a part of his mission. He insists that you won't have enough time to stop Team Galactic as they've already made moves to obtain the legendary pokemon at the other lakes as well. It sounds like we need to hurry!

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

Lake Verity

When we arrive at Lake Verity, we'll find that, indeed, Team Galactic is one step ahead of us once again.

 

We find Rowan manhandling one of the grunts. He tells us to run ahead to Dawn's aid.

 

We can see that Dawn seems to be dealing with Commander Mars,

 

 

but along the way to help her, we're stopped by two pairs of Galactic Grunts whose sole purpose is to stall for time while Galactic's mission is underway.

When we finally reach Mars, we find that Dawn doesn't seem quite confident enough in herself to stand up to her. It looks like we'll have to step up to help her out!

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

Vs. Commander Mars

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

Golbat, Lv. 38

                                        

                                        

Kuro was in the lead this time. I opened up with a Fly and dodged an Air Cutter. But, my Fly landed me right into a SuperSonic which shut down my ability to consistently fly. The best course of action here was to retreat.

                                        

                                        

I switched Ibutsu into an Air Cutter before starting to set up. I set up Stealth Rock and Trick Room before finishing Golbat off with some Gyro Balls.

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

Bronzor, Lv. 38

                                        

                                        

Bronzor was next. This should be simple enough. I went for Hypnosis but failed to connect. I kept going for Hypnosis and missed again, buying her time to set up with Iron Defense. Third time was the charm, though, and Bronzor was finally asleep, giving me the chance to switch out and get to work again.

                                        

                                        

I brought Kuro back out and used Haze to get rid of that boosted defence before going for some Faint Attacks. Bronzor eventually woke up and began to attack with Gyro Ball, but at this point, it was weak enough to be taken out with another Faint Attack.

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

Purugly, Lv. 40

                                        

                                        

This clearly wasn't going to end well.

                                        

                                        

I switched into Ibutsu on a Faint Attack. Ibutsu was low on HP due to that interaction with Golbat and Bronzor, but it was still raring to go! I went for Hypnosis but just couldn't get a hit several turns in a row while Purugly continued to chip away at my HP with Faint Attack, eventually I had to swtich to keep Ibutsu from fainting.

                                        

                                        

Her fate was sealed when I switched Senshi in on a Faint Attack. With Close Combat, Purugly couldn't survive another turn.

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

And with that, Commander Mars was defeated. But again, it's too soon to celebrate. Just like Saturn, she's already transported the legendary pokemon of the lake away. 

 

Prof. Rowan is glad to see that both of us are unharmed, and that it is no trifle that we are considering we just went up against hardened criminals. But there's still one more lake and it doesn't seem like there's much hope we'll get there in time. Lake Aquity is in the northern part of Sinnoh and we've yet to reach it. We'll need to explore northern Mt. Coronet which, now that we can use Strength outside of battle, is possible! In the interest of story progression, I think I'll wait to explore the world with Strength until after we deal with this plot.

If we surf to the center of Lake Verity, we'll find that the sunken island seems to have risen from the ground! Perhaps the lake spirit sensed its sibling was in danger? Well, when we check inside, we can find that it is indeed empty.

But, before we leave the lake, I do think it might be a good idea to check out the area to the southwest of this cavern. There's a small patch of grass which doesn't hold anything of interest, it's got the same encounter table as the pokmon near the entrance from the beginning of the game, but you can find TM38: Fire Blast!

Anyway, next time, we're going to make our way to northern Mt. Coronet and try to make our way to Northern Sinnoh.

[Aura]

Northern Mt. Coronet [1F]

In order to make our way to Lake Acuity, we'll need to travel through Mt. Coronet. If you recall, we needed to be able to use Strength outside of battle in order to reach northern Mt. Coronet. We got it at the top of the Lost Tower south of Solaceon Town, but haven't been able to use it outside of battle until earning the Mine Badge from Canalave City Gym. Now, northern Mt. Coronet is an oyster waiting to be cracked open!

As a reminder, you can get to this section of Mt. Coronet by heading East from Eterna City or West from Celestic Town.

Exploring this area requires an upgrade to our HM-user once again because neither Bidoof nor Stunky are capable of learning Strength! This time I'll be going with Onara the Skuntank. With Onara, we can now learn Strength, Rock Smash, and Defog. All three of which are helpful for exploring this area of Mt. Coronet.

As we explore this part, there are a few items we can gather, some hidden, some out in the open.

With Strength and Rock Smash, we can finally get the item that's been taunting us at the top of the cliff this whole time - TM69: Rock Polish, a Rock-type move that sharply increases the user's speed.

There's a Strength Boulder that can be pushed southward, but doing so is a waste of time as it'll only get itself wedged into an elbow, unable to be moved any further. This path can only be explored from the south through an area we can't reach just yet.

Pushing up toward the north, we can make our way to some stairs that lead down into B1F!

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

Mt. Coronet [B1F]

When you first arrive to this room, there will be a thick fog covering the area, so you'll need Defog to be able to see clearly.

  

Mt. Coronet is the only place you'll find Clefairy in the wild! It's never found any more commonly than the 15% here, so feel free to seek it out now! I named mine Uchu.

  

I also caught Machoke while here. It's still more common elsewhere, but if it shows its face, no need to be shy. I named it Suji.

If you choose to fish here and you're super lucky, you might run into Feebas! Feebas here operates on very similar rules to how it works in Gen III. It only appears on four randomly generated tiles across the entire underground lake here. These four tiles are shuffled every day, but mixing records with a friend will cause your Feebas spots to synch up for the day, so you can work together searching for Feebas faster. How you're supposed to know about this, I have absolutely no clue.

Anyway, I'm not going to hunt Feebas down just yet, I think it's a bit of an inappropriate time given what's going on in the story. I'll come back and seek it out later!

 

As you explore this floor, you'll stumble across Soft Sand to power up Ground-type attacks and Light Clay.

Mt. Coronet [1F]

There isn't much of interest besides an HP Up hidden between the rocks along the northern wall. More specifically, there's an exit that leads out of Mt. Coronet!

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

Route 216

This area of Sinnoh has some absolutely beautiful music, but other than that... this is by far the worst part of the entire single-player run of the game. Every region typically has a really long chain of routes that I tend to compare to the path to Fuchsia City in Red and Blue, and the journey to Snowpoint City is that for Sinnoh. Snowpoint City is the most remote location in Sinnoh. The nearest cities are Eterna and Celestic, both of which have to pass through Mt. Coronet just to get to the start of one of two routes that leads to it. There is a lot of grass along the way and a lot more trainers to deal with. Thankfully, the house here on Route 216 is home to a bed you're free to rest at to heal your pokemon. But even still, you have to slip by a handful of trainers just to get to it. And running back and forth to this house becomes a huge pain shortly after you start exploring this route... you quickly find the snow here isn't just a pretty tileset. You can't ride your bike in the snow, so you have to trudge along through the snow on your feet. At some points, you'll sink into the snow which will dramatically slow down your movement even further.

This is by far the stretch of the game where the slowness of everything really starts to compound and you really start to groan at the thought of battling another trainer.

But, I don't entirely hate this area. It's one of the most visually distinct parts of Sinnoh and, as surprising as it may be, there has never been a snowy area like this in a main series Pokemon game before! (To anyone who has only played the remakes, recall that Mt. Silver is all cave in Gen II, there's no snowy peak there!) The closest you've ever had to a snowy area so far are icy caves in Gens Kanto, Johto, and Hoenn. Although with pokemon like Snorunt, I wouldn't be shocked if there were plans for a snowy area in Hoenn that was scrapped at some point. As a result, this is the first time we're able to see a lot of these snowy pokemon in a habitat that feels a lot more natural than any of the out-of-place ice caverns from before.

While it's snowing, you'll be battling in Hail. It's a bit odd that snow in the overworld is converted to Hail in battle, but I suppose with no Snow weather effect, Hail is the closest thing?

  

One of the new pokemon we can find here is Sneasel! This is probably the most accessible Sneasel has ever been. It's not locked behind the postgame! And Sneasel is also finally at its most usable as well. Its always suffered from being a physical attacker with a very specially-oriented type. Well, now it can actually take advantage of some good STAB Dark- and Ice-Type physical attacks, making it a much more powerful pokemon in Gen IV! I named mine Dorobou.

Sneasel will be more common in a postgame area, so if you're not looking for it for your team, there's no real need to stress about it just yet.

 

Sneasel has a gender difference that stands out pretty easily. Males have a larger feather-shaped ear than females.

  

Snowver is the next pokemon of interest here. This thing is an Ice and Grass-type pokemon. It's an interesting type that sounds pretty powerful offensively and yet... this thing's typing is extremely self-destructive. Grass and Ice are infamously the two weakest defensive typings, so layering the two together provides a miserable list of types this one is weak to. Pick an arbitrary type and this thing is probably weak to it. (Fire, Flying, Fighting, Bug, Poison, Rock...) and it really struggles with not having the speed to back this up. Its Snow Warning ability, however, calls permanent Hail into the arena. Hail isn't a very useful weather effect like Sandstorm, but if you want to try and make use of it, this pokemon can get it going just for being sent out. I named my Snover Kurisumasu.

 

Snover has another gender difference in that females seem to have more "snow" on their bodies.

 

Even though they aren't technically a new trainer class, you'll find that the Ace Trainers on this route are well-prepared for the snowy environments with cozy-looking coats!

Alongside these Ace Trainers, we're introduced to a male Skier! This Trainer class returns from Gen II where it was originally a female-only class and a counterpart to the Male-only Boarder class. This time, there are Male Skiers! Skiers glide effortlessly over the snow, unaffected by the snow that slows you down, making it more difficult to avoid them than other moving trainers. Skiers have teams not unlike other atheletic trainer classes, but have a stronger lean toward Ice-type pokemon.

Using the dowsing machine along the ledges at the sides of the valley will lead you tot he location of a PP-Up along the southern border.

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

Route 217

Look at how massive this route is! Recall that each trainer in this image is the size of the player and the entire screen is about tiles in each direction. This route is massive, empty, littered with trainers, lots of snow to trudge through (again, no bicycle), and there's a blizzard to obscure your vision! Defog doesn't work to clear up the air. And if you need to heal (the hail is going to damage you every turn on top of any damage you naturally accumulate from the battles), you have to trudge all the way back, and through that patch of grass on the previous route, just to get back to the rest area. If you decide to fly back to a Pokemon Center, you've gotta make your way all the way back through Mt. Coronet from Celestic or Eterna. There are also Ninja Kids hidden in the snow that might catch you off guard if you aren't paying attention. This entire route feels like it's designed for no reason other than to make you suffer.

The last detail is that there is actually a very important and very missable item if you found yourself gravitating toward the east edge. So make sure to cut across to the left edge!

This route is where you'll find female skiers for the first time.

   

Sporadically throughout the route, using your Dowsing Machine will reveal the locations of various vitamins.

Resting on top of the snow, you'll find TM07: Hail.

If you stick to the west edge of the route, you'll eventually come across a house with a Hiker inside who talks about an HM he lost in the snow. That's right, a goddamn HM! Thankfully, once you find this house, the HM isn't hard to find at all, it's right outside, just northeast of the house.

This is HM08: Rock Climb! It was relieving to find out HM08 was replaced once again and no longer by a third Water-type HM! The problem? It was replaced by a third Normal-type HM instead. And a weirdly restrictive one at that because not many pokemon can learn it. This is a leg up Bibarrel has over Skuntank in place of not being able to use Defog. But hey, maybe it's good, right? Well... it's a 90-power Normal-type attack that justifies its 80% accuracy with its 20% chance of inflicting confusion on the opponent. I probably don't need to tell you why this move is never used when moves like Confuse Ray and Double-Edge, or even Body Slam exist. Hell, if the 80% accuracy doesn't bother you, you may as well sacrifice the extra 5% for the 120-power Mega Kick! Especially considering most of the time when Rock Climb lands, it's not going to confuse anyway. I think you're starting to see why I said before that Sinnoh is a showcase of the HM mechanic at its very worst.

If you try to return the HM to its rightful owner, the Hiker will laugh it off and tell you he's already accepted it as lost. He lets you keep it and rewards you with an Icicle Plate for your honesty. He tells us he's no expert, but he believes this plate to be incredibly old and to date back to as far back as when Sinnoh was created! Of course, we're way ahead of him on that front.

At the northwest corner of the route, you'll find a patch of grass surrounding a strange rock covered in ice that bears a similar appearance to the Moss Rock in Eterna Forest. Strange...

  

It's up here that you can find Medicham! You won't get Medicham any more common than here, so this is the best place to look for it! I named it Keihatsu.

 

Medicham have another gender difference. Males have a larger prong on the top of their head than females do.

In the house near here is a woman who will give you a Spell Tag which powers up Ghost-type attacks. If you leave and come back, the woman is completely missing... Most NPC's don't just spontaneously disappear after giving you an item. Could she have been a ghost? I really love subtle details like this!

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

Acuity Lakefront

You may have thought the journey was almost over, but we've still got some distance to go! The entrance to Lake Acuity is... blocked by Galactic Grunts. Well, yeah, of course. Why not battle through them? Yeah, this is a weird choice of roadblack, but these grunts just block the way and don't let you through. I guess even though thwarting Team Galactic's plans was our sole purpose for coming up here, we're just gonna have to... leave? Let's just hope Pace has things under control...

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

Snowpoint City

And now we've finally arrived at the most remote city in all of Sinnoh: Snowpoint City! Since it was such a long journey to get here, I'll leave exploring the city in the next post. We'll also probably handle the gym then as well since there's not actually much to cover here just yet. See you then!

[Aura]

Snowpoint City

The remote town of Snowpoint City is quite well described by the sailor standing nearby the Pokemon Center. "There's nothing here! That's what makes this place unique."

While not necessarily accurate, there are a few points of interest here, Snowpoint City definitely is the most barren of cities outside of Twinleaf and Sandgem Town. There isn't much at all to experience here.

Now, today is March 31st so it's actually really convenient we arrived here yesterday because I get to experience a very rare phenomenon on this day: Diamond Dust!

Unfortunately I can only find imagery of Diamond Dust in Platinum Version, but the effect is the same in Diamond and Pearl!

This is a mysterious weather phenomenon that only appears on particular significant dates. The snow that normally falls within Snowpoint City is replaced with a sparkling powder known as Diamond Dust.

There are many dates Diamond Dust can appear. March 31st is special as it was the day Mew was noted to be discovered in the journals found in Pokemon Mansion on Cinnabar Island.

Other dates Diamond Dust include January 12th, Junichi Masuda's Birthday; February 29th, leap day; March 15th, the ides of March; April 22nd, Earth Day as well as the anniversary of Diamond and Pearl's release in North America; May 1st - May Day, International Worker's Day, and the anniversary of the release of Pokemon Emerald in North America; September 20th, Sarah Natochenny's (The [as of writing this] current voice behind Ash Ketchum in the anime)'s birthday; October 30th, release date of Pokemon Ranger in the US.

This will go on to be a recurring easter egg throughout the series, though on fewer occasions in future generations. But this is the first game it happens in! So I'm glad I got to experience it naturally during my playthrough!

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

The Poke Mart in Snowpoint City does sell something of interest, kinda. It's the only place in Sinnoh you can get Snow Mail!

The Snow Mail looks like this. Really pretty!

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

 

There's an NPC in the northwestern house in this city who will offer to trade her Haunter, Gaspar, for your Medicham. This isn't necessarily a bad trade per se, but know what you're getting into. This girl is a scam artist! You might be excited to think you're trading for a Haunter armed with the knowledge that Haunter evolves via trade. You might do this trade expecting to receive a Gengar instead of a Haunter, but you'll be appalled to find the cruelest joke I almost have to applaud the devs for: This Haunter is holding an EVERSTONE.

In case you're unfamiliar, a pokemon holding an Everstone is the only way to prevent a pokemon that normally evolves via standard trade from evolving. The game is very self-conscious about this prank because even the NPC taunts you for falling prey to it! But, Haunter can't be caught in the wild like Gastly, at least not under standard conditions, so this is a reasonable trade for you to want to do.

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

To the north is Snowpoint Temple which is the most important landmark of Snowpoint City, but... we're not allowed inside. Curiously, there are four pillars in front. Three of them seem to bear the markings of the Legendary Golems from Hoenn, but there's a fourth pillar here that seems to be destroyed... I wonder what that could mean...?

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

Opposite of the temple, passed on the way into town, is a small harbor with a sailor standing at it. We can't do anything here just yet, but he'll become important later on as well as the temple.

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

Snowpoint City Gym

For now, the main reason to come here is the gym! The type this gym specializes in isn't exactly subtle, but once again the puzzle here utilizes the game's 3D environment to a unique degree that would've been difficult to pull off in a 2D environment. The gym is somewhat similar to the Mahogany Gym from Johto in that the ground is covered in ice which will send you slip-sliding away in the direction you step until you either bump into a wall or reach solid ground. A new element to this mode are the snowballs and ramps! Ramps can be slid down to gain speed. You can only slide up a ramp if you've built up enough speed. Similarly, if you've built up speed from sliding down a ramp, you can smash through the snowballs that block your path to the gym leader!

     

The trainers in this gym are all Ace Trainers, so be prepared for some fairly tough battles! A lot of them don't use the types of pokemon you would expect from an Ice Gym. There are a lot of Water types and even a Steelix! These trainers seem to specialize more in Ice-type moves rather than actual Ice-type pokemon. It's an interesting challenge to be presented with pokemon you weren't prepared to deal with, so I won't spoil all the surprises!

The main focus of the puzzle here is to clear all the snowballs blocking the way between the entrance and the gym leader across from you. It should be a straight shot, but the many Snowballs in the way stop you from simply sliding on over. You'll need to take a roundabout path to clear them all out.

Once you clear the path through the center of the gym, simply slide straight ahead from the entrance and you'll find yourself right before the Diamond Dust Girl: Candice!

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

 

My Team:

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

 Senshi (Infernape M); Lv. 42

 

Item: Fist Plate 

Ability: Blaze | Moves: Mach Punch, Close Combat, Flame Wheel, Taunt

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

 Denki (Luxray M); Lv. 42

 

Item: Shell Bell 

Ability: Intimidate | Moves: Thunder Fang, Roar, Swagger, Crunch

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

 Hana (Roserade F); Lv. 42

 

Item: Big Root 

Ability: Poison Point | Moves: Giga Drain, Toxic Spikes, Worry Seed, Stun Spore

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

 Uki (Floatzel F); Lv. 42

 

Item: Mystic Water 

Ability: Swift Swim | Moves: Surf, Crunch, Aqua Jet, Ice Fang

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

 Kuro (Murkrow F); Lv. 42

 

Item: BlackGlasses 

Ability: Super Luck | Moves: Wing Attack, Night Shade, Faint Attack, Haze

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

 Ibutsu (Bronzong); Lv. 41

 

Item: Quick Claw 

Ability: Levitate | Moves: Gyro Ball, Hypnosis, Stealth Rock, Trick Room

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

Vs. Snowpoint Gym Leader Candice

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

Snover, Lv. 38

Candice leads with Snover which means you're going to be dealing with Hail throughout this battle if you cant' shut it down with your own weather moves or abilities!

                                        

                                        

I led off with Ibutsu, admittedly on accident but I think it was ultimately a good choice because this gave me the chance to set up Stealth Rock! She went for Avalanche which is essentially an Ice-type counterpart to Revenge. It's a physical Ice-type attack that has decreased priority but deals double damage if you took damage that turn. Since I didn't attack, it only did standard damage which was also resisted by Ibutsu's Steel type. From here, I used Hypnosis to buy myself a free switch. I figured I might want to bring Ibutsu back for later sicne Gyro Ball probably wouldn't carry me through the entire battle.

                                        

                                        

In came Senshi! Snover was still asleep, so it was easy to take it out with a Flame Wheel.

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

Abamasnow, Lv. 42

                                        

                                        

Abamasnow, the evolution of Snover, was up next. This is actually Candice's strongest pokemon but it seems it was also her best out to Senshi, which wasn't a good sign for her because after the Stealth Rock dug into her, a simple Flame Wheel was all it took to out Abamasnow.

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

Sneasel, Lv. 38

                                        

                                        

Sneasel was next! But this one was even easier to deal with! A Mach Punch and it couldn't even hit me with a priority move before going down! Again, the Stealth Rock didn't help her case much.

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

Medicham, Lv. 40

                                                             

                                        

"I'm going to break the ice and bring out my last-resort pokemon!"

Surprisingly, Candice's Medicham was what gave me the most trouble! I opened up with a Taunt expecting some sort of setup, instead she met me with a Force Palm that successfully paralyzed me! I had to retreat now.

                                        

                                        

I switched in Denki who got completely swamped with a critical Force Palm. That's unfortunate, but there's nothing to be done about it.

                                        

                                        

Knowing of Medicham's Pure Power ability, I decided to take a bit of a risk and brought out Hana next. Taunt wore off, but I didn't think much of it yet. I used Worry Seed to replace Medicham's Pure Power with Insomnia, that way her physical attacks would be weakened. She blocked it the first try with Detect, not that stalling out does her much good under the hail from Snover's Snow Warning. The next attempt, she went for an Ice Punch which did a decent chunk of damage to Hana, but Hana was able to shake it off and even afflicted her with Poison Point! I used Giga Drain the turn after to heal off all the damage I'd accumulated and deal most of Medicham's remaining HP.

                                                             

                                        

"I can sense your will to win, but I promise you I'm not about to lose!"

The hail and poison at this point were enough to take Medicham out after its Bulk Up. Candice then proceeded to lose.

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

 

Upon defeating Candice, we're rewarded with the Icicle Badge! With this badge, we can now use the HM Rock Climb outside of battle!

Alongside the badge, we also receive TM72: Avalanche!

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

MVP: Senshi

Once again, I have to give MVP to Senshi! This battle may not have been a clean sweep, but Senshi definitely swept through lots of the tougher opponents here. Though I do have to give credit by saying that Stealth Rock may have been a contributing factor to being able to take out Abamasnow in a single hit. It may have been 4x weak to Fire, but let's not overestimate the fairly low power of Flame Wheel versus the bulk of Abamasnow. Under most circumstances, Abamasnow's bulk doesn't make up for its bad typing, but this isn't most circumstances. My moveset is still comrpomised by simply not having learned any stronger fire-type moves yet.

The other runner up I wanted to mention was Hana, who was a great help in dealing with Medicham and performed really well. 

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

And that's it for Snowpoint Gym! Maybe now I can progress to Lake Acuity and see what's going on? Maybe?

[Aura]

Acuity Lakefront

Once again, even though we have a new badge and can use a new HM, I think I wanna save exploring the world with that new capability for a little bit later. We still need to check up on Pace and see how he was able to fare against Team Galactic!

If we visit the Acuity Lakefront, we'll find that the grunts are now standing to the side, allowing us entry. It's a bit arbitrary but, whatever, the important thing is we can get to the lake now!

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

Lake Acuity

 

When we arrive at the lake, we find our rival dealing with Commander Jupiter. Or, perhaps Jupiter is dealing with him. She wiped the floor with him and we find her mocking his weakness before taking her leave. She's already captured the legendary pokemon of the lake so she decides she has no need to battle with you and heads back to Galactic HQ in Veilstone City.

Pace is greatly bothered by having lost such an important battle and decides to rededicate himself to getting stronger. It's actually a bit scary to see him so upset considering how upbeat he's been the entire game.

Before we go, we can take a look around the lake.

The grass doesn't contain anything of any particular interest, but you can find TM14: Blizzard on the other side!

Acuity Cavern

Stepping inside of the exposed cavern on the risen island in the center of the lake will once again confirm that Commander Jupiter wasn't bluffing. The third lake spirit is gone. Uxie, Mesprit, and Azelf are all in danger and we need to rescue them ASAP. If we want to help them, we need to go to where they're being kept: Galactic HQ!

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

Veilstone City

We can't get very far inside the HQ without a special ID card from Team Galactic. However, if we run up to the HQ building, we'll find a grunt outside who panics when we talk to him, tells us he knows nothing about a Storage Key that can be used to get into the HQ Building from the warehouse.

As he runs off, what does he leave behind but the Storage Key to the Galactic Warehouse? We can grab it and walk over to the warehouse to get deeper in.

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

Galactic Warehouse

Inside the warehouse where we got Fly earlier in the game, we can now use the Storage Key to get past the gate blocking our way deeper inside. The key snaps after being used once, but hopefully that won't be an issue!

More interestingly, however, is the Dusk Stone which can be found right behind the gate. This item has been mocking me all game because it can be used to evolve the final member of our team who's still waiting!

 

With the Dusk Stone, Kuro can now evolve into Honchkrow! Having an evolution is another layer that makes Murkrow a much more interesting pokemon in Gen IV. With this evolution, Kuro gains a much more prominent offensive presence with a little bit more bulk at the cost of some of his speed.

Now that we've celebrated our new evolution, let's put it to use by storming the Galactic HQ! We take the stairs in here to go deeper inside!

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

Galactic Warehouse [B1F]

This music paired with the occasional interlude of Galactic music throughout makes this part of the game actually really exciting! Being able to run indoors also calls back memories of Silph Co. from FRLG which is a bonus as well! It really feels like there's hope for a rescue and for the first time it really feels like we're a hero coming to save the day!

The gate near the entrance can't be opened. Just like the gate inside the HQ building, we need a special key to open it.

The item near the boxes toward the end of the hallway here is a Zinc, so make sure to pick it up!

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

Galactic HQ [B1F]

Climbing up the stairs at the end of the underpass in the basement of the warehouse will lead you to this small intermediary area between the two connected buildings.

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

Galactic HQ [1F]

And here is where the layouts start to get a little confusing, just like the Aqua/Magma Hideout and Silph Co. before it. I'll try to keep things straight as we move along. Entering the HQ building from the warehouse will lead you to the area in the northeast of the HQ building. Working your way around the bend will lead you to, yes, that's right, two warp panels. Game Freak just can't help themselves with this annoying gimmick. Thankfully, the Warp Panels don't seem to warp you between floors which makes my job a bit easier, but it still doesn't help that you can only barely orient yourself if you pay very close attention to the furnishings of each room as well as the rooms surrounding them.

Taking the warp panel on the right will lead you to the matching yellow warp panel in the southeast of the same floor.

In here, you can find TM49: Snatch

The left panel leads you to the room right next door where you can take the next panel beyond that to yet another room with a set of stairs leading to the next floor.

Galactic HQ [2F]

The ground on the next floor is slightly darker in tone than the previous floor. Just a neat small touch.

The stairs we just took will lead you to the northwest corner of the second floor where you have a fork: A warp panel or the staircase leading up to the next floor. You'll want to take the warp panel first. This will lead you to the room neighboring this one to the east where there's another set of stairs leading back down to 1F. There's a small table here and another staircase leading back to the warehouse.

TM36: Sludge Bomb can be found down here and I didn't hesitate at all to teach it to Hana. She's been suffering for so long only having a Grass-type attack. I went ahead and replaced Worry Seed since Worry Seed didn't have very good synergy with Ibutsu's Hypnosis. Anyway, Sludge Bomb is now a Special attack in Gen IV, so it's another move whose usefulness has dramatically shifted. A lot of pokemon who used to be able to make fantastic use of it can't so much anymore, but a lot of pokemon it used to be near useless for benefit greatly from it now!

The other item you can find down here is the Galactic Key! This is the ID Key Card needed to open the gates throughout the HQ, including this one right here that leads back outside! Before we head out, though, we'll want to return to 2F and check out what's up those stairs.

Galactic HQ [3F]

The stairs on 2F will lead you to a long hallway that winds around the main area of 3F and leads you to a room filled with strange machines. You'll need the Galactic Key from the warehouse to get in here, which is why I suggested you take the warp panel first.

TM21: Frustration can be obtained behind this gate. Not a very useful move but, hey, it's something! Now, we have everything we need from this side. We can't actually get any further. We'll need to head back down to the warehouse from the warp panel and make our way out of the building and re-enter from the front. Armed with the Galactic Key, we can get further in beyond the lobby and take the stairs up to the main part of 2F.

This area seems to be a rec area and break room. There are three warp panels here. We'll start with the ones across from you.

The southern warp against the eastern wall will lead you to a small room with a Max Elixir inside.

The northern warp panel is an incredibly pointless time waster. It just leads you to a tiny room with a few boxes and absolutely no items at all. Seriously!!

The last warp panel, the one in the room with the TV, will help you to progress. It'll warp you to a room with two beds where you can rest up and your pokemon can be healed!

From here, head up the stairs to 3F.

Yet again, this will lead you to a dead end with three warp panels.

The warp panel on the right leads you to another empty room. Well, it's part of a larger room, but the main part is boxed off by large crates. The panel left of it will lead you to that part of the room.

 

You can find an Elixir here as well as a hidden Rare Candy.

The furthest panel will lead you to the stairs that head up to the 4th floor.

Galactic HQ [4F]

We'll need the Galactic Key on this floor to open the gate and come face to face with none other than the boss of Team Galactic: Cyrus.

Cyrus seems to be intrigued by you for having come so far just to help three pokemon whom you've never even known. He suggests that he has no more need for the pokemon and that if you wish to rescue them, you can feel free to... and then he expresses curiosity about us. Why would we seek to rescue these pokemon we've never known? Out of pity? Compassion? Cyrus adds his belief that such feelings are products of the weak and lacking human heart. To prove his point, he challenges us to a battle to showcase our weak resolve! Or perhaps to learn more about what makes us so strong as to cause so much strife with his commanders?

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

 

My Team:

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

 Senshi (Infernape M); Lv. 43

 

Item: Fist Plate 

Ability: Blaze | Moves: Mach Punch, Close Combat, Flame Wheel, Taunt

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

 Denki (Luxray M); Lv. 43

 

Item: Shell Bell 

Ability: Intimidate | Moves: Thunder Fang, Roar, Swagger, Crunch

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

 Hana (Roserade F); Lv. 42

 

Item: Big Root 

Ability: Poison Point | Moves: Giga Drain, Toxic Spikes, Sludge Bomb, Stun Spore

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

 Uki (Floatzel F); Lv. 42

 

Item: Mystic Water 

Ability: Swift Swim | Moves: Surf, Crunch, Aqua Jet, Ice Fang

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

 Kuro (Honchkrow F); Lv. 43

 

Item: BlackGlasses 

Ability: Super Luck | Moves: Wing Attack, Night Shade, Faint Attack, Haze

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

 Ibutsu (Bronzong); Lv. 42

 

Item: Quick Claw 

Ability: Levitate | Moves: Gyro Ball, Hypnosis, Stealth Rock, Trick Room

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

Vs. Galactic Boss Cyrus

As with most enemy team bosses, Cyrus' battle theme is really cool!

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

Murkrow, Lv. 40

                                        

                                        

I led off with Uki and was able to make very quick work of Cyrus' Murkrow.

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

Golbat, Lv. 40

                                        

                                        

Golbat, too, was vulnerable to Ice Fang. Though it survived, it missed with SuperSonic. The following turn, Cyrus used a Super Potion to heal it, but I just brought its HP down low again with Ice Fang. I used Aqua Jet for a quick finish the following turn.

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

Sneasel, Lv. 43

                                                             

                                        

"My last Pokemon"

Cyrus' Sneasel is actually surprisingly capable! It took a Surf and healed off some damage with its Sitrus Berry. Then proceeded to survive another Surf the following turn. It got a couple of Screeches off in the meantime.

                                                             

                                        

"I see... I may lose if this pace continues."

Sneasel goes down the following turn with an Aqua Jet.

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

And with that, Cyrus is defeated. Well, kind of.

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

After defeat, Cyrus is intrigued by his loss to you. Still, he insists that drawing power from compassion toward pokemon is a waste because that compassion will fade with time as it is but an illusion, which is why he has chosen to abandon emotions and live purely on logic alone. However, in a strange twist, Cyrus is content to admit that you are stronger than him and decides to confer a shocking item.

Cyrus gives you the Master Ball! Normally this rare item comes from an ally, it seems incredibly odd for him to just give such a powerful asset to you. However, Cyrus insists that he has no need for the Master Ball. He claims that he doesn't use Pokemon as tools like other Galactic members. Instead, he makes the power of Pokemon his own. He then tells you to take the warp panel ahead if you wish to save the pokemon from the lakes before heading off to Mt. Coronet to bring an end, no, a new beginning, to everything.

What an odd man... But he's still dangerous. Before we follow his directions, we should head over to his computer and see if we can gather any information on his goals.

 

The Creation of Space

"Some say the universe originated from a massive explosion. Similarly, Sinnoh is thought to have been formed by an explosion in ancient times. Needless to say, the explosion came from the power of a Pokémon. The Pokémon must have been the mythical creature considered a deity by the ancients. Our aim is not to capture the mythical Pokémon, but to obtain its power..."

 

Mythical Pokemon

"The mythical Pokémon... According to myths, the Pokémon created Sinnoh with its power. However, capturing the Pokémon with a Poké Ball prevents it from using its full power... But with the Red Chain, the Pokémon can be shackled, and its power can be used without restraint..."

 

Red Chain

"The Red Chain... The Pokémon of the three lakes and Mt. Coronet are somehow connected. Capturing the Pokémon of the lakes will free the Pokémon of Mt. Coronet. From the Pokémon of the lakes, crystals can be extracted to create a Red Chain. Using that Red Chain, the mythical Pokémon can be summoned and shackled to do as we command..."

 

It seems that the plans of team Galactic are laid bare here. To pursue his goal to create a new world. Cyrus aims to use the power of this mythical pokemon by use of a Red Chain made from crystals extracted from the lake spirits of Sinnoh. He needs to use the Red Chain instead of the Master Ball because catching the mythical pokemon in a Poke Ball will prevent it from using its full power, which means it won't be capable of creating a new world. The Red Chain will allow him to shackle the mythical pokemon and command it to create his perfect world.

Curiously, the Red Chain actually has an unused sprite hidden in the data of the game suggesting that at one point you were supposed to acquire it as an item. But, in the final game the Red Chain never reaches the player's hands.

We can infer by Cyrus' assertion that he no longer has need for the lake spirits to mean that he must've already extracted the crystals necessary to form the Red Chain and now things are that much more disturbing.

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

Team Galactic HQ [Secret Lab]

This area is incredibly strange and unnerving... it kinda gives me Earthbound vibes which is surreal for a Pokemon game. As you make your way through the lab, you'll find some Scientists who seem to be deeply disturbed by whatever they've done in here and are questioning the ethics of their actions and wondering what the results of their creation will be...

In the backroom, you'll find containers imprisoning Uxie, Mesprit, and Azelf. The three lake spirits seem to be in pain from the machines they're trapped in.

We find Commander Saturn at the other side of the room, standing in front of a large machine in the center of the three pokemon. He's confused as to why Cyrus would allow someone as troublesome as you to come and go as you please, but he still wants to pay you back for his embarrassing defeat at Lake Valor.

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

Vs. Commander Saturn

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

Kadabra, Lv. 38

                                        

                                        

Once again, I led with Uki. A simple Crunch was all it took to get rid of Kadabra with ease.

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

Bronzor, Lv. 38

                                        

                                        

A couple of Surfs was all it took to take out Bronzor, in the meantime I took a Gyro Ball which didn't do a whole lot thanks to my resistance to it.

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

Toxicroak, Lv. 40

                                        

                                        

I once again had no way of knowing if this thing had Dry Skin or not. To play it safe, I went for Ice Fang for a few rounds. He hit me with a couple of X-Scissors before I needed to retreat or let Uki faint.

                                        

                                        

I switched Ibutsu in on a Poison Jab, was hit with a Brick Break immediately following. I went for Hypnosis but missed, leading to another hit, this time from X-Scissor. My Hypnosis this time landed, giving me the chance to set up Trick Room so that I would hit first each turn. I then proceeded to hammer him with Gyro Ball until the battle was over!

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

With that, Saturn was defeated again. He's perplexed by how you're so tough to defeat but admits defeat himself and steps aside, allowing you to press the button to release the lake spirits.

 

Upon pressing the button, the three legendary pokemon are freed from the machines they've been trapped in and disappear! We've done a good thing in rescuing them from the pain they were in, but our job isn't done. Now there's a much greater danger afoot and we'll need to do whatever we can to stop Cyrus from getting use out of the Red Chain he created... if we can catch that pokemon in a poke ball, we should be set!

Next time, we must head off to Mt. Coronet to put a stop to Cyrus' plans once and for all.

[Aura]

Southern Mt. Coronet [1F]

Yesterday, we stormed the Galactic HQ in Veilstone City to rescue the lake spirits from Team Galactic. However, we were too late to stop Cyrus' plan and he has now begun climbing Mt. Coronet to initiate the final step of his plan to destroy this world and create a new one in its place, to his ambitions.

In order to catch up to Cyrus, we'll need to enter Mt. Coronet from the Oreburgh City side and surf accross the northern pond. We'll need the HM Rock Climb, which we got from Route 217, an an HM-User to get use out of it!

And this is where Fuusa the Bibarel comes into play! As mentioned before, Bibarel can learn almost every HM you'll need: Strength, Rock Smash, Cut, Rock Climb, Surf, and Waterfall. The only HMs he can't use are Fly and Defog. If Bibarel already has four HM moves, you can always take him to the Move Deleter in Canalave City to erase one of them. Anyway, with Bibarel we can climb the rock wall at the other end of the northern pond in southern Mt. Coronet in order to reach stairs leading up to the next floor.

Mt. Coronet [2F]

You can start to find wild Bronzong up here, though it's slightly more common further up, you're not likely to get there without encountering it along the way and it's also only more common by 5% there. If you're just looking to catch a Bronzong, this is probably where you'll want to look for it. You don't wanna climb the rest of the way up unless there are other pokemon you're looking for up there.

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

Route 207

Taking the exit from this floor will lead you back out to a small ledge on Route 207.

We can use Rock Climb to jump down from the wall here and reach an Iron! There's nothing else out here, so back into the cave!

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

Mt. Coronet [2F]

Navigating your way around 2F of Mt. Coronet will lead you to TM80: Rock Slide. Of course, I continue to encourage you to use the Dowsing Machine periodically because there are some other really good hidden items for you to find at various suspicious spots throughout the entire mountain. It would simply take too long to detail it all.

Mt. Coronet [3F]

This is a bit of a transitional floor.

Taking the other stairs back down to 2F will lead you to a small chamber with a Max Revive hidden inside.

Making your way up the stairs will lead you to an exit.

 

It's along this path that you'll start to run into opposition in the form of Team Galactic. From here on out, you'll be fighting them sporradically throughout the dungeon. More frequently the closer you get to the peak of the mountain.

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

Mt. Coronet [Summit]

This will lead you to the snowy summit of Mt. Coronet with really soft piano music that slowly transitions into more serious music to emphasize the seriousness of the story at this point.

  

Abomasnow, the evolution of Snover, can be encountered up here at 20%! I named it Yukidaruma.

 

Male Abomasnow have shorter tufts of fur on their chests than females.

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

Mt. Coronet 4F

Entering the first cavern you'll find on the Summit will bring you to a small area in the southeastern part of 4F. We'll need Waterfall to explore the main part of this area.

Checking around with the Dowsing Machine here will reveal the location of a PP Up!

To actually progress in the story, though, you'll need to enter 4F from the western entrance which is a bit further along the outdoor area. You can use the HM Strength to create a shortcut and avoid a lot of tall grass. This path will lead you to an exit that leads back out to the exterior.

Mt. Coronet [Summit]

As you explore this area, you'll find a cave in the side of a small valley.

Mt. Coronet [Side Cave]

This area is just a detour. There are some nice items to pick up here, but all you'll mostly find here are a bunch of grunts who have gotten lost on their way to the summit. There's an entrance at the bottom of the ravine here, but it's blocked by a grunt that's too embarrassed about being lost to budge from his spot.

Mt. Coronet [4F 2]

Continuing along the main path, you'll eventually find your way to another entrance that leads further up the mountain. Before entering here, I strongly recommend coming prepared with lots of healing items and various pokeballs! I don't think it's real subtle, but we're about to run into a legendary encounter soon and the game is actually pretty rude about the way it's handled thanks to a point of no return. You can't actually fly away from the mountain's peak, either, escape ropes can only be used from inside the cave part of Mt. Coronet and doing so after reaching the peak will count you as having entered from the peak. So you'll need to backtrack all the way out through here in order to Fly away and restock on items.

In this little cavern here, you can run into Chimecho! But it's only a 5% encounter rate so it makes no sense to hunt this little guy down right here. Chimecho evolves from Chingling who's been available throughout the entire dungeon with high friendship during the night. Chimecho is a pokemon that I personally theorize was very close to having the same fate as Shellos: Being planned for Gen 3 but scrapped and repurposed as a Gen IV pokemon. Not only is it significantly more common in Sinnoh than in Hoenn, but it's also the very last pokemon in index order of Gen 3 games. (Index order is an internal value used to point to specific pokemon in the game's code, a Pokemon's index value is a likely indicator of when that pokemon was implemented into the game). Chimecho's index value places it even after Deoxys.

Mt. Coronet [5F]

Up the stairs will bring you to the 5th floor!

  

This is where you'll start to run into Chimecho more commonly, so this is where I'd recommend hunting for it! It's only a few steps further in and you won't find it any more commonly elsewhere. There is one postgame area where it might arguably be easier to reach, though. I caught one and named it Seishin.

Mt. Coronet [6F]

We're getting closer! It's the final stretch! There's some more grunts to battle. The grunts seem to be getting more and more nervous about what Cyrus' intentions really are... it seems they've all been left totally clueless as to what he truly means by creating a perfect world... it's almost scary and pitiful how powerful of an influence Cyrus has over their lives.

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

Spear Pillar

As we take the exit from the 6th floor of Mt. Coronet, we've finally arrived at the mountain's peak -- Spear Pillar. The opposition isn't quite done yet, though. We've still got some battles to go through. Two grunts will meet us at the entrance and challenge us to a double battle. Pushing beyond them, we'll find that we're too late...

Cyrus is already using the Red Chain to summon the mythical pokemon who created Sinnoh -- Dialga!

Before we can approach to stop Cyrus, however, we're stopped by Commanders Mars and Jupiter who threaten to take us on at the same time!

Just before having to take them on alone, Pace runs to our side! He hasn't given up, and he's not going to lose his chance to get back at Jupiter for his defeat at Lake Acuity!

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

 

My Team:

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

 Senshi (Infernape M); Lv. 44

 

Item: Fist Plate 

Ability: Blaze | Moves: Mach Punch, Close Combat, Flame Wheel, Taunt

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

 Denki (Luxray M); Lv. 43*

 

Item: Shell Bell 

Ability: Intimidate | Moves: Thunder Fang, Roar, Swagger, Crunch

*Denki was in the PC to make room for Fuusa.

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

 Hana (Roserade F); Lv. 43

 

Item: Big Root 

Ability: Poison Point | Moves: Giga Drain, Toxic Spikes, Sludge Bomb, Stun Spore

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

 Uki (Floatzel F); Lv. 44

 

Item: Mystic Water 

Ability: Swift Swim | Moves: Surf, Crunch, Aqua Jet, Ice Fang

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

 Kuro (Honchkrow F); Lv. 44

 

Item: BlackGlasses 

Ability: Super Luck | Moves: Fly, Night Shade, Faint Attack, Haze

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

 Ibutsu (Bronzong); Lv. 43

 

Item: Quick Claw 

Ability: Levitate | Moves: Gyro Ball, Hypnosis, Stealth Rock, Trick Room

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

                                          

                                          

Vs. Commander Jupiter & Commander Mars

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

 

Bronzor, Lv. 41 & Bronzor, Lv. 41

                                          

                                          

I opened up with Hana while Pace led with his Munchlax! There wasn't much for Hana to do in this matchup so I opened up by layering out some Toxic Spikes. Munchlax used Body Slam and managed to paralyze one of the two! After receiving a couple of Extrasensories, I needed to switch out!

                                          

                                          

It seemed Pace was on the same page because he retreated into Ponyta! Kuro switched in on an Extrasensory which she was immune to, but also a Gyro Ball which did an unfortunate number on me. The following turn, I used Faint Attack to weaken the healthy Bronzor while Pace used Fire Blast to finish off the paralyzed one.

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

Skuntank, Lv. 42

                                          

                                          

On being sent out, Skuntank absorbed the Toxic Spikes I'd laid out. I don't know if I've mentioned that but yes, Toxic Spikes can be cleaned up if a Poison type lands on them. Kuro used Fly to dodge Skuntank's Poison Jab while Ponyta took out Bronzor with another Fire Blast. Nice!

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

Purugly, Lv. 45

                                          

                                          

My Fly landed on Skuntank to soften it up a bit. It was able to land its poison jab which ended up poisoning and nearly KOing me! I needed to retreat now!

                                          

                                          

Senshi was switched into an Aerial Ace and Poison Jab! Yikes! Thankfully, he was still able to hold on and dish out a Close Combat to finish off Purugly. Skuntank took Ponyta out with a Poison Jab.

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

Golbat, Lv. 41

                                          

                                          

Staraptor joins the fray! I finished off Skuntank with a Mach Punch so its Poison Jabs would stop wreaking havoc on my team. Unfortunately, this meant no Taunt to prevent Golbat from setting up Confuse Ray. Staraptor was able to get an Aerial Ace off on Golbat.

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

Golbat, Lv. 41

                                          

                                          

With Senshi confused, I really just needed to switch here.

                                          

                                          

I brought Ibutsu into the fray! He took an Air Cutter like it was nothing. Staraptor went for Body Slam to deal a healthy chunk of damage on one of the Golbat. Staraptor was poisoned by a Sludge Bomb, though, which wasn't very fun. I tried to go for Gyro Ball but I was flinched out of it with Bite!

Staraptor took out one of the Golbat with another Take Down, but the remaining one used Mean Look to trap Ibutsu.

                                         

                                          

With just one remaining, we powered on! Staraptor went for a last-ditch effort with... a quad-resisted Close Combat. Sure. It was taken down by a Sludge Bomb, but Ibutsu used Gyro Ball to defeat the remaining one.

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

 

And with that, Commander Jupiter and Mars were defeated! To my surprise, Pace's team is actually a pretty big help! He's grown a lot considering his team has kind of been trash the whole game. However, this battle feels a bit less exciting when you realize that Pace also has a full team of six pokemon, and they're all in the range of level 40-43, so like most multi-battles, this battle is once again really weighted toward you by giving you an advantage with 12 pokemon toward their measly 6.

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

Defeating the Commanders is great and all, but what about Cyrus and Dialga? How can we stop him from controlling Dialga with the Red Chain?

  

Well, the answer is made clear when the three Lake Spirits we rescued appear before us. The three spirits disappear shortly after, leaving Cyrus confused, but when he turns around to look at Dialga, is shocked to find that the Red Chain, too, has completely vanished! He no longer has control over Dialga and the new world he was creating is gone!

Even though he's supposedly completely abandoned all emotion, for the first time, Cyrus loses his composure and becomes furious with you! He exclaims that he'll just have to capture the Lake Spirits again and create another Red Chain. But this time, he knows he needs to crush you to keep you out of the picture.

Pace heals your pokemon for you before you're trusted into a battle with Cyrus.

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

Vs. Galactic Boss Cyrus

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

Honchkrow, Lv. 45

                                        

                                        

A really bad start here, so I needed to retreat.

                                        

                                        

Now, admittedly, I played really sloppy hear and nearly paid the price later in the battle. But I switched Ibutsu in and started with a misclick where I accidentally used Hypnosis instead of Trick Room. On top of this, Honchkrow's Steel Wing and Drill Peck were doing a lot more damage than I'd expect even though I resist them! I went for Trick Room for real, then followed up with Stealth Rock before trying a Gyro Ball to get a little extra damage. Had I not wasted that first turn, I might've been able to get something more done with Ibutsu, but as it were, I had to retreat again.

                                        

                                        

Uki switched in on a Steel Wing which she resisted. Thanks to Trick Room, Honchkrow was able to move first and hit me with a Dark Pulse before I was able to finish it off with an Ice Fang.

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

Gyarados, Lv. 45

                                        

                                        

Gyarados was next and his Intimidate reduced Uki's attack. I needed to retreat because there was no way I could take out this Gyarados.

                                        

                                        

Hana rejoined the fight, but Cyrus read my switch and hit me with an Ice Fang! That's unfortunate! I followed up with a Giga Drain in hopes I could heal off some of the damage, but I barely did any damage to him before getting KO'd with an Earthquake. I'm not gonna lie, I was actually a little worried at this point.

                                        

                                        

Kuro came out next and went for Fly on a Super Potion turn. She landed into an Ice Fang but was able to take the hit. Another Fly and Gyarados was KO'd!

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

Weavile, Lv. 48

                                        

                                        

No way in hell was this a good matchup, so I retreated.

                                        

                                        

Senshi arrived on an Ice Punch and followed up with a Mach Punch for a quick KO thanks to Weavile's 4x weakness!

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

Crobat, Lv. 46

                                                             

                                        

"I admit that you have pushed me to this extreme"

It's interesting that Cyrus' last pokemon is a Crobat considering he doesn't usually demonstrate any form of emotion at all. I wouldn't have thought his Golbat would be capable of evolving. Though perhaps he merely looks at happiness as an analytical stat and does things he knew Golbat enjoyed in order to make it stronger, but even still, I think this is an odd pokemon for him to use. Having a pokemon that benefits so greatly from happiness seem to hard counter his own point about emotions being problematic. Oh well.

Cyrus' Crobat is fast enough to outspeed Senshi on its own, so I had to make my Flame Wheel count!

                                                             

                                        

"This... this cannot be! It's not possible that I lose!"

With one more Air Cutter, Cyrus was able to defeat Senshi, but he's still on the ropes! We know we've got this!

                                        

                                        

Ibutsu was low on HP, but he rejoined the fray! Setting up Trick Room allowed me to get some additional hits in without going down. Ibutsu's defences were strong enough to fend off Crobat's attacks even with its low HP. From here, I used Gyro Ball a few times for the KO!

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

"I won't accept this... the power spoken of in mythology... I didn't just make it obey me, I made it my own!"

Cyrus has been defeated and the world has been saved from Team Galactic's assault!

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

Cyrus is perplexed by this experience, but continues to stand by his beliefs. He refuses to give up and asserts that he will try again one day. Then, he takes his leave.

 

Dawn and Professor Rowan shortly arrive to check up on you after everyone leaves. They came all the way out here because they were worried about the effects of what was happening to Dialga. But thanks to the Lake Spirits, everything is fine!

Dialga is still standing at the far edge, however, and Prof. Rowan insists that it looks like it wants to battle with you. It must have been moved by what we've done with the Lake Spirits... perhaps... it wants to be captured? Thinking about it, it makes perfect sense. If we capture Dialga in a pokeball, Cyrus will never again be able to control it with the Red Chain and his plan will be ruined forever. So... here we go!

This, by the way, is why I put such a heavy emphasis on making sure you were well stocked. Neither Rowan nor Dawn will heal you and if you don't have the items to do it yourself, there's no escape! You can't fly and trying to leave well cause Rowan to encourage you to see Dialga and push you back toward it. This is a pretty rude way to pressure you into using your Master Ball and I really don't agree with it, so we're gonna play rebel and heal with our items!

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

Vs. Dialga, Lv. 47

                                        

                                        

Dialga is a Steel/Dragon type. He may be a legendary, but a super-effective Close Combat is still a bit too powerful for him, so I'll open up with a couple of Mach Punches. I'm able to survive a Dragon Claw, so I hit him with a second Mach Punch before being taken down.

                                        

                                        

The next pokemon I brought out was Uki who could chip away at Dialga's HP until he was in the red with Ice Fang while hoping to trigger a Freeze chance.

                                        

                                        

Now that Dialga was low on HP, it was time to bring Ibutsu out and hit him with a Hypnosis! From here, it was time to start throwing Dusk Balls for the catch! Thanks to Ibutsu's bulk and defensive typing, I didn't have to worry too much about Dialga's damage output.

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

 Eternity (Dialga); Lv. 47

 

Item: None

Ability: Pressure | Moves: Metal Claw, AncientPower, Dragon Claw, Roar of Time

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

Dawn and Rowan are both amazed by our ability to capture Dialga and applaud our work and insist that we should head home for a breather after all of this.

But before we leave, we should pick up the Adamant Orb from the ledge in the very back. This is a held item exclusively for Dialga that boosts the power of its Dragon- and Steel-type attacks by 20%. Which is honestly a little bit disappointing. I guess they learned their lesson from Gen III's Soul Dew, but it's a little lame that this thing is just a glorified Metal Coat and Dragon Fang mixed together.

Well, with that, we've finally finished the Galactic plot. Next time we'll double back over the world and try to catch up on all the things we've had access to since we got the ability to use Strength and Rock Climb. Perhaps we'll also find some new interesting changes in the world from having defeated Cyrus as well...

[Aura]

Now that we've finished the plot with Team Galactic, we have some breathing room in our journey! We haven't had a chance to check over the world since plot started happening after clearing the Canalave Gym, so now we've got access to a whole lot of new areas thanks to the ability to use Strength and Rock Climb outside of battle. Some things change after defeating Cyrus and meeting Dialga/Palkia from before. I think the best approach to this would be to approach it from Spear Pillar and work our way backwards from a linear perspective.

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

 

Before we begin our little tour of Sinnoh, I should mention that I was able to get a Heracross from a Honey Tree during my berry run! I named it Nageru!

 

Heracross has a gender difference in the shape of its horn! Males have spikier horns while females have more rounded ones. This is one of the more easily noticed ones.

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

Mt. Coronet [Side Cave]

If you recall, the side cave which could be accessed from a crevasse in the snowy summit of Mt. Coronet, there was an entrance that was blocked off by a Galactic Grunt who had gotten lost. Well, we've driven Team Galactic out of Mt. Coronet so that path should be cleared up now! Indeed, if we go to check on it, we'll find that the door is now open and accessible!

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

Northern Mt. Coronet [1F]

It turns out, this path runs a lot deeper than it looks! It brings us all the way back down to the first floor and the entrance here connects the summit form southern Mt. Coronet to the northern entrance of Mt. Coronet.

You can find TM02: Dragon Claw in the hallway here. This move is now a physical attack!

As we head north, we'll find ourselves on the other side of that Strength Boulder that would just get stuck at the elbow of the tunnel before. From here, you're back on the path between Eterna City and Celestic Town.

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

Lake Acuity

The next area I needed to explore was the area around Snowpoint City. A quick fly and some wading through grass will bring us back to Lake Acuity. Since the Lake Spirits are free, why don't we check in on them?

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

Acuity Cavern

After completing the event at Spear Pillar, the three lake spirits have returned to their homes in the lake caverns! We can finally revisit their homes in peace! We know that Cyrus is interested in capturing them, so it might be a good idea to seek them all out and capture them ourselves! That way we can guarantee their safety.

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

Vs. Uxie, Lv. 50

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

                                         

                                         

So, my general strategy with catching these lake spirits is pretty simple. Denki's Crunch can generally weaken them pretty consistently well. Uxie is the more defensive pokemon of the trio, so it can take hits a bit better. Sometimes I can manage a Crunch and a couple Thunder Fangs to chip away at its health. The main thing to watch out for is its Yawn which can be pretty disruptive. Its Future Sight can also be a pretty bad way to spread damage onto your more defensive pokemon, making you feel pressured to stay in with more fragile pokemon.

                                         

                                         

Once its health is low, I switch into Ibutsu to use Hypnosis. This can put Uxie to sleep and make it more succeptible to catching. I start trying to catch it using Ultra Balls for the color matching, but in my successful run, I ran out of Ultra Balls and had to switch to the more effective, but less matching, Dusk Balls. It happens. Thankfully, Ibutsu's typing lets it tank a lot of hits before going down. Uxie's most threatening attack is Future Sight. Aside from that, it's really just annoying between Yawn and potentially confusing me with Confusion.

                                         

                                         

If/when Ibutsu goes down, the follow-up to the strat is to go for the more permanent paralysis. Paralysis is less effective at making Uxie more catchable, but it doesn't cure itself after 2-5 turns like sleep, so I don't have to keep it active. It's generally what I prefer relying on for legendary hunting, but I wanted to try something new with Ibutsu's Hypnosis. Sleep is a scary status condition! Anyway, since hana is a Poison type, it's a dangerous switch-in, so I only send her out after Ibutsu is completely KO'd.

                                         

                                         

Once Uxie is paralyzed, Kuro is the next step. Kuro perfectly walls Uxie since Uxie only knows Psychic-type attacks, so I can spend as much time as I want throwing poke balls at it until it starts to use Struggle.

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

 Chishiki (Uxie); Lv. 50

 

Item: None

Ability: Levitate | Moves: Confusion, Yawn, Future Sight, Amnesia

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

Route 216

Our next destination is Route 216 where there was a Rock Climb wall we couldn't climb before. Now we can! It's kind of a mean place to put one of these because, once again, there's no easy way to come back here. You either have to pass through Mt. Coronet or take the long trek again across Route 217. To be fair, I think they expect you to travel through Route 217 a few times to find everything rather than expecting you to just be thorough in a single pass-through, but let's let bygones be bygones.

There are some trainers up here that we couldn't battle before. Most notably, there's an annoying Skier with a Geodude and Graveler who both like to explode right away, so come prepared!

  

The main reason to come up here are the items: A Mental Herb, an HP Up, and TM13: Ice Beam!

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

Route 211

Our next destination is Route 211, the one west of Celestic Town! Simple enough, this route has a climbable wall.

There's an item at the top. It's TM12: Taunt!

I'm not sure if I mentioned it before, but there's a strange Strength Boulder on this route that doesn't seem to have any purpose at all. You can only push it in two directions. You can maneuver it into a few different locations, but it always just gets stuck in a corner. There aren't even any items hidden behind it. I'm not sure if there's a purpose for it I'm not seeing, but it seems to just be here for... aesthetic?

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

Route 210

We still can't fully explore the northern section of Route 210, but we can reach a new area! By using Rock Climb at the edge of the valley, you can climb down into a large pit. Using Rock Climb on the other side of this pit will bring you out on the other side in the previously inaccessible Northeastern corner!

Up here, we find a Dragon Tamer! A returning trainer class from Gen III. They look a lot more serious than their Superhero-esque Hoenn counterparts. These guys on a look that more strongly resembles Lance from the Kanto region, making them a lot more serious-looking. They specialize in Dragon-type pokemon and pokemon with Dragon-type attacks.

You can find a Zinc up here.

More interesting here is the house. It's home to Grandma Wilma, an old lady who used to live in a famous city of Dragon Tamers. From this city, she has refined a special pokemon move known as Draco Meteor. This move is essentially a Dragon-type counterpart to the Fire-type move Overheat. It's a special Dragon-type attack with 140 power that sharply reduces your special attack on use. It's a powerful attack capable of one-shotting a lot of pokemon. As a catch, Grandma Wilma will only teach the move to a Dragon-type pokemon with maxed out friendship, so it's a bit more exclusive than Overheat. But it's still a really important move to keep in mind!

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

Route 213

Our next destination is Route 213 East of Pastoria City. It's home to a few new areas we can reach thanks to Rock Climb.

TM05: Roar can be obtained from the climbable wall near Pastoria City.

There's also a Max Revive hidden in the grass up here.

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

Hotel Grand Lake

We can reach another climbable wall using Surf to give us an alternative entrance into Hotel Grand Lake. From here, a few more items can be obtained.

Climbing up the cliffsides here wil lead you to a building with a rich couple: a Rich Boy and a Lady. The lady complains that the room is dingy, it does seem to be in a rather inconvenient location. However, the hotel was nearly booked and it was the only vacancy. Apparently, it was a coin toss that led them to this place. Interesting...

Talk to the Rich Boy to receive the Poketch App he used to do that very coin flip!

App #15: Coin Toss

Tap the coin and it'll flip! It has a 50% chance of landing on heads (Magikarp), or tails (a Poke Ball). It's a serviceable simple RNG machine, but not much in terms of practicality. I suppose if you want to make a simple binary decision, like which of two moves to give to a pokemon, it can help with that!

Checking the garbage in this room will reveal a Max Revive! Huh, I guess one man's trash really is another man's treasure.

Climbing down the cliff in front of this house here will lead you to a Protein on a lonely cliff.

As you make your way up north, you might have noticed an item that's been taunting you this whole time from the other side of a hedge. You may have noticed the rock climb wall nearby and just assumed you needed Rock Climb to reach it and decided to come back later. But now that you have the move, you might be puzzled as to how to get to it. Well, once again, this is a puzzle that plays with the 3D perspective of the game. If you look very carefully at the northern edge of the west-most cliff, you might notice a Rock Climb pattern in the wall! Climb down from here and you can work your way back to the item here!

The item in question is TM85: Dream Eater

You can find a nearby Rare Candy back here with the Dowsing Machine as well!

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

Lake Valor

Returning to Lake Valor next, you might be surprised to see that it cleaned up quite nicely from the Galactic Bomb! I'm just gonna go along with the headcanon that Dialga used its powers of time to undo the damage caused by Team Galactic here. I suppose similar logic also works for Palkia and its power over Space in Pearl version. But it's a bit odd that the damage from the bomb is completely undone.

Like the other two lakes, a TM for a strong elemental attack is here! This one is TM25: Thunder!

More importantly, though, we can see that Valor Cavern here is exposed again!

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

Valor Cavern

Just like with Lake Acuity, we can find Azelf inside the Valor Cavern!

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

Vs. Azelf, Lv. 50

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

                                         

                                         

Azelf is a more offensive counterpart to Uxie, so it's a bit more delicate and I can't quite squeeze in two attacks on it. As a result, I'll have to try and catch it a lot sooner. The basic strategy is still unchanged, but it's a bit more complex.

                                         

                                         

The main issue with this matchup is that Azelf knows the move Uproar in place of Uxie's Yawn. Rather than put us to sleep, this makes it immune to being put to sleep itself! In addition, it knows Nasty Plot in place of Amnesia. Since Uproar is a Special attack in Gen IV, this can cause Azelf to occasionally brute-force its way through Ibutsu's defenses before even becoming vulnerable to Hypnosis! So, if it does happen to use Uproar, I'll use it as an opportunity to set up Trick Room. That way, I guarantee I'm faster and can hit it with Hypnosis without having to worry about it immediately going for another Uproar and I get at least one chance to put it to sleep.

                                         

                                         

As a further shakeup, since Kuro isn't as strong of a counter to Azelf due to the presence of an alternative attack type, I like to send Kuro out second in order to get Haze off and eliminate any Nasty Plots Azelf has managed to amass.

                                         

                                         

Things play out roughly the same from here. Send out Hana and go for paralysis with Stun Spore, then start throwing Poke Balls. For Azelf, I like to try and catch it in a Great Ball since it matches so well with its aesthetic.

Azelf is a lot harder to stay alive against, though. Its offensive presence can be really overwhelming and it can easily start causing some serious damage to your team!

It took a few tries, but eventually I was able to catch it!

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

 Konjou (Azelf); Lv. 50

 

Item: None

Ability: Levitate | Moves: Confusion, Uproar, Future Sight, Nasty Plot

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

Veilstone City

Veilstone is a city home to an item that's been taunting us for an especially long time! There's a tiny peak here you need Rock Climb to reach.

This item turns out to be a Full Incense! Its effect is identical to the Lagging Tail, it causes the holder's moves to have decreased priority. It's the incense needed to turn Snorlax Eggs into Munchlax Eggs! Quite frankly, this is by far the preferred method to obtaining Munchlax in Gen IV rather than Honey Trees. But, if I'm lucky enough to stumble across a Munchlax from a Honey Tree, I won't look a gift horse in the mouth! Unfortunately, there's no way to get Snorlax directly from Diamond and Pearl themselves...

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

Route 206

What are we doing back on Route 206? Well, you might be surprised to find that there's actually another entrance to Wayward Cave besides the one we entered before! And now that we have Strength, there's reason to cover it! It's kind of cheaply hidden, but there's a secret entrance into the cave obscured by Cycling Road. You'll need to feel your way around down here to get into it.

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

Wayward Cave [1F]

This secret entrance leads us to that tiny room just west of the main entrance on this map. Without Strength, this is just a tiny 1x1 tile mocking you with the promise of more to see down a staircase that's just out of reach. Of course, you're going to need Flash again, so I dug Risu back out of the PC!

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

Wayward Cave [B1F]

  

This place is most well-known for being the only place to catch the rare Dragon of Sinnoh: Gible! He can be found here at 15% rarity. I named mine Same.

 

Gible has a gender difference in that males have a chip in their dorsal fin while females do not.

Beyond just coming down here for Gible, there's a bit of a tricky area to navigate here. You'll need to frequently switch between gears on your Bicycle in order to land at different distances after jumping from the ramps. Of course, wild pokemon encounters can also screw up your built-up speed, so it might take a couple of tries, or repels.

There are a handful of good items to find down here, but among them is the Grip Claw. This is a held item that causes binding moves like Wrap or Fire Spin to always trap the opponent for the maximum 5 turns. This can be incredibly useful for a certain something we're going to cover soon...

The main item you're after down here, though, is what you get at the very end. There's a set of stairs leading back up to the tiny chamber east of the main entrance on 1F.

This is where you'll find the, rather legendary, TM26: Earthquake. This 100 power 100%-accurate Ground-type attack to this day is the most reliable and most powerful Physical attack with no drawback save for its Ground typing. Thankfully, in Diamond and Pearl, this isn't the only way to get this TM outside of Pickup with level 91 pokemon. The move is a bit more accessible so you can feel free to use it a bit more sparingly.

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

Orebrugh Gate [B1F]

Wayward Cave isn't the only cave with new areas available to us! We can finally get the items at the end of Oreburgh Gate once we can use the HM for Strength!

 

We can get the Earth Plate, the Ground-type Plate functionally identical to Soft Sand for most pokemon, and TM01: Focus Punch.

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

Jubilife City

It already feels almost nostalgic to return here, huh? Back in the Poketch Company building in Jubilife City, the president told us he'd have another app ready for us once we got our seventh badge. Well, we've got seven! So let's see what it is!

App #16: Move Tester

This app is one that actually has a pretty prominent use for players who might not be as experienced with the game. This is a simplified damage calculator of sorts that allows you to set a move type on the bottom left, and a pokemon type on the top-right. The game will display whether an attack on a pokemon of the chosen types would be super-effective, not very effective, have no effect, or deal normal damage. In addition, the number of !'s shows how strong the multiplier would be! '!!!!!' means the move is 4x effective against the target (such as Fire against Ice/Grass). '!!!' means no relation (Normal against Normal), '!' means 1/4 damage (Normal against Rock/Steel), and nothing at all means x0 damage (Normal against Ghost). Naturally, '!!' and '!!!!' refer to standard 1/2 and x2 multipliers of Not-Very effective (Fire against Water) and super-effective (Fire against Grass) matchups. If you aren't very knowledgeable about type matchups, this is a fantastic resource, and it can be pretty useful for planning a party or moveset!

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

Lake Verity

Of course, our last stop on our journey around the world is going to be Lake Verity. There isn't anything new here, but we can find that the island in the center of the lake is still exposed like the others. Naturally, we should go inside and look for the Lake Spirit, right?

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

Verity Cavern

Inside, we find our last of the three Lake Spirits: Mesprit! Only, when we go to interact with it...

It shows itself to us briefly before running off! Excuse me!?

Shortly after witnessing this, Prof. Rowan arrives and comments about how we've managed to obtain Pokedex data on the three mythical pokemon. He then encourages us to follow after Mesprit because it seemed almost as if it wanted to play! It must see this as a game, the mischievous little scamp! Rowan suggests using our Marking Map app on our Poketch to track Mesprit's location to try and track it down.

That's right, Mesprit is one of the dreaded roaming Pokemon. yikes. I've voiced my reservations about this gimmick a while back. I think now is as good of a time as any to go ahead and start tracking Mesprit down. We have access to the majority of Sinnoh, especially the best place to stake it out. It's just a matter of doing the deed. But we're not going to do it in this update. Next time, we'll be playing Mesprit's game!

[Aura]

Tracking Mesprit

Yesterday, our tour of Sinnoh exploring all the new areas open to us ended rather abruptly due to Mesprit running off at Lake Verity! Rowan recommended we track Mesprit's movements with the Marking Map on our Poketch and, indeed, using the Poketch tracking roaming pokemon has actually never been easier!

The old method of tracking roaming pokemon using the Pokedex's Area page no longer works. Regardless of whether or not Mesprit is currently roaming Sinnoh, its current position will not appear in pokedex. You need to use the Marking Map app to track it. If you are missing the Marking Map application, you can retreive it from the Poketch Company in Jubilife CIty.

Anyway, while Mesprit is roaming Sinnoh, you'll notice an icon pop up on the marking map. Turns out it's useful for more than just tracking your honey trees! Because of this, you can quickly see whether or not Mesprit is in the same area as you and, consequently, repels aren't nearly as necessary. They don't hurt, though, because the roaming pokemon still seem to operate on the same rules as Gen III.

As always, the roaming pokemon will only appear on overworld routes. Dungeons, such as Eterna Forest, are excluded. Some routes, like Route 204, are split in two (northern and southern) due to being on two separate sides of a cave. Be wary of this fact if you try to encounter Mesprit on either of these floors.

When a roaming pokemon moves, it will move to an adjacent route (leaping over towns and dungeons). A roaming Pokemon will move anytime you pass through the transition from one area to the next. It seems like there might be a chance the Pokemon stays in the same location, but I'm not certain. The marking map can be a bit awkward with updates.

If you use Fly or any other means of warping (such as Dig or Escape Ropes), the location of the roaming Pokemon will shuffle rather than move to an adjacent route. When the pokemon's location is shuffled, they can appear anywhere else in Sinnoh at complete random. If you encounter a wild pokemon, there's a chance a Roaming Pokemon will shuffle as well. If a roaming pokemon is in the same route as you, it seems to have a 50% encounter rate in the area. Sometimes the Pokemon will simply shuffle randomly for no reason at all. So don't assume you'll bump into the pokemon just because you have it cornered.

Like Latias and Latios in Hoenn, Mesprit is capable of flight and consequently water routes are not exempt from its appearance!

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

The best place to encounter a pokemon roaming Sinnoh is Valley Windworks and the neighboring Route 205. What's really nice about these locations is that Mesprit can travel to both, and Valley Windworks is a dead-end from which Mesprit can only move in one direction: Back onto Route 205. It's also a path Mesprit commonly passes through, being part of one of the two major loops in the Sinnoh Region. You can simply stand at the border between these two areas and ride back and forth on your bike while watching Mesprit's position on the lower screen. Since it's so easy to track Mesprit's position this time, there's no need to pop a repel and run randomly through the grass every time you pop in and out of a route. Once Mesprit is in your area, that's your cue to make a dash for the grass and start searching. Repels are optional here, but be wary. If you don't use a repel, there's a chance you'll encounter a regular wild pokemon instead of Mesprit and this could cause Mesprit's location to shuffle. If you do opt to use a Repel, make sure your party is led with a pokemon that is lower level than Mesprit's, but higher level than the local pokemon (here, that shouldn't be an issue due to the low-level wild pokemon). Otherwise Mesprit will be repelled alongisde the local pokemon which is just a tragic taste of bittersweet irony.

Unless you plan to use your Master Ball (don't, by the way, just trust me on that), just encountering Mesprit is only the beginning. You should know the drill by now. These things will immediately flee if given the chance. In order to prevent that from happening, you have to outspeed them first, then find some way to trap them. There are several moves that trap the opponent. The easiest method are full traps like Mean Look or Block. Kuro actually tried to learn Mean Look before and, if I was smart, I would've taught it over Haze. However, I wrongly assumed I'd be able to use a Heart Scale to learn it for the purpose of catching roaming pokemon. As it turns out, though, only Murkrow learns Mean Look, Honchkrow does not. Woops!

Another approach is to take advantage of the Grip Claw. This is a bit more dangerous as each turn will damage Mesprit, but if you're worried about one-shotting Mesprit, it's a good way to chip away at its HP without KOing it while still trapping it for a few turns of pokeball throws. With the Grip Claw, you can use partially trapping moves like Wrap and Fire Spin to chip away at Mesprit's health for 5 turns. During which, it will be unable to retreat from battle.

Lastly, Shadow Tag is a useful ability to keep these guys from retreating flat-out.

Regardless of the method you take, make sure you save every time you weaken Mesprit without KOing it! 

The approach I decided to take, however, was a bit more of a brute force method.

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

                                         

                                         

I started out by leading with Hana. Hana was fast enough to outspeed Mesprit, so I could paralyze it with Stun Spore right away. If I didn't have a fast enough pokemon to paralyze with, I could always lean on the use of the Quick Claw. Like in Gen III, if you paralyze the pokemon, it will remain paralyzed for all future encounters. Sleep works similarly, but Paralysis has the added benefit of slowing Mesprit down! And, though it would make sense, these status conditions do not restrict the pokemon from escaping. So, after paralyzing Mesprit, it'll flee, its location will shuffle, and then I'll have to wait for it to come back! But with it being paralyzed, it'll be easier to outspeed it and get some attacks in with other pokemon before it flees.

                                         

                                         

The next couple of encounters, I led off with Denki to hit Mesprit a few times with Crunch and Thunder Fang.

Once Mesprit's HP was low enough, the real fun begins. If you have Mean Look or Shadow Tag, or any other means of trapping Mesprit, at this point the battle becomes no different than a standard legendary capture attempt only it'll end as soon as the active pokemon is defeated and you no longer have any options to trap it.

In my case, I'd have to throw a single pokeball every encounter. This sounds like a nightmare, but actually...

This is perhaps the most practical use of the Quick Ball! Since I'm not spending my first turn setting up Mean Look, I can get the best use out of the Quick Ball's massive multiplier on the first turn which normally expects the pokemon to be at full HP. It still took some luck, but I was able to catch Mesprit in a Quick Ball within five encounters after weakening its HP! It actually didn't take too long at all.

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

 Kanjou (Mesprit); Lv. 50

 

Item: None

Ability: Levitate | Moves: Confusion, Lucky Chant, Future Sight, Charm

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

  

And with that, the three guardian spirits of the lakes have successfully been captured! They're now safe from the potential threat of Cyrus' return! Next time, we can continue onward with the game's story! There's one more gym city we haven't visited yet and it's west of Hotel Grand Lake! Let's go check it out!

[Aura]

Valor Lakefront

Yesterday we finished catching the third of the lake spirits. Today's going to be a bit of a small update as we're just going to be traveling across a new route on our way to the next gym city. To move forward, we simply travel East from Hotel Grand Lake. If we tried this before, we'd be stopped by an NPC who warns us not to go there because of a blackout. But, things seem to be A-OK now! We can now run right on down these stairs onto the next area!

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

Route 222

As you can see, this route is pretty short, there's not even any gras in th eway, but it's stuffed full of trainers! The route is split between two paths. A lot of trainers line the northern path while the southern path is filled with fishers who will only battle if you talk to them.

  

This place is our first chance to encounter Gastrodon's East Sea variant! This thing is tied with its most common in Diamond version during the morning and day at 30%, but in Pearl version, you're best waiting a little longer to seek it out if you're interested in catching it. Either way, if you're playing at Nighttime more commonly, it'll be more common later on in the game. In Pearl version, 20% of this spawn rate on this route is eaten up by Glameow. I named it Azuma.

 

Just like Shellos, Gastrodon takes on different forms depending on whether it evolved from a West Sea or East Sea Shellos.

And now that we've covered both variants of Gastrodon, I wanted to mention that, just like with Shellos, there is an unused backsprite for Gastrodon that we can only assume to be an early design before the concept of the two forms was introduced. It appears to be a lot lumpier. It scolor scheme seems to imply it would've resembled its West-sea counterpart better but we can't really know for sure. It's unfortunate that only the backsprite is in the final game as it would be really interesting to see this design in its entirety!

  

Chatot is another pokemon that can be found here! You could trade for one earlier back in Eterna City, but now, you can catch one right out of the wild! I named it Ekou.

In Pearl verison only, you'll find Purugly here at 15%! This is where it's at its most common.

Here in Diamond, this 15% is taken up by Mr. Mime instead.

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

Crossing the first patch of tall grass will lead to three paths in the trees which end back in Valor Lakefront. If you used your Dowsing Machine from there, you would know to take the correct path to find a hidden item. This item is a PP Up! Always worth your time for these!

   

The berry patch here has a Wiki, Mago, Aguav, and Qualot berry tree. The Qualot Berry reduces a pokemon's defense EV's so it's an incredibly nice berry to have for retraining a pokemon! We'll discuss the details of this toward the end of the gen.

TM56: Fling can be obtained from the man standing against the cliff. Surprisingly, he's not a trianer! Fling is a new move that allows you to use your held item in a rather unexpected way. It throws the item at the opponent to deal damage! This consumes the held item regardless of importance. I'll never forget one time where I was training a Togepi and it used Metronome... Metronome turned into Fling and Togepi flung the Lucky Egg it was holding against a generic Wild Pokemon encounter. The power of the move is determined by the item thrown. This is one of the primary purposes of the Iron Ball that slows the holder and makes it vulnerable to ground-type attacks. It results in the most powerful variant of Fling with a whopping 130 base power! It's single-use in the battle, sure, but that's still a deadly attack that rivals the likes of Hyper Beam! If you're interested in the power each item offers, you can check the Bulbapedia page for specific information. Most items you're probably willing to part with in single player will only offer 30 power, but a lot of the rare treasures obtained in Sinnoh Underground do provide 90 or more power!

If you travel along the northern border of the route, you can find a Carbos behind a Cut Tree.

As for the two buildings on this route, the one on the left is the Pikachu fan club! Inside there's a whole bunch of Pikachu as well as an old man who suggests he's going to take on the Pokemon League with a team full of just Pikachu! In this room, there seems to be six Pikachu, which would make for a full team, but interacting with them all will lead to a battle with one who turns out to be a Poke Kid! Honestly, a well-played trap even though I saw it coming ahead of time.

The other building is a bit odd. There's a fisherman here who wants to see a large Remoraid. If you show him a Remoraid that's large enough, he'll reward you with... a Net Ball? Okay... Considering you probably caught that Remoraid in a Net Ball already and these have been available as far back as Floaroma Town... sure.

Toward the end of the route, you'll find another Honey Tree! This one's in a pretty convenient location being right outside of a city, so it's not too bad.

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

Sunnyshore City

And we've now arrived at Sunnyshore City! This technologically advanced city has roads that travel overhead to avoid tampering with nature. These roads also double as solar panels to provide clean energy to the city as well! Since it hasn't been that long before we got here, let's take a minute to cover what's going on!

When we first arrive in the city, we're met by a man named Flint who tells you he's a member of the Elite Four! Wow! He explains that the gym leader in this town, Volkner, not to be confused with Falkner from Johto, has grown incredibly apathetic toward his role as a gym leader due to only having boring battles and spends most of his time renovating his gym. Flint can recognize on sight that we're a strong trainer, so he requests that we go and give him a brilliant battle! Speaking to the locals, it seems that the cause of the blackout earlier was indeed Volkner's renovations of the gym. He's been using too much power and it's apparently caused issues.

But before we get into the gym, I of course want to take a look at the surroundings like always.

In the Poke Mart, we can buy Steel Mail!

Steel Mail looks like this!

You can also buy Luxury Balls here. These poke balls have the same catch rate as a standard poke ball but leave the pokemon captured feeling a lot happier. It's great for catching pokemon that evolve via happiness if you intend to evolve them really quickly.

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

The house nextdoor to the mart is a strange one. It's filled with NPCs who talk obsessively over the Sinnoh Underground? It's bizarre to put this house so late in the game when we got the Explorer's Kit way back in Eterna City. Maybe they're here to remind you to try and use it to gain access to new areas of the underground? But most of the NPC's here provide standard tutorials for things we were already tutorialized on way back then. It kind of makes me wonder if at one point they gave you the Explorer's Kit here rather than in Eterna City before realizing they wanted it to be available a lot sooner in the game so that people could have fun together throughout their adventure?

Either way, there is one interesting tidbit here. One of the NPC's mentions that the Underground man is actually related to Byron and Roark! It seems mining runs in the family, huh?

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

The Castle-looking building just north of these two buildings is home to the Sunyshore Market! In this small marketplace, there are three stalls you can interact with.

The lady immediately to the West will give your pokemon an Effort Ribbon if it has maxed out EV's.

The man in the back is the main draw here, though. He'll sell you various seals for your Ball Capsules! Yeah, remember those? Man, I really wish this mechanic was more practical, but having to detach Ball Capsules every time is just unfortunate. Anyway, the selection of seals at this shop changes depending on the day of the week, so come back a lot in order to buy everything! They're all really cheap so you can get plenty of them while they're there! It's weird to me they didn't start selling these seals a lot sooner in the game. At this point, I've basically forgotten these seals existed in the first place! But, now you can throw in a whole variety of effects when your pokemon are sent out. By this point in the game, you probably do have a full team of six pokemon, so customizing their ball capsules can be some nice fun. It's just unfortunate that you have to keep putting them on and taking them off manually. I really don't know what they were thinking implementing this mechanic that way.

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

At the northern border of the city, you might be surprised to run into... Jasmine! The Gym Leader of Olivine City from Gold and Silver! What's she doing here!? We don't really get a reason just yet, I suppose she's just sightseeing. She says Sunnyshore reminds her of her home because of the lighthouse. There are actually a few similarities between this place and Olivine incuding the fact that the gym isn't immediately available to you, but let's not go there just yet.

Anyway, Jasmine will warn you that if you haven't completed the gym here, you'll be forced to turn back. So we should take her advice and stay here for now.

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

Taking the stairs up to the overhead walkways, we can make it to the houses in the northwest where we'll find a woman named Julia who will tell you to start visiting her every day starting tomorrow!

      

Each day, depending on the day of the week, Julia will be feeling a different way and give your pokemon a ribbon depending on how she's feeling that day. On Monday, it's the Alert Ribbon; Tuesday, Shock Ribbon; Wednesday, Downcast; Thrusday, Careless; Relax on Friday; Snooze on Saturday; and Smile on Sunday. It's a bit of a tedious process to get all of these ribbons, but they're all free!

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

Heading south from here is a building atop a cliff you'll need Rock Climb to reach. Up here is a Poketch App developer who works in collaboration with the Poketch Company to provide you with Poketch Apps! He'll ask for a pokemon of a certain nature and he'll reward you with a new poketch app if you provide the pokemon he asks for.

Showing him a Pokemon with a Serious nature when he asks for it will reward you with the Calendar App! Naive will unlock the Dot Artist app and Quirky will unlock the Spinner app.

App #17: Calendar

This app displays the days of the current month. It marks the current date and if you tap on any other date, it'll be highlighted. You can use it to mark important events.

App #18: Dot Artist

This app is really cool on the surface level, but it's lacking an integral feature: An eraser or at least a clear button. Unlike the memo pad, you can't clear the screen by simply switching apps. It's an unfortunate blunder because it's actually a really nice app! It lets you draw anything you want using individual pixels. The pixels can be shaded to different colors by tapping them multiple times and will only disappear after tapping them at their darkest. Whatever you draw down here will remain down here until it's drawn over. It's a fun way to provide some custom aesthetics! But there's just no way to clean the screen which is unfortunate because the first thing you're probably going to want to do with it is scribble all over it. This ultimately leaves the app doomed to be just a messy canvas. But even still, I'm sure there's plenty of people who made some really cool pixel art with this thing!

App #19: Spinner

Need to make a deicison bigger than just the two choices the Coin Flip App allows for? This Spinner is freely customizable! You can draw on the spinner to divide it up and label the panels however you like. Then you can press the Play button to start the arrow in the middle spinning and hit the stop button to cause it to slow to a stop.  I actually think this app is pretty neat! It could be used for some fun little games iwth your friends.

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

Vista Lighthouse

Heading inside of the lighthouse will put you in an elevator to the top where you'll find Volkner peering through a pair of binoculars. If you speak with him, he'll tell you he's made a decision. You will be his final battle. If he isn't excited by his battle with you, he will challenge the Pokemon League in pursuit of a greater challenge. He then walks off to return to his gym. Well isn't he a ray of sunshine?

If you peer into the binoculars after him, you'll see a massive building in the distance shrouded in fog... this must be the Pokemon League, huh? Well, we're very close to being able to take it on. It looks like we've got a lot riding on this battle as well. next time, we'll take on the Sunnyshore Gym and hopefully restore Volkner's passion for battling!

[Aura]

Sunyshore City Gym

This Electric gym is home to all sorts of bizarre machinery. There are paths on top of rotating gears and buttons on them. Pressing the the green and blue buttons will spin the gears 90 degrees in different directions to connect the walkways in different ways allowing you to reach new areas, or breaking paths you've traversed before. The red buttons will spin the gears 180 degrees. In order to get to the gym leader, the gym's puzzle is actually pretty clever. You've gotta think outside of the box to make your way there.

       

The trainers of this gym include School Kids, Guitarists, Ace Trainers, and a Poke Kid. As you can expect, there are a lot of Electric-type pokemon. But like Byron's gym, there's also a handful of pokemon that aren't actually Electric-type pokemon but more pokemon that specialize in Electric attacks. Don't think you've won just because you're strong against Electric types!

And when we reach the end, we come face to face with the gym leader who hopes he'll be met with a good match. I agree, the gym battles recently have been a little on the easy side, so I suppose this feeling is mutual!

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

 

My Team:

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

 Senshi (Infernape M); Lv. 46

 

Item: Fist Plate 

Ability: Blaze | Moves: Mach Punch, Close Combat, Flare Blitz, Taunt

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

 Denki (Luxray M); Lv. 46

 

Item: Shell Bell 

Ability: Intimidate | Moves: Thunder Fang, Roar, Swagger, Crunch

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

 Hana (Roserade F); Lv. 46

 

Item: Big Root 

Ability: Poison Point | Moves: Giga Drain, Toxic Spikes, Sludge Bomb, Stun Spore

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

 Uki (Floatzel F); Lv. 45

 

Item: Mystic Water 

Ability: Swift Swim | Moves: Surf, Crunch, Aqua Jet, Ice Fang

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

 Kuro (Honchkrow F); Lv. 45

 

Item: BlackGlasses 

Ability: Super Luck | Moves: Fly, Night Shade, Night Slash, Haze

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

 Ibutsu (Bronzong); Lv. 45

 

Item: Quick Claw 

Ability: Levitate | Moves: Gyro Ball, Hypnosis, Stealth Rock, Trick Room

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

Vs. Sunyshore Gym Leader Volkner

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

Raichu, Lv. 46

                                        

                                        

I led off with Hana so I could set up a double layer of Toxic Spikes. Hana is a Grass type, so Volkner's electric attacks would have a hard time getting through her. He'll have to get a bit creative. Raichu opened up with Thunder Wave, though, making Hana slower and stilting her attacks. This bought Raichu several more turns to fight back. It hit me with a few Charge Beams to boost its Special Attack before setting up Light Screen the turn I hit it with Stun Spore. Now, Raichu was slower than me again and we were both paralyzed. After a constant back and forth exchange of Brick Breaks, Charge Beams, and Giga Drains to heal off damage on my end, Raichu eventually went down!

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

Ambipom, Lv. 47

This one's a surprise! That's right, Volkner is the only gym leader in Sinnoh to have a pokemon that doesn't match his gym's specialty!

                                        

                                        

Ambipom came out right on top of two layers of Toxic Spikes, getting itself badly poisoned. It tried to take me out with some Nasty Plot Shock Waves but ultimately went down to a mixture of Giga Drain and Toxic damage.

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

Octillery, Lv. 47

                                        

                                        

Octillery is up next! It, too, was badly poisoned. This thing went for Bullet Seed followed by an Octazooka. I got a super-effective Giga Drain in to nearly KO it and its poison finished the job.

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

Luxray, Lv. 49

                                                             

                                        

"Here it comes! Get ready for my trump card!"

Volkner's final pokemon is a Luxray who, again, came right out on the Toxic Spikes, getting poisoned. I was running low on PP for Giga Drain at this point, so I switched over to Sludge Bomb since my HP was doing alright. Luxray ate a Sitrus Berry which helped it hold on against another Sludge Bomb. Meanwhile, it went for Charge Beam to boost its Sp. Attack and Crunch.

                                                             

                                        

"Shocking... I didn't see this coming!"

He's driven to a corner and it sounds like it's the first time that's ever happened! He has to drop a Full Restore to heal off his Luxray and cure its poison! Now the real fight begins! My paralysis wouldn't let me attack, so I took another Crunch before having to retreat. This Crunch triggered Poison Point which was actually a bit detrimental to my plan and I didn't actually catch it until it was a bit too late.

                                        

                                        

My plan was to switch to Ibutsu to put Luxray to sleep, but it was at this point that I realized Luxray was already poisoned again, so Ibutsu couldn't do anything but stall. He switched in on a Crunch and I had to find a new switch.

                                        

                                        

I ultimately decided to go for the mirror match of Denki versus Luxray. Denki switched in on a Thunder Fang, his Intimidate reducing the strength of the attack he already resisted making it effectively useless. From here, a couple more Crunches and Volkner's Luxray was defeated!

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

 

Upon defeating Volkner, our final gym leader, he is reminded of why he became a gym leader in the first place! To thank you for the fantastic battle and to fulfill his role, he bestows upon you the final badge: The Beacon Badge!

TM57: Charge Beam is also given to you. It's a 50 power Electric attack with a 70% chance of boosting your special attack. It's a useful way to keep the pressure on while building your stats!

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

MVP: Hana

I don't think it would be fair to give MVP to anyone but Hana who was able to keep the pressure up thanks to her Toxic Spikes and ability to persevere through so much abuse by healing with Giga Drain!

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

With this victory, we've now claimed all 8 gym badges of the Sinnoh Region and are already ready to make our way to the Pokemon League and take on the Elite Four! There's nothing standing in our way besides Victory Road and an untraversed route! But let's not get ahead of ourselves. A new badge means a new HM. We'll have to look into what we can do with that first... next time, we'll see just what this badge opens up for us!

[Aura]

Sunyshore City

Sorry for the long wait, school's been catching up to me these past few weeks, but I'm feeling alright and ready to get back to our pokemon adventure!

Last time, we cleared the Sunyshore gym and received the Beacon Badge which lets us use the HM Waterfall outside of battle. However, we don't actually have the HM for Waterfall just yet.

 

If we speak with Jasmine at the north end of town, she'll notice our badge and recognize we must be on our way to the Pokemon League, so she'll give us HM07: Waterfall which we'll need to get there!

Waterfall used to be a really redundant HM move due to being nearly identical to Surf but weaker and less accurate in exchange for a flinch chance, but now the two moves are much further differentiated thanks to Waterfall now being a physical water attack! This is great for Uki who doesn't have nearly as strong special attack as her physical.

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

Canalave City

So, before doing anything, I decided to fly back to Canalave City to visit the Move Deleter.

 

I deleted Surf from Uki to replace with Waterfall and taught Surf to Fuusa the Bibarel instead in place of Cut which I also needed the Move Deleter to remove. This leads to the unfortunate caveat that I actually need to bring two HM-users with me on my berry run, but we can manage that just fine.

Now, as with any HM, Waterfall opens up the way forward in the story, but also grants us access to a few areas we've had to pass before.

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

Mt. Coronet [4F]

The first area I wanted to call attention to was the lower area of Mt. Coronet 4F, this was the cave you could enter from the first snowy section of the mountain's summit. There was a waterfall in here we couldn't climb before.

Up here is a small chamber. Don't be fooled by this image from Platinum, there's only one item in here and it's admittedly rather disappointing.

This is the resting place of the Stone Plate. Yes, you came all this way for the effective equivalent of a Hard Stone. Congratulations.

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

Route 210

The northern section of Route 210, east of Celestic Town, has a few waterfalls for you to go up and down. You can access the water from the east edge.

The Meadow Plate can be found at the top of the first waterfall. It powers up grass-type attacks like the Miracle Seed.

At the end of the river, you can find a Wave Incense. It boosts the power of Water-type attacks like Mystic Water. It comes with the added bonus of allowing Mantine to lay Mantyke eggs!

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

Route 208

West of Hearthome City on Route 208 is a waterfall that leads to an collection of rocks.

These rocks are arranged in such a way that you can slip right by them and get to the Carbos behind them!

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

Sunyshore City

And that's it! Not nearly as much was locked behind the Waterfall HM in Sinnoh as in Hoenn, but that's neither here nor there. With the Waterfall HM in hand, it's now time to push beyond Sunyshore and see what lies on the way to the Pokemon League!

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

Route 223

Yes... this route is as agonizing as it looks. If you're used to Hoenn, it might not seem so bad, but I'm going to be totally honest: I have never felt the drag of Gen IV more than the few surfing routes we've explored so far. The constant wild pokemon are already annoying, but on top of it there are lots of trainers here that can actually do a bit of a number on your team. Even the wild pokemon are tough! I recommend bringing some repels if you find yourself getting annoyed by the encounter rates. You aren't alone!

 

This is the place I've been alluding to this whole time where Tentacruel and Pelipper are significantly more common. Tentacruel is at 60% and Pelipper at 30%. They've essentially eaten their younger siblings. If you haven't encountered these two yet, you definitely will here. They're can also appear with really high levels, likely matching yours! And Tentacruel can be surprisingly fast and can trap you with Wrap, so be prepared to fight your way through some of them!

  

Alongside these guys is a 10% chance to encounter Mantyke! Mantyke is the baby form of Gen II's Mantine! I really like Mantyke, I think it's really cute! I named him Nami. You can evolve it into a Mantine by leveling it up with a Remoraid in the party. Such a bizarre evolution requirement, but I suppose it's because Mantine has a Remoraid under its wing in previous gens? Especially strange is that this is the generation that stopped depicting Mantine with a Remoraid under its wing which makes this evolution requirement even more cryptic. I really don't get why they couldn't have had the requirement be something like friendship or even leveling.

Worming your way through the rocks along the western side will lead you to a clearing with TM18: Rain Dance. Navigating your way around these rocks on the small DS screen with wild encounters going off every six steps is incredibly annoying, though, so I'd almost prefer to just grab 10 Blue Shards to get this thing!

I don't know if I could really do justice in this thread about just how agonizing this route was to get through. You move at a snail's pace, you're constantly getting interrupted by wild pokemon, let me make it clear it is very rare that I've ever felt the impulse to pop a repel. I'm generally capable of making my way through the entire game without using one. I recall maybe one or two areas in Gen III where I used them but that was mainly for tricky Bike maneuvering and such. There are a ton of trainers here, and the worst part is, aside from the Rain Dance TM, this entire massive route (again, remember you can only see 7 steps ahead of you in any direction at a time. That's about the distance from the bottom of the map here to the first tile of the first island. There are so many rude dead ends, blockades, and detours in the way in this deceptively maze-like route. Every time I had to backtrack, I'd have to battle like 3 more Tentacruel.

Now, I don't know if the encounter rates are higher on this route than the water routes of Hoenn or if it's just the slower battles of Gen IV, but this whole time was just an agonizing experience for me that I never want to go through again... so of course we're going to go through it again in Pearl, but thankfully I'll be armed with the knowledge that there's nothing worthwhile here save for the TM and then a straight-shot to the end. If you don't know that, though, you'll spend a lot of time going back and forth, up and down. I. Hate. It. I said Route 217 was by far the worst part of Sinnoh, but I completely forgot how agonizing this deceptively simple route was.

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

South Pokemon League

I'm not putting the map here because I think it's fitting to only show the most prominent part of this map at the northern end.

The music here is absolutely beautiful to me and after the frustrations of the route we just came at, honestly, it's a tune that almost makes you want to cry with happiness. Seriously though, this song is a beautiful capstone as you reflect on your adventure so far and how far you've come. Remember when Senshi was just a little Chimchar? We've really come a long way.

You'll need Waterfall to climb up to the land to hear this music, though. And I can only imagine the despair on someone's face if they forgot to bring their Waterfall user and didn't have Fly, either. Make absolute sure you have Waterfall before coming out here!

At the top of the cliff, there's a Pokemon Center you can heal at. Now, you can fly straight here and never have to worry about that god-awful route again. On the other side is an entrance to, we all know what's coming next: Victory Road.

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

Victory Road [1F]

Heads up, this is probably the single worst iteration of Victory Road in the series. Remember how I said Sinnoh has HMs at their worst? Well, to navigate Victory Road to the end, you're going to need Rock Climb, Strength, Rock Smash, Surf, and Waterfall. Assuming you have Surf or Waterfall on your main team, you can get by with just Bibarel. By the way, there's a section you'll want Defog as well, but that's an area that we won't be able to access on our way to the Pokemon League and for good reason. It's a whole mess in and of itself!

This is where the Machoke is at its most common at 25%!

TM41: Torment can be found by using Rock Climb right near the entrance and heading west.

Victory Road [2F]

This is where you need Rock Smash and Strength! The boulder puzzles pull some cheap tricks on you, but just try to think ahead and lock as few boulders into place as possible and you should be fine. Worst case scenario, you can leave and come back. In fact, this is actually necessary to reach the east side of this floor because of the way the three boulders blocking the chokepoint are arranged.

If you don't have Kadabra yet, it's at its most common here at 25%! These Kadabra actually no longer know Teleport either, so they're significantly easier to catch.

At the very far end of the floor, you can find TM71: Stone Edge. Stone Edge is a 100-power Rock-type move with 80% accuracy. It's a solid replacement for Rock Slide, though the drop in accuracy might make some a bit iffy. Getting to the TM can be a little bit tricky as you'll need to ride along a few bicycle ramps and stop yourself before hitting the last one.

Taking the stairs near the end of the floor will bring you back to a path on 1F where you can drop down to the first area or fight past a BlackBelt to get to stairs leading deeper in.

Victory Road [B1F]

This is where Surf and Waterfall are required.

Sticking close to the southern boundary, you'll find a long narrow body of water that you can surf back west to another set of stairs.

 

These stairs will bring you to an isolated area of 1F with a Rare Candy and a hidden Max Revive.

Climbing up the first Waterfall and dropping down the second will lead you to the top of a cliff where you can find TM59: Dragon Pulse, a new Dragon-type attack with 90 power and 100% accuracy. Oddly, the Dragon type hasn't really had many powerful moves outside of Outrage, so this is a massive plus and a solid replacement for DragonBreath. Considering Dragon Claw and Outrage are both physical moves now, this and Draco Meteor are really your only options for a strong special Dragon-type attack. But at 90 power with 100 accuracy, it's not a shabby choice at all.

Taking the stairs at the end of this floor brings you to the northern section of 1F. You can drop back down into the middle section from here and, in turn, back to the southern section where the entrance is from there if you so desire.

The Razor Claw can be obtained from the end of the path straight ahead. This is a held item required to evolve Sneasel into Weavile. It'll need to level up at night while holding this item. Other than that use, it increases the critical-hit ratio of the pokemon holding it.

Taking the stairs near the Veteran will lead you to a blocked off entrance. The man blocking the way sizes you up and tells you that one day you'll grow even stronger and that the world will expand for you when that happens... We won't be able to get past him just yet, but there's a Zinc over here to keep your troubles from being for nothing!

Head south past the veteran and you'll be met with a fork. Going West will lead you to a Rock Climb wall that goes to stairs up to 2F which leads to a basic Strength Puzzle.

Solve the puzzle to obtain TM79: Dark Pulse!

Taking the east side of the fork will lead you to another Rock Climb wall, one last Dragon Tamer battle, and then to the exit of the cave! Finally!!

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

Northern Pokemon League

We're at the final stretch of our journey to the Pokemon League!

Before we get ahead of ourselves, let's stop to check our dowsing machine for the Sky Plate! Then, we take the waterfall up to the Pokemon League proper!

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

Pokemon League Lobby

As per usual, the entrance to the Pokemon League doubles as a Pokemon Center and can be flown to! You can heal at the left counter, while there's a mart at the right counter. Any Poke Ball that can be bought in a mart in Sinnoh can be bought here alongside all sorts of medicines and other items. Make the most of it!

Now, normally I'd end the post here. We did just get through a whole dungeon as well as a really rough route, but if we step toward the gate at the back...

Who would run up to us from behind but our rival, Pace? Before we take on the Pokemon League, we've gotta test our skills against him and, I'm not gonna lie, this battle is actually genuinely pretty tough, especially if he catches you off guard!

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

 

My Team:

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

 Senshi (Infernape M); Lv. 50

 

Item: Fist Plate 

Ability: Blaze | Moves: Mach Punch, Close Combat, Flamethrower, Taunt

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

 Denki (Luxray M); Lv. 50

 

Item: Shell Bell 

Ability: Intimidate | Moves: Thunder Fang, Roar, Swagger, Crunch

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

 Hana (Roserade F); Lv. 50

 

Item: Big Root 

Ability: Poison Point | Moves: Giga Drain, Toxic Spikes, Sludge Bomb, Stun Spore

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

 Uki (Floatzel F); Lv. 50

 

Item: Mystic Water 

Ability: Swift Swim | Moves: Crunch, Aqua Jet, Ice Fang, Waterfall

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

 Kuro (Honchkrow F); Lv. 49

 

Item: BlackGlasses 

Ability: Super Luck | Moves: Fly, Night Shade, Night Slash, Haze

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

 Ibutsu (Bronzong); Lv. 50

 

Item: Quick Claw 

Ability: Levitate | Moves: Gyro Ball, Hypnosis, Stealth Rock, Trick Room

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

Vs. Rival #5

We've battled alongside Pace before and found his team to be dramatically improved from our previous battle with him. Now it's time to see how far along he's really come!

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

Staraptor, Lv. 48

                                        

                                        

I tried for a Night Slash, but Staraptor got to me first and caught me off guard with a U-Turn!

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

Heracross, Lv. 50

                                        

                                        

Heracross took Staraptor's place and took my Night Slash like nothing. I tried to follow up with Fly, but Heracross took me out with Close Combat! Wow! What a start to the battle, he really has grown a lot!

                                        

                                        

The next best choice here was Senshi whose Flamethrower could pick off Heracross with ease.

                                        

                                        

Staraptor came back out next. It was an unfavorable matchup, so I switched out.

                                        

                                        

In came Ibutsu who switched in on a Wing Attack. I knew he'd try to spam U-Turn a lot, so I went for Stealth Rock to punish such a strat. From here, Staraptor would have to try a little harder than just poke and run. It went for Close Combat when I went for Gyro Ball. I wasn't satisfied with the damage output, so I went for Hypnosis instead. When I did, he brought the U-Turn out.

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

Rapidash, Lv. 49

                                        

                                        

Rapidash unfortunately switched into not only Spikes, but a Hypnosis as well. RIP.

                                        

                                        

While Rapidash was asleep, I brought out Uki and went for Waterfall for the KO.

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

Roserade, Lv. 49

                                        

                                        

How many times has he tried this counter? Well, let's see what his plan is! I went for Ice Fang, but Roserade was able to hold on with just a bit of HP! Unfortunately, Pace didn't go for Giga Drain and instead opted for Poison Jab. An unfortunate Misplay that definitely costed him some comeback potential. Another Ice Fang and Roserade was toast.

                                        

                                        

Staraptor returned again! This time facing the consequence of the pointed stones. With an Aqua Jet, I was able to get its HP low before it hit me with a U-Turn. Now, its HP was low enough that Staraptor will go down to the stones unless he can do something about them.

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

Snorlax, Lv. 51

                                        

                                        

Snorlax was a scary sight, of course, but nothing too terrible since I had a decent out.

                                        

                                        

Ibutsu was pretty low on HP thanks to the beating it received from Staraptor, but it was still able to hold on a bit. He switched in on a Body Slam. Unfortunately, I missed my Hypnosis so I didn't get my free switch into Senshi before Snorlax was able to take Ibutsu out with a second Body Slam.

                                        

                                        

A super-effective Close Combat from Senshi was all I'd need to finish Snorlax off!

                                        

                                        

Briefly, very briefly, Staraptor was sent out only to succumb to the Stealth Rock.

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

Empoleon, Lv. 53

                                                             

                                        

"I fully believe in this last one. I have no reason to freak out."

With a line like that, I almost have to feel bad for pace when the following turn opened up with a Close Combat taking Empoleon out with a single blow. 

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

And with that, Pace was defeated once again. He still seems a bit frustrated that he can't seem to win against you, but his growth was definitely noticeable! I feel like this battle may have actually helped him see his own growth as well. Maybe he really will surpass us one day?

Well, regardless, next time, all that's left for us to do is take on the Pokemon League. It's time to finish what we set out to do! We've got some tough fights ahead of us, though, so it won't be easy!

[Aura]

Pokemon League

Last time, we arrived at the Pokemon League and had another face off with our rival. Today will be our last update for story progress in Diamond as we'll be taking on the Pokemon League!

       

       

Across our journey, we've gathered eight badges from the region's eight gym leaders. From Oreburgh City's Roark: The Coal Badge, from Eterna City's Gardenia: The Forest Badge; From Veilstone City's Maylene: The Cobble Badge; from Pastoria City's Crasher Wake: The Fen Badge; From Hearthome City's Fantina: The Relic Badge; from Canalave City's Byron: The Mine Badge; from Snowpoint City's Candice: The Icicle Badge; and finally, from Sunyshore City's Volkner: The Beacon Badge.

       

Each Gym Leader had their own challenges to present for us, but thanks to the help of our team, some were easier than others and we were able to perservere through them all! And now, we stand here at the gate of the Pokemon League, ready to take on the toughest challenges yet with the Elite Four!

This challenge is the same as always, we'll be faced up against four of the toughest trainers in the region in an endurance challenge. We'll need to defeat all four in a row, so I recommend stocking up on Revives, Ethers/Leppa Berries, Moomoo Milk/Hyper Potions, and Full Heals/Lum Berries. Most of which can be purchased from the nearby store, others you should have amassed while exploring the game's world.

Without further ado, let's take on the Elite Four!

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

 

My Team:

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

 Senshi (Infernape M); Lv. 50

 

Item: Fist Plate 

Ability: Blaze | Moves: Mach Punch, Close Combat, Flamethrower, Taunt

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

 Denki (Luxray M); Lv. 50

 

Item: Shell Bell 

Ability: Intimidate | Moves: Thunder Fang, Roar, Swagger, Crunch

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

 Hana (Roserade F); Lv. 50

 

Item: Big Root 

Ability: Poison Point | Moves: Giga Drain, Toxic Spikes, Sludge Bomb, Stun Spore

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

 Uki (Floatzel F); Lv. 50

 

Item: Mystic Water 

Ability: Swift Swim | Moves: Crunch, Aqua Jet, Ice Fang, Waterfall

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

 Kuro (Honchkrow F); Lv. 49

 

Item: Razor Claw* 

Ability: Super Luck | Moves: Fly, Night Shade, Night Slash, Haze

*Technically I didn't have the Razor Claw on Kuro, I forgot to give it to her and didn't realize until after, but it was supposed to be there. Let's just pretend I got really unlucky with crits, okay?

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

 Ibutsu (Bronzong); Lv. 50

 

Item: Quick Claw 

Ability: Levitate | Moves: Gyro Ball, Hypnosis, Stealth Rock, Trick Room

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

Elite Four

The music behind the gate is really intense! Very fitting because I'm gonna be frank, while I'm not sure if this region's Elite Four is as tough as Hoenn's, it's definitely up there! But enough stalling, let's get on with the show!

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

Elite Four [1F]

When you initiate the battle with an Elite Four member, they have some really cool encounter music that plays during their opening spiel. The Elite Four is just shrouded with awesome music!

Anyway, our first Elite Four member is the Bug-type specialist Aaron!

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

Vs. Elite Four #1: Aaron

The Elite Four Battle theme is a slightly more intense remix of the Gym Leader theme! Honestly, the difference is so slight that you probably wouldn't even notice if it wasn't pointed out. It's a bit disappointing to the point where I genuinely thought while playing that it was just the gym leader theme.

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

Dustox, Lv. 53

                                        

                                        

I led off with Ibutsu so I could set up Stealth Rock which would be especially useful against a team of Bug-types! Dustox went for Bug Buzz which is a special Bug-type attack. It started going for Double Team next, though, so my Hypnosis didn't have much of a chance to hit. I decided to switch out regardless of not putting Dustox to sleep.

                                        

                                        

Kuro switched in on a Light Screen. She went for Haze to eliminate Dustox's evasion boosts and then used Fly. Dustox tried to boost its evasion again with Double Team but it was down for the count when I landed Fly.

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

Vespiquen, Lv. 54

Vespiquen came out next! This is the evolved form of Combee which only female Combee are capable of evolving into. 

                                        

                                        

Vespiquen is a Bug/Flying type, so Stealth Rock cut into half of its HP. Kuro used Fly to dodge an Attack Order and KO'd it on landing!

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

Heracross, Lv. 54

                                        

                                        

Kuro couldn't outspeed Pace's Heracross, yet somehow I had it in my mind that maybe this one, which is higher level, would be a different story. I was wrong and, just like with Pace, Heracross outsped Kuro and took her out with Close Combat. Big mistake on my end...

                                        

                                        

Out came Senshi next. With Flamethrower, I took Heracross out easily enough.

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

Beautifly, Lv. 53

                                        

                                        

Being a Bug/Flying type, Beautifly, too, had half of its HP sapped by Stealth Rock. I doubt this one mattered as much, though. I probably would've taken it out in one shot with Flamethrower anyway.

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

Drapion, Lv. 57

Aaron's final pokemon is a Drapion! Drapion isn't actually a Bug-type itself, but it does evolve from the Bug-type Skorupi. It's actually a Poison/Dark type which is a much greater defensive typing, only weak to Ground.

                                        

                                        

I led off this matchup with a Taunt expecting some setup from this thing. I was met by an Ice Fang instead. Odd choice of move against a Fire-type but I suppose he had his reasons. I followed up with a Flamethrower and a Close Combat. Close Combat didn't quite get the KO I was looking for, though.

                                                             

                                        

"Not yet! Your first Pokemon League victory doesn't come easily, kid."

His Drapion went for an X-Scissor which I resisted. One more Close Combat and Drapion went down!
----------------------

"I will now concede defeat. But I think you came to see how great Bug-type Pokémon can be. I hope you also realized why you're up against in the Pokémon League. Battling is a deep and complex affair..."

With that, the first of the Elite Four was finished! Simple enough, but this was just the easiest of the battles ahead! There's three more Elite Four members to go!

MVP: Senshi

While Kuro's Stealth Rock was nice, I'm pretty confident Senshi probably could've swept Aaron's entire team save for Drapion and maybe Vespiquen without the aid of the stones at all. Senshi's ability to sweep the team definitely did not go unnoticed.

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

Between each Elite Four room is another hallway similar to the entrance that contains an elevator to the next floor up.

Elite Four [2F]

In the second room, you're met by... Agatha?? No, that's not right... She looks similar, but she seems a lot more gentle. Her name is Bertha! Maybe they're related? 

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

Vs. Elite Four #2: Bertha

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

Quagsire, Lv. 55

                                        

                                        

I led off with Hana, so this matchup with Quagsire was easily handled with a Giga Drain right out the gate!

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

Whiscash, Lv. 55

                                        

                                        

Her choice to follow-up? Whiscash... another Water/Ground type... alright... Well, a Giga Drain wasn't able to take out Whiscash in one hit, but its Rock Slide missed. Bertha used a Full Restore to heal Whiscash off. Another two Giga Drains, though, and it was gone.

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

Sudowoodo, Lv. 56

                                        

                                        

Finally, we had an opponent that wouldn't go down to a single Giga Drain. I set up two layers of Toxic Spikes while Sudowoodo went for Sandstorm and Sucker Punch, Sucker Punch being a priority physical Dark-type attack that only hits if the opponent goes for an offensive attack. Knowing he was going for Sucker Punch, I started going for Stun Spore to paralyze Sudowoodo only to be met by an Earthquake instead! A couple Giga Drains later and Sudowoodo went down!

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

Hippowdon, Lv. 59

No, it's not shiny! Female Hippowdon simply have a drastically different color scheme than their Male counterparts. Hippowdon's Sand Stream will bring in an endless sandstorm, so this will be plaguing us for the rest of the battle!

                                        

                                        

Hippowdon was badly poisoned on appearance due to Toxic Spikes. After it set up a Curse and we exchanged a few Giga Drains and Crunches, Bertha healed Hippowdon off with a Full Restore, curing its poison as well. I wouldn't be able to drain its HP again, so I needed to switch out.

                                        

                                        

I switched Kuro in to Haze away Hippowdon's Curse. I switched in on a second Curse so this was doubly nice! Unfortunately, I was met by a Stone Edge which Kuro had zero chance of surviving.

                                        

                                        

Uki came in to take Kuro's place. With Waterfall, I couldn't take Hippowdon out, but I did cause it to flinch, buying me a free KO with a second Waterfall!

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

Golem, Lv. 56

                                        

                                        

For her final pokemon, Golem would be easily outed. A simple 4x effective Waterfall was enough to KO it!

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

"Well! Dear child, I must say, that was most impressive. Your Pokémon believed in you and did their best to earn you the win. Even though I've lost, I find myself with this silly grin!"

That's two Elite Four members down!

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

MVP: Hana

Giga Drain made quick work of some of Bertha's more annoying tanks and was able to get Betha to waste her healing as well. Without Bertha's Full Restores, this probably would've been a clean sweep!

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

Elite Four [3F]

It's Flint! He's been itching to battle us ever since he heard word from Volkner. Well now, it's his turn! Let's go!

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

Vs. Elite Four #3: Flint

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

Rapidash, Lv. 58

                                        

                                        

I led off with Ibutsu so I could set up Stealth Rock against his Fire-types. Rapidash Bounced into the air, though, so I set up Trick Room expecting this thing to outspeed my entire team since it pretty significantly outleveled me. After Rapidash landed its Bounce, I switched out.

                                        

                                        

Flint capitalized on my switch with a Sunny Day to power up its Fire Attacks when Uki emerged. As an unfortunate side-effect, Uki's water attacks would be weakened as well. It used Flare Blitz, a powerful physical fire attack that deals recoil damage, which, even with the power from Sunny Day, wasn't able to do enough damage to KO me thanks to the resistance. Due to Sunny Day, though, Waterfall wasn't quite strong enough to get the KO even with the Recoil from Flare Blitz. I tried to finish Rapidash off with an Aqua Jet but even that wasn't enough for the kill. Rapidash used Bounce to return to the air, so I needed to retreat with Uki.

                                        

                                        

Denki was the best to take Rapidash's Bounce attack, so I switched him in to take it. His HP was low enough that Stealth Rock would finish it off, so I used Roar to get rid of it. Unfortunately, he seemed to read this strategy and used a Full Restore the same turn, so that plan was foiled. Well-played Flint!

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

Infernape, Lv. 61

                                        

                                        

The pokemon that emerged from Roar was Flint's Ace: Infernape! It went for Mach Punch to my Thunder Fang. The following turn, it completely caught me off guard with an Earthquake!

                                        

                                        

Uki has surprised me with its speed against Rapidash, so I considered the possibility that maybe he could outspeed Infernape, too. This proved to be a pipe dream, though, and Infernape took me clean out with a Flare Blitz.

                                        

                                        

Kuro was the next in line. She took a Mach Punch but Flew to avoid another. Infernape was KO'd upon landing.

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

Steelix, Lv. 57

Steelix was up next! Flint is quite infamous for this pokemon. Ironically, he's not the only one to shulk his type specialty but he gets particular flack, I think, because it highlights just how few Fire-types there actually are in the Sinnoh Region. Across his entire team, he actually only has two Fire-types and one of them is his Infernape, a starter pokemon.

                                        

                                        

Naturally, there wasn't much to do with Kuro, so I switched.

                                        

                                        

I imagined the safest switch I had was Ibutsu. Steelix used Rock Tomb which lowed my speed (oh no! Not my speed!) From here, I put Steelix to sleep with Hypnosis to cover my switch.

                                        

                                        

It was time to fight fire with fire! Or... Steel, I guess. Anyway, I get to show off Senshi, my own Infernape! Steelix didn't go down to just one Flamethrower, but it was still sleeping for my second!

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

Lopunny, Lv. 57

What a bizarre choice of pokemon for a Fire-type specialist! It does know Fire Punch, but still...

                                        

                                        

With a simple Close Combat, I tore through Lopunny like paper.

                                        

                                        

And finally, Rapidash returned to the fray. The stones taxed its Health a bit, so I hit it with a Close Combat expecting to KO but didn't quite do enough damage. It used Bounce, forcing me to switch because I was not going to survive the Bounce with two defense drops from Close Combat.

                                        

                                        

I brought Ibutsu back out while he landed Bounce. My intention was to finish what little HP Rapidash had with Gyro Ball, but he used a Full Restore to heal it off. Dammit! This thing just didn't want to die! I decided to go for Hypnosis the following turn, but he went for Bounce! I tried again, but Quick Claw activated forcing me to attack before it landed and paralyzed me! What the hell! I tried a third time and, again, Rapidash used Bounce! Even my fourth time I was stopped by paralysis! Finally, on the fifth turn I was able to connect a Hypnosis, but only after Rapidash set up Sunny Day again. I decided that I liked the damage output of Gyro Ball, so I chose to stay in and continue going for it now that I was paralyzed. Unfortunately, my paralysis stopped my attack. The following turn, Rapidash woke up and hit me with a Solar Beam!! Where did that come from and why didn't he use it against Uki?? I suppose I should count my blessings. I went for Hypnosis again and got the Quick Claw, but ended up missing. Rapidash nailed me with a Flare Blitz for the KO.

                                        

                                        

I brought Senshi back out next and went for Mach Punch to finish the job. Unfortunately, Rapidash was able to take the hit and hit me with another Solar Beam which I resisted. Another Mach Punch was enough to finally get rid of this stupid horse!

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

Drifblim, Lv. 58

All that remained now was a Drifblim!

                                                             

                                        

"I can feel your determination. Your will is overpowering me!"

I went for a Flamethrower against Drifblim and admittedly grew a bit nervous when I saw him starting to set up Double Team.

                                                             

                                        

"This situation... this is heating up! I'm blazing now!"

Another Flamethrower still wasn't quite enough to finish the job, but all he did was use Ominous Wind before my final Flamethrower was able to finish the battle!

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

"...! I wasn't expecting this! I wasn't looking down on you... But I didn't think for one second that I'd lose! This is fantastic! You and your Pokémon are inspiring!"

That's our third Elite Four Battle over, but it wasn't an easy battle! That Rapidash put up one hell of a fight!

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

MVP: Ibutsu

This was a bit of a mess of a battle, so I wasn't sure who to select as MVP. I chose Ibutsu because his Stealth Rocks put a lot of pressure on Flint's Rapidash and he was frequently a good switch-in as well.

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

Elite Four [4F]

The final Elite Four member is Lucian, the Psychic-type specialist. He seems to be a bit of a bookworm. He insists that he's the toughest of the Elite Four and I'm inclined to believe him! Let's not underestimate our opponent here!

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

Vs. Elite Four #4: Lucian

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

Mr. Mime, Lv. 59

                                        

                                        

I led with Ibutsu and put Lucian's Mr. Mime to sleep right away, but not before it was able to get a Light Screen off. That was fine, though, because I was planning to attack this thing physically!

                                        

                                        

I brought Denki out to take it out with Crunch. Mr. Mime woke up on the second turn and hit me with a ThunderBolt before getting KO'd.

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

Bronzong, Lv. 63

                                        

                                        

Bronzong was next! I was caught off guard when it completely wrecked Denki with an Earthquake! I figured it'd at least try to set up first. I tried to send it away with Roar, but Denki didn't get to get it off.

                                        

                                        

Senshi came in next and used Flamethrower. It didn't do nearly as much as I would've liked and I honestly considered that it might simply have Heatproof. Nope, apparently its Special Defense was just that good. Anyway, I went for Close Combat to try and get a chunk of damage off while it continued to set up Calm Mind.

                                        

                                        

Kuro came out expecting an Earthquake. Instead, she was met by a Gyro Ball which actually didn't hurt as much as many of the other attacks she was hit by, presumably due to her lower speed. A Night Slash was enoguh to get the KO!

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

Medicham, Lv. 60

                                        

                                        

I was hit by a Drain Punch when Medicham came out. I went for Fly to dodge the next one and took Medicham out with a critical hit the following turn! Nice!

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

Alakazam, Lv. 60

                                        

                                        

I suspected Alakazam might have Shock Wave, but on a whim I chose to stay in and try Night Slash hoping he might try to set up instead. Instead of Shock Wave, he hit me with an Energy Ball, essentially a Grass-type Shadow Ball. The attack was resisted, but Alakazam's special attack was strong enough that it was able to KO Kuro anyway.

                                        

                                        

Ibutsu came along and went for Hypnosis. I missed twice in a row, punished by Energy Balls and a drop to Special Defense, but the third time was the charm and I managed to get one last Hypnosis through! Once I had him asleep, I went for Gyro Ball which did a healthy chunk of damage due to Alakazam's low defense and high speed! The second Gyro Ball got a lucky crit which KO'd Alakazam!

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

Girafarig, Lv. 59

                                                             

                                        

"Hmm... Now what should I do..."

Girafarig was up next and all Ibutsu could really afford to do here was put it to sleep with Hypnosis and switch.

                                        

                                        

I switched Uki in and a couple Crunches later, Girafarig was down.

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

"I see. You getting past the three before me was no fluke. Your power is real."

And with that, the last of the Elite Four has been defeated!

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

MVP: Ibutsu

Once again, a lot of pokemon pulled their weight, but Ibutsu was the one who kept coming in and shifting the tides of bad situations. I have to give it to 'em!

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

Anybody who's been following along the series so far should already know that the Elite Four is not where the game ends, of course. We still have the champion beyond them who we'll also have to defeat. It's time for the final push!

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

 

My Team:

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

 Senshi (Infernape M); Lv. 52

 

Item: Fist Plate 

Ability: Blaze | Moves: Mach Punch, Close Combat, Flamethrower, Taunt

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

 Denki (Luxray M); Lv. 50

 

Item: Shell Bell 

Ability: Intimidate | Moves: Thunder Fang, Roar, Swagger, Crunch

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

 Hana (Roserade F); Lv. 50

 

Item: Big Root 

Ability: Poison Point | Moves: Giga Drain, Toxic Spikes, Sludge Bomb, Stun Spore

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

 Uki (Floatzel F); Lv. 51

 

Item: Mystic Water 

Ability: Swift Swim | Moves: Crunch, Aqua Jet, Ice Fang, Waterfall

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

 Kuro (Honchkrow F); Lv. 51

 

Item: Razor Claw* 

Ability: Super Luck | Moves: Fly, Night Shade, Night Slash, Haze

*Technically I didn't have the Razor Claw on Kuro, I forgot to give it to her and didn't realize until after, but it was supposed to be there. Let's just pretend I got really unlucky with crits, okay?

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

 Ibutsu (Bronzong); Lv. 51

 

Item: Quick Claw 

Ability: Levitate | Moves: Gyro Ball, Hypnosis, Stealth Rock, Trick Room

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

Elite Four [5F]

Just listen to that incredible piano arrangement! As we step inside the final chamber, we're met face-to-face with the champion: Cynthia. We've met her many times throughout our journey. At this point, this sort of twist shouldn't even really be a surprise. But I will say that this champion battle developed a reputation as the toughest one in the entire series. There's a reason that Cynthia is popular! Okay, well excluding fanart.

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

Vs. Champion Cynthia

Now, I'll be honest, this battle really is incredibly challenging. I was completely swamped several times over, so this is by no means my first attempt, just my first successful one. I'll detail a lot of the things that went wrong in my previous attempts as well.

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

Spiritomb, Lv. 61

Cynthia's first pokemon is a Spiritomb! Already off to a terrifying start. This thing is infamous for its Ghost/Dark typing which makes it have absolutely zero weaknesses and even two immunities! This thing is incredibly tanky!

                                        

                                        

I tried several leads against Spiritomb. Hana wasn't a good lead because it would often take her out with Psychic. Senshi would give me mixed results and usually bait some of her more troublesome pokemon out early. But the winning strategy seemed to be Denki, who could nail Spiritomb with a Swagger to stunt some of its attacks. This is fairly safe since Spiritomb doesn't actually have any physical attacks to capitalize on its attack boosts. The self-inflicted damage and halted attacks are incredibly nice consequences of the confusion as I chip away at its health with Crunch, hoping for defense drops to get the self-inflicted confusion damage a bit higher. It likes to go for Embargo which is nice since it doesn't do much damage and I try to avoid using items wherever I can anyway, though this does nullify my Shell Bell's healing. Eventually, Confusion wears off and I have to afflict it with another Swagger which causes it to hit itself which brought its HP just within the range of being KO'd with a Thunder Fang! A brilliant start and I only took a Silver Wind and Dark Pulse!

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

Gastrodon, Lv. 60

                                        

                                        

This thing is easy enough to deal with, so long as I don't get unlucky with crits.

                                        

                                        

All I need to do is switch into Hana who can take anything Gastrodon can dish out except for one attempt where it critted me with Earthquake! Aside from a critical hit, the only way I can lose this matchup is through a freak string of bad RNG. It needs to hit with Muddy Water, reduce my accuracy, and cause Giga Drain to miss. Otherwise, I hit Gastrodon with Giga Drain and my Big Root helps me heal off all of the damage from Gastrodon regardless of the attack it used against me. This isn't enough to take out Gastrodon, but since Hana outspeeds Gastrodon, I just have to take another hit at full HP in order to finish the job.

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

Lucario, Lv. 63

                                        

                                        

Whenever I KO Gastrodon with Hana, Cynthia likes to follow up with Lucario. This guy is a run ender for sure if not handled well. I've been swept several times by Lucario's immense speed and offensive presence. It has Earthquake, Psychic, Dragon Pulse, and Aura Sphere. Name a type and it probably has an answer to it!

                                        

                                        

My best choice was to switch Ibutsu in. I was iffy about this, though, because of one particular pokemon I'd have to deal with later who likes to dish out a lot of pain, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there. Ibutsu switched in on a Dragon Pulse which he resisted, then answered Lucario's Aura Sphere on the following turn with Hypnosis.

                                        

                                        

While Lucario was sleeping, I switched into Senshi and hoped that the following turn I'd be able to get a Close Combat off. The plan worked! And Lucario couldn't hold up! He's a bit of a glass cannon, you see, but even as a glass cannon, a high level can still help it tank some weaker attacks which is a problem that made this thing so threatening. Unfortunately, this is just one of many major threats on Cynthia's team.

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

Milotic, Lv. 63

The next of these major threats is up next! Remember Milotic? The ace of Wallace, Champion of Hoenn in Emerald? Yeah, just one of many of Cynthia's pokemon. Lovely. It's never fun to go up against a Milotic of a higher level.

                                        

                                        

I didn't really have much of a clean plan for dealing with Milotic. This was honestly my first time facing it like this. In earlier attempts, I would set up Toxic Spikes with Hana at the beginning of the match which would ultimately prove to not be worth it considering her Lucario was immune to it, it wouldn't affect Spiritomb who it would probably be most useful against, one of her upcoming pokemon is a Poison type capable of absorbing the spikes, and if any of her pokemon are poisoned then they can't be paralyzed for outspeeding or put to sleep for my protection. In Milotic's case, it would trigger Marvel Scale to up her defense. Even beyond that, for the few pokemon Toxic Spikes did affect, Cynthia would generally just heal them with Full Restores before they succumbed to it. All in all, leading with Toxic Spikes would really benefit Cynthia more than it did me, which was a big contributing factor to changing my lead around on future attempts.

Anyway, I decided this time to try out what Close Combat could do against Milotic. It couldn't quite get the KO, unfortunately, but to my surprise Milotic went for Ice Beam rather than Surf, perhaps anticipating that I'd switch instead of tough it out. Senshi was able to take the Ice Beam thanks to its resistance and I could follow up with another Close Combat for the KO!

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

Garchomp, Lv. 66

                                        

                                        

Here it is! This is the threat that Cynthia is by far most infamous for. Garchomp is incredibly fast, incredibly powerful, it will one-shot whatever you throw at it unless it's really bulky. Between Dragon Rush, Brick Break, Earthquake, and Giga Impact, not a whole lot will be able to withstand this thing's assault. But with a bit of luck, I might be able to play around some expectations! However, I really needed some luck.

                                        

                                        

I know it's a bit insulting to Kuro, but I needed someone to take a bullet here and unfortunately Kuro just wasn't fast enough to be of much use in this battle. There was too much riding on this switch for me to assume Garchomp would go for Earthquake, so I needed the free switch from a KO. I switched Kuro in and this proved to be a good choice because he was hit by a Dragon Rush for an unquestionable OHKO.

                                        

                                        

Next up to bat was Ibutsu who'd already taken an unhealthy chunk of damage thanks to Lucario's Aura Sphere. Garchomp went for Giga Impact this time which Ibutsu was able to barely hold onto! He used Hypnosis to put Garchomp to sleep on his recovery turn.

                                        

                                        

From here, I switched Denki in during Garchomp's sleep, but unfortunately, Garchomp woke up the following turn and took Denki out with a Dragon Rush. Shit!

The plan was to have Denki confuse Garchomp to hopefully keep it from attacking and potentially turn her attack against her, but that went out the window.

                                        

                                        

And this is where I decided this run was too good to pass up. I don't think this is too unfair given that Cynthia has four Full Restores to use as she sees fit, so I decided to drop a Hyper Potion on Ibutsu to heal it to full HP. Considering he could've been asleep for a full five turns rather than just two, I think this is a pretty fair option to make up for bad luck in an otherwise fantastic run! And this Hyper Potion really wasn't going to guarantee anything. It'd just let me tank a few more hits. Once again, I hit her with Hypnosis and switched out.

                                        

                                        

This time, Senshi entered the fray. I went for Close Combat, Garchomp thankfully remained asleep. The attack did a little over 1/3 of its health! Holy crap! This thing was shockingly bulky, too! She remained alseep for a second Close Combat, but then fell to berry range. It ate its Sitrus Berry and I knew if I hit it with one more Close Combat, she'd surive the hit and now be in the range of a Full Restore and I could not allow that to happen under these conditions. So, I retreated.

                                        

                                        

Uki came out next and thankfully Garchomp was still asleep! The following turn, Garchomp woke up and hit me with a Giga Impact! By some luck, Uki was able to take the attack and dish out an Ice Fang! The Ice Fang weakened Garchomp but didn't quite get the KO. Still, he was locked into recharge the following turn meaning Cynthia wouldn't have the chance to use a Full Restore! I had to capitalize with an Aqua Jet to secure the KO! That was Cynthia's greatest threat out of the way!

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

Cynthia, Lv. 60

                                        

                                        

This thing was a really annoying presence throughout several of my failed attempts. Often my attempts would fail because it would come out early and ruin my strategies with a BS lucky crit with Extrasensory or Sludge Bomb! In this case, however, I was well equipped to finish it off since it was her last pokemon. I went for Ice Fang, she hit me with Extrasensory for the KO.

                                        

                                        

But, I still had Senshi! And with a Flamethrower, I was able to finish the fight!

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

And with that, the champion of Sinnoh has finally been defeated! Good lord, she definitely lives up to her reputation! It took several iterations of my approach before I found one that worked even some of the time!

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

MVP: Senshi

While I really wanted to give MVP to Ibutsu for his grand assistance against Garchomp, it would've all been for naught had Senshi not been there to capitalize on the openings he created. I really needed the raw firepower Senshi had to offer in order to even make a dent in Cynthia's more defensive pokemon.

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

Hall of Fame

As if running through the ropes, upon defeating Cynthia, Prof. Rowan arrives to see you off to your crowning as the champion! It's been a long time since he's last been here and Cynthia reveals that the last time he'd been here was Cynthia's own victory over the champion before her! I wonder if Cynthia started her adventure with a pokemon from Prof. Rowan as well? It's an interesting thought to consider. Either way, it's time to enter our tema into the Hall of Fame!

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

 

My Team:

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

 Senshi (Infernape M); Lv. 53

 

Item: Fist Plate 

Ability: Blaze | Moves: Mach Punch, Close Combat, Flamethrower, Taunt

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

 Denki (Luxray M); Lv. 51

 

Item: Shell Bell 

Ability: Intimidate | Moves: Thunder Fang, Roar, Swagger, Crunch

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

 Hana (Roserade F); Lv. 51

 

Item: Big Root 

Ability: Poison Point | Moves: Giga Drain, Toxic Spikes, Sludge Bomb, Stun Spore

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

 Uki (Floatzel F); Lv. 51

 

Item: Mystic Water 

Ability: Swift Swim | Moves: Crunch, Aqua Jet, Ice Fang, Waterfall

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

 Kuro (Honchkrow F); Lv. 51

 

Item: Razor Claw* 

Ability: Super Luck | Moves: Fly, Night Shade, Night Slash, Haze

*Technically I didn't have the Razor Claw on Kuro, I forgot to give it to her and didn't realize until after, but it was supposed to be there. Let's just pretend I got really unlucky with crits, okay?

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

 Ibutsu (Bronzong); Lv. 51

 

Item: Quick Claw 

Ability: Levitate | Moves: Gyro Ball, Hypnosis, Stealth Rock, Trick Room

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

       

Every Pokemon really pulled their weight to get us here! So welcome to the hall of fame!! Everyone on the team upon defeating Cynthia is rewarded with the Sinnoh Champ Ribbon!

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

After this sequence, the credits begin to roll! We ride our way home! What a wonderful experience this game was! I'll try to hold off on my final throughts because, as always, we aren't even close to finishing covering this game just because we've arrived at the credits. But I will say I've been pleasantly surprised by my playthrough so far! I've definitely felt the slowness of the gameplay at times, especially during surfing routes or complex caves, but it rarely felt unbearable and I was really able to get a good grip on things!

Anyway, like I said, I'll hold myself back from giving my final thoughts just yet. Next time, we'll take a peek into the postgame of Pokemon Diamond!

[Aura]

Twinleaf Town

Now that we've finished the main story of Pokemon Diamond, a huge chunk of the game is open to us! As always, after defeating the champion of the Pokemon League, the game will save and the next time you boot it up, you'll start up back in your room in Twinleaf Town.

When you first head downstairs, your mother Johanna will stop you to tell you that Pace stopped by to say something about a ship to take from Snowpoint before running off in his impetient manner. Of course, this is something we're going to want to look into, but before we get into that mess, I want to zero in on some more specific details of the postgame. Namely, the new daily events we're going to be managing for the next several days. But in order to get access to most of the postgame content, we're going to want to finish filling out our regional pokedex. If you've been playing along and battling every trainer, you should have at least seen every pokemon in the pokedex save for a single pokemon. If you haven't been battling all the trainers, you've got a bit more work cut out for you. Either go back and seek out the trainers you've missed around the world or try to track down the pokemon you're missing in the wild. Feel free to use this thread to find any missing pokemon!

Sandgem Town

If we stop by Sandgem Town, we'll find Dawn standing outside Prof. Rowan's lab. Dawn is going to not-so-subtly point us in the direction of some of the interesting things to do around the world that are open to us in the postgame. The first thing she has for us is that the elder of Celestic Town said she had something to show you.

Celestic Town

If we stop by the village elder's house, she tells us she returned to the ruins after realizing there was trouble at Mt. Coronet and came to a surprising discovery: She found an ancient book inside the ruins! This book depicts another deity just like Dialga. A deity of Space.

This book contains an image of Palkia, the creator of Space! It seems that both Palkia and Dialga used their powers of Space and Time to create reality and everything within it.

More importantly, though, the image in this book counts as having seen the pokemon Palkia, and it's now registered in our pokedex as seen! With this, we've seen all 150 pokemon in Sinnoh! Technically, it's 151 since we also have Manaphy. But now that we have our pokedex filled out, why don't we check in with Prof. Rowan?

Prof. Rowan's Lab

As we return to speak with Prof. Rowan, he'll be amazed to find that we've seen every pokemon that can be found in the Sinnoh Region! And, it seems we're about to be met with a rather shocking surprise!

Prof. Oak from Pallet Town arrives shortly after us! He's come a long way from Kanto but is glad to reunite with Prof. Rowan, an old colleague of his. It seems these two actually have quite a history together! Prof. Oak is quite famous for his love of pokemon. Rowan comments that they used to have a saying that where you could find pokemon, you'd find Oak.

So, what's Prof. Oak here for? Well, he's just arrived to deliver data on pokemon from the National Pokedex of course! That's right, the very one we completed in Gen 3! With this data, Prof. Oak upgrades our pokedex directly by installing the National Dex Mode into our pokedex! Now, we can see all 493 pokemon! That's right, 493! Eagle-eyed math nerds reading along this thread might recognize that the numbers don't quite match up. We've only seen 150 pokemon in the Sinnoh Region, and the National Dex consisted of 386 pokemon! Factoring in the fact that the 150 pokemon in the Sinnoh region included a lot of previous gen pokemon, that means there are still new pokemon unaccounted for! And you'd be correct! This is actually one of my biggest criticisms about Diamond and Pearl... for some totally bizarre reason, a lot of brand new pokemon associated with the Sinnoh region... aren't actually obtainable in Sinnoh. At least, not in the base Diamond and Pearl versions Sinnoh debuted in. It's an incredibly bizarre choice, but these pokemon are only available in the postgame after obtaining the national pokedex, many of which literally aren't available at all without a feature we'll be covering later today.

With the national dex mode secured, Prof. Oak explains that the main reason he's here from Kanto is to check up on Pal Park which is the place that was under construction at the end of Route 221. The location is now open and he wanted to come and make sure everything was working properly, and he encourages us to come check it out! We'll need to take him up on that invitation! It's not every day you get to spend some time with the famous Prof. Oak!

After your Pokedex is upgraded, Prof. Rowan will give you a special new invention called the Poke Radar! We'll go over how this thing works in a future update, but just know that this thing is another tool that can be used to get some rare national dex pokemon.

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

If we speak to Dawn outside the lab, she'll ask if we've ever spoken with her kid sister before? It's a bit of an odd question to ask, but there's a reason for it. If we visit her home here in Sandgem Town, we'll find her little sister talking about how the news lately has been speaking of Pokemon Outbreaks! That's right, Swarming is back and this little girl is the key to them! Speak with her and she'll tell you what she saw on TV. A rare pokemon not normally found in the Sinnoh region will have started appearing in a location somewhere around the world. In this case, it's Drowzee on Route 215!

This is going to be a new daily event we'll want to check in on as much as possible.

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

  

And when we arrive at Route 215, wouldn't you know it, it's true! We can now find Drowzee here at 40%, but only for the remainder of the day! You'll want to check in with this girl every day to see what pokemon is being swarmed and where. If you don't have access to the previous gen games, or if you're playing on a model of DSi or 3DS, this feature will prove to be key in completing the national pokedex in Gen IV! While the process is a lot more tedious, it is possible to complete the national pokedex just within Gen IV games just like it was with Gen III. Of course, just like Gen III, you're going to have to trade with other games in order to get many missing pokemon. I'll try to cover as much of this as I reasonably can. Anyway, I named this Drowzee Yume.

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

Now, before heading off to Pal Park, one more daily event I'd like to cover today is at the Pokemon Mansion on Route 212, south of Hearthome City. If you recall, I mentioned the trophy garden would be a key point in pokedex completion for Gen IV. Well, we're ready now!

If we meet up with Mr. Backlot, I recommend saving before speaking with him, he'll start to boast about the wild pokemon in his trophy garden. Keep responding positively to his questions and his boasting will start to sound a bit more... made up. In fact, at some point, he'll lie about an especially rare pokemon appearing before him in the garden. However, his butler will take notice of this and remind him that that pokemon actually isn't in the garden. This will get Mr. Backlot flustered and he'll give the Butler secret instructions before turning back to you and insisting that he is, in fact, telling the truth, insists that the pokemon is in his garden and that lies never leave his lips!

And if you step inside the Trophy Garden after seeing this, you just might actually find the pokemon he mentioned!

     

  

   

  

It seems to cover up for his blatant fibs, Mr. Backlot has his butler secretly obtain the pokemon he mentioned, perhaps through the GTS, and release them into his garden. These pokemon include:

Clefairy, Jigglypuff, Meowth, Chansey, Eevee, Porygon, Cleffa, Igglybuff, Marill, Azuril, Plusle, Minun, Castform, Bonsly, Mr. Mime, and Happiny!

Many of these pokemon have never actually been catchable in the wild before this point, so this Trophy Garden is especially nice! A handful of these pokemon are available elsewhere in the game, but interestingly, both Bonsly and Mime Jr. are available in Diamond and Pearl, so I suppose they're actually soft version exclusives!

The pokemon of particular interest here that you'll probably want to make a checklist of include Jigglypuff/Igglybuff, Meowth, Porygon, Plusle, Minun, Castform, and then Bonsly or Mime Jr. depending on which one is rare for your version of the game. While some of these pokemon will be more easily obtainable in future games in the gen, if we're strictly talking about Diamond and Pearl, this is the only place you'll find these pokemon. The others can be obtained more easily elsewhere.

The reason I'm trying to narrow this list down as tightly as possible is because only one of these pokemon can be generated a day, and it takes 24 hours for another pokemon to be added to the garden. It's important to note this functions a little differently than other daily events. Only two pokemon can be added to the garden at a time and when a third pokemon is added, the first will be removed. Rather than just being available to generate a new pokemon each time the date changes, you have to wait an entire 24 hour period meaning that if you generate the next pokemon at 8:00 at night, you won't be able to generate another one until 8:00 the next night.

To add some grace to this frustrating limitation, the pokemon chosen isn't hardwired by your secret ID like other random daily events. So, you can feel free to save scum as much as you like and talk to Mr. Backlot over and over until he mentions a pokemon you're looking for. In addition, this 24-hour timer only applies to generating new pokemon. You do not only have 24 hours to catch the pokemon. When a pokemon is added to the garden, it will remain available there permanently until two more pokemon are added, then they'll stop appearing in the garden until Mr. Backlot mentions them again. This is a good thing because each pokemon added to the garden only has a 5% encounter rate, making them incredibly tedious to hunt down. Some of these pokemon can be pretty tough to catch, too, so be wary of them!

I recommend speaking with Mr. Backlot once a day wherever you can and making note of what time of day you spoke to him. Once a pokemon is added to the garden, make note of which pokemon was added but don't bother looking for it until you have a second pokemon of interest in the garden. (remember to save scum so the first doesn't get overwritten because of a pokemon you didn't care about!) Once you have two pokemon of interest in the garden, go looking for them. You'll have a 10% chance of finding either of the two pokemon. If you find the first one added, stop looking for the day and start searching for a new pokemon of interest. If you find the second one first, then keep looking until you find the first one. Then don't bother coming back to the garden until you have two new pokemon of interest. That is, unless you're just down to the last pokemon of interest on your checklist. Then feel free to hunt for it even if it's the only one there!

  

The first pokemon of interest that was added for me here was Minun which I caught and named Genzan!

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

Great Marsh

This section was definitely here the whole time and no I'm not gaslighting you about that. I don't forget things!

Once you obtain the National Dex, the Great Marsh also gets updated in secret! There are now new rotating pokemon that can be spotted!

  

 

 

The pokemon Paras, Exeggcute, Kangaskhan, Yanma, Shroomish, Gulpin, Drapion, and Toxicroak can now appear in the shuffled pokemon slots! These come with the added bonus of taking over slots that were previously taken up by pokemon that could already always be found in the Great Marsh anyway. The only sad consequence to this is that Azurill can no longer be given its boosted chance.

Drapion and Toxicroak both evolve from pokemon that could already be found here, so they're a bit less special.

 

Gulpin also has a gender difference in that males have a larger feather on their heads than females.

Anyway, you'll want to make it a habit to check the binoculars on the daily to see if any of these guys are available!

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

Route 221

Finally, our last destination is Route 221 at the tail end of the path south of Sandgem Town. This is where the Pal Park that Prof. Oak mentioned can be found! Let's head on inside, shall we?

Pal Park Lobby

When you first arrive at Pal Park, Prof. Oak will be glad to see you and he'll generously give you yet another gift! This time, a Poketch app!

App #20: Trainer Counter

This app is directly related to the Poke Radar, so it might make more sense when we cover what the radar is used for, but basically, this app keeps track of how many times in a row you've encountered the same pokemon using the Poke Radar. It'll list your three highest chains of all time, so keep checking up on it!

If you check in with the NPC's nearby, many of them are excited to watch your "catch show." Apparently, Pal Park is a place where rare pokemon are migrated from other regions and a trainer has to hunt them down to catch them in special Park Balls. The main attraction being the opportunity to see rare and exotic pokemon in-person! But the main draw for us is how exactly these exotic pokemon are made available...

This is handled through a mechanic known as Pokemon Migration! If you're playing on a DS original or Lite model and you have a main-series Gen III game (Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, FireRed, or LeafGreen) in the system's GBA slot, a new option will appear on the game's main menu when the game is booted up: Migrate From <version name>. Selecting this option will bring up a special menu that lists the many pokemon in the GBA game's PC. Select six pokemon to transfer forward and the game will save.

Now, this is where this decision gets a little bit scary. This doesn't function quite like the Time Machine in Gen II. You aren't trading with Gen III games, you are migrating these pokemon away from their home games. They can only be transferred forward and there's no way to transfer them backward. Be absolutely sure you no longer want the migrated pokemon in your Gen III game.

As an additional note, the pokemon will be transferred with their held items, so make sure you don't care about losing the held item either! This can be easy to forget because future games in the series typically automatically strip the held item and return it to the bag before transferring the pokemon away. Some items, such as many of the rarest berries, can only be obtained in this way outside of external help.

Finally, pokemon with HM moves cannot be transferred as a failsafe to prevent accidental softlocking. If you want to transfer a pokemon with an HM move, bring it to the Move Deleter in Hoenn's Lilycove City or Kanto's Fuchsia City to transfer forward! You can always teach the HM again on the other side if you want! Unless, that is, you're removing Dive, but, really, are you gonna miss Dive?

Now, you should be no stranger to the fact that we completed the National Dex in Pokemon Emerald version, leaving ourselves with a nearly complete living dex in this game, so technically we could have a healthy chunk of our national dex filled out just by migrating a whole bunch of pokemon, but that's not quite interesting enough for me. I like to catch as many pokemon as I can before relying on external help like this. Still, there are a selection of pokemon I do want to transfer in for specific reasons...

     

From Pokemon Emerald, I decided to migrate Leaf's Consume the Snorlax, Emerald's Tropics the Kecleon, Ruby's Golem the Regirock, Jotunn the Regice, and Talus the Registeel, as well as Wes' Sass the Feraligatr.

Of course, obtaining these pokemon isn't quite as simple as just migrating them over... we have to put on a Capture Show next!

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

Pal Park

Once six pokemon are migrated over, you can put on a Catching Show! This is essentially a bite-sized Safari Zone minigame in which you have to hunt down the six pokemon migrated to the game.

To aid in this minigame, you're given six Park Balls which are similar to Safari Balls in that they can only be used here, but different in that they're funcitonally identical to the Master Ball! A toss of a Park Ball is a guaranteed capture!

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately if you prided yourself on catching pokemon in specific pokeballs to match their aesthetics, the Park Ball will transform into the pokeball the pokemon was originally caught in.

Interestingly, the Park Ball itself is colored with a gold top, silver bottom, and blue line between them which I can't help but recognize as a subtle nod to Pokemon Gold, Silver, and Crystal.

Anyway, the park is divided into five sections: An open field, a forest path, a small pond, a mountain cliffside, and the sea. Each pokemon will only appear in one section of the park, so I recommend looking the pokemon up on Bulbapedia to know which area it will appear in ahead of time.

You'll be scored on the rarity of the pokemon you catch in the Capture Show as well as how quickly you were able to catch them. You'll also be given bonus points for catching pokemon with many varying types. This score is pretty meaningless, though. You'll only be rewarded with berries that can be obtained elsewhere (even the highest-tier prizes aren't as rare as the berries you get from the Berry Lady in Pastoria City), and the only other use for these is an NPC in the lobby who will track your high score. By default, your rival will have a high score of 2000 points which is easily beaten.

Thanks to the capture show, I was able to transfer the following pokemon from Emerald!

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

 Consume (Snorlax M); Lv. 30

OT: Leaf

 

Item: None

Ability: Thick Fat | Moves: Headbutt, Yawn, Snore, Rest

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

 Tropics (Kecleon F); Lv. 30

OT: Emerald

 

Item: None

Ability: Color Change | Moves: Faint Attack, Fury Swipes, Psybeam, Screech

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

 Sass (Feraligatr M); Lv. 31

OT: Wes

 

Item: None

Ability: Torrent | Moves: Rain Dance, Scary Face, Bite

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

 Golem (Regirock); Lv. 40

OT: Ruby

 

Item: None

Ability: Clear Body | Moves: Rock Throw, Curse, SuperPower AncientPower

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

 Jotunn (Regice); Lv. 40

OT: Ruby

 

Item: None

Ability: Clear Body | Moves: Icy Wind, Curse, SuperPower, AncientPower

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

 Talus (Registeel); Lv. 40

OT: Ruby

 

Item: None

Ability: Clear Body | Moves: Metal Claw, Curse, SuperPower, AncientPower

Alright, let's address the elephant in the room here: Yes, this is the Registeel sprite pre-censor. In versions of the game that came after the english localization, this Registeel sprite was edited because it strongly resembled the Nazi salute. A great big yikes on that front. Of course, the resemblance is obviously unintentional. I think we can all be adults about this, right? 

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

So, why these particular pokemon? Well, Feraligatr might offer a bit of a spoiler as to what pokemon I will be using in future games, but the other five do actually have practical purpose! But for now, we'll just focus on the first two: Snorlax and Kecleon.

In the lobby of Pal Park is a girl who will ask to see a pokemon that eats and sleeps a lot. She forgot its name, but I think you can tell where I'm going with this.

Show her a Snorlax and she'll be delighted! She'll thank you by giving you a Poketch App themed after Snorlax!

App #21: Kitchen Timer

This app is a simple countdown timer. Set a time limit up to 99 minutes and 59 seconds and Snorlax will drum on its belly once time is up! You could use this for its intended purpose as a kitchen timer, or you could use it to keep yourself from obsessively hunting rare pokemon for several hours too long... cough. You can also pause and reset the timer if you want!

When you leave and come back, the girl will ask to see a pokemon that can change colors based on its environment.

Show her a Kecleon and you're rewarded with my favorite app in the game!

App #22: Color Changer

It feels like a crime that you don't get this app earlier in the game. This app is a simple slider that lets you change the color of your poketch's display! This may not seem like much on its own, but when you switch away from it...

The changed color remains! It's such a simple change, but I absolutely love this small layer of personalization!

Ironically, you don't actually have to migrate either of these pokemon to get these apps. You can theoretically catch and evolve a Munchlax out of a Honey Tree and you could also catch a Kecleon using the Poke Radar. However, the easiest and quickest way to get these pokemon is through Pal Park and considering the girl's location, that seems to be the intention here. But, the devs were careful enough to not lock you out of getting these apps if you don't have a Gen III game. Even if you're worried about Munchlax, Snorlax can be much more easily obtained in a future Gen IV game, so look forward to that!

Anyway, that about sums it up for the new daily events! Next time, we'll start taking a peek around the world to see what else is new with our newfound National Pokedex and maybe take a peek at what this Poke Radar can do!

[Aura]

It's been a few days since my last update. Quite frankly, it's because what we're doing in this post was actually a much larger undertaking than I initially expected. Sorry for the delay!

Before we get into the main action, I wanna cover some of the pokemon I caught between these sessions!

  

There was an outbreak of Snubbull on Route 209! I named it Dakishime!

  

And another outbreak was Phanpy on Route 207! Its name is Zou!

And following the plan I'd outlined before with the Trophy Garden, I was able to catch two rare pokemon here!

  

The first of these was Castform! Named him Tenki!

 

 

 

Of course, Castform brings along its three forms as well: Sunny, Rainy, and Snowy!

  

And the other pokemon was Bonsly! Named him Naegi!

=================== 

Sandgem Town

Now that we've gotten that stuff out of the way, let's cover the main action!

So, to start, if we return to Sandgem Town after having spoken with her sister, she asks us if we've spoken with Bebe and tells us that every trainer should meet her since she runs the PC! We've met her our first time at Hearthome, but there's a reason she's mentioning this now. Let's go check out Hearthome City!

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

Hearthome City

If we stop by Bebe's house after having obtained the national pokedex, she'll comment on it and offer you a special gift to help!

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

 Henka (Eevee M); Lv. 5

 

Item: None

Ability: Adaptability | Moves: Tackle, Tail Whip, Helping Hand

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

As it turns out, you don't actually have to catch Eevee out of the Trophy Garden because Bebe will give you one as a free gift! Of course, you can evolve this Eevee into any Eevolution from a previous route! But here in Gen IV, we actually have a few new options...

 

Remember those strange Moss and Ice Rocks? Bring Eevee to these areas and level it up and you might be surprised by the results...

Leveling Eevee up in Eterna Forest where the Moss Stone can be found will allow it to evolve into Leafeon: A Grass-type Eevolution! THis definitely threw me for a loop as a kid because I tried to give my Eevee a Leaf Stone to evolve it into Leafeon. I'm sure this isn't an uncommon mistake, either.

Leveling Eevee up on Route 217 where the Ice Rock can be found will instead evolve it into the Ice-type Glaceon!

I really love these two Eevolutions. Leafeon is really cute and Glaceon is pretty! It really is a shame these pokemon are kind of locked behind postgame content in the debut games because I might've liked to include one of them on my team. Maybe I'll find room in the future...

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

Sandgem Town

If we retrun to Sandgem Town after speaking with Bebe, Dawn will now ask us if we've been using the Poke Radar. She'll hint at a secret use of this special item... I'll go over exactly what that is in a future post at the end of the generation. More importantly for right now, this is a good time to start discussing the mechanics of the Poke Radar! Let's start on Route 201.

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

Poke Radar

This item is a tool many Pokemon fans at the time became intimately familiar with. In preparation for using this thing for its intended use, you're going to want a handful of repels. We'll demonstrate its use on the first route of the game: Route 201!

Route 201

You ay have noticed throughout the game that there were a lot of large patches of grass like the one just outside of Sandgem Town. As it turns out, these aren't just for show and they serve a practical purpose related to the Poke Radar! If you stand inside of the grass and use the Poke Radar, watch carefully. For a brief moment, individual blades of tall grass will begin to rustle. Some will rustle lightly, others heavily. The heavy rustling patches are the ones we're after for our purposes with this tool for now.

Now, this is where the repels come in. You'll need to make your way over to the patch of grass you saw rustling without stepping on any of the other patches that rustled and without getting into a random encounter along the way. Managing this feat will reward you with... a random encounter? Well, it's not just any random encounter. This is the start of a chain.

Remember the Trainer Counter App? Yeah, it's a weird name, but that's its official name. Now I can explain in a bit more detail exactly what this app shows you! When you encounter a pokemon using the Poke Radar, a chain will begin. The chain will be broken if you run from a wild encounter or encounter a pokemon that is not the same species. If you want to keep your chain going, you'll want to defeat the pokemon you encountered. If you defeat or catch the pokemon you started the chain with, that pokemon will appear at the top of your Trainer Counter app alongside the number '1'. This is your chain count! In addition, more patches of grass will rustle and you can try again for another chance. The rustling patches this time have an increased chance of having the same pokemon. The further away the patch is, the more likely you are to encounter the same pokemon you're currently chaining. If you catch the pokemon rather than defeat it, the chance will also be increased further, but I find that this isn't totally necessary. It's still an 88% chance of the farthest grass containing the chained pokemon.

The reason I called attention to large blades of grass is because of the technicalities about how this works. The game will randomly select four tiles, each one on the outer edge of a square path around you (3x3, 5x5, 7x7, and 9x9). If the selected tile is tall grass, that tile will begin to rustle. Otherwise, that tile will be wasted. If all four tiles are wasted, the grass will remain quiet and your chain will be broken.

Getting a high chain actually requires a lot of dedication and luck. A lot of unfortunate things can happen to break your chain and even if you do everything right, there's still a chance you'll just get unlucky and encounter the wrong pokemon, breaking your chain.

After your chain is broken, you'll need to recharge your Poke Radar by walking around similar to the Vs Seeker. It takes 50 steps to recharge and you can check how many steps remain simply by using the item.

Now, as your chain gets higher and higher and luck is really on your side, you might see a patch start to sparkle... I wonder what will happen if you walk in then...? Well, I think you can see where I'm going with this, but it's a lucky opportunity you don't want to pass up. Again, I want to cover this in a future post, but not quite yet.

For now, remember that I said to give special attention to the heavy rustling? Well...

  

That's right, heavily rustling grass has a chance of holding rare pokemon not normally contained in the Sinnoh Region! How does this work? Hell if I know! But it's a thing! On Route 201, you'll have a 20% chance of encountering Niroan F with this method! I named it Ai.

There's also a 2% chance of encountering Nidoran M here! Just like in FireRed and LeafGreen, these encounter rates are swapped in Pearl version so that Nidoran M is more common while Nidoran F is rarer. Consequently, I'm not super bothered with trying to catch both of them here.

In general, these Poke Radar-exclusive encounters have a 22% chance of occuring. Any splits are usually 20::2. In case it isn't clear, this is where our focus for these last couple of sessions has been! The Poke Radar can be used anywhere there's tall grass and most distinct areas have a different rare pokemon available in them! This is completely separate from any pokemon outbreaks as well, so be sure to cover all your bases! If using the Poke Radar on every route seems exhausting to you, it might be a good idea to use it whenever you go to investigate a Pokemon Outbreak. You might be able to chain that swarmed pokemon while you're searching!

  

On Route 221, we can find Nidorina which I named Imoutou!

Its male counterpart, Nidorino, is more common in Pearl version.

  

At all three of the lakes, Wobbuffet can be found! I named it Guragura.

 

It's been a while since we got a gender difference to cover, well here's an odd one! Female Wobbuffet have... Lipstick?

  

On Route 202, you can find Sentret which I named Kinchou!

  

Route 218 is home to Ditto! That's right, Ditto is available from the very first games unlike Ruby and Sapphire which left Ditto eerily absent. Though I suppose this was guaranteed a possibility since you could simply transfer it forward via Pal Park, so there's no point in playing coy this time! Ditto will make it much easier to complete the pokedex! I named this one Egao!

  

On Route 203, you can find Ralts! I named it Ouen!

You can also find Kirlia here, but it's only a 1% rarity. Kirlia is much more commonly caught out of the wild in another Gen IV game, but even if you're just limited to this one, you're probably better off just evolving a Ralts. Either way, you're also going to want to make sure you have at least one Male Kirlia!

  

While the southern section of Route 204 has Ralts and Kirlia just the same as Route 203 on the more inviting-looking southern section, remember that the northern section is treated as a separate area and has its own encounter table! Up here, you can find Sunkern! I named it Himawari!

  

At the Valley Windworks, you can find Mareep! I named this one Watage!

The southern section of Route 205 can more or less be ignored because you can find the same pokemon but with technically lower odds, but paired with a much rarer pokemon elsewhere. Where that is, though, depends on your version of the game.

  

Hoppip is the pokemon in question! In Diamond version, it can be found in the northern section of Route 205 alongisde its evolution! I named Hoppip Bou.

  

Its evolution Skiploom is also available here, though only at a 2% rarity.

And if you're playing Pearl version, you'll find Slowpoke here in place of Hoppip and Skiploom.

 

Fuego Ironworks is where you'll find Skiploom and Hoppip together in Pearl version!

  

In Diamond version only, you'll find Aron here! I named it Yoroi!

Let's not forget about Eterna Forest!

If you enter from Eterna City, you'll see Gardenia standing at the gate overlooking the Old Chateau. Speaking with her, she'll talk about rumors of the ghost of the Old Chateau and claim that sinister shadows inside. She seems to be frightened by the idea of ghosts but tries to play it off by asserting that she's imply too busy as a gym leader to go in and investigate the chateau before wishing you good luck on your investigation! Well, it looks like we were voluntold for this job, but it does sound like it'll be in our interests to check out the Old Chateau again... maybe we'll find something new?

  

Anyway, turning our attention back to the matter at hand, here in Eterna Forest, you can find Nincada! Its name is Ninja!

  

On the western side of Route 211, you'll find Tyrogue! Named him Kitae.

Due to an unfortunate oversight, I actually ended up overlooking the fact that Swablu is available on the western side of this route until now. I swear I double-checked this and thought that Tyrogue was found on both sides. We'll need to come back for this one!

  

Along the underpass of Route 206, you can find Baltoy! Its name is Ningyou.

  

On Route 207, in Diamond version only, you'll fond Larvitar! Named her Yama!

And in Pearl version, you'll find Stantler in place of Larvitar.

Yes, even the summit of Mt. Coronet isn't exempt from the Poke Radar! And of course, there's a pokemon all the way up here that you can't find anywhere else in Sinnoh.

  

That pokemon is Loudred! I named it Onryou!

  

Snorunt can be found on Route 216! Believe it or not, even though it's also found on Route 217 and Acuity Lakefront, It's strangely less common than average up closer to Snowpoint without any compensation with other pokemon species, and there's a lot of grass between there and Route 217, so your best bet is to come down to Route 216 so that you can heal at the nearby house. In amed my Snorunt Hourou-Sha!

  

Smeargle can be found in the northern section of Route 212. I named it Bijutsu.

  

In the southern swampy section, you'll find Grimer which I named Haiki-Modo.

Our next destination is on the other side of Pastoria City!

  

Swellow is next on the list on Route 213! ANd what an intimidating sprite for this pokemon! It almost looks like it could be a legendary looking like that! I named it Maedate!

  

Flaaffy can be found on Route 222! Its name is Seiteki!

  

Mightyena can be found here in Diamond version! I named it Kokkou!

In Pearl version, you'll find Houndoom in Mightyena's place!

  

Tauros was next on southern Route 210! You can use the Poke Radar in the patch of grass just after the field of long grass but before the fog rolls in. I named it Buru.

Similar to the Nidorans, Tauros is at 20% and Miltank is only at 2% in Diamond version, but in Pearl version these percentages are dropped. I'll wait to track that on edown.

In Diamond version, northern Route 210 is home to Kecleon who I suppose is Diamond's counterpart to Pearl's Stantler.

The natural conclusion there is that this must also be where you find Pearl's counterpart to Diamond's Larvitar! Indeed, Bagon can be found here in Pearl version!

And with that, I do believe I've covered every area! There are a few areas I left out because they just had pokemon that were available elsewhere. I tried to focus on the most convenient locations to hunt down each pokemon. All that's left are new areas we've actually yet to explore... But with that out of the way, next time we'll finally be putting the Poke Radar in the past and checking out some of the more exciting stuff that's open to us here in the postgame!

I think we'll start by looking into that Old Chateau....

[Aura]

Once again, before we get into our update, let's go over what pokemon we've caught from the daily events!

  

From the Trophy Garden, I got a Meowth which I named Nya.

  

I caught a Plusle there as well which I named Tsuika!

  

And finally, from Route 217, Swinub was swarmed! I named it Buta!

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

So, now that we've finally finished going over the whole world and catching up all the pokemon available via the Poke Radar, all that's left is to explore any actual events that have been made available upon defeating Cynthia and obtaining the national mode for our pokedex! Well, that's not entirely true. There is actually one more way to alter the wild pokemon available in a handful of areas throughout the game, but that involves the dual-slot functionality and I want to wait to cover that until we reach a point where we're done with everything on-cart first. The only reason I covered Pal Park so soon was because it's only available once a day, so I wanted to make sure I could have access to it ASAP so that I could go ahead and transfer forward some mons from gen III playthroughs to allow a bit more variety in a certain upcoming game.

Eterna Forest

Our first destination today is going to be Eterna Forest! Specifically, the Old Chateau. Remember what Gardenia mentioned when we saw her just out here last time? Let's look into it a little deeper now!

Old Chateau

Throughout the majority of the Old Chateau, nothing abnormal, or at least abnormal for this creepy place, seems to be up.

However, if you make your way to the room with the TV, you might notice something odd at night. Inside the TV, there appears to be... a pokemon!

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

Vs. Rotom, Lv. 15

This has got to be the most bizarre static encounter in the series for me so far. This thing is only level 15, it's encountered in an early-game area, it is not a legendary pokemon and yet it can only be encountered in this one place, has the legendary encounter music for its battle (Which had a lot of people at the time fooled into thinking this thing actually was a legendary!), and even though it's a brand-new Gen IV pokemon only found in the Sinnoh Region, it can only be encountered after obtaining the National Pokedex! Everything about this encounter makes it feel like it was meant for you to catch this thing way earlier in the game, but it isn't made available at all until the postgame.

If you're playing along in Platinum version, you might be a bit confused by this assertion. But reasonably so, in Platinum they had the sense to make this encounter available without the National Pokedex. Rotom is even higher level! But in Diamond and Pearl, it's only a postgame battle, meaning this Level 15 pokemon that you have to seriously hold back against to avoid KO-ing gets this bizarrely epic encounter theme.

                                        

                                        

Anyway, the strategy here is simple enough. Rotom is really just annoying more than anything. I wanna open up by putting him to sleep with Ibutsu using Hypnosis. There are a few reasons this is important to do right away: Rotom has the move Uproar which will make it immune to sleep! Additionally, it has Confuse Ray to slow me down while it sets up Double Team to dodge attacks! It also has Thundershock which can add an additional layer of annoyance if it gets a lucky paralysis.

Thanks to Rotom's low level, Ibutsu outspeeds it and so Gyro Ball is really weak by default. It also gets weakened further by Rotom's Electric typing. So I can actually get a couple of Gyro Balls off to weaken Rotom for the catch.

                                        

                                        

If things become too awkward here, I can always bring out Hana to hit Rotom with Stun Spore!

                                        

                                        

And with the Evasion boosts? You guessed it, Honchkrow can swoop in for the Haze. Since Rotom is only level 15, I can do this without worry of getting struck hard with lightning.

Once I have Rotom Asleep or paralyzed and low on HP, it's time to start throwing Poke Balls!

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

 Biirusu (Rotom); Lv. 15

 

Item: None

Ability: Levitate | Moves: ThunderShock, Confuse Ray, Double Team, Uproar

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

Canalave City

Our next destination is Canalave City. Here, if we check with the Sailor who normally takes us to Iron Island, he'll tell us about how his son seems to have fallen under some sort of curse. He's fallen asleep and seems to be suffering from some sort of horrible nightmare. Ever since this has happened, it's troubled the sailor greatly and stopped his passion for sailing altogether.

If we go to his house nearby, we'll find the little boy in his bed, still sleeping. He's talking in his sleep. "Dar... Dark... is watching me..." His mother is standing over him, incredibly worried. I can imagine, this is a scary situation for sure! But this isn't the first time this has happened in Canalave City. Apparently it happened once before long ago.

If we speak to the sailor, he'll tell us about a place called Fullmoon Island where we should be able to find a Lunar Wing that is said to be able to dispel nightmares! He pleads with us to go and retrieve the wing for his son to which we agree!

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

Fullmoon Island

Fullmoon Island is a remote island and seems to be a pretty desolate place.

And as we move inside, we'll find... a pokemon!

Interacting with this pokemon will reveal it to be the legendary pokemon Cresselia! However, on interacting with her, she disappears! But, she left behind an item...

The item was the very Lunar Wing we were after! That was easy enough, but I wonder where Cresselia went off to? It shouldn't matter too much. We deliver the Lunar Wing to the Sailor's son back in Canalave and, sure enough, his nightmares are cleared up and he's able to wake up! He says he was having a horrible dream where he was followed by a scary pokemon, but that he could still hold his mother's voice the whole time. This reunion is really sweet, so let's give this family some space, huh? Not everything needs a reward. Of course, this quest does come with its own indirect reward...

If you've noted the way Cresselia disappeared as familiar, you'd probably be right in the natural conclusion...

Pull out your Marking Map app and, indeed, you'll find that Cresselia has started wandering Sinnoh just like Mesprit! Remember how I said not to use your Master Ball on Mesprit? Well, hopefully you aren't regretting your life choices now!

 Anyway, there's no need to go into detail about the process of tracking down Cresselia. It's all the same as with Mesprit. Once I found it, I simply tossed my Master Ball at it. No sense in going through with all that mess if there's nothing else I'd rather use my Master Ball on.

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

 Miadzuki (Cresselia F); Lv. 50

 

Item: None

Ability: Levitate | Moves: Mist, Aurora Beam, Future Sight, Slash

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

And with that, we're done for the day! There is one last area with changes I want to revisit, but that's gonna be large enough to warrant its own session.

So, next time, we'll take a look at what's different underground now that we have the national pokedex!

[Aura]

Sinnoh Underground

We return to the Sinnoh Underground! Technically, I should probably be waiting to cover this until we've visited everywhere in Sinnoh, but this is something else I kind of wanted to get started before getting too invested in postgame content. Once you get the National Mode for your pokedex, the items available in the Sinnoh Underground change! Many of the rarest items are now more common down here while some new items are also hadded!

Fossils:

Alongside the standard fossil for your version of the game, the fossils from the Kanto and Hoenn regions can now be found! I only have anecdotal evidence that is contradicted by Serebii, but it really feels like the Root and Dome Fossils aren't as common. I've found 5 Claw Fossils, 2 Helix Fossils, and 2 Old Amber but I have yet to find a single Dome or Root Fossil. It would be reasonable to assume these might be soft or even hard version exclusive items. Serebii claims all of these fossils are of the same rarity, so I really don't feel like my finds should be skewed this badly. Serebii has had some information wrong previously in this thread, and it's also possible this could be a difference between the Japanese and English version as well. It doesn't help that Bulbapedia lacks information on the Underground, so Serebii is the only source I have to go off of. But for now, I'm going to be running off of this assumption that I'll find the Dome and Root Fossils more commonly in Pearl version and stop trying to hunt for them.

Spoiler

Uncommon:

 

Skull Fossil (Diamond Version), Armor Fossil (Pearl Version)

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

Rare:

    

Dome Fossil, Helix Fossil, Old Amber, Root Fossil, Claw Fossil 

Evolution-Related Items

Aside from the Oval Stone, every evolution-related item becomes more common upon obtaining the National Pokedex to help with evolving pokemon from outside of the Sinnoh Region!

Spoiler

Uncommon:

     

Everstone, Fire Stone, Water Stone, ThunderStone, Leaf Stone, Sun Stone

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

Rare:

 

Moon Stone, Oval Stone

Held Items:

The weather rocks and Hard Stone are all bumped to more common tiers of rariy.

Spoiler

Uncommon:

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

Rare:

   

Damp Rock, Heat Rock, Icy Rock, Smooth Rock

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

Very Rare:

 

Light Clay, Iron Ball

Treasures:

The Star Piece is more common now.

Spoiler

Rare:

Star Piece

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

Very Rare:

Rare Bone

Any categories not listed in this post are unchanged from before. All in all, you're going to find a much wider variety of items more commonly now. But your main focus is on those newly added fossils!

    

By resurrecting the appropriate fossil, you can get your hands on Kaubto (Dome Fossil), Omanyte (Helix Fossil), Aerodactyl (Old Amber), Lileep (Root Fossil), and Anorith (Claw Fossil)

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

One last aspect about the Underground I wanted to mention here is that, if you just arbitrarily go down to the Underground from wherever you're at, you might find that you can't seem to get back to your base! If you look carefully at the map, you'll notice it's actually divided into 6 isolated sections. Where you use your Explorer's Kit in the overworld dictates where you'll end up in The Underground. Most of the time, you'll end up in the main section, which is the place we arrived at from Eterna.

The south-western area is the easiest of these to reach. If you Fly to Twinleaf Town or Pal Park and use the Explorer's Kit, you'll end up down here.

The south-eastern area you might think involves simply flying to Pastoria, but you'd be wrong. That actually brings you to the main area just north of it. Instead, you'll have to head South of Hotel Grand Lake. Thankfully, no sailing is necessary. Just standing on the beach is effective enough!

For the Northwestern Segment, though, you might think Snowpoint is the obvious way to go, but even that isn't quite North enough! You'll need to take the boat from Canalave to Fullmoon Island to be North enough to end up in the Northwestern area of Sinnoh Underground.

As for the tiny area in the center, my initial assumption was that you'd use the Explorer's Kit from the summit of Mt. Coronet, but the actual solution lies in Celestic Town! I suppose with just how far away Snowpoint City is, Celestic Town actually is in the center of Sinnoh. It's just odd to think of it that way because, if you remove that outlier, this would be the northernmost city tied with Eterna.

Finally, there's the North-eastern corner which is an area we can't actually reach just yet. Well, we can, but it's an area I haven't covered yet. I'll note it when we get there.

Anyway, part of why I wanted to cover this now is I figured I'd mention while I was hunting for Fossils that there are merchants in the far corners of the Sinnoh Underground who are very useful in gathering large spheres for the purpose of trading for decorations with other merchants. You can sell any treasures you've dug up, such as duplicate held items or Fossils, in exchange for fairly large spheres depending on the rarity of the item you sell. Remember that you can combine your spheres with larger spheres to increase their size as well. So it's a good idea to bury a large sphere and pile a bunch of smaller ones on top of it when you run out of space in your bag. These duplicate Fossils and held items aren't going to do you any good on the surface, so you may as well sell them to someone who needs them more! Trading them away on the GTS would've once been an option, but sadly that is the case no longer.

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

Anyway, that is the last area I wanted to double back over. Next time, we'll actually explore the new areas available to us only in the postgame! Well, technically I suppose Fullmoon Island was a new area, but it was such a small area that I don't think it really counts. Next time, we're going somewhere much more interesting!

[maid lover]

Always been a big fan of this ED topic, especially because of how detailed it is. But this time, I need to point out a slight error that occurred while some posts were written. The city name is PastAoria, not Pastoria, and I will not let this slide, didn't you notice that all the people around there are eating spaghetti?